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Monday, October 8, 2018

Christopher Columbus-A Hidden Jew


Nadene Goldfoot                                       

Do you know that Christopher Columbus (1451 Genoa, Italy-May 20, 1506 Valladolid, Spain) was a Jewish convert to Catholicism (third generation, I think)?   And his wife, Filipa Moniz Perestrelo,  was also basically Jewish, from Portugal,  and so was his son.  They married in 1479.  "Chris was based in Lisbon for several years, but later took a Spanish mistress; he had one son with each woman, Diego and Ferdinand.  

The man, a Jew, most likely was forced to convert being the Spanish feeling towards Jews had been growing and developing way before they decided to carry on a full inquisition.  He also might have been a Marrano, a hidden Jew, one who practiced what Judaism he could in secret.  Families kept such a secret up into this very day, afraid to expose themselves.  Today, people found to have had this horrible experience in their family are called the Anusim, not Marranos. Another name used for hidden Jews of Spain or Portugal was a Converso.  A quarter of a million Spanish Jews were converted forcibly. 

"
A service in a Spanish synagogue, from the Sister Haggadah (c. 1350). The Alhambra Decree would bring Spanish Jewish life to an end.
"The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion; Spanish: Decreto de la Alhambra, Edicto de Granada) was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year. The primary purpose was to eliminate their influence on Spain's large converso population and ensure they did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted as a result of the religious persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391." (wikipedia)  " As a result of the Alhambra decree and persecution in prior years, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled, an indeterminate number returning to Spain in the years following the expulsion."  
                                                         

When it did happen, Jews tried to leave in ships for Portugal.  Sometimes they didn't make it.  It was a dangerous venture.  Marranos were "(in medieval Spain) a Christianized Jew or Moor, especially one who merely professed conversion in order to avoid persecution.
                                                    

For those Marranos who never left Spain and had become full-fledged Christians, it didn't take long to assimilate and be one of the Spaniards.  Within 50-60 years, even though Jewish customs were preserved in Marrano homes, sometimes even for centuries, such as lighting candles on Friday night or eating unleavened bread in the Spring, it was treated by later generations as nothing more than a mysterious family tradition  As far as religion was concerned, they were now Catholics.  

As for the Jews who made it to Portugal to live, they in turn were expelled from there 5 years later.  That decree damaged them more than the original Spanish expulsion because it showed them that the inquisitional Church's Christian society was far more serious than anything previously.  

Jews were forced to leave for the next 50 years after 1492's decree from the Iberin Peninsula.  They had a hard time mingling with their fellow Jews.  The rabbis of that day even decreed that Marranos were to be accepted and taken back into the Jewish community, but the Jews they found outside of Spain had little sympathy for the Marranos.  They had no idea of the horrors that the Spanish Inquisitioners  used to threaten people.  For many generations, people wouldn't marry a Marrano.  They were not accepted as Jews, possibly out of resentment that at the moment of truth, they had weakened and opted to convert and save their lives instead of facing exile.  So the Marranos banded together forming their own communities and didn't mix with the Jews.
                                                      
In the eastern European Jewish communities of Poland of the 1400s and early 1500s, the center of Ashkenazic Jewry was established.  The Sephardic Jewry made homes throughout Europe and the Mediterranean basin.  Italy was a popular destination, even though it was mainly the largest Catholic country in the world.  In that time period, Italy ws divided into many small kingdoms.  The Church in Italy was liberal compared to Spain.  It was the time of the Medici and Borgias popes who were not really religious men.  

"Marranos found Italy to be pleasant, so different from Spain.  Jews even accepted them .  The most famous Jew to flee here was Don Isaac Abarbanel.  His presence in Italy gave standing to the Spanish Jews, and even to the Marranos, who rose rapidly in social circles to positions of wealth and influence. 

When Abarbanel arrived, a great rabbi from Poland settled in the town of Padua, Rabbi Meir ben Isaac Katzenellenbogen, who is on our family tree."  He had 3 sons;  a rabbi, a banker and a merchant.  They befriended Italian noblemen scattered long the broken sites of the Italian peninsula and created a base for Jewish life for the future.

Katzenellenbogen and his sons had many descendants.  Don Isaac has many many descendants.  These 2 great rabbis, created the Italian-Jewish community and were the cement that held it together.  

He was such a brave man, and must have been quite interested in science to have taken such risks as sail in the unknown uncharted sea testing out a theory.  Had he not ventured with his fleet of ships of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, we might still think the world was flat and not take any chances to explore.  What he did was open up the world that he had found to be very ugly.

 I didn't know that, but I do know that Columbus corresponded with his son in Hebrew, so he didn't want anyone to know what they were talking about.  At the time Yale and Harvard were built in the USA, they were teaching Hebrew, so I wasn't sure if Hebrew was more familiar to educated people in his day or not.  

His trip to the New World was financed by one Jew (Abarbanel) and two Jewish converts to Christianity. These three gave their money to the Spanish queen.  

The Abravanel (Abarbanel) family was distinguished of Spanish origin.  The surname is a diminutive of Abraham through Abravan. 

 Isaac Abravanel was born in 1437 and died in 1508.  He was a statesman, philosopher, and bible exegete.  Abravanel served as treasurer to Alfonso V of Portugal, but fled to Spain in 1483, which is the opposite direction most would dream of taking.  Anti-Semitism was happening. He had gone to Spain to escape charges of conspiracy leveled by Alfonso's son and successor against his father's ministers.  

The Spanish Inquisition was in its height in 1492 when Catholicism was dictating that Jews had to convert to their religion or get out of the country quickly.   

In Toledo, he entered the service of Ferdinand and Isabella but was unable to avert the decree of expulsion from Spain in 1492.  So he accompanied many of his fellow-exiles, called Marranos, an ugly word meaning "hidden Jews"  to Italy where he was employed by the court of Naples.  After further tribulations which brought him to Sicily, Corfu and Monopoli, he finally settled in Venice in 1503 where he tried to negotiate a treaty with Portugal.  

His main importance derives from his voluminous literary works which include a commentary on the Bible which had considerable influence on the 17th and 18th century Christian exegesis;  philosophical works of an essentially anti-nationalist nature, and religious writings that stressed the primacy for Judaism of the belief in Divine Revelation and the Messiah.

His later works influenced the messianic movements of the 16th and 17th centuries.  

Judah Abravanel was known as Leone Ebreo and was born in 1460 and died in 1521.   He was a philosophr and a physician, the  son of Isaac Abfavanel whom he accompanied to Italy.  He wrote the Dialoghi d'Amore (Dialogues of Love) in 1502, then published in 1535 which strives to combine Neoplatonism and Judaism.  It stresses the concept of Love as the foundation of the universe and the key to union with G-d.  The book must have been very popular as it was translated into a number of languages, including Hebrew, and exercised a great influence on the lyric poetry of the 16th century in  Italy, France and Germany.

Samuel Abravanel was also a son of Isaac Abravanel.  He was born in 1473 and died in 1547 and was the family financier.  He was the head of the Jewish community of Naples for many years and settled in Ferrara after the expulsion of the Jews from that kingdom in 1541.  He and his wife, Bienvenida, who died in 1560, were literary patrons.  

News on TV today announced that there would be no more Columbus Day in Columbus, Ohio.  Is this what is happening to our history?  People cannot accept the fact that the mindset of people years ago was different and that we can do 2 things; look back and see the progress or the decline in our own society today.   Such things as having a Columbus Day brings our minds to the history of that section of the world and we get to review what went on in those days and why.  The last thing we should be doing is whining about honoring Columbus, a man of vision.  They only see an empty cup and that Columbus had brought Spain and Portugal the Western Colonialism, whatever that implies.  

Update: 10/16/18
Resource: Andi Ziegelman, DNA researcher; Halpern & Branches
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus
https://www.jewishhistory.org/the-marranos/https://www.jewishhistory.org/the-marranos/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree

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