At the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition forced Jews to flee the country. The most adventurous among them took to the high seas as freewheeling outlaws. attacking and plundering the Spanish fleet while forming alliances with other European powers to ensure the safety of Jews living in hiding.
This book is the entertaining saga of a hidden chapter in Jewish history and of the cruelty, terror, and greed that flourished during the Age of Discovery. Readers will meet such daring figures as the pirate rabbi Samuel Palache, who founded Holland's Jewish community; Abraham Cohen Henriques, an arms dealer who used his cunning and economic muscle to find safe havens for other Jews; and his pirate brother Moses, credited with the capture of the Spanish silver fleet in 1628--the largest heist in pirate history. Historian Kritzler here captures a gritty and glorious era of history from an eye-opening perspective.
| Other Title | How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge |
| GMD | BOOK |
| Classification | 972 KRI |
| Publisher | Anchor Canada, 2009 |
| Subject | HistoryHistory / JewishPiratesThe Spanish InquisitionHistory - People |
| Description | PRAISE ★ "Compelling ... An ambitious and expansive history of a mostly unexamined aspect of the Jewish expulsion from Spain and Portugal." —Los Angeles Times
★ "Yo ho ho and a bottle of Manischewitz! ... A giddy, breathless dash through the material ... Jewish pirates [are] more vividly present in our imagination than we might have suspected." —Jewish Daily Forward
★ "Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean is populated by so many remarkable characters–Jewish and otherwise–that picking a favorite is taxing." —San Francisco Chronicle
★ "Kritzler should be commended for making us rethink a few historical assumptions. What’s ‘Aarrgh!’ in Yiddish, anyway?" —Washington Post
★ "A book that turns one's lifelong notions on their ear and makes one rethink history is a find indeed. ... [A] surprising, yet convincing story ... Enormous fun." —Santa Cruz Sentinel
★ "A far-reaching chronicle of an oft-forgotten chapter in Jewish history, it also encompasses the role of Sephardi Jews in the opening up of the New World." —Jerusalem Report
★ "Fascinating ... [Kritzler] exposes a virtually unexplored world in Jewish history ... [Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean] is a book that should not just be read, but studied as well." —San Diego Jewish World
★ "Kritzler is a storyteller and the story he tells is about the tangled and colorful Sephardi web that stretched from Fez to Amsterdam to Jamaica." —Haaretz
★ "This is far more than a book about Jewish pirates. It is a book about early Jewish Settlement in the New world and it makes for fascinating reading ... Kritzler illuminates an all but unknown chapter in Jewish history in colorful, salty prose." —History Book Club |
| ISBN | 9780767919524 |
| Additional ISBN | 0767919521 |
| URL |