A Jewish Pirate's Life for Me!

During the golden age of Caribbean piracy, people from all walks of life set sail in search of gold. Yet you may be surprised to hear that some of the pirates were Sephardic Jews. Tune in and learn more about the lives of Jewish pirates.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair and recently we got
some male from Sarah and Amber and they sent us

(00:21):
these lovely handmade paper magnolias and some necklaces. And they
also sent us a book by Edward Chritzler called Jewish
Pirates of the Caribbean, which of course meant that we
had to read it created quite a stir on his
it really did. We were very excited. We put a
picture of us in our in our magnolia with our
magnolias and our hair wearing our beads. If you haven't

(00:43):
seen it, and people were really enthusiastic about the Jewish pirate,
it wouldn't be so I wanted to do a podcast
just about Jewish pirates, but we decided it didn't make
a lot of sense unless you had the background, which
is really interesting. So we're going to do some background
followed by some brief biography. It's almost like a two
part episode in one exactly, and we've talked about expeditions

(01:05):
of discovery before you know, the human drive to explore,
to conquer, to be first and the Age of Discovery
is one really fabulous example, the period from the fifteenth
to seventeenth centuries when Europeans went far and wide in
search of new lands and treasures. But there's a little
disgusted group amongst these explorers that had a different mission.

(01:26):
It wasn't to find golden cinnamon, but to escape the
Inquisition and the anti Semitic horrors of Europe. And these
people were, of course European Jews, and we're going to
give you a little bit up their story. Okay, so
we've talked about some of this in our podcast on
the Reconquista, but we're going to recap for you in
case you haven't heard that episode yet. So if you've

(01:47):
ever heard the term Sephardic Jews and wondered what Separd was,
it was an outpost of the Roman Empire in what
later became Spain, and at the end of the fourteenth
century there were five hundred thousand Jews in Safard, making
it the largest Jewish community outside of Palestine. And that
stad is from that pirate book. A lot of this

(02:09):
information is going to be from there, So yeah, you
should definitely pick up a copy against Edward Chritzler's book
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, And although Jews had called
Safared their home for a long time, it wasn't seen
that way by the rulers of the land throughout the
centuries tight Us, the Visigoths, the Moors. But in feudal Spain,
Jews occupied high society. Things took a sharp, sharp turn

(02:32):
for the worse in the fourteenth century, during the infamous
Massacre of One Jews were accused of blood libel, using
the blood of Christian children for their religious rituals and
also being the cause of the Black plague. And the
man who sparked this horror and these attacks was the
friar prompt Martinez of Seville, and you should remember his

(02:53):
name because his accusations resulted in the deaths of one
hundred thousand Jews who were ordered to invert or die.
Many chose death. So skipping ahead a little bit to four,
Queen Isabella of Spain or of Castile and Aragon orders
the Edict of Expulsion, and we talked about that in

(03:14):
the re Conquista podcast. But another one hundred thousand Jews
were forced to leave Spain and the rest converted and
were known as Conversos. Sometimes they converted publicly, but still
maintain their own religious practices. I've known as new Christians
um and also crypto Jews. Under Isabella, the Spanish Inquisition

(03:35):
began and her Inquisitor General assaulted the burnings of nine
thousand Jews at the Stake. By the early sixteen hundreds,
there were very few places in Europe where Jews were
allowed to be, So where was there to go? For one,
there's a whole another continent, the New World, the New World.
So a lot of them went as new Christians or Conversos,

(03:57):
with high hopes for this new land and hopefully a
new future where there was more tolerant right. Because of course,
fourteen ninety two didn't just mark the beginning of the
expulsion of the Jews from Spain. It's also the year
Ferdinand and Isabella gator approval to Christopher Columbus's mission to
find that elusive route to the East, and Jews supported

(04:18):
this mission, you know, perhaps you could find them a
safe place to make their home. And also in that book,
apparently Christopher Columbus came from Jewish ancestry, which I had
no idea, and I haven't finished reading it. I have
to be perfectly honest, so I can't. I can't get collaborating. No,
I would love to, but it's simply not possible at

(04:38):
the moment um. But yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
There's another person we're going to talk about later in
this time past who you also surprised they know, is
to Yes. So Christopher Columbus, of course didn't discover America,
but he did discover all sorts of places, and some
of them became Jewish havens, like the island of Jamaica.
But Jews also dominated commerce in the New World. They're

(05:00):
the ones who set up all the trade networks, who
leased the ships, who introduced letters of exchange and credit,
and their religious beliefs were ignored so long as they
were useful. And once, say, you figured out the trade
networks for yourself, you could go back to, you know,
inviting the Inquisition to come visit. But Spain was pretty
much the most powerful country in the world at this time,

(05:23):
and the hatred that persecuted Jews had for the country
made them an attractive ally for all of Spain's enemies.
They had a lot of enemy, yes, a lot a
lot of enemies. They could all work together to destroy
the Spanish naval fleet. And because they knew all about ships,
trade routes, and credit, these Jewish merchants knew where everyone

(05:43):
was going and what they had in their ships. So
that would make them perfect for one particular line of
work I have in mind. Piracy. Perhaps, yes, it's the
pirates life for me. So a tiny little history of
Jewish pirates. Our first mention of them comes for Jewish
historian Flavius Josephus in Jewish Antiquities in sixty three BC.

(06:05):
Jewish leader Hyrcanus accuses Aristobulus of piracy in front of Pompey.
They're arguing over a leadership position. And our source for
that was Herod the Great Secretary, who told the story
to Josephus. So for some reason that's considered a reliable source,
I guess for information, although I wouldn't really want to
trust Herod the Great Secretary. So I mean, if that's

(06:27):
our start of Jewish pirates, though it continues long after that,
and it makes sense too. I mean, we we already
mentioned this extensive trade network and sort of the inside
knowledge that a lot of people had about who was trading,
what where it was going, and when, but it also
makes sense that people who are forced to be outlaws,

(06:48):
some of them might turn to an outlaw career where
you can actually make a buck and maybe stay alive.
So the first famous Jewish pirate we're going to discuss
is named sign In, and he was Barbarossa's second in
command and his favorite captain and also a giant pain
in the Holy Roman Emperor Charles's life, And with one

(07:09):
hundred ships, he occupied Tunis for Suliman, which gave Suliman
control of the entire Mediterranean. Suliman might be a familiar
name to Roxalana pip Harem beast. So when Charles offered
Barbarossa North Africa in exchange for leaving Suliman and joining him,
Barbarossa made his point by cutting off the messenger's head.

(07:31):
So we're going to go ahead and take that. Doesn't know,
but Signon also governed Algiers and commanded the Turkish navy
and did away with most of the Spanish fleet in
fifteen thirty eight. But he's also known for acts of mercy.
It's because of him that the Christians of Tunis weren't
all murdered by the enraged Barbarossa. So I mean for
somebody who himself is persecuted, he seems to be markably tolerant.

(07:54):
Our next one is Samuel Palash, the pirate rabbi of Holland,
and he was the son of a rabbi. He was
born and raised in Morocco, in the Jewish ghetto in Fez,
which was home to fifty thousand Jews. And I didn't
know before I read this book that Jews were in
Morocco before the Arabs brought Islam there. I had no
idea the other did I. But he wasn't content to stay,

(08:15):
and in fact, he and his brother Joseph started making
it past the walls of the ghetto at night to
help raid ships in the Strait of Gibraltar. But he
got got a reputation, as you know, a capable and
daring young man, and the Sultan chose him as his
trade rep. Samuel and his brother soon made use of
the position to try to sell intelligence to other countries.
But they were double agents, and in general I think

(08:37):
maybe just enjoyed the lying more than what they were
actually trying to do. They told Spain that they'd sell
them information about Morocco and then told France they would
sell them information about Spain. What they really wanted to
do was find a safe haven for the Jews and
a place where crypto Jews could drop the Christian mask
and go back to celebrating the religion in peace. And

(08:59):
they decided one particular place which had said it would
be tolerant of religion. Yeah, they hear that Holland is
open to other religions, and so they make their home there.
It turns out it's more like look the other way
than we welcome you with open arms. But um, they
had a community that established there and the Jews in Amsterdam.

(09:20):
In in sixteen o three they celebrated the Day of
Atonement and that was the first Jewish worship service in Holland.
Samuel also made alliances between the Netherlands and Morocco, which
is pretty cool since wam was a Christian nation and
one Muslim, and in general through all that he did
tried to get back at Spain anyway he could. They had,

(09:40):
after all, Synth the Inquisition after him. In sixteen fourteen,
he began command of a Moroccan fleet and went after
Spanish ships, trading arms for sugar, spice and diamonds and
teamed up with the Dutch, the Moors, and other Jews
to combat their common foe. One ship was adorned with
phoenix and had a kosher cook aboard, and he was

(10:02):
pirrating in the very last years of his life. He
died in sixteen sixteen in the Hague. Our next entry
is Moses Cohen Enriquez. We love the name. I think
it's maybe the best name. He pulled off one of
history's largest heists, and that went down in sixteen along
with the Dutch West India Company's Admiral Hind. They both

(10:25):
hated Spain, as so many people in this podcast have. Um,
you know, do you think we're getting biased to the
last couple episodes. I don't know. We're gonna have to
figure out some We're gonna think about this Spain topics
topics to counterbalance this a little bit. But Enrica's hated
Spain because of the country's attitude towards Jews. Hind hated

(10:47):
it because he had been a galley slave. That's a
pretty understandable hatred, I'd say. Um, So, guess whose ships
they decided to attack, Oh, Spain. Sin. They boarded them
off Cuba and made off with enough silver and gold
to total around a billion dollars in today's money. That
I mean, does that put our artives to shame? I
think it's any article we have about diamond heiser art heist,

(11:11):
nothing is getting near a billion dollars. No, not so much.
Enriquez settled on an island off Brazil and was never caught,
even though I think people knew where he was. Perhaps
he was just an enemy they didn't want to deal with. Maybe.
So our final entry is Jean Lafitte the Corsair, and
he's from a different time period um than the rest

(11:32):
of them, but he's also a much more famous pirate
and one that many people don't know was Jewish. So
he decided we had to end our list with him.
He was born around seventeen eighty and he came from Conversos.
His family left Spain after his grandfather was executed during
the Inquisition, and he set up shop in New Orleans.
You could come to his family's blacksmith shop to deliver

(11:54):
your smuggled goods and slaves to someone who would pay
for them. He lived in islands in the swam throughout
New Orleans with his men, and he would attack Spanish
ships on commission from Latin American countries. But he wasn't
all scoundrel. He had this sort of patriotic streak. It seems.
When the British offered him money to help them attack
New Orleans in eighteen fourteen, he instead passed on the

(12:17):
information to the American army. He wasn't trusted and the
bay where he was located was still rated. He made
another attempt and spoke to General Andrew Jackson, who promised
a pardon in exchange for his aids. So I think
this We mentioned the Battle of New Orleans a little
bit in one of the eighteen twelve podcast, but I
think it's interesting this pirate has a genre. He led

(12:40):
one thousand men in the War of eighteen twelve and
fought bravely, but then he went back to being a rascal.
He left New Orleans for Galveston, Texas, where he set
up a new colony for his privateering men, and he
was left alone until some of his followers attacked American ships,
at which point he sensibly departed from Galveston, and we
don't know how he met his end. But speaking of endings,

(13:04):
we have a bit of a sad one today. This
will be my very last episode of Stuff You Missed
in History Class. I am moving on to a new opportunity,
and while I'm very excited about that, it is incredibly
hard to say goodbye to the podcast. Reading your emails
and letters and opening all your presence and hearing your

(13:28):
stories and seeing your pictures and having you tell us
all about why you love history and the things you're
passionate about in your lives. That's been the highlight of
my day for a long time now. So thank you
for listening, and I will very much miss talking to
you every week. And Katie, it's been such a joy

(13:50):
to post the podcast with you. I'm going to miss you. Sarah. Well,
we better not go on or we might start tearing
up there if there may have been a little tearing out,
I had a small surprise party with our our video team.
I'm currently wearing a tiara under my headphones, so picture
that if you can. Um But don't worry, Stuff you
Missed in History Class is not over. There is another

(14:12):
fabulous host who will be taking my place. I promise
you will like him or her. It's a surprise and
a special guest. There will be a special guest house
who I know you'll like, um, but I don't think
you'll like anyone quite as much as me. Um, But
thank you. That's the end of our episode for today's
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