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After more than eight years in development, a book contract was awarded to Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates for their collaborative study of Crypto-Jews and Crypto-Muslims in the settlement of British North America. Titled Star, Crescent and Cross: Jews and Muslims in Colonial America, the work will be published next year by McFarland, a leading U.S. publisher of scholarly, reference and
academic books.
Among original investigations by the authors are genealogical studies of the West Country Gentlemen and others who proposed and promoted England's first colonies. From Sir John Hawkins (Sephardic Jewish surname Haquines, "physician" in Arabic) and Sir Francis Drake (whose family coat of arms bore a six-pointed star until it was air-brushed out by later historians) to Stephen Parmenius (a Jew from Turkish-held Hungary) and Captain John Smith, the principal players in England's colonization efforts are revealed to be far different from the white Anglo-Saxon Christian buccaneers American schoolchildren are taught about.
"England's reliance on Iberian Jews to promote its interests abroad goes back as far as the Tudors," according to Star, Crescent and Cross. "Henry VIII used Spanish Jewish lawyers to justify his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. One of them, an Italian banker tapped for his shrewdness and knowledge of international law, was the ancestor of Oliver Cromwell, Protector of the Commonwealth."
The book presents a series of colonial documents, contemporary firsthand accounts, records, portraits, family genealogies and ethnic DNA test results which fundamentally challenge the national storyline depicting America’s first settlers as white, British and Christian. The authors postulate that many of the initial colonists were of Sephardic Jewish and Muslim Moorish ancestry, usually arriving as crypto-Jews or crypto-Muslims.
Names Ordinary and Illustrious
The footnotes in the study document origins and meanings of over 5,000 surnames previously assumed to be sturdy English ones of ancient bearing. The authors' research casts a sidelight on celebrated Jewish Americans who can trace back to colonial forebears. These range from the Massachusetts Kennedys to the Byrds of Virginia, from actors Johnny Depp and Adrien Brody to actresses Roseanne Barr and Gwyneth Paltrow, from writers Louise Glück and Neil Simon to politicians Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders and jurists Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
"We hope that the remarkable stories of the men, women and families in Star, Crescent and Cross will serve as a reminder of America’s early diversity and stimulus for rewriting some of the inaccurate and injudicious portions in the country's history," said Yates.
Among the famous colonial figures discussed (and usually illustrated with a portrait) are William Byrd II, Patrick Henry, William Bradford, William Penn, George Mason, George Washington, Richard Lee II, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, Peter Stuyvesant, Luis Gomez, Jacob Troxell, Anthony Ashley Cooper Lord Shaftesbury, Tench Tilghman, Christopher Gist, John Skeen, Sir Philip Sidney, Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, Virginia Dare, Don Luis de Carvajal, Daniel Boone, William Cooper, the Salem Witches, Christopher Gist, Lord Saye and Sele, and various Lowells, Cabots, Lodges, Livingstones, Delanceys and Roosevelts.
Chapter 2, "Sephardim in the New World" is a survey of Crypto-Jews in North America, especially the Caribbean and Atlantic Islands. It includes autosomal DNA data proving the Melungeons are probably descended from Jews mixed with American Indians, Africans and Gypsies/Romani, as recently reported in this blog.
There are chapters and name-lists devoted to each of the original colonies. The book will contain over 50 illustrations.
English navigators and explorers included many West Country gentlemen. Most were from intermarried Crypto-Jewish families. New York Public Library.
Rachel commented on 28-Aug-2010 12:00 PM
Comments
It seems that from other research, such as, "Y-chromosome Lineages from Portugal, Madeira and Acores Record Elements of Sephardim and Berber Ancestry", amongst others. Sephardim and Muslim Moors are fairly indistinguishable, since Islam came late to the game, and converted most of the Israelites (pre-Ashkenazi European Jewry). This fact, together with the protection of the Jews in Muslim lands from Christian forced conversion, means that DNA research will most likely produce false positives for Jewish origins. This means that the Sephardim and Azore shared DNA predates Islam and rabbinic Judaism to Berber and Israelite origins. The same could be said for the study of etymological studies. If ancient Hebrew is basically Moabite Canaanite, a vulgar dialect of ancient Arabic (Jewish enclopedia), then etym. tracing of surnames could easily map into Arabic surnames, especially with remooval of semetic vowel marks, which are medeival in origin. A simple example is Elohim and Allah, both spelled the same in consonant spelling without marks, ALH, Aliph Lam Ha. Moreover, it is well understood that a large majority of Spanish conquistadors were Crypto Muslims , fleeing the oppression of newly Catholic Spain. This was not the case for Jews who had the opportunity to live in some parts of Europe, and who possessed valued commercial skills in the Islamic Caliphate, which would not likely be easily transferred into the required skills of Colonial Conquistador, an undesirable profession at best. However, the Netherlands contained a large number of Jews who fled Spain, as did Ireland (the so called Black Irish though more likely crypto Muslim mercenary sailors).
Finally the small number of practising Jews in western Europe at the time of the North American invasions, and the neutral status of Judaism, or other non trinitarian sects such as the Quakers, makes it more likely that the cryptos were cryto Muslims with Israelite or Berber origins, rather than the descendants of the Islamic commercial class, the Sephardim. Nor is it likely that the eastern european, Balkan , Ashkenazi (see, The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity, Paul Wexler) made their way through Germany to Holland to the new world ( a much later historicall migration). All of this requires some condieration in this research book, even if one might sell more books by making the Kennedys and founding Fathers all Jews.
Very good points!