1 00:00:00,400 --> 00:00:05,400 When you think of pirates, you probably think of rum-guzzling, treasure-hunting, eye-patch-wearing 2 00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:08,320 yar-swearing bad boys of the high seas. 3 00:00:08,320 --> 00:00:11,960 But did you know that centuries before Johnny Depp suited up as Jack Sparrow, there were 4 00:00:11,960 --> 00:00:14,920 Jews who operated under the swaying Jolly Roger? 5 00:00:14,920 --> 00:00:17,200 Who were these Jewish pirates of the Caribbean? 6 00:00:17,200 --> 00:00:18,560 What motivated them? 7 00:00:18,560 --> 00:00:24,020 And what kind of semi-kosher mayhem did they get into? 8 00:00:24,020 --> 00:00:30,120 It all started in 1492, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain expelled 200,000 9 00:00:30,120 --> 00:00:31,120 Jews. 10 00:00:31,120 --> 00:00:34,620 This purge of the Jews came from a Christian clerk, who wanted to stop traditional Jews 11 00:00:34,620 --> 00:00:38,900 from influencing conversos, Jews who had converted to Christianity. 12 00:00:38,900 --> 00:00:45,660 Oddly enough, the clerk himself had converso ancestors, but we guess that didn't stop 13 00:00:45,660 --> 00:00:46,660 him. 14 00:00:46,660 --> 00:00:50,780 A number of these exiled Spanish Jews decided to seek revenge from their anti-Semitic monarchs 15 00:00:50,780 --> 00:00:52,260 on the high seas. 16 00:00:52,260 --> 00:00:56,540 These long-bearded, sword-wielding, Spanish-speaking members of the tribe were like something out 17 00:00:56,540 --> 00:00:59,080 of an overblown Tarantino vengeance fantasy. 18 00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:02,100 There was even a pirate nicknamed the Great Jew. 19 00:01:02,100 --> 00:01:06,820 His actual name was Sinan Reyes, and he was second in command to the pirate Barbarossa, Italian 20 00:01:06,820 --> 00:01:09,320 for Redbeard, in the early 1500s. 21 00:01:09,320 --> 00:01:13,380 The duo attacked their fair share of Spanish merchant ships, but it wasn't all fun and 22 00:01:13,380 --> 00:01:15,540 games and bottles of kosher rum. 23 00:01:15,540 --> 00:01:21,440 In the early 1540s, the Great Jew's son was kidnapped at sea by King Charles V of Spain, 24 00:01:21,440 --> 00:01:25,720 Redbeard recaptured the kidnapped boy in an epic series of attacks that included sacking 25 00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:29,260 a small Spanish town and blowing up a fort. 26 00:01:29,260 --> 00:01:34,160 Another Jewish pirate was Moses Cohen Henriquez, considered to be one of the most successful 27 00:01:34,160 --> 00:01:35,720 buccaneers ever. 28 00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:40,720 He was supposedly the brains behind one of the biggest pirate halls in history, the 1628 29 00:01:40,720 --> 00:01:46,500 capture of the Spanish Silver Fleet, a convoy of about 25 ships loaded with treasure returning 30 00:01:46,500 --> 00:01:48,540 from Spain's American colonies. 31 00:01:48,540 --> 00:01:53,940 Henriquez sailed with the Dutch West India Company admiral and low-key pirate Pete Haine, 32 00:01:53,940 --> 00:01:58,860 whose anti-Spanish agenda was inspired by his time as a slave on a Spanish ship. 33 00:01:58,860 --> 00:02:02,740 The silver and gold the duo lifted in the raid is estimated to be worth over one billion 34 00:02:02,740 --> 00:02:04,080 dollars today. 35 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:05,620 Not bad for a day's haul. 36 00:02:05,620 --> 00:02:08,040 Henriquez was a pretty wild guy too. 37 00:02:08,040 --> 00:02:12,280 He established his own pirate island, where he schlepped and hid his fortune, continued to 38 00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:17,360 advise Haine, and sailed the seven seas, eluding capture for the rest of his days. 39 00:02:17,360 --> 00:02:20,680 Other Jewish pirates were less tethered to the bad boy life. 40 00:02:20,680 --> 00:02:26,920 Yaakov Curiel, aka Diego Perez de Costa, was a converso Jew who commanded three pirate ships 41 00:02:26,920 --> 00:02:32,180 in the Caribbean seas, and spent a good decade or so pillaging unsuspecting Spanish vessels. 42 00:02:32,180 --> 00:02:34,100 And then, he found God. 43 00:02:34,100 --> 00:02:38,640 He repented for his marauding ways, became the first ever Baal Teshuvah pirate. 44 00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:42,700 Eventually, he made his way to the land of Israel, where he settled in Safed, a city 45 00:02:42,700 --> 00:02:47,280 in the Galilee, after becoming enthralled with the mystical teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria. 46 00:02:47,280 --> 00:02:51,320 Or the Arizal, the father of contemporary Kabbalah. 47 00:02:51,320 --> 00:02:55,580 Then there was the man known as the Pirate Rabbi, who terrorized the seafarer in Spanish 48 00:02:55,580 --> 00:03:01,480 in the late 1500s, using part of his loot to found a community of Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam. 49 00:03:01,480 --> 00:03:05,700 The Pirate Rabbi supposedly kept kosher on the high seas, and may have even brought a chef 50 00:03:05,700 --> 00:03:09,060 along with him to make sure he wasn't eating treif. 51 00:03:09,060 --> 00:03:13,420 Jewish pirates tended to form partnerships with leading non-Jewish pirates of the day. 52 00:03:13,420 --> 00:03:17,700 This often led to remarkable crossovers of Jewish and pirate culture, including treasure 53 00:03:17,700 --> 00:03:22,140 maps written in Hebrew, ships with names like the Queen Esther and the Shield of Abraham, 54 00:03:22,140 --> 00:03:26,800 and tombstones in Jamaican Jewish cemeteries that bore the skull and crossbones. 55 00:03:26,800 --> 00:03:31,120 These sea-bound raiders fought for decades against the Spanish, attacking ships and sharing 56 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:35,900 Spanish naval secrets with Spain's enemies, all while building up a mercantile network connecting 57 00:03:35,900 --> 00:03:38,180 trading posts around the globe. 58 00:03:38,180 --> 00:03:42,340 Some scholars shy away from using the term Jewish pirates, since a lot of the aforementioned 59 00:03:42,340 --> 00:03:45,840 people served in advisory roles to other leading pirates. 60 00:03:45,840 --> 00:03:52,580 But if we broaden the term to include buccaneers, smugglers, privateers, or, in Spanish, contrabandistas, 61 00:03:52,580 --> 00:03:56,900 there's a broad consensus that Jews at the time were involved in illegal trade and raid 62 00:03:56,900 --> 00:03:59,160 against the Spanish Empire. 63 00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:03,020 Maybe what we actually call them is not as important as just recognizing that they existed 64 00:04:03,020 --> 00:04:07,980 at all, and recognizing that the Jewish role in early mid-second millennia Caribbean maritime 65 00:04:07,980 --> 00:04:10,700 history was greater than we thought. 66 00:04:10,700 --> 00:04:15,180 These Jewish naval greats had profound influence on leading pirates at the time, and took their 67 00:04:15,180 --> 00:04:19,900 fate into their own hands by shooting back at the empire that tried to stomp them out. 68 00:04:19,900 --> 00:04:25,140 And many succeeded, which makes for some pretty thrilling stories of vengeance and self-determination, 69 00:04:25,140 --> 00:04:37,140 and highlights these pirates as colorful examples of Jews who stood up against their oppressors.