PIECES OF THE PUZZLE: WHY DID COLUMBUS SAIL THE OCEAN BLUE?

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

This article was written three years ago.  I found the facts fascinating then, and now I find them even more fascinating. 

Do you realize how many times the Jewish people and the Christian people have been driven out of their lands and homes because of their belief in God?  

It has happened continuously, over and over in the history of mankind.  If you begin to study this history, you also begin to see how the hand of God has worked in these things, despite the tragedies that took place.  

One example is that of the Alhambra Decree that drove the Jewish people out of Spain.  If you study the writings of modern day Spanish scholars, you uncover amazing truths about how history in American evolved.  You will hear of many things that are not recorded in the typical American History books or taught in American schools.  

Pondering  the Alhambra Decree and the devastation it must have brought to the Jewish community as they were driven from Spain has allowed me to stumble across some very interesting observations. 

I am so excited to share these historical possibilities with you.  Am I sure they are all completely true?  I will let you know the facts I have found, and you may decide that for yourself.  I never claim to be an expert or a perfect historian, so be sure to do your own homework and research all of the facts.  Ask God to reveal only the truth to you and know I am presenting the truth here as best I can discern it from my own limited research.  I have found it all very fascinating! 

As a first note, and just to make sure we set the record straight, after all these years, The Alhambra Decree, the Edict of Expulsion that ordered the Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon was formally revoked on December 16, 1968 after the Second Vatican Council. 

It is nice to clean up history this way.  It was a pleasant gesture of good will from the descendants of ungodly men, but as you know all of those who suffered and were affected were long dead and gone by the time of this apology.  

It appears from certain documents that Christopher Columbus signed his last will and testament on May 19, 1506, and in this document he made five very curious and revealing provisions.  Two of his wishes were that there would be a tithe of one-tenth of his income to the poor, and to that an anonymous dowry would be provided for a group of poor girls.  These requests were typical Jewish customs of the times. 

He also decreed to give money to a Jew who lived at the entrance of the Lisbon Jewish Quarter.  

In Simon Weisenthal's book, "Sails of Hope," he argues that Columbus's voyage  in which he discovered America was mostly motivated by a desire to find a safe haven for the Jews in light of their expulsion from Spain.  

In order to get the vision of this surprising discovery; we must trudge back through the paths of history.  

It seems that it all began in the 8^th century, when the Muslims had occupied and settled most of the Iberian Peninsula.   The Jewish people had lived in this region since Roman times and were called “The People Of The Book.”  They were given special status and even thrived under the Muslim rule.  The Jewish settlements flourished with learning and commerce until Iberia began to be reclaimed by Christendom and The Catholic Church.  Hostility toward the Jews gradually became more and more pronounced until it escalated in brutal episodes of violence and hostility.   Thousands of Jews escaped this violence by converting to Catholicism.  Many of these conversions were false moves, just done in order to save their lives, but not done from the heart or the head.    

From the 13th to the 16th centuries many European countries expelled the Jews from their territory, with Spain being preceded by England, France and German lands, among many others. So Spain does not provide any exception to a tragic history of the life of Jews among Christian nations.  

Then we move forward in time to the days of the reign of Ferdinand II and Isabella I.   This royal couple formed a union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile.  In 1948 King Ferdinand established the Spanish Inquisition in Aragon.  By the victory of the Battle of Granada Isabella took control of a large Jewish and Muslim population.  The Alhambra Decree was issued, and much persecution began.

Imagine yourself as a Jew living during the time of these Crusades.  How tragic life must have seemed for them.  During the same time in a small town called Genoa, Italy; lived a boy named Christopher Columbus.  Imagine how he came to be there.  His first language was Castilian Spanish.  About one hundred years before his birth many Jewish people had been forced to leave Castile.  Large numbers of these refugees had come to Genoa, Italy.   14^th Century Castilian Spanish is the “Yiddish” of Spanish Jewry,  and is also known as “Ladino.”  This was the native language spoken by Christopher Columbus.   

Forget all that you have been taught in elementary school for a moment, and imagine the life of the young Christopher Columbus.  Perhaps, by leaving all previously taught knowledge, you might even be able to see him as a young boy of Jewish ancestry  growing up in Genoa, Italy, like many other young boys of Jewish ancestry at that time.  What would your life have been like?   

When the new king and queen came into power over the area the Jews were forced to renounce Judaism and embrace Catholicism.  The people who decided to do this were called “Conversos” or Converts.  The people who were already Catholic liked to call them “new converts” in order to distinguish them from themselves. 

If your Jewish family stayed true to the Jewish traditions under this rule, your life might have been lived secretly, and your religious beliefs might have been hidden from the government.  That is, if your family held to the “Marrano” traditions of that time.  The “Marranos,” (another word for “swine,”)  were those who faked a conversion to the Catholic Church, practicing Catholicism outwardly while covertly practicing Judaism.  Tens of thousands of Marranos were tortured in the Spanish Inquisition.  They were pressured to offer up the names of friends and family members who were ultimately paraded in front of crowds, tied to stakes and burned alive.  Their land and personal possessions were then divvied up by the church and crown.  

 History tells us that Granada was the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian Peninsula at the time.  The other countries around it had been united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, who had converted them to Christianity under the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.  Granda fell too in the year of 1492, when Christopher Columbus had grown into a young man.  This brought an end to the Muslim domination of Spain that had lasted nearly 800 years.  Spain returned to being a completely Christian country.    What if Christopher Columbus had secretly been a young Jewish man living in a former Muslim country that was now being completely converted to Christianity? 

All of the kingdoms in the area under Ferdinand and Isabella came to be called Spain.  Ferdinand and Isabella decided to throw all the Jews out of Spain.  They were not just targeting Jews who had never converted to Christianity anymore.  These Monarchs proclaimed an Edict of Expulsion and signed it into effect on March 31 of 1492.  They did not want the Jews left in the country to re-Judaize the converses.  Also, Jewish money was now needed to rebuild the kingdom after the costly war against the Muslims.  Instead of taxing the Jews, they thought it easier and faster to just expel them all at once and to confiscate the wealth and property they would leave behind. 

 Some scholars now believe that Christopher Columbus sailed to America to protect and find refuge for his Jewish brothers and sisters at the time of the Alhambra Decree during the Crusades.  Pope Urban II declared the Crusades on the 9^th of AV in 1492; which displaced many Jewish people from their lands.  Countless Jews were tortured and murdered on this day.    On the very same day, Columbus left on his route through the West Indies, and there is much evidence from history to reference that the Jewish people were established in America even before the pilgrims! 

What an astonishing discovery!  These facts are not at all in keeping with what I learned in my old history classes in elementary school growing up.  We were taught that Christopher Columbus set out from Spain to discover new lands for the Spanish throne.   There was no mention of his being Jewish, and actually no mention of the good King and Queen not liking the Jews because they were Catholic.  We were simply told that the Queen was a “Christian.”   We were actually told that Christopher Columbus was an Italian from Genoa, and that the good queen and king backed his adventures with their funds. 

Recently a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal systemic, ethnic cleansing due to the Alhambra Decree.

There is documented evidence that Columbus's voyage was not as it is commonly believed, funded by the deep pockets of Queen Isabella, but rather by two Jewish Conversos and another prominent Jew.  Louis d Santengel and Gabriel Sanchez  are said to have advanced an interest free loan of 17,000 ducats from their own pockets to help pay for the voyage.  

Some historians now believe the first two letters Columbus sent back from his journey were not to Ferdinand and Isabella, but to Santangel and Sanchez, thanking them for their support and telling them what he had found.  This evidence seems to bear out a far more complicated picture of the man named Columbus.  As we witness bloodshed the world over in the name of religious freedom, it is valuable to take another look at this brave soul who sailed the seas in search of such freedoms and landed in a place that would eventually come to hold such an ideal at its very foundation.

Some even believe it could be possible that Christopher Columbus was actually on a quest to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims.  We cannot know for sure.  If this is all true, it would be because his true identity was being hidden. 

On the document of his will Columbus marked a triangular signature of dots and letters that resembled inscriptions found on grave stones of the Jewish cemeteries in Spain. He ordered his heirs to use the signature in perpetuity.  According to British historian Cecil Roth's "The History of the Marranos;"   the anagram was a cryptic substitute for the Kaddish, a prayer recited in the synagogue by mourners after the death of a close relative.   It is also stated that Columbus left money to support the crusade he hoped his successors would take up to liberate the Holy Land.

Many of the letters Columbus wrote to his son were later found and each of them contained the Hebrew letters bet-hei, which means "with God's help."  This was a custom of observant Jews for centuries; to add this blessing to their letters.  No letters written to others outside of the family bear this work.  

Scholars also point to the date on which Columbus set sail as further evidence of his true motives. He was originally going to sail on a day that happened to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av.  Columbus postponed this original sail date by one day to avoid embarking on the holiday, which would have been considered by Jews to be an unlucky day to set sail.  That made the timing of the actual day he did set forth the very day that Jews were given the choice of converting, leaving Spain, or being killed.

Most seem to agree that there's hardly a question that Columbus's voyage to America was spiritually linked to the expulsion. Just as one of the greatest Jewish communities of Medieval Europe was being destroyed, God was opening up the doors of what was going to eventually become the greatest Diaspora refuge for Jews in history -  a place called America.

Is this replacement theology in the making?  Not at all!  It is just the continuing of God’s long, unending story.  In this it has been stated that “before God made the disease, He made the cure.” 

Another interesting fact is that though we can’t prove exactly that Columbus was Jewish, we can know that the tools that he used in his journey were all made possible by Jewish inventions, such as the tools of the navigators called the quadrant and the astral lobe.   All that were used during this period of history were of Jewish manufacture.  In fact, the quadrant then in use was called “Jacob’s Staff,” it was invented by Rabbi Levi ben Gershon.  The atlas that Columbus used was known as the Catalon Atlas. It was the creation of the Cresca Family who were Jews from Majorca, Spain. Not only was the Catalon Atlas considered the greatest and most significant collection of maps at the time, it had no competition to speak of.  Jews had a virtual monopoly on map making because they had gained valuable information from Jewish merchants from all over the known world all throughout their history to that point. 

Another thing we must consider in this fascinating history is the fact that Spain, having discovered and colonized the new World, should have been the wealthiest of countries, but in fact was bankrupt within one hundred years of the expulsion. Turkey, who welcomed the Jews who migrated there from Spain, on the other hand, prospered. The Ottoman Empire became one of the greatest powers in the world. The next two sultans, Selim I and Suleiman I, expanded the empire as far as Vienna, Austria.

One has to recall the blessing of Abraham when considering these facts.   God had given Abraham and his descendants a special blessing:  "I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and through you, will be blessed all the families of the earth." (Genesis 12:3)

To quote Thomas Newton-The Bishop of Bristol (1704-1782):

The preservation of the Jews is really one of the most single and illustrious acts of Divine Providence... and what but a supernatural power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth hath been preserved. Nor is the providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies, than in their preservation... We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin... And if such hath been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those, who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them.

This is the pattern of history that continues to repeat itself over and over.  

You can literally chart the rise and fall of empires by how they treated the Jews.