Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

Начало книги

A puzzling entry in a pirate’s journal jumped out at me. Invading Jamaica in 1643, William Jackson found the island’s capital deserted except for “divers Portuguese of the Hebrew nation who came unto us seeking asylum, and promised to show us where the Spaniards hid their gold.” I had always learned that early New World adventure was the province of Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors, and that they were all devout Catholics carrying the cross. So what were Portuguese Jews doing on a Spanish island, seeking asylum with an English pirate?

It was 1967. I had moved to Jamaica from New York, and came upon Jackson’s journal in the reading room of Jamaica’s national library while perusing contemporary accounts of the island’s buccaneer beginnings. I was more than intrigued. I wanted an answer.

What I next learned was startling: Before England conquered Jamaica in 1655, the island belonged to the family of Christopher Columbus, who provided a haven for Jews otherwise outlawed in the New World. The leader of the Jewish community, the late Sir Neville Ashenheim, went even further, telling me that Columbus was a Jew, and that Jamaica’s Jews traced their ancestry to the first settlers.

Читать дальше →