Holy Chocolate!

Readers of my blogs know that I’ve been into “conversos” recently. If I had the time, I’d write a book called “The Hidden History of the Conversos” or, “The Converso Impact on Western History”. I’ve pointed out that these “conversos” i.e., Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism at the end of the 15th century in Spain and Portugal, led double lives fleeing the Inquisition. This struggle for survival had a huge ripple effect on history. Columbus was probably from a converso family. He was probably seeking, not a sea route to India, but a safe haven for his fellow Jews. Michelangelo inserted symbols of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, into his Sistine Chapel that he learned from his teacher Pico della Mirandola, who was studying Kabbalah with conversos. And now, from Reform Rabbi Deborah Prinz, comes a book on chocolate that, among other things, points out the impact of conversos on the introduction of chocolate into Europe. Yes, conversos are to a large degree responsible for the yummy chocolate you ate today. And you hadn’t even heard of them until now.

How did it work? Chocolate comes from cacao trees. Cacao trees come from the New World. The first Europeans to get to the New World were Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. All centers for conversos. Columbus’ first journey was financed by Luis de Santangel, a converso. The first man off the boat when they hit landfall was Luis de Torres, Columbus’ Hebrew speaking translator. Many of the people who risked the dangerous journey to the New World were conversos fleeing the Inquisition. When they got there, they learned about chocolate! And when they came back to Europe they brought the chocolate with them.

Since conversos had been dispersed by expulsions to the far flung corners of the world, and since they shared family ties, they were able to provide credit to each other and reliable distribution. The dispersion of Jews after their expulsion from Spain roughly corresponds to the earliest distribution of chocolate from the New World! In France, for example, chocolate was first introduced in the port city of Bayonne. To this day, the city gives credit to conversos. By 1630, there were 60 Jewish families living in Bayonne, many involved in the chocolate trade. In the UK, the first coffee house that served a hot chocolate was the Angle in Oxford. It was established by “Jacob the Jew” in 1650. In the French Caribbean island of Martinique, Benjamin d’Acosta de Andrade, a Jew formerly of Bayonne, from a converso family, cultivated the first cacao trees. As a result, chocolate eventually became the most important export for Martinique.

To learn more, read Rabbi Prinz’s delightful book; “On the Chocolate Trail: A Delicious Adventure Connecting Jews, Religions, History, Travel, Rituals and Recipes to the Magic of Cacao”. I’m looking forward to trying out some of her recipes.