Jewish Pirates: Revenge, Adventure, and the Seas of the Inquisition

Not a Punchline

The phrase “Jewish pirates” sounds like the setup to a joke. It is not. From the 16th through 18th centuries, Jewish and crypto-Jewish sailors, captains, and privateers roamed the Mediterranean and Caribbean in significant numbers. They fought, plundered, and occasionally sank Spanish ships — and if there was a certain satisfaction in that, it was not coincidental. Spain had expelled them, tortured them, and burned them at the stake. The sea offered something land never had: freedom.

This is not a story about lovable rogues. Pirates were violent men (and occasionally women) who operated outside the law. But the Jewish pirates of the early modern period were also refugees, survivors, and rebels whose maritime careers cannot be separated from the history of the Inquisition.

The Background: Why Jews Turned Pirate

To understand Jewish piracy, you need to understand what Spain and Portugal did to their Jewish populations. In 1492, Spain expelled all Jews who refused to convert to Christianity. Portugal followed in 1497, though it opted for forced conversion rather than expulsion — creating a large population of conversos (also called New Christians) who were Jewish in secret and Catholic in public.

The Inquisition hunted these conversos relentlessly. Those caught “Judaizing” — secretly practicing Jewish customs — faced imprisonment, torture, public humiliation, confiscation of property, and death by burning. For conversos who managed to escape Iberia, there was an obvious target for their rage: the Spanish and Portuguese empires that had destroyed their lives.

The sea was the great equalizer. On the ocean, a converso captain with a fast ship and a crew of desperate men could strike at the empire that had persecuted him. He could seize Spanish gold. He could liberate converso prisoners from Inquisition ships. And he could do it all with the blessing of Spain’s enemies — England, the Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire — who were more than happy to license Jewish privateers against their mutual foe.

Samuel Pallache: Diplomat, Spy, Pirate

The most remarkable Jewish pirate was Samuel Pallache, and his story reads like a novel that no editor would believe. Born into a prominent rabbinical family in Fez, Morocco, Pallache operated in the blurry space between diplomacy, espionage, and piracy.

In the early 1600s, Pallache served as an ambassador for the Sultan of Morocco to the Dutch Republic. He negotiated trade agreements. He gathered intelligence. And he obtained Dutch and Moroccan authorization to raid Spanish shipping — making him, technically, a privateer rather than a pirate, though Spain saw no distinction.

In 1614, Pallache captured a Spanish ship and brought it to the English port of Plymouth. Spain demanded his arrest. England, caught between diplomatic pressures, arrested him. His trial became an international incident, with the Dutch and Moroccan ambassadors intervening on his behalf. He was ultimately released — the only known pirate to be defended by two sovereign governments simultaneously.

Pallache died in The Hague in 1616 and was buried in the Portuguese Jewish cemetery at Ouderkerk. His gravestone still stands. He was a rabbi’s son who became a pirate, a pirate who was also a diplomat, and a diplomat whose greatest achievement may have been simply surviving.

Sinan Reis: The Great Jew

In the Ottoman Empire, a pirate known as Sinan Reis — or Sinan “the Jew” (Cifut in Turkish) — rose to become one of the most feared captains in the Mediterranean. His exact origins are debated, but Ottoman sources identify him as Jewish. He served under the legendary Barbarossa brothers and participated in major Ottoman naval campaigns against Spain and its allies.

Sinan commanded a fleet of galleys and participated in the 1538 Battle of Preveza, one of the most important naval engagements in Mediterranean history. The Ottomans won a decisive victory, and Sinan played a significant role. For a Jewish captain to hold such a position in the Ottoman navy was unusual but not impossible — the Ottoman Empire was far more tolerant of Jews than Christian Europe.

Moses Cohen Henriques and the Caribbean

The Caribbean was the Wild West of the 17th century, and converso Jews were deeply embedded in its economy and piracy. Moses Cohen Henriques, a Portuguese converso, allied himself with the Dutch West India Company and participated in one of the largest pirate raids in history: the 1628 capture of the Spanish silver fleet off the coast of Cuba. The haul — silver, gold, and trade goods — was worth millions and helped finance Dutch independence.

Henriques later established a pirate island off the coast of Brazil, which some historians consider one of the first autonomous Jewish communities in the Americas. When the Portuguese recaptured Brazil from the Dutch in the 1650s, Henriques and his followers scattered across the Caribbean, establishing communities in Jamaica, Curaçao, and other islands.

The Jewish communities of the Caribbean — in Jamaica, Barbados, and Curaçao — owed their existence in part to these converso pirates and privateers. The oldest synagogues in the Western Hemisphere stand in these islands, built by the descendants of people who arrived as refugees, traders, and yes, pirates.

The Revenge Motive

What distinguished Jewish pirates from their gentile counterparts was motivation. Most pirates were in it for money. Jewish pirates wanted money too — they were pirates, not monks. But many also harbored a specific grudge against Spain and Portugal. The Inquisition had destroyed their families. Piracy was payback.

Some Jewish pirates specifically targeted Inquisition ships carrying converso prisoners. Others attacked Spanish colonial ports where Inquisition tribunals operated. The Dutch pirate Abraham Blauvelt, possibly of Jewish origin, raided the Spanish Main with a ferocity that contemporaries attributed to personal vengeance.

This revenge motive made Jewish pirates valuable allies for Protestant powers. England and the Netherlands, locked in their own struggles against Catholic Spain, were happy to unleash Jewish privateers against their enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend — especially if my friend has a fast ship and a score to settle.

The Jean Lafitte Question

No discussion of Jewish pirates is complete without addressing Jean Lafitte, the legendary pirate of New Orleans and the Battle of New Orleans (1815). Was he Jewish? The question has generated more heat than light.

The case for Lafitte’s Jewishness rests primarily on a journal allegedly written by Lafitte and discovered by a collector in the 1950s. In it, Lafitte reportedly describes his family as Sephardic Jews from Spain. Supporters point to family naming conventions, his documented sympathy toward Jews, and circumstantial evidence.

The case against is simpler: the journal’s authenticity is disputed, and no contemporary documents identify Lafitte as Jewish. Most mainstream historians remain skeptical. Lafitte is best described as a “maybe” — a tantalizing possibility that cannot be confirmed or definitively ruled out.

Why This Story Matters

Jewish pirates matter not because piracy is admirable — it is not — but because their story shatters stereotypes. The image of the passive, bookish Jew is a product of centuries of persecution that limited Jewish occupations. When given the opportunity — or when driven to desperation — Jews proved perfectly capable of violence, adventure, and derring-do.

The story also illuminates the global reach of the Jewish diaspora. At a time when Jews in Europe faced confinement and persecution, Jewish pirates operated across oceans, negotiating with sultans and governors, commanding multicultural crews, and building communities on distant islands.

Most importantly, the story of Jewish pirates is a story of agency. These were not passive victims. They took their fate into their own hands — literally, by taking the helm. They chose risk over submission, the open sea over the Inquisition’s dungeons. Not all of their choices were moral. But they were their choices, and they shaped the world in ways we are still discovering.