Hello, Columbus

November 27, 2024 Alan Feiler, Editor-in-Chief

People visit the tomb of Christopher Columbus at the Cathedral of Seville. (Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images via JTA)

We Jews like to figure out a way to make everyone Jewish. There’s something in our psyche — perhaps it’s an inferiority complex after centuries of persecution — that strives to find Jewish angles to virtually everything, including celebrities and famous individuals.

Nu, did you know Harrison Ford is half-Jewish? That Stan Lee knew his way around a pastrami sandwich and rapper Drake was bar mitzvahed? Or that Scarlett Johansson’s mom is an M.O.T. (Member of the Tribe)?

I know, who cares? But we do, for some reason.

Years ago, I wrote an article about Elvis. At that time, not many people knew that the king of rock ‘n’ roll — who epitomized the all-American hillbilly sensibility to many Americans — had Jewish ancestry. His mother’s maternal grandmother was Jewish, which would make Elvis an M.O.T. by halachic (Jewish legal) standards.

I was tipped off by someone who’d visited Graceland and noticed a Star of David on a gravestone in storage that once adorned the final resting spot of Elvis’ mom. Calls to a few Elvis historians revealed the king — although a devout Christian known for his love of gospel music — had some Jewish street cred.

I sent my article about “Jewish Elvis” to a buddy who’d worked in Jewish journalism but at that time was studying in a Jerusalem yeshiva. His response: “So what? That’s all that’s going on in the Jewish world? There’s nothing else to write about?”

He had a point. The Jewish world always seems to be in turmoil, now arguably more than ever.

But I must admit that the recent reporting of the secret Jewish lineage of Christopher Columbus tickled my fancy. No matter how you feel about Columbus — intrepid discoverer of the New World or ruthless colonizer and mass murderer of Indigenous peoples — the news of his Yiddishkeit was a somewhat pleasant diversion from all the election craziness and wars.

As reported by the international media, Spanish researchers announced that Columbus was most likely a Sephardic Jew. This revelation came after 22 years of researching the explorer’s national origins.

“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” said lead researcher José Antonio Lorente of the University of Granada. “Both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando, there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”

In a way, I wasn’t surprised. As a youngster, I read “The Jewish Connection” (Bantam USA) by local author M. Hirsh Goldberg. In that book, Goldberg contends, through his historical research, that there was once a Jewish pope, that Henry Kissinger was not the first Jewish secretary of state, and the telephone was invented by a Jew.

He also devotes a chapter to Columbus and speculation on his Jewish roots, including the fact that the explorer set sail right at the outset of Spanish Inquisition. The original date of the voyage, Aug. 2, 1492, was postponed by a day, perhaps because it coincided with the Jewish observance of Tisha B’Av. In addition, the voyage was funded by a Jewish benefactor and a pair of conversos.

As a kid, these seemingly trivial historical matters stoked my imagination and made me think more about my Jewish identity. Let’s put it this way: it was a lot more interesting than Hebrew school.

The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter if Columbus was a ”crypto Jew.” We know he was a follower of Christianity who, in his writings, applauded the expulsion of Spanish Jews.

But you’ve got to admit such tidbits, for some odd reason, make Jewish life more interesting.

Sincerely,

Alan Feiler, Editor-in-Chief