The Royal Palace of Spain. Photo: Rafesmar via Wikicommons.

I once had a meeting postponed because the client’s office was shut for Columbus Day. Irritated about rescheduling, someone asked “they still celebrate that?” Indeed, times have changed.

I still remember the excitement as a child reading theories about Christopher Columbus’ secret Jewishness: “Can you believe it? He was one of us!” Now, with the toppling of the great explorer’s statues across the nation, I imagine many Jewish students run from his alleged Hebraic heritage.

Since the 529th anniversary of Columbus’ journey falls on August 3rd, we should all consider — from a Jewish perspective — the legacy of the man who discovered the New World.

Columbus wanted to find a direct water route to Asia, and he bounced around Europe to secure financing. King after king rejected him — and for good reason. Everyone knew that the best, safest, and perhaps only maritime path to Asia was around the African coastline. Columbus sought to go due west, a navigational blasphemy.

The tale that Queen Isabella pawned her jewels to pay for the journey is only a pretty romance. Fernando Columbus, Christopher’s son, reported that in January 1492, as his father was leaving the Spanish palace after being denied funds, the finance minister, Luis de Santangel, eventually persuaded the Queen to give royal assent — provided Santangel advance the money out of his own private purse, a whopping four million maravedis.

Why was Santangel willing to risk it all on Columbus, a man with a plan the leading cosmographers of the time considered infeasible? Santangel was reported to have seen in Columbus’ odyssey the potential discovery of a refuge for persecuted Jews. Santangel was a converso, outwardly Christian but practicing Judaism secretly. In fact, one of his relatives was burned at the stake by the Inquisition. In addition, Columbus’ crewmen would include a number of prominent Jews, like Bernal, his physician, Marco, the surgeon, and Luis de Torres, the interpreter.

In March came the Edict of Expulsion, giving Spanish Jews the choice to leave, convert, or die. The eventual effective date was August 2nd, 1492 — the same day Columbus was set to embark. That day was Tisha B’av.

Columbus and his three ships were ready to sail from the Port of Palos, which was packed with Jews seeking to escape at the last second. To avoid this traffic, Columbus delayed his departure a day. Emilo Castellar, a Columbus biographer, made note of the striking fact that “one of the last vessels transporting into exile the Jews expelled from Spain, passed by the little fleet bound in search of another world.”

And what another world it was. Robert Frost would famously say that Columbus began “a fresh start for the human race.” The Old World was hellish, stifling, painful, and tyrannical. In contrast, the New World was sparsely populated, far from kings, and removed from hierarchical norms — and would become what Santangel possibly had imagined: a safe haven where Jews could be free.

Jews recognized that in this new hemisphere, lay the survival of their people, and named their colonial communities accordingly: Newport, Rhode Island’s shul became Jeshuat Israel — the Salvation of Israel. And similar other names were given across the fledgling country. The modern Luis De Torres Synagogue in the Bahamas is named after the aforementioned interpreter, acknowledging this link between Columbus and the religious liberty enjoyed in the West.

Jewish tradition maintains that the Messiah will be born on Tisha B’av, teaching that in our destruction lay the seeds of our rebirth. In 1492, as banished Jews sailed away — on Tisha B’av — only to be persecuted somewhere else, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria forged off into the unknown, revealing the site of a new era in the history of mankind. Had Columbus stuck to conventional wisdom, or lacked courage, or was in want of tremendous skill, most of us, and certainly all Jews, could be locked into serfdom, slavery, or in a ghetto somewhere.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Christopher Columbus and to the historical process he, with his Jewish helpers, set in motion.

Joshua Blustein will be attending The University of Chicago Law School in the Fall