When Flora Cassen first came across the name Joseph Ha-Kohen, she was researching her first book on how Jews in Renaissance Italy were forced to wear yellow badges and hats — visible symbols of exclusion imposed by Christian authorities.

“Ha-Kohen, who lived in Genoa in the 16th century, wrote movingly about the shame and distress Jews felt under those laws,” said Cassen, Associate Professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies and of History at Washington University in St. Louis.

Then she discovered something unexpected: Ha-Kohen, who never set foot in the Americas, had written an entire book about the New World.

“He was the child of exiles from Spain in 1492, and by the time he wrote this book, he had been expelled multiple times from Genoa,” said Cassen. “I imagined him, in that remote mountain town, dreaming of a place where he could live in peace — and trying to learn all he could about it.”

That image stayed with her. It made Cassen wonder: What did the Americas look like to Jews who had already been pushed out of Spain and Portugal? People still carrying the weight of exile, trying to imagine a place where they could belong.

That question shaped a recent article she co-authored for The Conversation with colleague Ronnie Perelis of Yeshiva University. In it, they introduce readers to Ha-Kohen and Luis de Carvajal — two 16th-century Jewish voices navigating empire in different ways.

Carvajal was what’s described as a crypto-Jew, living in colonial Mexico.

“Crypto-Jews were people who had been forced to convert to Christianity but continued to observe Jewish traditions in private,” Cassen explained. “It was dangerous — they risked everything just to light candles or whisper a prayer.”

Carvajal was arrested during the Mexican Inquisition and burned at the stake with his mother and sister. But his words survived.

While Carvajal wrote from within colonial life, Ha-Kohen adapted Spanish conquest narratives into Hebrew, reshaping them for a Jewish audience.

“Ha-Kohen condemned the violence of Spanish conquest long before such critiques became common,” Cassen said. “Sometimes, he empathized so deeply with Indigenous peoples that he compared them to ancient Israelites.”

What moved her most was their determination to be heard. Ha-Kohen copied his 200-page manuscript by hand nine times — a gesture of quiet defiance.

Cassen sees echoes of their stories in St. Louis.

“There’s a shared experience of coming from somewhere else, of trying to build a life without leaving yourself behind,” she said.

“I hope readers here see something of themselves in these voices,” she added. “They weren’t supposed to survive. But they did. And they still have something to teach us.”

Read the full article by Flora Cassen and Ronnie Perelis in The Conversation