Andrew Rice
“In fourteen hundred ninety two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
That infamous song taught to elementary school children across the country marks one of the most significant years in history. However, most people don’t know that, while Christopher Columbus was setting sail, some European Jews were on course for a life of piracy.
In the same year of Columbus’ grand adventure, the Spanish Inquisition shifted its target to Jewish people, expelling Jews from the country and scattering their people around Europe. This inquisition is believed to have led to the world’s first Jewish pirates.
On June 26, around 30 adults gathered at Congregation Adat Reyim off Old Keene Mill Road in Burke, Virginia, to learn more about the surprising history of Jewish pirates.
“It’s not your grandmother’s adult education,” said Paul Astrow, a member of the adult education committee at Adat Reyim.
Zina Segal, senior director of community impact and engagement at the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, taught the group about the largely unknown Jewish pirates.
“It is not a presentation; it is a pirate party,” Segal said to the group of adults.
She learned more about the history of Jewish pirates from reading the book “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” by Edward Kritzler. Segal said many Jews moved to Portugal and Amsterdam after the Spanish Inquisition. On his second journey, Columbus was shipwrecked in Jamaica and decided to take over ownership of the island. Columbus’ ownership of Jamaica kept the inquisition out of the island. As Portugal began to expel Jews from the country in 1496, Columbus was looking for workers to join his newly formed colony.
“Jamaica was off limits for inquisition for more than 100 years,” Segal said. “It was the only place in the New World that was off limits for inquisition.”
Without the threat of inquisition, many Jewish families in Portugal made the journey to Jamaica. They became merchants, moneylenders and pirates in the new country. However, Segal said pirates were different from how they are typically depicted in popular culture now. The Jewish pirates in Jamaica were accepted as a licensed profession.
Privateers were state-sponsored pirates who were authorized by governments to attack and capture enemy vessels and goods. Privateers differentiated themselves from pirates by operating under a letter of marque or a government license to engage in piracy against enemy ships.
“Being a privateer was actually seen as a real, respectable career,” Segal said.
A 1662 census in Jamaica found the country had a population of 6,000. It is estimated that 3,000 of these were buccaneers, with many of them most likely being of Jewish ancestry.
The first synagogue in Jamaica was built in 1703. Jamaica was not the only place to see a large Jewish population emerge. An exploration by Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral and his Jewish navigator ended up in Recife, Brazil. Segal said the Jewish population exploded in Recife, as evidenced by laws forbidding gambling on Friday afternoons in observance of Shabbat.
“They were not on time to the synagogue for Shabbat,” Segal said. “You never will forbid something people don’t do. You will forbid something that people are doing and you don’t want them to do.”
Segal shared stories of several notable Jewish pirates, including Samuel Palache, Jean Laffite and Moses Cohen Henriques. Henriques worked with other pirates to successfully complete the capture of a full Spanish silver galleon, or treasure fleet. Some estimates say a typical Spanish galleon carried $20 billion worth of rare jewels.
Debby Pregal, an attendee at the synagogue’s event, said she didn’t know much about Jewish pirates before.
“This was partly a criminal enterprise, but with it was also a career and a living,” Pregal said.
Segal loves teaching people new things and showcasing new facets of the Jewish community.
“Trying to find interesting aspects of Jewish history that people are not necessarily aware of is kind of my thing,” Segal said.
Sara Astrow, the executive director at Adat Reyim and wife to Paul, said the event was one of the most well attended she has seen. In a congregation of 215 families, she said she is always nervous hosting events because of heightened safety threats against the Jewish community in the wake of recent terror attacks.
“It makes you think, well, if I do this, I need security and maybe we shouldn’t do that,” Sara said. “You need to make sure everybody’s safe.”
“I’m not happy about the way things are these days,” Paul said. “What the Jewish community is going through and we have to have so much security.”
Despite worries of safety, Sara said she has no plans to stop holding events in the community, even if they are about pirate education.
“We’re called a community of friends. That’s what Adat Reyim means,” Astrow said. “By opening up, we’re living up to our name.”
Andrew Rice is a freelance writer.
