The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 was yet another dark and cruel episode in the remarkable saga of the Jewish People. That malign decree by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella set in motion an unstoppable, forward-moving train of events that had permanent, far-reaching effects on the future of the Jews. Through their financially avaricious and religiously intolerant ways, however, the monarchs also influenced the course of western history in ways they could have never imagined.

Jews who fled Spain, and even those who stayed behind attempting to mask their beliefs, became the recruitment office for generations of individuals who set sail, mostly westward, in search of a New World, a sanctuary from the long, murderous reach of the Inquisition, new opportunities and, sometimes, revenge upon Spain.

A great deal has been written about the Inquisition. Less has been written about the specific sea explorations westward, over a period of nearly three centuries, by Jews and Conversos fleeing the Inquisition. In recent years, however, scholars and writers have increasingly turned their attention to this under-noticed cadre of enterprising Jews and Crypto-Jews that academics refer to as “Atlantic Jewry.”

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“Atlantic Jewry” is unlike the other dispersions of our people through the ages. For this Diaspora included sages, teachers, explorers, sailors, pioneers, astronomers, engineers, entrepreneurs, farmers, businessmen, plantation owners, merchant ship proprietors, shopkeepers, venture capitalists and pirates. Yes, it’s true, pirates.

The multi-talented writer, composer, poet and multimedia artist Gary Barwin has written about one small band of these Atlantic Jewish pirates in Yiddish for Pirates (Random House Canada, 2016). Barwin’s interest in the subject was piqued by the recent work of Edward Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean.

Apart from saying that the book is a work of fiction, Yiddish for Pirates is otherwise almost uncharacterizable. To a large degree, it is a comedy-drama written in prose form.

The story has a unique narrator who is integral to the action of the plot but frequently steps out of the plot – forward from the stage to its proscenium, so to speak – to offer commentary on the story unfolding behind him.

Barwin’s narrator is a parrot. Not only is he a parrot, he is an endearing, brave, wisecracking, loyal bird, more than 500 years old, who speaks fluent Yiddish! The magical age of the parrot, we learn later, is tied to one of the sub-plots of the story. His mastery of and use of the mamaloshen is tied to the very core and purpose of the book.

The parrot’s name is Aaron. If the book were cast as a play or a movie, one can easily hear the voice of the late George Burns, George Jessel or Myron Cohen reading the parrot’s lines. The bird, though, is not merely a commentator on the story, a bystander flapping his wings with his mouth far removed from the slap, dash and chase happening below. He is very much part of the evocative, dazzling action that fills the pages of the story.

In a real sense, he is the interpreter or spokesperson for the human protagonist of the story, Moishe, an eastern-European Jew who finds himself, after his bar mitzvah, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and later as a leader of a pirate crew scouring the Caribbean for the hated Spanish.

Barwin’s writing is riveting. He has created a “multidisciplinary” work of prose art. At times riotously funny, at times tenderly tearful, the work he created mines, in a thoughtful manner, the deeply lachrymose years of Jewish history wrought by the Inquisition. The oppression of the open and hidden Jews by the Inquisition is the large-frescoed backdrop to Yiddish for Pirates.

Barwin has achieved a significant literary feat. The humour he liberally splashes throughout the story, usually but not always from the mouth of the parrot, incorporates raw joke-telling, irreverent satire, salty sarcasm, sophisticated punning and intricate double-entendre. But the reader quickly understands that the frequent comedic references comprise one of the author’s many skillful techniques that help one contend with the difficult passages about suffering, cruelty and survival.

At its core, Yiddish for Pirates is a historical novel that sails the stormy, eventful sea of Jewish history at the end of the 15th century. We are introduced to significant historic figures whose hands wrote upon the pages of that history.  For example, we encounter the above-mentioned King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Christopher Columbus, Torquemada, Don Isaac Abravanel and Dona Gracia Nasi, to name a few.

In addition to history, Barwin also demonstrates a comprehensive knowledge of Jewish liturgy, tradition, customs and legend. The book is infused with allusions – some straightforward, some cryptic – to the Jewish prayer book, traditions, holidays, Ashkenazi and Sephardi folkways and superstitions.

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But above all else, Yiddish for Pirates is a showcase for Barwin’s powerful, skilled, intelligent writing. His reflections on the cruel malevolence of the Inquisition, the abject brutality of the Conquistadores, and the persecution and slaughter of “Los Indios” are worthy mini-treatises on power and politics, on human nature and on ideology and injustice.

But why is there so much Yiddish?  Even though Barwin often translates the Yiddish words he uses, Yiddish sometimes stands alone, untranslated for those readers who have only partial familiarity with the language or for those without any knowledge of it at all.

In an essay that appeared recently in the Hamilton Jewish News, Barwin gives us his explanation. He uses Yiddish… “because of its vitality, its humour, its ability to sum up the richness of experience and Jewish being-in-the-world. Wherever Jews went, with or without possessions, they also brought their language. And for me, Yiddish expresses a quintessentially Jewish irony and a fatalistic yet celebratory humour. They tried to kill us, but instead we lived and celebrate with good food and family. Life is hard, but still we’re around and can tell jokes about it. We’re often a pessimistically optimistic people. Is the glass half full or half empty? Full-shmull. As long as we have a glass.

“Yiddish,” Barwin maintains, “is a library of our experiences and it has travelled with us through time and space.”

In a sense then, the ubiquity of Yiddish in Yiddish for Pirates speaks to the defiance of the Jewish People. Telling this particular story with frequent funny, cheeky and saucy Yiddish-language content attests to the resolve of a people not to lose its ability to find the pleasant and the pleasurable in life, even when the story of that life is more than slightly sorrowful.