Considering that the man bragged that he had killed over 100,000 natives by his own hand, I would hardly want to proudly claim him, and, as a side note, it may have had something to do with him going insane later in life.

You should also know that he was a portuguese noble! Jewish, yes, but portuguese.
All the best

In 1992 ,500 years after the expulsion from Spain, Elie Shalit ZL arranged an exhibition in Madrid OPENED BY THE KING of SPAIN entitled “Columbus and the Jewish Contribution to the Voyages of Discovery” .It was very well received and subsequently toured 7 of the larger Spanish Cities. The exhibition was subsequently transferred to Haifa. The exhibition is now owned and stored by Netanya Academic College but my hope is that one day a generous philanthropist will arrange for it to be displayed once again somewhere prominent in the State of Israel.

Very very very interesting. Makes a lot of sense. Amazing! I like it.

I have a master's degree in American Jewish History from Yeshiva University, and may know a bit more than other commentators.
One of the previous comments mentions a book, possibly written in the 30;s about the possibility Columbus was Jewish. I believe the book to which he may be referring is "Christopher Columbus", by Salvador de Madariaga, published in 1940 by MacMillan. There is no evidence the book was suppressed. It simply was not a "best seller" even though it won< I believe, a :Pulitzer Prize. According to Wikopedia de Madariaga lived from July 1986 - Dec, 1978, and was an excellent historian and author . He does not claim Columbus was Jewish himself, but indicates he had Jewish roots; for example, Columbus wrote he was a descendant of King David. Many claims about him are distorted or not properly documented. He did have squiggles on top of many lettesr that some have said are B"H and said for Baruch HaShem or b"ezras H' but it is hotly contested if that is what it really said. All other indicators are also contested. This is one of the few carefully researched books on the topic and seems to indicate his father willingly converted, but Columbus had much sympathy from Jews, especially his father's friends who remained in Spain, his father having moved to Italy--and it was these who financed he voyage. Additional research, I believe, was done by Dr. Jeffrey Gurock, prof. of history at Yeshiva U. I believe his book was called "The Columbus Conundrum," but I cannot find that anywhere. I did not read it like I did the de Madariaga book. I did read reviews, and it seems to me he brought more evidence claiming Columbus really was Jewish, but nothing totally convincing.

I recently watched a documentary about Columbus, theory he was iligitimate son of Jewish mother & Portuguese prince. Claims he was born in Cuba, Portugal. Many, many places in new world named for places very close to his home city. Also claims he could not read or write Italian, but could Portuguese, Latin, Greek & HEBREW!

This article has gone "viral" among the "anti-semites" on social media such as FB.....thought you might want to know?

Checking at Kaluach 3, Ab 11th, 5252 it was August 4th 1492 in Julian calendar.
And checking in this page: https://calendarhome.com/calculate/convert-a-date
I got the same date, and was Shabbat!!!!
I would like to have your observations about it.
Thanks
Hugh

Frankly, I don't care whether Christopher was Jewish or not. But if he was I hope he was kosher.

It continues to fascinate me to no end just how much influence that we Jews have had on the development of civilization. I think it was John Adams who openly said that we Jews are THE great civilizing force of mankind. I had heard rumors for some time now that Columbus was Jewish, but after reading the above article, I am now convinced that it is more than a rumor, that it is in fact true. I have also heard similar rumors about such people as Miguel de Cervantes, Alexander Hamilton, Elvis Presley, and Lyndon Johnson.

Actually there are many inconsistencies among the comments above, one of them is the noun matamoros: meaning ¨of dark skin ¨ in reference to those arabs that came from the north west part of Africa and migrated to Spain, It is not referred to jews,
Since the people who mention this are so poorly educated, take your time and translate this if you will: from wikipedia.

Moro es un término de uso popular y coloquial, que puede tener o no connotaciones peyorativas, dependiendo tanto del emisor como del receptor,3​ para designar, sin distinción clara entre religión, etnia o cultura, a los naturales del noroeste de África o Magreb (expresión árabe que comprende todo el oeste de África al norte del Sahara: la actual Mauritania, Marruecos, Argelia, Túnez e incluso Libia), y también de forma genérica a cualquier musulmán, independientemente de su origen.

If You are to start a new theory of any character please bring clear and probable facts, and support them with additional information which can itself be supported.
Not just with jibberish.

And start pointing the finger at this, and then ask more questions...

I believe it is entirely possible the person they call Columbus was a Jew...but if he was, he wouldn't have committed some of the awful acts attributed to Columbus...how to reconcile this?

We know now, that Christopher Columbus was quite brutal and inhumane. I genuinely wish nobody posted this, as it could genuinely be used to try to make a (false) connection between his actions and Jews as a whole.

His name was Colon, he was from a small town called Cuba, hence the Island state CUBA. He took with a series of other Jews in his voyages, probably to save them from the inquisitors. He retired in the Azores, where his mother had settled. Do no forget that the Portuguese were the first of the 13th century discoverors, after that came the Dutch & Spain, & later Britain!

Columbus' was a Jew and he brought his family, others Jews to America

What Jew would give their child the name Christopher, meaning Christ bearer unless they had truly converted? For a Jew to give a child such a name would be a daily reminder of their heinous duplicity. On the other hand, could his sir name, Colon, be a variant of Cohen?

HIS NAME HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT YOUR SAY ,

Cristóbal has the same meaning. Whether you call him Christopher Columbus or Cristóbal Colón, the statement applies.

Anusim (marranos) often gave their children very Catholic names all the more to prevent them being found out.

I highly recommend Simon Wiesenthal's book "Sails of Hope". It contains more information and findings.

Much I agree with John Taylor. However, Native American Tribes or Nations totaled 500 when Columbus landed in America. How does one "find" a Nation already inhabited? I never bought into the Columbus finding, and History proves the reckless abandon, and massive inhumanity once he stepped ashore. The drift of this essay speaks of Columbus' possible Jewish roots. I do NOT believe in coincidence so as the facts stand, if they are facts, indeed Columbus could have been a Jew. We can't blame him for the aftermath, like genocide against Native Americans, but the disease and destruction he brought we certainly can!

Columbus was no angel, However you can't blame him for everything that went wrong after he landed in the new world. If Columbus had not come to this hemisphere someone else would have done it within just a few years. Are we supposed to believe that the new world would never have been found? The time was right for European exploration. Also, it is naive to think that those who made that discovery would not exploit it. That is what human beings do. We find new resources and we exploit them. Columbus' actions at times were cruel, but they were normal for the times in which he lived.

A web site which existed for many years chronicling the Portugese Jewish community www.Saudades.com. The Sephardic family name of Christopher Columbus' mother was noted to be Fonterossa. Historical records of the Jewish community of Genoa include reference to families named "Columbo," Thank you.

What this man and his crews did to the indigenous people on the islands he landed on( he did not discover anything that wasn't already discovered) was nothing short of genocide. So I will keep my view that he was a Christian ,Italian or spaniard and let the Italians keep celebrated this evil person and the murderers who sailed with him.

this is new to me and I can't tell if that is correct or incorrect. However, Columbus can not be made responsible for all the crimes of the evil Spanish empire.

Lately Columbus has gotten a bad rap. He is being blamed for slavery and exploitation. Personally I like the guy. If it weren't for Columbus my family would have been stuck Romania. I always fly the flag on Columbus Day. However, lets be clear, if Columbus were alive today, the media would attack and destroy him. He would be labeled a murder, xenophobe, and sexist. Thousands of college kids (with skulls full of mush) would be marching in Washington accusing him of white privilege. I'm glad he is not here to witness the craziness of 21 century America.

It always bothers me when we judge previous generations by our values. As someone said, the people who wrote the constitution would be in jail today according to their values towards other people, eg: slave owners, mistresses with other babies, women's rights etc. One can of course compare various peoples of the past how each related to their slaves, wives, mistresses etc.

I have seen reports that the reason Columbus claimed that the Earth's circumference was smaller was that he knew (such as from Viking maps) that there was land in the middle of the ocean. People did not claim that the Earth was flat, but knew that the circumference of the Earth was such that his ships could not survive the full trip to Japan. In fact, had he not spotted land when he did, he would have been forced to turn back (and might not have survived the return trip).

On a Jewish tour of Palma de Mallorca I was told that Christopher Columbus's two cartographers who lived in Palma de Mallorca were Jewish. Is there any evidence for this?

My information is that Columbus's associate on the trip was a Jew named Amerigo Vespucci.

As far as I know, Amerco was NOT a jew but a Christian cartographist. Because he was NOT jewish is that the continen was named after him and not after Columbus.

I think that Chrisopher Columbus was a secret jew.there are
indications when he wrote b/h in his letters In my opinion he was a marrano who lived in Spain and practised his jewdasim secretly.
He also taught his children to say kadish.

I have read the following, Flower From Castile, a trilogy by Lilian Gafni, and it is quite detailed, and is quite beautiful in its depiction of the Spain , Columbus sailed from, and his family and culture.
We will never know for sure, but isn't that in the end the truth about The Wandering Jew?

I wrote a paper on this same subject and came to the same conclusion. There is a lot more information than what is presented here. Check the Society for Crypto-Judaic tudies website.

In the words of Wikipedia: "Christopher Columbus [ c. 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer, and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Those voyages and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola initiated the European colonization of the New World."

The writer claims factual evidence, but the most glaring mistake is ignored - Columbus never set foot on North American soil. He initiated further discovery of the New World.

Wikipedia writes: During his first voyage in 1492, he reached the New World instead of arriving at Japan as he had intended, landing on an island in the Bahamas archipelago that he named "San Salvador". Over the course of three more voyages, he visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming all of it for the Crown of Castile.

It is not clear who actually discovered America, at the very least it was Amerigo Vespucci, and the Vikings.

Lets say that Colon started unveiling the fact that there was a continent in the middle of Europe and Japan. Up and down afterwards came Spanish, Portugese, English and Dutch. Americo Vespuccio never set foot in the continent, and the Vikings did commerce, as well as, it is thought, the phoenicians and turks.

In this day and age you shouldn't be bragging about this ! The logs of his voyages have been dredged up and it's not pretty .He enslaved and slaughtered the Taino population . At best he was a gold digger and a henchmen for the Spanish crown . Let the Catholics have this one .
Look into Abe Lincoln ...that's a better choice

To judge Columbus by today's values clouds the reality of the expanse of values existing in that time. The only societies that have not advanced from that time are Islamic societies which invaded Spain and Portugal, and still hold on to the same values, as written in the Koran.

,

If you are saying Torah morality changes with the times then I stand to be corrected . If you are saying slavery and genocide of non Jewish races was acceptable in Jewish law at that time ... I was not aware and stand to be corrected once again .
Like everyone else I learned to love Columbus from reading school books however the internet has shed new light on history by posting literature (logs) directly from that voyage . I just don't want to call attention to him ( as a Jew ) in today's world .

You do realize Islamic spain gave us RamBam and the Zohar...

And "Christian" western spain gave us the inquisition and forced conversion...

Massacres all through the middle ages in Europe while Saadia Gaon and RamBam flourished. Islamic countries became antisemitic after oil.. and money... and puppet governments installed by "Christians" who think every Jew is responsible for killing you know who.

Look at Saudi Arabia. House of Saud. Look at Iran. Those regimes would simply not exist without the meddling of western superpowers. The crazies were given money specifically so that countries would fall into disarray and the west could drink up all the oil. Look at all the bombs they sell to everyone in the middle east to keep it in constant conflict, surrounding Israel with war and madness.

And my ancestors wouldn't have had to be Crypto-Jews.

I remember many years ago I did a paper for a History class on this topic. My main source was an entire book published, If remember correctly in the 1930's that presented very convincing evidence, including his will, documents such as the one shown in this article, and much more, that he was in fact a Spanish Jew. The only copy of the book I was able to locate was at the Judaic section of the NYPL at 42nd street. I no longer have the paper nor any details on the book. I tried a few times with out success to re-locate it. The professor at the time felt the books scarcity was a result of efforts of strong elements who did not want this fact to be known.

It probably is not significant to history, but I will tell you an anecdote that I heard from the person himself. A black Cuban architect met with the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt'l at 770 at the Rebbe's behest. After their meeting, the Rebbe informed him that he was Jewish. He respectfully responded 'that he is a Cuban and Cubans are Catholic'. The Rebbe repeated what he told him.
Twenty years later, I assured him that if the Rebbe said it, it was absolutely true that his mother's mother's etc. going back to Spain were Jewish.

Unfortunately, there are many such people, but at least for this one individual, the Rebbe felt it important that he know his Jewish lineage.

It is my understanding that Columbus' children were not such tzaddikim regardless of whether or not they suspected or knew that their father was Jewish.

Many Jews willing converted to the new religion call Christian
Others converted by force under the Spanish in position

Regardless all kept elements of their Jewish roots
I was raised a Roman Catholic ,but elements of our Jewish roots
We're kept .ie menorahs , Shabbat candles ,
For many who descended from crypto Jews or secret Jews
Assimilation became a fact
But the Jewish soul always hear the words Lej-Leja yo me voy תראה בעצמך
see for yourself
Or go for self The words of אברהם אבינו
Abraham our father

The author left out the most compelling evidence that Columbus was a Jew: the efforts of the Left to destroy his image and portray him as a genocidal warlord much as they do with Israel. Whether or not Columbus was really Jewish his discovery of what eventually became the golden medina as well as his close relationships with Jews should at least qualify him as a righteous gentile. I'm proud we share the same enemies.

The Jews have given the world so much in the Arts, Literature, and Business, now the New World, wonderful. And it is true, the ( left) in the USA want to focus only on the evil deeds of Columbus. He also gave us something good.

Oh my Lord! Did you just say that?!? I am NOT of the left, as a matter of fact I am pretty mainstream and to have you Idolize CC just shows you have no enlightenment. Pick up a book or read a few articles, it will do you some good..

I have also read that the continent was called America, in the name of Americo Vespucio, who only did maps. and not Colombia for the name of the discoverer, precisely because Colon's christianity was doubtful.

we were taught in school in South America that the British Americans wanted to use the name for themselves to become "Columbus" or Colombia but 'colombians' got it first; So they were left with United States of America; but then there was United States of Mexico and United States of Brazil, so they were left with United States of North America - and somewhere else United States of Australia (nothing to do with 'America' but with 'United States' ... ! go figure

There is also a distinct possibility that Columbus himself was a Marrano, the son of parents named Colon, who had escaped from Spain to Genoa during one of the pogroms. He was certainly a very odd sort of Genoese.

Why, for example, did he write and speak such poor Italian—and yet speak Castilian Spanish so fluently that he could move with ease in the highest circles of the Spanish court?

Nothing but puzzles and blind alleys surround the actual place and circumstances of Columbus’ birth….

He certainly surrounded himself with Marranos and Conversos [Jewish converts to Christianity] when making up his crew.

Aboard the [ship named] Santa Maria, both Mestre Bernal, the physician, and Marco, the ship’s surgeon, were Jews.

The first man ashore in the New World was probably also a Jew: Luis de Torres, the official interpreter for the expedition.

SOURCE: The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite (chapter 3, page 36) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition, ISBN: 9781493024681 ISBN: 149302468X

Mr. Cohen is correct on all points. Some of Barbara Penn's comments show a lack of knowledge. She writes: Castilan [sic] Spanish or Ladino, a Jewish version of the Spanish language, analogous to what the Yiddish language is to German." Castilian Spanish is simply Spanish, not something specifically used by Jews. Ladino is a term commonly used to mean the Judeo-Spanish used by Jews who lived outside of Spain, during and after the Expulsion through the 20th Century. It is essentially the Spanish of the 15th Century that did not follow the linguistic changes of the language as spoken in Spain. It also had some vocabulary from Hebrew and from whatever languages the surrounding population spoke in the countries in which the Jews found refuge (Arabic, Turkish, Greek, etc.)
Ms Penn also writes: "... landed in a land known for its benevolence and religious tolerance. " The land wasn't known in the Old World for anything; people didn't even know it existed.

When he plotted his course, Columbus used charts prepared by Judah Cresques, known as “the map Jew,” head of the Portuguese School of Navigation is Lisbon.

The almanacs and astronomical tables that Columbus gathering for the trip were compiled by Abraham ben Zacuto, a Jewish professor at the University at Salamanca.

It was Señor Zacuto who introduced Columbus and the officers of his expedition to the prominent Jewish banker Don Isaac Abravanel, who was one of the first to offer Columbus financial backing.

When still more money was needed , and when Isabella was at the point of abandoning the project for lack of funds, [Don Isaac] Abravanel turned to other Jewish bankers, including Luis de Santangel, Gabriel Sanchez, and Abraham Senior, who had played such an important role in bringing Isabella and Ferdinand to the [marriage] altar.

It is because of these bankers that the expedition was able to leave Spain under the Spanish flag and, as a result of their part in the undertaking, Columbus’ first word back to Spain about his discovery was addressed not to the queen—which would have been courteous, but to Señores Santangel, Sanchez, and Senior, his bankers, which was practical.

As a result of these activities, Professor H. P. Adams of Johns Hopkins [University] has commented:

“Not jewels, but Jews, were the real financial basis of the first expedition of Columbus.”

SOURCE: The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite (chapter 3, page 36) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition, ISBN: 9781493024681 ISBN: 149302468X

I'm 60, and I've heard so many different theories on Columbus that I've lost count.
OTOH, there's the "the whole world is Jewish" theory.

I certainly believe that Columbus had Jews with him on the voyage. All the Jews had to leave Spain, so why not give the
"New World" a shot?

I also believe that Columbus was VERY religious.
I'm just not sure which religion.

What's the final line?
I don't believe we'll EVER know for sure.

His name was Colon, he came from a town in Portugal called Cuba, which he passed on to the Island state. He was a Merrano,
as were a number of other Portuguese!

Colombus was an tyrannical enslaver of native people which resulted in death of entire tribes of people. I hope he wasnt Jewish.

I think you are confusing Cristobal Colon, who travelled in 1492, with Pizarro and Cortes, who travelled many years later and indeed caused tremendous damage to the originary civilization, who were in Mejico and Peru, more advanced that Europe in those days. Colon in fact was imprisoned, chained, and brought back by the inquisition after the trird o fouth time he went to the New World.. Im not sure if he was a Jew, but Jews did supply money for his travels.

Umm, i take it your kidding. Colon is spanish for Columbus and he did implement a feudal system which enslaved and eventually killed natives. Truth isnt always pretty.

Let's put it this way. If there is in the future, genocide on the moon, dont blame the astronauts of the Apollo 11.

I am surprised about the discussion about the birthplace of Colombus . Lugano is Switzerland and not Italy and furthermore I saw the house where he was born in Calvi in 1441 ( Corsica) which was at the time of his birth an island belonging to the Republic of Genoa .His father was a Weaver. Colombo is a very common name in Italy and the family Colombo lived in the same house until the 18th century. Cristoforo died in Valladolid (Spain in 1506 ) where you can visit his house. And what to say about the inscription you can find in the Dominican republic where you can also visite the fortress and castle of Colombus : " Cursed be Corsica involving me in this place "
That his origins were Jewish is possible but why was he bringing christianity to America ? Maybe he was a convert.
Another theory is that he was a Portuguese converted Jew . But this new theroy born in Lugano seems too exagerated.