Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

by Edward Kritzler

  “Cursed by day and cursed by night; cursed when he goes forth and cursed when he comes in.”30 So reads the condemnation of Uriel da Costa, excommunicated by holier-than-thou Jews who felt compelled to outdo the Christians in orthodoxy. Jews might have been freer in Amsterdam, but they still had to abide by the strictures their religious leaders demanded of the community. Before da Costa wound up killing himself, he wrote an account of his life and of the early community’s severity and religious dogmatism.

  So stringent were these constraints that they drove away many young Jews, including members of da Costa’s family, who, seeking personal freedom, settled in the New World and led the fight for Jewish rights. Their parents, having been raised with the strictures of Christianity and being newly returned to Judaism, felt compelled to adhere—or pay lip service—to the numerous tenets of their religion. As if doing penance for all their years pretending to be Catholic, few of the older émigrés looked to confront those rabbis who (like Palache’s brother-in-law) were zealous in their litany of do’s and don’ts, and quick to excommunicate those who didn’t toe the line.

  Uriel da Costa was one of those who refused. His autobiography, excerpted below, illuminates this early period as few other sources can.31 Born in Oporto, Portugal, in 1585 to a wealthy converso family, he studied for the priesthood and served in the local church before moving to Amsterdam in 1615 with his mother and four brothers. What prompted his return to Judaism is best described in his own words:

  I grew up in the Roman Catholic religion, and since I was terribly afraid of eternal damnation I occupied myself with reading the New Testament and other spiritual books…I became completely confused…It seemed to me impossible to confess my sins in accordance with Roman Catholic custom to obtain absolute absolution…I began to doubt if it was really true what I was taught of the life to come and tried to reconcile faith with reason, for it was reason which whispered into my ear something utterly irreconcilable with faith…

  Longing to find some satisfaction in any religion, I began to read the Books of Moses and the Prophets, knowing full well there was great competition between Jew and Christian. I found in the Old Testament many things that contradicted the New Testament completely. In addition, the old covenant is accepted by Jews as well as Christians, and the new one only by Christians. Finally I began to believe in Moses and decided to live according to his law because he received it from God, or so he maintained, and he simply considered himself an intermediary.

  Considering all this and the fact that in my country there was no freedom of religion, I decided to leave my beautiful house built by my father, and did not think twice about giving up my ecclesiastical office. So we embarked on a ship under the greatest danger, for it is known that those descended from Jews were not permitted to leave the country without a permit by the king. My mother was with me, as well as my brothers whom I had won over to my newly won convictions…It was a daring enterprise and could have failed, so dangerous was it in this country to even discuss matters of religion. It was a long voyage and finally we arrived in Amsterdam where we felt Jews could live in freedom and fulfill the commandments. And since I was imbued with it, my brothers and I immediately submitted to circumcision.

  Uriel’s concept of Judaism was based on the Old Testament. He had expected to find a biblical Judaism that no longer existed. Like many conversos, his knowledge was based solely on the Old Testament as transcribed in the Christian Bible. Instead, he encountered the Judaism of the Diaspora, an evolving faith built on interpretations and the commentaries of learned Jews found in the Talmud rather than the Torah. Wishing to live in accordance with the Commandments, da Costa rejected any new rendering of divine law not intoned in the Five Books of Moses.

  When a converso moved to Amsterdam, he was immediately embraced by the rabbis. No matter how idolatrous he had been while in “Babylonian exile,” he was absolved. But now that he had returned to the bosom of Judaism, the rabbis smothered him with their laws:

  After the first few days I began to understand that the customs and institutions of the Jews in Amsterdam were not at all in accordance with what Moses had written. If Moses’ commandments were observed strictly as written, then the Jews here were wrong to have invented so many things which deviated from them. It was not right for a man who had exchanged security at home for freedom abroad, and had sacrificed every possible advantage to permit himself to be so threatened…

  Not reticent about his views, Uriel accused members of the Mahamad, the synagogue’s executive committee, of inventing a new Torah: “They call themselves the sages of the Jewish people, inventing a host of laws which are totally opposed to it [and] do all these things in order to sit in the first row of the Temple and to be greeted in the marketplace with particular respect.”32

  In 1623, two incidents occurred that led to his excommunication. His nephew, “who lives with me, went to the community leaders and accused me of eating food which was not in accordance with Jewish law, and said that I could not possibly be a Jew.” Soon after, da Costa met two new arrivals, who “I advised against joining the Jewish community, telling them they did not know what kind of yoke they were about to be burdened with.”

  I asked them not to mention our conversation to the Jews. But these scoundrels betrayed me…As soon as the elders of the synagogue learned of my conversation, they met with the rabbis, who were hot with anger. A public war ensued. The rabbis and the people began to persecute me with a new hatred and did so many things against me that I could only react with utter and justified contempt.

  Expelled from the synagogue, he was shunned. “Even my brothers, whose teacher I was, passed me by. So afraid were they of the authorities that they did not even greet me on the street.” When his wife, Sarah, died, his only close companion was a faithful housekeeper. After seven years, he could take it no longer. He asked to be reconciled, and agreed to the humiliating subjugation demanded by the Mahamad for reinstatement. On the appointed day:

  I entered the synagogue, which was crowded with men and women who had come to observe this spectacle. When the time came, I went to the pulpit…and read in a loud voice the list of my confessions, concluding “I merit to die a thousand deaths for what I have committed.”…After, the sexton told me to go to a corner of the synagogue and strip off my clothes. I disrobed to my waist, wrapped a scarf around my head, took off my shoes, and the sexton tied my arms to one of the columns of the synagogue. The cantor came, and with leather whip beat me 39 times according to the law which provides for 40 lashes. But these people are so conscientious, they are afraid they might give me more than the law states. While he whipped me I recited the psalm.

  When this was over…I dressed and lay down over the threshold of the synagogue while the sexton held my head, [and] all the men, women and children passed over me into the street, stepping with one foot on the lower part of my legs. No monkey could have invented a more despicable, tasteless and ridiculous action. Afterward when everybody left, I rose and someone helped me get the dust off my clothes, so that no one should say that I was not treated honorable. Although they had whipped me just a short time ago, they expressed their pity for me and patted my head, and I went home.

  Sometime later, in 1640, Uriel da Costa bought a pistol, went home, put the gun barrel to his temple, and pulled the trigger. No one in his family had openly supported him, but after his death, one brother left for the New World to live free from a Jewish version of the Holy Inquisition, and other relations, exhibiting a similar combative spirit, directed their energies to gaining civil rights elsewhere in Europe and the New World. Indeed, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, everywhere that Jews struggled for rights, the da Costa name is prominent.33

  The trials and tribulations of Uriel da Costa paint a rabbinical portrait of Jewish Amsterdam at its most extreme. Samuel Palache would have been aghast at the treatment accorded da Costa, and certainly many of the congregation who went along did so reluctantly. Although not fanatical
about their own beliefs, they deferred to those who were. It is one of history’s anomalies that their religious leaders, themselves survivors of religious fanaticism, should have formed their own Inquisitional tribunal, rather than show tolerance to the new Jews. Granted, no dissidents were held in dark dungeons, stripped naked, and subjected to the rack, or suffered the Holy Terror’s other specified tortures.34 Even so, the lives of those expelled were ruined just the same.

  The most notable figure banished from the community was nine years old when he stepped over da Costa’s body in the synagogue entrance. The celebrated philosopher Baruch Spinoza would publicly question every religious tenet of Judaism and deny that the Bible was God’s word. Like Uriel, he was condemned to be “cursed by day and cursed by night; cursed when he goes forth and cursed when he comes in.” However, unlike him, Spinoza is embraced today as a champion of the Enlightenment and considered one of the great men in Jewish history.

  Only a handful of Jews were drummed out of the congregation. However, when one considers the oppressive religious atmosphere that permeated the small community, it is little wonder that a younger generation, raised in freedom, wanted out. Among the Jewish youth who quit Amsterdam for the New World were the Cohen Henriques brothers. Moses was fourteen and Abraham eleven when Rabbi Palache was buried, and a decade later they were in Brazil. Little is known of their parents, but the lasting influence of the pirate rabbi is apparent when, after the death of his first wife, Abraham married Samuel Palache’s grandniece, Rebekah, and the couple’s two children also married into the Palache family.35

  Moses left Amsterdam as a soldier and spy and embarked on a spectacular piracy career that would span a half century. Abraham soon followed him to the New World, where he became a powerful international merchant and used his economic muscle to orchestrate Jewish settlement. He never used Henriques, his Spanish “oppressor” name. Indeed, his fealty to his ancestry was such that, whenever possible, he signed his patronymic name, Abraham Cohen, in Hebrew.36

  During Holland’s armistice with Spain, from 1609 to 1621, Brazilian sugar found its way to foreign countries, transported by Dutch Jews to Portugal and then to Holland, France, Germany, and points east. This traffic, combined with Holland’s own consumption of the granulated product, boosted Brazil’s output by more than 50 percent. Likewise, the number of sugar refineries in Amsterdam increased from four to twenty-five.37 Once a confection only the very rich could afford, the sweetener was fast becoming an affordable treat for everyman.

  This traffic came to an abrupt halt in 1621, and the Dutch resumed their fight for independence. The desirability of regaining the sugar market was a major factor in the creation of the Dutch West India Company (hereafter called the Company), a trading combine with privately held shares modeled after the earlier Dutch East India Company. In April 1623, Prince Maurice presided over a conference at The Hague, where it was decided to fight Spain by targeting her colonies, the source of her wealth. To accomplish this, the States General approved the formation of a militant Company with the right and means to wage war against any that stood in its way.38

  No private corporation would ever again be granted such power—a monopoly on foreign trade, governorship of settlements, and the right to raise an army, wage war, and negotiate peace. The Company’s mandate was not simply to bypass Portugal and deal directly with Brazil. Rather, its initial mission was to conquer the sugar colony and then seize the silver mountain of Potosí, which for a half a century had financed Spain’s armies and funded her empire. To penetrate the interior of the southern continent where the silver mountain was located (today’s Bolivia), the Company’s plan called for a pincer movement to close in from both coasts—from Brazil on the Atlantic side and Peru on the Pacific.

  Jews were not involved in the formation of the Company but were wholly in favor of it and quick to enlist. While the Company’s motives were wholly mercenary and political, the Jews had another, more pressing agenda. In Portugal in 1618, the Inquisition arrested more than a hundred wealthy converso traders who had agents in Amsterdam and seized their cargos from Brazil in transit to the Dutch port. Amsterdam’s Jews, who were related to many of those arrested, and were holding their money, protested to the States General. A formal complaint was duly sent to King Philip, but it had no effect.39 The arrests in Portugal coincided with an Inquisition hearing in Brazil, where ninety conversos were denounced.40

  For a century, Brazil’s New Christians had been living in relative peace while developing the colony into the world’s richest sugar producer. Owing to its vastness and Portugal’s small population, conversos (along with petty criminals) had been encouraged to emigrate there. By 1623, an estimated 15 percent of the colony’s fifty thousand settlers were conversos. The authorities knew this included a clandestine community of nearly a thousand Judaizers, but as long as its members didn’t flaunt their beliefs, no one at first was particularly concerned.41

  This laissez-faire policy changed after the union of Portugal and Spain in 1580. Inquisition proceedings were initiated throughout the consolidated empire, and over the next decades, hearings by Inquisitors from Lisbon regularly targeted the colony’s Judaizers. The fourth hearing in 1618, in which the ninety conversos were accused, coupled with the arrests in Portugal, was a clear warning to those who were not the Christians they pretended to be.

  Although many of the colony’s conversos were sincere Christians, and a small percentage remained loyal to Judaism, by the 1600s most former Jews had become indifferent to religion. Having to choose between a faith that was forced on their ancestors and remaining true to outlawed beliefs, the majority chose mammon. A leading authority on Brazil’s New Christians, Anita Novinsky, opines that it was not so much a question of religiosity as it was “the economic prosperity of the colony [that] awoke the greed of the Inquisitors.”42 Conversos constituted most of the wealthy class. The hearings revealed that they dominated the sugar trade and in 1618 owned twenty of the thirty-four largest sugar mills.

  The production of sugar, fueled by African slaves, was the main business of Brazil, and the specialty of conversos. To appreciate the role the sweetener played in their New World welcome, we must digress into history to account for this connection.

  The association of Brazil’s conversos with this most valuable and contentious industry can be traced to 1503, three years after the Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral, accompanied by his Jewish pilot Gaspar da Gama, discovered Brazil. As previously related, Portugal’s King John had leased the colony to the enterprising converso merchant Fernando de Noronha to export brazilwood, a red dyewood that grew there in abundance, and for which the colony was named. From the sale of this timber, prized by Europe’s textile industry, Noronha’s consortium derived an annual profit of fifty thousand ducats. However, his hold on the colony ended when he had the bright idea of transplanting the cane root from the islands of São Tomé and Madeira. The success of his crop, and its potential profits, convinced the king to void Noronha’s contract and reclaim the colony. In 1516, Brazil’s first sugar mill began operating. To encourage the industry, new settlers were supplied with necessary tools and other equipment for the production of sugar.

  In 1534, the king appointed Duarte Coelho as feudal lord of Brazil, and directed him to recruit sugar experts from Madeira and São Tomé to establish large plantations. Sugar had been grown in the New World since Columbus brought the first roots from the Canary Islands, but not on the vast scale on which it was then being produced by a particular group of conversos in São Tomé, a small island off Africa’s west coast. What they did in São Tomé, the king would have them do on the vast savannahs of northeast Brazil. So it was that in 1534, the same year Charles V sent Portuguese conversos to salvage Jamaica, Coelho brought over Portuguese conversos—foremen, mechanics, and skilled workmen, principally from São Tomé—to Brazil. In São Tomé, they had transformed the cultivation of sugar into an agro-industry fueled by slave labor, and would do the same in Brazil,
a land of three million square miles, larger than Europe and all the other colonies in the New World together.

  From the time of the Crusades, when the cane root was transplanted from Asia to the Mediterranean basin, “the making and selling of sugar was dominated by Jews.”43 In the 1400s, Morocco was the primary producer of sugar, a commodity so dear only royalty could afford it. But the Mediterranean climate—too cool in winter and too dry year-round—was not optimum for sugar growth. Late in the fifteenth century, the grape growers of Madeira, Portugal’s Atlantic island known for its namesake wine, overtook Morocco in sugar production.

  Madeira’s vintners, mostly conversos, had obtained the cane root from their Moroccan brethren and were soon outproducing them.

  Madeira’s success inspired the king to introduce the crop to São Tomé, an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa his sailors had discovered in 1470 in the Gulf of Guinea. The island’s lush tropicality was suitable for sugar. Moreover, its location ensured an unlimited supply of slave labor. Enslaving Africans was nothing new. Portugal had been engaged in the slave trade from the time her ships first reached tropical Africa a half-century before. What was introduced in São Tomé for the first time was using slaves in a major agricultural enterprise.

  But first the king had to settle his uninhabited island. This proved difficult. None of his countrymen had any interest in migrating to an isolated isle, far from home, populated mostly by snakes and mosquitoes. Soon, however, the king hit upon an answer when his nation was overrun by displaced persons whose sugar-growing skills had already been proven.