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Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

COLUMBUS SAILED AMIDST DESPAIR IN SEARCH OF HOPE

"So, after having expelled the Jews from your dominions, your Highness, in the same month of January, ordered me to proceed with a sufficient armament, to the said regions of India. "

Thus wrote Christopher Columbus to Queen Isabella. Indeed, she signed the expulsion decree and Columbus' voyage order on the very same day:

Therefore, with the council and advice of the eminent men and cavaliers of our reign, and of other persons of knowledge and conscience of our Supreme Council, after much deliberation, it is agreed and resolved that all Jews and Jewesses be ordered to leave our kingdoms, and that they never be allowed to return.
And we further order in this edict that all Jews and Jewesses of whatever age that reside in our domain and territories, that they leave with their sons and daughters. their servants and relatives, large and small, of whatever age, by the end of July of this year, and that they dare not return to our lands, not so much as to take a step on them not trespass upon them in any other manner whatsoever. Any Jew who does not comply with this edict and is to be found in our kingdom and domains, or who return to the kingdom in any manner, will incur punishment by death and confiscation of all their belongings.
We further order that no person in our kingdom of whatever station or noble status hide or keep or defend any Jew or Jewess, either publicly or secretly, from the end of July onwards, in their homes or elsewhere in our reign, upon punishment of loss of their belongings, vassals, fortresses, and hereditary privileges.

In his novel "Alhambra Decree," David Raphael, imagined the great Rabbi, statesman, philosopher, Bible commentator, and financier.[1]Isaac Abrabanel, responding to the Spanish queen thus (It is presented on the internet as real, alas it is not. It is so good that I have decided to retain it):

We leave you with this comforting knowledge. For although you can dispose of our power, we have the higher truth. Although you can dispose of our persons, you cannot dispose of our sacred souls and the historical truth to which only we bear witness.
Listen, King and Queen of Spain, for on this day you have joined the list of evil-doers against the remnant of the House of Israel. If you seek to destroy us, your wishes will come for naught, for greater and more powerful rulers have tried to finish with us, and all have failed. Indeed, we shall prosper in other lands far from here. For wherever we go, the God of Israel is with us. And as for you King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, God's hand will reach out and punish the arrogance in your heart.
Woe unto you, authors of iniquity. For generations to come, it will be told and retold how unkind was your faith and how blind was your vision. But more that your acts of hatred and fanaticism, the courage of the people of Israel will be remembered for standing up to the might of imperial Spain, clinging to the religious inheritance of our fathers, resisting your enticements and your untruths.
Expel us, drive us from this land that we cherish no less than you do. But we shall remember you, King and Queen of Spain, as our Holy Books remember those who sought our harm. We Jews shall haunt your accomplishments on the pages of history... and the memories of our sufferings will inflict greater damage upon your name that anything you can ever hope to do to us.
We shall remember you and your vile Edict of Expulsion forever.

The novelist did not speak lightly. For years Jews/conversos have been searching for new lands. Indeed, cartography was pretty much a Jewish science. Jewish converso explorers named João Gonçalves Zarco and Bartolomeu Perestrelo discovered the important stepping stone island called Madeira and Porto Santo. Columbus who spent years on the island married Felipa Perestrelo, the daughter of the late Porto Santo governor and got access to his vast collections of maps relating to the Atlantic.

For years Columbus hoped to convince the Portuguese court to finance a Western voyage. He failed. So, he went to Spain. There, Isabella's Jewish advisers succeeded in convince her to sanction the trip in part by providing the financing. As Columbus prepared to sail, Jews prepared to leave Spain. Indeed, when Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492. He was not alone. All around him were boats of every shape and size filled with expelled hundreds of thousands of expelled Jews. For the day he sailed was also the last day Jews could leave Spain. It was also the Ninth of Av (Tisha B'av) on the Jewish calendar, a day of fasting in commemoration of the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem.

Jews were on the move again and as Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal wrote in his fascinating book Sails of Hope, Columbus and his Jewish shipmates were scouts looking for new more hospitable land where Jews can thrive again. Columbus himself, Jewish or not, writes Chuck Missler, connected his voyage to the fate of the Jews:

Columbus was more driven by prophecy than astronomy. He compiled a collection of Biblical passages in his Libro de las Profecias, Book of Prophecies: Proverbs 8:27, which speaks of the earth's surface as being curved; Isaiah 40:22, the spherical earth; and the ocean currents in Isaiah 43:16.5 He would later describe his discovery of the New World as "the fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied," from Isaiah 24:15, "Isles beyond the sea," and Isaiah 60:9.6

Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them," (60:9)

It took hundreds of years before America (the "Goldene Medina) fully replaced Spain as a physical and spiritual Jewish center. But the first step was taken on that blessed/cursed day in 1492 when Columbus "sailed the ocean blue."