7/27/2019 CRISTOBAL COLON EN JUDIO

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cristobal-colon-en-judio 1/2

Was Columbus secretly a Jew?By Charles Garcia, Special to CNN

(CNN) -- Today marks the 508th anniversary of the death of Christopher Columbus

!verybody kno"s the story of Columbus, ri#ht$ %e "as an &talian e'plorer from (enoa

"ho set sail in )*+ to enrich the Spanish monarchs "ith #old and spices from the orient

 Not uite

.or too lon#, scholars have i#nored Columbus/ #rand passion the uest to liberate

1erusalem from the 2uslims

Charles (arcia

3urin# Columbus/ lifetime, 1e"s became the tar#et of fanatical reli#ious persecution 4n2arch ), )*+, 6in# .erdinand and 7ueen &sabella proclaimed that all 1e"s "ere to be

e'pelled from Spain The edict especially tar#eted the 800,000 1e"s "ho had never

converted, and #ave them four months to pack up and #et out

The 1e"s "ho "ere forced to renounce 1udaism and embrace Catholicism "ere kno"n as

Conversos, or converts There "ere also those "ho fei#ned conversion, practicin#

Catholicism out"ardly "hile covertly practicin# 1udaism, the so-called 2arranos, ors"ine

Tens of thousands of 2arranos "ere tortured by the Spanish &nuisition They "ere

 pressured to offer names of friends and family members, "ho "ere ultimately paraded in

front of cro"ds, tied to stakes and burned alive Their land and personal possessions "erethen divvied up by the church and cro"n

9ecently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as 1ose !ru#o, Celso (arcia de la 9ie#a,4tero Sanche: and Nicholas 3ias ;ere:, have concluded that Columbus "as a 2arrano,

"hose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his 1e"ish back#round

in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansin#

Columbus, "ho "as kno"n in Spain as Crist<bal Col<n and didn/t speak &talian, si#ned

his last "ill and testament on 2ay )+, )50=, and made five curious -- and revealin# --

 provisions

T"o of his "ishes -- tithe one-tenth of his income to the poor and provide an anonymous

do"ry for poor #irls -- are part of 1e"ish customs %e also decreed to #ive money to a1e" "ho lived at the entrance of the >isbon 1e"ish 7uarter

4n those documents, Columbus used a trian#ular si#nature of dots and letters that

resembled inscriptions found on #ravestones of 1e"ish cemeteries in Spain %e orderedhis heirs to use the si#nature in perpetuity

?ccordin# to British historian Cecil 9oth/s The %istory of the 2arranos, the ana#ram

"as a cryptic substitute for the 6addish, a prayer recited in the syna#o#ue by mourners

7/27/2019 CRISTOBAL COLON EN JUDIO

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cristobal-colon-en-judio 2/2

after the death of a close relative Thus, Columbus/ subterfu#e allo"ed his sons to say

6addish for their crypto-1e"ish father "hen he died .inally, Columbus left money to

support the crusade he hoped his successors "ould take up to liberate the %oly >and

!stelle &ri:arry, a lin#uistics professor at (eor#eto"n @niversity, has analy:ed the

lan#ua#e and synta' of hundreds of hand"ritten letters, diaries and documents of

Columbus and concluded that the e'plorer/s primary "ritten and spoken lan#ua#e "asCastilian Spanish &ri:arry e'plains that )5th-century Castilian Spanish "as the Aiddish

of Spanish 1e"ry, kno"n as >adino ?t the top left-hand corner of all but one of the )

letters "ritten by Columbus to his son 3ie#o contained the hand"ritten %ebre" letters bet-hei, meanin# b/e:rat %ashem "ith (od/s help 4bservant 1e"s have for centuries

customarily added this blessin# to their letters No letters to outsiders bear this mark, and

the one letter to 3ie#o in "hich this "as omitted "as one meant for 6in# .erdinand

&n Simon Deisenthal/s book, Sails of %ope, he ar#ues that Columbus/ voya#e "as

motivated by a desire to find a safe haven for the 1e"s in li#ht of their e'pulsion from

Spain >ike"ise, Carol 3elaney, a cultural anthropolo#ist at Stanford @niversity,concludes that Columbus "as a deeply reli#ious man "hose purpose "as to sail to ?sia

to obtain #old in order to finance a crusade to take back 1erusalem and rebuild the 1e"s/

holy Temple

&n Columbus/ day, 1e"s "idely believed that 1erusalem had to be liberated and the

Temple rebuilt for the 2essiah to come

Scholars point to the date on "hich Columbus set sail as further evidence of his true

motives %e "as ori#inally #oin# to sail on ?u#ust , )*+, a day that happened to

coincide "ith the 1e"ish holiday of Tisha B/?v, markin# the destruction of the .irst and

Second %oly Temples of 1erusalem Columbus postponed this ori#inal sail date by oneday to avoid embarkin# on the holiday, "hich "ould have been considered by 1e"s to be

an unlucky day to set sail Coincidentally or si#nificantly, the day he set forth "as the

very day that 1e"s "ere, by la", #iven the choice of convertin#, leavin# Spain, or bein#killed

Columbus/ voya#e "as not, as is commonly believed, funded by the deep pockets of

7ueen &sabella, but rather by t"o 1e"ish Conversos and another prominent 1e" >ouis deSantan#el and (abriel Sanche: advanced an interest free loan of )E,000 ducats from their

o"n pockets to help pay for the voya#e, as did 3on &saac ?brabanel, rabbi and 1e"ish

statesman

&ndeed, the first t"o letters Columbus sent back from his Fourney "ere not to .erdinand

and &sabella, but to Santan#el and Sanche:, thankin# them for their support and tellin#

them "hat he had found

The evidence seem to bear out a far more complicated picture of the man for "hom ournation no" celebrates a national holiday and has named its capital

?s "e "itness bloodshed the "orld over in the name of reli#ious freedom, it is valuable

to take another look at the man "ho sailed the seas in search of such freedoms -- landin#

in a place that "ould eventually come to hold such an ideal at its very core