Christopher Columbus was Jewish, on both sides of his family, according to DNA research of his bones and the remains of his son. He came from the "western Mediterranean," possibly Valencia or Mallorca, not from Genoa.
“Christopher Columbus had to pretend all his life that he was a Roman Catholic Christian. If he had made one mistake, this man would have ended up on the pyre,” said historian Francesc Albardaner, who believes Columbus came from a silk-spinning Valencia family.
Historians have speculated about the explorer's ancestry. He was cagey about his past, and he left documents written in Valencian, Mallorcan, Galician and Portuguese.
Columbus set sail for the New World just as Jews who refused to convert were expelled from Spain. Many of his crew, including his navigator, translator and physician, were Jews or converts hoping for a brighter future.
Ferdinand and Isabella granted the island of Jamaica to the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. He refused to let the Inquisition operate there, and it became a refuge for secret Jews.
Many schools have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, reports Emma Bowman for NPR.
Now that Columbus is unpopular -- the arrival of Europeans was not a good thing for the natives -- he's Jewish. Just another colonizer.
"Columbus did not interrupt a prelapsarian paradise," Glenn Reynolds points out on Instapundit. He quotes Samuel Eliot Morison's Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus on how the discovery of a New World galvanized Europe. "Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment."
What about celebrating Discoverers' Day?
I'd rather celebrate the peace-loving Maya, Aztec, Apache, and Utes--wouldn't you?