Happy Thanksgiving!
For this Thanksgiving special, I focus on Sonia’s short essay Columbus and Thanksgiving Day. The full text of the essay is presented below in both transcript and image form.
The essay is two pages long, and in it, she discusses the legend of Christopher Columbus and his ethnicity. Although Columbus was thought to be a Spaniard due to his fluency in Spanish, it is rumored that he was secretly a Jew.1 For instance, his departure date, 3 August 1492, to the New World coincides with the date on which Jews were expelled from Spain. On 31 March 1492, the order to expel the Jews was issued, but they had until the end of July to leave the country.2
Celso García de la Riega, a Spanish historian and author, made it his mission to prove that Columbus was a Spanish Jew. In short, a Sephardic Jew.3 De la Riega held a public conference on the night of 20 December 1898 to expound on his research. The title of his presentation was Cristobal Colón Español?4 The documents that de la Riega presented, which he claimed to have found in Pontevedra in Galicia, contained the names of the Colón family and the Fonterossa family. By some means, de la Riega linked Columbus with the Colón family, while his wife was linked with the Fonterossa family, whose ancestors were known to be Jewish.
Taking de la Riega’s research further, Maurice David wrote Who was “Columbus”?, which provided additional “proof” in the form of photostatic reproductions of forty letters written by Columbus. The book was published in 1933 by Research Publishing Company. According to the publication, the cryptic, triangular form of Columbus’s signature was said to be deciphered into “an abbreviation of the ‘last confession’ of the Jews and also a substitute for the Kaddish.” Moreover, the obscure monogram at the top left corner of most of Columbus’s intimate letters suggested that it was “nothing more nor less than an old Hebrew greeting”.
However, the article Columbus & the Jews by Jonathan D. Sarna takes these sources and presents a different and more grounded account from Jewish scholars, particularly from Rabbi Meyer Kayserling.5 At the request of the Spanish government on the 400th anniversary of America’s discovery, Kayserling wrote Christopher Columbus and the Participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese (1894).6 It can be stated with greater certainty, thanks to Kayserling’s research, that Jews had played a role in the voyages of Columbus. His interpreter, Luis de Torres, had converted into Christianity but was of Jewish descent. Luis Santángel, a third-generation converso, was the Spanish treasurer who chiefly helped secure the funds for Columbus’s expedition.
“Most important of all, Kayserling showed that Columbus’s reward was paid out of funds expropriated from Jews being expelled from Spain in 1492, and that the same source—not the Queen’s jewels, as popular myth had it, but her Jews—would defray the costs of his second voyage as well.”
Jonathan Sarna, “Columbus and the Jews”, Commentary, Vol. 94(5), 1992, pp. 38 – 41.
Being a Sephardic Jew, Nathaniel A. Davis, Sonia’s third husband, was also fascinated with this topic. Around 1938, he wrote a play about Columbus. Sonia quoted excerpts from it in her essay. He also penned two poems, Cristobal Colon and El Almirante Colon, collected and published in The Voice of the Prophet.
In addition to her essay, Sonia wrote a scene for a play containing a Thanksgiving dinner in which the family discusses Columbus and Thanksgiving. Scene IV includes a curious anecdote on the origins of the turkey bird. In Who was “Columbus”?, Maurice David described an incident in which Columbus and one of his voyagers shot a “tuki”. Tuki is the Hebrew name for parrot, which over time became “turkey”. Unfortunately, I cannot speak for the accuracy of this anecdote. The rest of the play is nonextant, and its purpose is unknown. Yet, like the essay, Scene IV further reflects a belief that both Nathaniel and Sonia held as proud Jewish Americans.
The ancestry of Christopher Columbus will always remain a mystery—unless new information emerges that finally sheds light on the “Admiral of the Ocean Sea.”7 Nevertheless, we have many reasons to be grateful and even more reasons to celebrate on this special day. May grace and peace be with you and yours.
Transcript:
COLUMBUS AND THANKSGIVING DAY
***********************************
By
SoniaH. [sic] Davis
—————————–
Sunday, October 12th. will be Columbus Day. The last Thursday in November will be Thanksgiving Day. These two dates are inevitably intertwined with one another. How and why? Because it is alleged that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew; and Thanksgiving Day, as a holiday, antedates the Mayflower Pilgrims who landed here in sixteen twenty.
I trust the following bit of information will be found of sufficient interest to give food for thought.
In the latter part of the last century the Spanish government offered fifty thousand dollars to any research worker who could prove that Columbus was a Spaniard.
A Catholic scientist by the name of Celso de la Riega, after many years of research among the historical archives in Spain proved conclusively that Columbus was a Spanish Jew.
Dela [sic] Riego was then told “We offered fifty thousand dollars to prove that Columbus was a Spaniard, and not a Jew.” De la Riego did not obtain the prize but he wrote a book.
After having done some research work on the life of Columbus such as is not ordinarily found in our conventional and official text books, the following extract is from some of that research by the late Nathaniel A. Davis:
“In 1892, a Spanish Catholic scientist, one Celso de la Riego read a paper before the Geographic Society of Madrid, making the claim that the “GENOA” story about Columbus was a deception in order to conceal his true identity; and that there are genuine documentary proofs that Columbus was a Spaniard, born in Pontevedra, a city in the northwestern part of Spanish Galicia. In 1913, De la Riega published a book entitled “COLON ESPANOL?”
In 1933 a New York lawyer, named Maurice David, checked on the story and found it to be correct. He then published his findings in a book by the title of “WHO WAS COLUMBUS?” in which he included photostatic copies of the intimate letters of Colon with their Hebrew identifying signatures in Colon’s own handwriting, the initial letters of the Barach Ha Shem, (Blessed be the name) and many other interesting facts.
In that book Maurice Davis says that when Colon reached Hispaniola, as he called Santo Domingo, Luis de Torres, the Hebraist interpreter of the expedition, went ashore on that November day and shot a bird he thought to be a peacock and therefore called it by its Hebrew name for that bird, “TUKKI” (“Turkey” is the Anglicized perversion of “Tukki”)
N.A. Davis wrote a play on this theme from which I shall quote:
After expounding some more facts about Columbus, Hebrew tradition and Thanksgiving, a student at U C L A speaks: “It seems to me as if WE found America, found something to be thankful for in November, and then found and named the Thanksgiving-dinner-bird, the turkey of today.” end of quotation.
Columbus’ Spanish name was Cristobal Colon but was Latinized into its present form. And apropos of his name, two cities in Panama bear his Spanish name, the east entrance to the canal city is called Colon, and the other, Cristobal. But I doubt whether the Panamanians know that Columbus was a Jew.
The late Dr. Davis has written an interesting play based on these facts.
Anyone interested, may have it read before a group, or taught to the Juniors who might like to produce it for the benefit of some worthy Jewish cause. I’d be happy to coach them.
S.H.D.
Endotes:
- The Times of Israel, “Christopher Columbus–the hidden Jew?” ↩︎
- History, “Spain announces it will expel all Jews.” ↩︎
- Britannica Editors. “Sephardi”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Mar. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sephardi. Accessed 28 April 2026. ↩︎
- The Online Books Page, “Cristobal Colón español?” ↩︎
- Brandeis University, “Scholarship and Biography of Jonathan Sarna”. ↩︎
- Jewish Virtual Library, “Meyer Kayserling (1829 – 1905)” ↩︎
- Flint, Valerie I.J.. “Christopher Columbus”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Apr. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus. Accessed 28 April 2026. ↩︎