Why
Jewish Pirates Sunk
A
book review by Shelomo Alfassa
Jewish
Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling
Jews Carved out an
Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure,
Religious Freedom - and Revenge.
By Edward Kritzler - Doubleday,
$26.00, 2008
At
first, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean looks
like an incredible book. Edward Kritzler tells the story
of how certain Jews which fled Spain during the era
of the Inquisition, went on to become involved in sea
trading, exploration and in certain cases, piracy. And
while it is indeed a pleasant book, filled with history,
exploration, intrigue and adventure - that said, what
it is not, is a scholarly work.
The
book twists the tales of several Sephardic men (Jews
from Spain and Portugal) that were expelled from Spain
during the era of the Inquisition. In its narrative,
the book occasionally blurs it's subject matter, including
that of the Jews that worked on ships with Jews that
piloted them. It doesn't describe large numbers of Jewish
pirates, for there were not large numbers of Jewish
pirates. What the book does, is focus on the few stories
of the very few known 'pirates' which were of Jewish
extraction. The author weaves their personal stories
into the larger contemporary history. He also draws
in the history of certain conversos, Sephardic Jews
that had converted to Christianity under Inquisitional
duress, who had fled Spain for the Caribbean islands,
Brazil and Holland. (The author leaves out that the
overwhelming majority of the Jews which left Spain went
to the Ottoman Empire).
"The
book offers authoritative but inaccurate declarations"
The
book starts out with Kritzler telling that, "King
Solomon's trading post (1000 B.C.) developed over a
millennium to become Sephard [sic],
a strategic outpost of the Roman Empire."
Yet, this is a conjectured theory, for there is no proof
that Jews were in Spain during the period of Solomon.
A common conviction in Jewish folklore is that the Jews
arrived in Spain, sailing from the holy land with the
Phoenician sea traders. Yet, these are more likely romanticized
stories which have developed over time. What we do know,
is that there certainly was no location known as "King
Solomon's trading post" and that there is indeed
archeological proof that Jews arrived in Spain with
the Greeks. The Greeks took up sea going trade, much
like the Phoenicians, sometime between 500 and 800 BCE.
It is well known that the Greeks were in Spain several
hundred years prior to the Romans. Inconsistently, further
into his introduction, the author indicates Jews had
been in Spain only since "the
time of Christ," which would have been
some 1000 years after he first mentioned Jews settled
- during the period of King Solomon.
The
book offers authoritative but inaccurate declarations,
such as the Jews arrived in Spain, "…in
the first century A.D.," [sic] and that they
were there because, "Emperor
Titus, after conquering Israel and burning the Temple,
exiled thousands of Jews." Yet, there
is no proof that a large scale migration of exiled Jews
arrived in Spain during this period. Scholars have discussed
this topic for centuries, and while Moshe Ibn Ezra indicated
this and while Yishak Abravanel has a similar opinion,
there remains no proof of such. The Roman conquest of
Hispania (generally speaking of modern Spain and Portugal),
began near 264-241 BCE, and by this time, Jews has been
living there-this being several hundred years before
Titus walked the earth.
In
a discussion on the number of victims of the mass murders
and mass conversions of Jews perpetrated by the Christians
in 1391, the author indicates that "100,000"
Jews were left dead and there were "100,000
converts for Jesus." He said that another
"300,000" later
came out of hiding. That is a total of 500,000 Jews!
These figures far exceed Abravanel's number of 300,000
total Jews that were exiled from Spain-and even Abravanel's
figure is looked at by scholars as exaggerated. Most
scholars today have deduced that the number of Jews
that were made refugees by the Spanish government as
around 150,000 and up to 200,000. As for the number
of conversions, they are estimated to be 10,000-35,000,
this is significantly less then Kritzler's peculiar
figure of 100,000.
The
book has many details which must be examined closely
if one is searching for historic accuracy. This includes
the stunning and unsubstantiated supposition made by
the author, that Christopher Columbus "sailed
with a hidden agenda" which was to "acquire
a new land where Sephardim could live free from the
terrors of the Inquisition." If this
was indeed a secret of Columbus, then I'm not sure how
Kritzler knew about it. Even scholars that focus on
Iberia and/or the Sephardic Diaspora have not written
about this.
"The
book has many details which must be examined closely
if one is searching for historic accuracy."
In
another example, Kritzler tells of the Jewish heritage
of the famous "pirate" Jean Lafitte of New
Orleans, who allegedly told how his Sephardic grandmother
spoke to him about the family's tragic experience with
the Inquisition. The author mentions that Lafitte wrote
about this in his journal. Yet, the (in)famous "Journal
of Jean Lafitte" is widely alleged to be a
forgery, and many historians have declared it as an
outright counterfeit document. Whether it is a forgery
or not, Kritzler has included Lafitte's account in the
book as if it was substantiated truth. Thus, Kritzler's
critical error is magnified by not mentioning or even
alluding to the questionable authenticity of "Journal
of Jean Lafitte."
On
a technical note, the book has several problem with
word usage, here are but a few examples:
