What??? There are Jews in Jamaica? Well, yes! We – I’m one of them – are mostly descended from Sephardic Jews who fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition beginning in the late 15th century, traveling to the New World as conversos, also known as ‘hidden Jews.’ In other words, Jews have been on the island a long time, say just over 500 years, the first allegedly arriving with Columbus on his first voyage to the island in 1494. Columbus, it is said, was a man of ambiguous origins, possibly Italian, possibly Basque, and very possibly a converso.