Jewish Pirates and the Caribbean

Jewish History Nerds - Unpacked

This episode explores the myth and reality of Jewish pirates in the Caribbean, examining historical inaccuracies in popular narratives while highlighting genuine Jewish contributions to maritime trade and community life

Key takeaways

• Jewish pirates in the Caribbean are largely a myth with little historical evidence

Transcript preview

Hey friends I want to ask you for a quick favor. We are always looking to understand our audience who listen to unpacked even better, who watch it, who engage with us even more. So to do that we want to hear from you directly what you're loving, what you're curious about, what you want to see more of, what you'd want to see covered, whatever it is. It's a super short survey, just two minutes, but your answers help us shape where this show goes next. So really appreciate, really appreciate it. So, really appreciate it. The link is in the link is in the show notes, or you can go to slash pod survey. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Thanks for being part of this community. Now go fill out that survey please. Pretty please. You know who goes to a Jewish school in the Caribbean. Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, not mentioned in the play. stories in Jewish history. I'm Jonathan Schwab. And I'm Yal Steiner and we'd like to welcome you to our second episode in a special series on The Americas. Schwab, you led our first episode on the Americas with a fascinating tale about Jews in Recife Brazil and I think you have some follow-up. Yes, yeah. So where we left off was for not the first time Jews in Brazil, and I think you have some follow-up. Yes, yes. So where we left off was for not the first time, being expelled from their homes in this case in Recife Brazil and sort of spread all throughout the Western Hemisphere but really primarily through the Caribbean and that's where we're gonna be talking about our story today and it will take us to a lot more places. I want to start off with a really interesting colorful tale and then we'll unpack it a little bit. It's perfect. September of 1628. Matanzas on the north coast of Cuba, a very large fleet of Dutch ships or ships flying a Dutch flag are closing in on a Spanish treasure fleet. 16 Spanish ships carrying an entire year's worth of silver that has been mined from Peru and Mexico intending to carry it back to Spain. The Dutch much larger fleet captures, this entire Spanish convoy of all 16 ships and all of the silver that they are holding, which is 11.5 million guilders of silver. In today's money, it's something like a billion dollars. That's insane. A very large sum, enough to fund a lot more Dutch warships. The largest treasure capture in the history of the Spanish main of the Caribbean, like possibly... A huge amount of money. It's a massive, massive, massive... amount of money, yes. Wow, who'd have thunk it? And riding alongside the Dutch Admiral at the head of this Dutch fleet is a Portuguese Jew named Moses Cohn-Enriches, a Jew whose family fled the Inquisition, now getting his ultimate revenge on the Spanish who were responsible. He is the captain now. Yes. It's an amazing remarkable story. It's not exactly true. Which part is not exactly true. Okay. The Moses cone and Rique's, or at least, we have very little to go on that there was such a person that he was involved in this thing. The Dutch seizing the Spanish silver, absolutely we have historical evidence for it. The Dutch are great recordkeepers as we've talked about many times on the show. And they document like down to the individual barrel, exactly what was. it is that they captured. So we know that like they counted the guilders of silver. We know that this battle happened, that the Dutch you know captured the silver and other stuff carried on the ships, but Moses Conan Rique, it's a very appealing story, you know a Jew being very involved in this, but the evidence is thin for the way this is told. Where or what is the evidence or written theory that this person existed or was there? Where that story comes from is a book published in 2008 called The Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, subtitle How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in their quest for treasure, religious freedom, and revenge. Very appealing narrative. Not excellent historical work. Also, very much right in the heart of the... Pirates of the Caribbean, Jacks, Barrow, Popularity era. So definitely there could be some motivation there for someone to possibly embellish a story in order to. We don't need to spend our whole time dunking on Edward Kritzler, who's like an amateur historian, Jewish guy who moved to Jamaica. That's the word I was looking for, amateur. Okay. How he draws his conclusions and how he quotes things is embellishing and creative, I guess are you. good euphemisms for it, but like it's really largely kind of not true. Interesting. Okay. What is interesting and and that's how I want to break down our discussion for today. He talks about Jewish pirates in the Caribbean. There's not a lot there to really talk about. There were Jewish pirates, although I think there's a there's we'll get into like how do we define that term and how do we understand how function. There were pirates in the Caribbean or the Caribbean and again still like what what do pirates look like and how do we understand and there were Jews in the Caribbean but there's no center of that Venn diagram that incorporates all three but any two of them there is a lot to talk about so that's how I want to structure today like let's talk about pirates in the Caribbean let's talk about one particular very fascinating Jewish air quotes hybrid and let's talk about Jews in the Caribbean but let's say at the outset like this book is swept along by its own enthusiasm rather than extensive research like it's a cool story there's a lot that's like license that is taken sometimes I feel like that's my MO I'm often swept away by my own enthusiasm yeah my initial thought and maybe this is because I've been captured by the Lachymouth conception of Jewish history is that casting Jews as pirates is very keeping in all sorts of anti-Semitic tropes obsessed obsessed with commerce dishonest oh interesting I thought you were gonna say something different of like it's a nice it's like an appealing way of looking at Jews rather than they were just scholars who kept their nose in their books and were persecuted like this is Jews taking their agency own hands and being swashbuckling and you know like it's almost like a I think in the there's a great unpacked video on this and I think it's described as like a Tarantino-esque retelling you know I love that like this didn't happen but isn't it appealing to think about you's acting this way I walked out of in glorious bastards on such a high it really is appealing to think about it that way right it is yeah so let's start with talking about pirates and piracy youngest daughter just had a pirate day at her daycare and they were visited by a pirate which was a person dressed as a pirate and he's dressed basically exactly as you're probably picturing right now party city adult pirate. Yeah. Yeah. Like a red bandana that ties on the side precisely. Yep. And a plastic sword attached to some kind of belt. Yeah. And like the puffy shirt that Jerry Seinfeld wore on the tonight. show. Yes, yeah. Okay, cool. And and you're forgetting a really important element. The boots, the breaches? Okay, the even more an eye patch. An eye patch. Yeah. Got it. I think he also. Maybe had like, okay. And skull and crossbones we got to talk about it also, right? But like, okay, all of the, all of these are, this is a very Hollywood picture of pirates and like it's like a Hollywood version, a Disney version. Apparently LEGO has played a role in this also, like had a lot, had a lot a lot a lot a lot of from our childhood. That's not what I don't know the actual pirates looked like and what was a pirate was also kind of more complicated than we think the skull and crossbones now we associate that as a pirate symbol for a long time it was just like sort of a generic symbol that especially appeared on a lot of graves but was like an important sort of universal symbol so that's part of it is like Edward Kritzler has all of these pictures and evidence of Jewish graves in the Caribbean with skull and crossbones on them but that doesn't mean they were pirates that in some cases that just means that this person died maybe of poison right because now that's what we think about but it was just like a generic simple pirates and privateers which are different jobs different people is a privateer just a paid pirate so yes who like has a legal job is does not do whatever they want but are licensed and bonded by whatever like a bounty hunter king kingdom has employed them yeah except rather than like I mean sometimes they were they were looking for specific bounties sometimes they were they were allowed to engage in capturing any enemy of their state a bit of a different thing but they're much closer to than pirates as we think about them today. Understood. So where did the Jews fit into this culture of sea capture? Yeah, very little. The Jewish involvement in the Caribbean and will come back to this at the end but was mostly not in this area of the economy. They were much more involved in the legal, hopefully less violent trade, although that trade did include slavery. which we'll talk about also. And in the cultivation and manufacture of goods in the exchange of goods but not as much in the Caribbean in