Columbus: Jewish?
It was a long long time ago – perhaps fifty years ago – when I first heard the claim that Christopher Columbus was Jewish. In the intervening years I’ve also read that it’s not so.
But that’s why it was no surprise to read an article about a study that purports to prove through DNA that Columbus actually was of Jewish origin:
To solve the mystery researchers conducted a 22-year investigation, led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente, by testing tiny samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral, long marked by authorities there as the last resting place of Columbus, though there had been rival claims.
They compared them with those of known relatives and descendants and their findings were announced in a documentary titled “Columbus DNA: The true origin” on Spain’s national broadcaster TVE on Saturday.
“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” Lorente said in the programme.
“And both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”
Around 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before the ‘Reyes Catolicos’, Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand, ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country. Many settled around the world. The word Sephardic comes from Sefarad, or Spain in Hebrew.
Then again, who names a Jewish kid “Christopher”? When I read the report it seemed to me more likely that Columbus had some Jewish ancestry but did not, as we currently say, “identify” as a Jew. And I see that some experts agree:
“The recent DNA evidence regarding Columbus is very interesting and helps to illuminate his biography and the era in which he lived. I would offer one caveat, though: While it indicates that Columbus had Jewish heritage, it does not indicate that Columbus was a professing, Jew,” said Jonathan Ray, professor of Jewish studies at Georgetown University. …
“For over a century, if not since his own lifetime, people have been obsessed with Columbus’s origins. He is a fascinating, flawed and enigmatic figure,” added Perelis, the author of the 2016 book Blood and Faith: Family and Identity in the Early Modern Sephardic Atlantic.
“I encourage people to read his own writings to appreciate his complex identity—he was an autodidact, who took advantage of the explosion of knowledge after the birth of printing to create an eclectic theology that had many Judaic elements—but in a deeply Christian, mystical vein,” Perelis said. “Genetics doesn’t make someone Jewish.”…
It sounds about right to me.
Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation, goes on to say that he thinks Columbus’ ancestors were conversos. Perhaps. Of course, if Columbus was Italian as widely reported, it wouldn’t make as much sense although it’s also possible that his Italian-Jewish ancestors converted to Catholicism.
However, it is indeed the case that some of Columbus’ crew were conversos, and that the sailing coincided with the edict of expulsion issued by Ferdinand and Isabella.
Much more at the link.
NOTE: It’s also been known for quite some time that many Hispanics have a small percentage of Jewish DNA, unbeknownst to them. See this:
Now, unprecedented genetic research undertaken by dozens of professors from around the world has provided evidence that almost a quarter of Latinos and Hispanics have significant Jewish DNA. The study, published in Nature Communications in December 2018, revealed that the number of descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities is far higher than even the largest estimates previously suggested.
The last official approximation of the number of people in Latin America, conducted by the United Nations in 2016, resulted in a figure of over 650 million. Add to that assessment the 60 million or so Latinos and Hispanics in the U.S., as well as the data from earlier genetic research showing that around 20% of the current population of 60 million people in the Iberian Peninsula have Jewish ancestry and the statistic becomes staggering. There could be as many as 200 million descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities around the world today.
The Jewish DNA connection is even more pronounced in Italy in southern Italians, although Columbus is said to have come from Genoa in the north.
Tracing the origins of the Ashkenazim seems to lead in no small part through the progress of Roman enslaved Jews, brought after the destruction of Israel in 70 AD into Italy, dwelling in Italy for many decades if not centuries and finally migrating into the northern territories long after. Genes, mayhap, were distributed in Italy too, along the way.
Two things:
1) The headline, as is usual for science in the legacy media, is inaccurate. The study did not prove Columbus had Jewish ancestry or was a Sephardic Jew. “And both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”
As the Vice President might say, draw a Venn diagram. Not everyone who has “traits compatible with Jewish origin” are Jews and not all Jews have “traits compatible with Jewish origin”.
2) There’s no consensus in Judaism that I’m aware of which would make someone a Jew who has potentially some tiny fraction of Jewish ancestry. There are certainly some Jews who would exclude someone in Columbus’s position even if this tiny fraction of “compatible with Jewish origin” DNA really did come from some tiny fraction of Jewish ancestry.
Converso ramblings follow.
A Hispanic neighbor of mine found out that he had a converso in his ancestry- a 16th century Spaniard from Monterrey, in northern Mexico. His brother was stationed in Italy with the Navy. Italians told him that his surname was Jewish.
I met a Spaniard in a company training school, way back. He was Jewish. He told me that his ancestors had secretly practiced Judaism for the 4+ centuries that it was not legal in Spain to openly practice Judaism.
Anecdote re Monterrey. I suspect that there were a fair amount of conversos who made it to Monterrey- could still be Spanish but were far from the reach of the Spanish king and church. Howcum? People from Monterrey have the reputation in Mexico of being tightwads. Remind you of any others characterized as being tightwads? 🙂 Monterrey’s per capita income is about twice the average for Mexico so, yes, people from Monterrey are good at business and hanging onto money.
Characterized not just as tightwads, but also as go-getters. I was chatting once w my next door neighbor. She said how she needed to keep working, keep trying. I asked, are you from Monterrey? Yes.
Worth remembering that the Y chromosome is only passed through the male line and mitochondrial DNA only through the female line. At most, you learn about two ancestors. Using your great-grandparents as an example, your Y chromosome (if you have one) came from your father’s father’s father, and your mitochondrial DNA from your mother’s mother’s mother, and the other 6 great-grandparents are not represented. They do contribute to your other DNA of course, but not Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA.
I absolutely do not care whether or not Columbus was . . . oh, for fuck’s sake, this is ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but close to it.
How about this. I am a direct descendant of Chief Joseph Brandt of the Mohawk nation. Yes I am. I have documentation proving that he was my great-great-etc. grandfather, and that I am descended from the white woman he married. Do you care? I didn’t think so.
Now, about that casino I’m planning to open. . . .
Yes, it doesn’t prove that Columbus (first name Christopher!) was secretly a practicing Jew. “Some ancestry” is not the same as “forced convert.”
But still, the wide prevalence of some Jewish ancestry among Spanish peoples interesting. The New Testament reports that there were Jews from all over the known world in Jerusalem for the Passover the year Jesus was crucified.
I had a discussion with a learned elderly Muslim friend in Egypt, pointing out to him that beginning in the 13th century AD there were increasingly oppressive pogroms carried out against the Copts, leading to many conversions. This means that many Egyptians, so far from being “Arab,” probably have significant Egyptian, i.e. Copt, blood.
Sephardic ancestry isn’t uncommon in Spaniards. According to DNA studies, 20% of Spaniards have some Sephardic ancestry and 11% have some Moorish ancestry. Also, there are Spaniards with distant Phoenician or Carthagenian ancestry, and their DNA shows much overlap with Sephardic DNA.
I am an Ashkenazi Jew and trace my ancestry to the Baltic states and the Ukraine, however my son had his ancestry analyzed and the report substantiated the above but also added that he was 1% Italian. My wife’s families came from what is now Poland.
Columbus’ ancestry is only of importance to Italians and anti-Semites. Being of Portuguese ancestry on my paternal side, I’d be honored to discover that in my genetic mix I harbor some Jewish genetics. Unfortunately, none were revealed in my gifted DNA ancestry report. Of course, hope springs eternal.
Those DNA ancestry reports don’t actually show ancestry, they show similarities between your DNA and distributions for other populations, usually limited to what they’ve obtained from other customers. The geography classifications are based on where people live today, not where your ancestors would have lived had they come from that area.
Except maybe in the Andamans (some difficulty with testing there) there are no human genes not found in all human groups.
If a DNA ancestry report says you’re 25% Elbonian and 25% Ruritanian, if you actually were descended from those groups in that ratio you might get that result, but you can get that result without being descended from any of them.
And you might not get it even if you were, siblings and even identical twins frequently get differing “ancestry reports”, and so will you if you get tested by more than one company.
At best they might supplement or complement a genealogy based on documents.
OT, but interesting-
According to the 2 articles cited below, today’s Ashkenazi Jews descended from a cohort that had been reduced to numbering 350 sometime around the 14th century.
40% of today’s Ashkenazi Jews descended from 4 women.
At least, according to these 2 papers, the reliability of which I cannot determine.
https://tinyurl.com/yzck4mhw
https://tinyurl.com/mr28ddp2
Today’s entry in the ‘Is Everybody Jewish?’ file!
@Molly+Brown:
But don’t expect to see the headline: “We’re all Jews Now.”
Be funny if Arab Muslims did DNA tests and found that they all had Jewish ancestors.