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 passion0 the -uest to liberate 1erusalem from the 2uslims Charles (arcia 3urin# Columbus/ lifetime, 1e"s became the tar#et of fanatical reli#ious persecution 4n 2arch 5), )*+,, 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 8Conversos,8 or converts There "ere also those "ho fei#ned conversion, practicin# Catholicism out"ardly "hile covertly practicin# 1udaism, the so-called 82arranos,8 or s"ine Tens of thousands of 2arranos "ere tortured by the Spanish &n-uisition 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 "ere then 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 a 1e" "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 ordered his heirs to use the si#nature in perpetuity ?ccordin# to British historian Cecil 9oth/s 8The %istory of the 2arranos,8 the ana#ram "as a cryptic substitute for the 6addish, a prayer recited in the syna#o#ue by mourners

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 "as Castilian Spanish &ri:arry e'plains that )5th-century Castilian Spanish "as the 8Aiddish8 of Spanish 1e"ry, kno"n as 8>adino 8 ?t the top left-hand corner of all but one of the )5 letters "ritten by Columbus to his son 3ie#o contained the hand"ritten %ebre" letters bet-hei, meanin# b/e:rat %ashem B"ith (od/s helpC 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, 8Sails of %ope,8 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 one day to avoid embarkin# on the holiday, "hich "ould have been considered by 1e"s to be an unlucky day to set sail BCoincidentally 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 C 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 de Santan#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 our nation 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