(RNS) — Just in time for Columbus Day, reports emerged on Monday (Oct. 14) that DNA analysis has revealed that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew.
Rumors of this have been floating around the Jewish world for a long time — long enough for us to wonder: Is it true?
The definitive essay on the subject comes to us from Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University, the preeminent scholar of American Jewish history. It appeared in Commentary magazine in 1992, marking the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ “discovery” of America.
How did Jewish “Columbus-mania” start? In 1892, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage, the American Jewish merchant Lazarus Straus and his diplomat son, Oscar Solomon Straus of the elite German-Jewish “Our Crowd,” commissioned Rabbi Meyer (Moritz) Kayserling to research the topic of Columbus’ alleged Jewish identity. The resultant book was “Christopher Columbus and the Participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries.”
“The Inspiration of Christopher Columbus” by José María Obregón, 1856. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)
Let us put this effort into its proper historical context. Like many of their Jewish contemporaries, the Strauses wanted Jews to assimilate into American life. What better way to do so than to show the supposedly unbreakable bond between Jews and the very origins of the American experience?
Not only that. Oscar Straus believed that if it could be historically proved that Jews had taken an active part in the discovery of America, “this fact would be an answer for all time to come to anti-Semitic tendencies in this country,” Kayserling wrote.
The research behind the claim turned out to be interesting. Kayserling documented that Columbus had significant connections with Jews or recent forced converts from Judaism (conversos), who had supplied him with maps, astronomical tables and nautical instruments. Some championed his cause before the Spanish crown. Some, such as the convert Luis de Santangel, even supported Columbus’ journey financially. Four men “of Jewish stock” were found to have accompanied Columbus to the New World (actually, only one of them — interpreter Luis de Torres, who had converted to Christianity not long before — was of certain Jewish descent).
But, was Columbus himself Jewish? It is doubtful, though there has been a lot of circumstantial evidence.
His birth name, Colon, was a common Sephardic name, but there were many non-Jews with the same name.
Columbus also had a mysterious triangular signature, which some have dubiously called a key to his Jewish identity.
The family was in the weaving business, which was frequently associated with Jews, and like many Spanish conversos, Columbus and his family were highly secretive, taking great pains to conceal their background, suggesting that they had something to hide. But these claims are inconclusive, as are the facts that Columbus associated with Jews and even left a small legacy to a Jew, knew Jewish mystical sources and occasionally linked his experiences to events in ancient Jewish history.
There was one big Jewish link in Columbus’ life. He had an illicit relationship with Beatrice Enriquez, the mother of his son Ferdinand and, in his biographer Salvador de Madariaga’s view, herself a secret Jew.
As for the DNA testing: In my humble opinion, meh. It proves some Jewish genetic presence, but that would not be unusual. There is Jewish DNA all over the place.
More than that: If Columbus was indeed a Jew, it would be a substantial lack of Jewish mazal for this to suddenly see the light of day — again. Because Columbus has not been a hero for quite some time.
More than 30 years ago, Sarna wrote:
In “Was the Discoverer of America Jewish?,” a writer in Moment magazine reminds his readers that Columbus’s discovery was “disastrous” for the native American population, leading to millions of deaths, and that, in addition, the explorer introduced into the New World the scourge of slavery. “Do we really want to claim Columbus?,” Moment’s editors ask. And Judith Laikin Elkin, writing in Hadassah, has made a similar point:
The search for Jewish ancestry for Columbus is particularly untimely now, when Native Americans are drawing our attention to the genocide that paved the way for the creation of our New World.
So, we might ask: Why now? Why the sudden resurgence of Jewish Columbus-mania? When it comes to historical figures, Columbus is not the only would-be-maybe Jew. There had been some speculation that Abraham Lincoln had Jewish ancestry.
In my mind, it goes back to the phenomenon that I call “Jew-collecting.” It is the habit of seeing someone famous and seeking to confirm that person’s Jewish identity: “Hey, did you know that X is Jewish?” It is also the need to see those people publicly affirming that identity (for example, Jerry Seinfeld’s activism for Israel after Oct. 7), especially when we see so many Jewish celebrities remaining silent.
But there is something deeper going on. This is not about the alleged Jewish identity of Christopher Columbus. This is about the real identity of American Jews.
Let us go back to the original impetus and inspiration for the “Jewish Columbus” thing. It goes back to Oscar Straus, a scion of one of American Jewry’s noblest families, who served as United States secretary of commerce and labor in the Theodore Roosevelt administration, making Straus the first Jew to have served in a presidential Cabinet.
Straus was a loyal Jew and a publicly recognizable Jew. But he also resembled a unique Jewish style, and that was one of assimilation.
What had influenced him to enlist Kayserling to do research into the life and times of Christopher Columbus? It was not only his desire for assimilation. It was also the very real presence of antisemitism, and the fact that members of the Straus family themselves had been victims of social antisemitism.
The new Jewish “Columbus mania,” the feverish enthusiasm at identifying the great explorer as an M.O.T. (member of the tribe) is a vestige of Jewish ethnic fervor. It will resonate much more with Jews over 60 than with Jews under 40, who are likely to yawn at the idea of a Jewish Columbus. (They will have never known the old Yiddish epithet, uttered by immigrants who were disappointed at their lack of success in their new land: “a klug tsu Columbus”— “a curse on Columbus.” That disappointment with what America had taken from the Jews, 65 years ago, became transformed into Philip Roth’s classic novella, “Goodbye Columbus.”)
But let us understand the timing of this new announcement regarding Columbus. Yes, in time for Columbus Day. And yes, in the days after Yom Kippur. And, most certainly, in the week after the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7, and its accompanying tsunami of antisemitism.
The spirit of Oscar Straus lives. We want to be loved, accepted and confirmed as part of the American story.
Who came blame us? But, at the very least, let us do so with real history, and not with myths.
If Christopher Columbus turns out to have been Jewish — fine. I will include him in my posthumous much-more-than-a-minyan of great Jews.
And, if he’s not really Jewish, we can live with that, too.