Nadene Goldfoot
Rabbi Colon was famous for his ability to establish broad principles that would apply not only to the case at hand, but to future disputes. He ruled that a parent’s objection should not prevent a child’s marriage to an appropriate spouse, because a child was not obligated to suffer the pain of marrying an undesired spouse in order to honor his parents. Colon had “an inflexible regard for right and justice,” and was not swayed by bias toward or against any individual person. He chastised a respected German rabbi for adjudicating a dispute in which he himself was a party. Driven by false rumors to attack Rabbi Capsali in Turkey for laxity in matters of divorce law, Colon later recanted and on his deathbed sent his son Perez to deliver an apology to Capsali.
Italy contains some of the oldest Jewish Communities in Europe. Jews arrived in South Italy after the destruction of the First Temple and later thousands of Jews lived in Rome already before the Christian era. At Roman time there were ten-fifteen synagogues in Roma (Rome). Whether fact or legend, there are those who say that Columbus set out with the expelled Jews because he had stalled his voyage, originally set for August 2, by one day; that year, August 2 was the commemoration of Tisha B’Av, a fast day of mourning for the fall of the Jewish Temples. |
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, goes the line to remember his date. Why this was important to some Jewish Spaniards was that they were told they had to leave the country or convert to Catholicism. Jews were the target of this doctrine that came from the Church through Queen Isabella and king Ferdinand. . Columbus had purchased 3 ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Marina. An interesting man, he was an Italian who had gone to the Spanish royalty to get the financial backing for this journey. Many Jews lived in Italy.
Recently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing.
Columbus, who was known in Spain as Cristóbal Colón and didn’t speak Italian, signed his last will and testament on May 19, 1506, and made five curious – and revealing – provisions..Two of his wishes – tithe one-tenth of his income to the poor and provide an anonymous dowry for poor girls – are part of Jewish customs. He also decreed to give money to a Jew who lived at the entrance of the Lisbon Jewish Quarter. On those documents, Columbus used a triangular signature of dots and letters that resembled inscriptions found on gravestones of Jewish cemeteries in Spain. He ordered his heirs to use the signature in perpetuity.
According to British historian Cecil Roth’s “The History of the Marranos,” the anagram was a cryptic substitute for the Kaddish, a prayer recited in the synagogue by mourners after the death of a close relative. Thus, Columbus’ subterfuge allowed his sons to say Kaddish for their crypto-Jewish father when he died. Finally, Columbus left money to support the crusade he hoped his successors would take up to liberate the Holy Land.
He could have been one of them because it's known that he wrote to his son in Hebrew, and why? Was it his mother language, or so that no one else could read it. His native language is presumed to have been a Genoese dialect (Ligurian) as his first language, though Columbus probably never wrote in it. His name in 16th-century Genoese was Cristoffa Corombo, in Italian, Cristoforo Colombo, and in Spanish Cristóbal Colón. A few of his shipmates were Jews, getting out of Spain, their mother country. On August 3, 1492, just three days after the deadline given to Spain’s large and vibrant Jewish community to convert to Christianity or leave the country for ever, three ships - the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria - set sail from the port in Palos de la Frontera West.
Jews had lived in Spain since the 1st Temple of Solomon had been destroyed in 597 BCE. The bible refers to Spain as Sepharad. Jews were mentioned in 1st century records in the canons of the 1st Council at Elvira in the year of 312. Jewish tombstones have been found from the Classical period.
The Visigoths, when they were following the Arian form of Christianity, liked Jews and treated them well, but in 589, they embraced Catholicism, there was a reaction towards Jews. By 612, a relentless persecution took place from the Councils of Toledo. They prohibited Judaism! Arianism is often considered to be a form of Unitarian theology in that it stresses God's unity at the expense of the notion of the Trinity, the doctrine that three distinct persons are united in one Godhead. The Visigoths were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in
The Arabs invaded in 711 and brought the Jews freedom of religion. Spain became the center of Jewish life. However, their communities were of course Arabized in language like English is today. It affected also their nomenclature and outlook; but at the same time-Islam was prescribing a rigid anti-Jewish discrimination. Even so, skill won over their government and a few Jews rose to positions of great influence like Hasdai Ibn Shaprut of Cordova and Samuel Ibn Nagrela, vizier to the king of Granada.
During this period, Hebrew literature of all fields was being shared with the rest of the world. Classical science by Jewish scientists living in Spain reached out to Christian Europe.
In 1136, the Almohades invaded brought a reaction to Jews. Again, the practice of Judaism was forbidden in Andralusia !! In the north, expanding Christian kingdoms kept their more tolerant policy towards Jews. They felt Jews were quite useful as diplomats, financiers, and even as agricultural colonists. That's how the great centers of Jewish life were found under Christian rule. Almohads, Arabic al-Muwaḥḥidūn (“those who affirm the unity of God”), Berber confederation that created an Islamic empire in North Africa and Spain (1130–1269), founded on the religious teachings of Ibn Tūmart (died 1130).
In the court of Alfonso the Wise of Castile (1252-1284) , the Dark Ages, Jews were a part of the intellectual growth as translators and astronomers. Samuel Abulafia of the 14th century and Isaac Abravanel in the 15th century were important financiers. From the north developed a more intolerant spirit towards Jews again. In the middle of the 13th century, the Dominican Order initiated constant anti-Jewish propaganda as shown in the Disputation of Barcelona, conversionist sermons (many still go on today in USA),and the implementation of the persecutory code of the 4th Lateran Council including some scattered physical outbreaks like pogroms. Example, in 1391 a wave of massacres beginning at Seville swept through the entire Peninsula, as a result of which very large numbers of Jews accepted baptism in order to escape death. This was repeated in the following years.
As a result of the Alhambra decree and persecution in the years leading up to the expulsion, of Spain's estimated 300,000 Jewish origin population, a total of over 200,000 had converted to Catholicism to remain in Spain, and between 40,000 and 100,000 remained Jewish and suffered expulsion. An unknown number of the expelled eventually succumbed to the pressures of life in exile away from formerly-Jewish relatives and networks back in Spain, and so converted to Catholicism to be allowed to return in the years following expulsion.
These New Christians were labeled Marranos, ostensibly Christians but Jewish at heart and they attracted jealousy through their remarkable social and economic programs, henceforth constituted a serious problem. After a series of popular outbreaks against them, the Inquisition of the Church was introduced in 1478. this procedure against the secret Jews, for they kept their Judaism hiding in their celebrations, encouraged further action against those remaining true to their faith who were alleged to have provoked the other element to infidelity. The Inquisition is known to have tracked down Jews who escaped to Mexico. They have been unrelenting.
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