Every few years, a story about Columbus resurfaces: Was the Genoese navigator who claimed the Americas for Spain secretly Jewish, from a Spanish family fleeing the Inquisition?
This tale became widespread around the late 19th century, when large numbers of Jews came from Russia and Eastern Europe to the United States. For these immigrants, 1492 held double significance: the year of Jews’ expulsion from Spain, as well as Columbus’ voyage of discovery. At a time when many Americans viewed the explorer as a hero, the idea that he might have been one of their own offered Jewish immigrants a link to the beginnings of their new country and the American story of freedom from Old World tyranny.
