MOOR ZION TRADING POST BLOG & Botanica

This groundbreaking collection of thirteen essays restores a long-suppressed dimension of Jewish history: the African and Moorish identity of the Portuguese Sephardim and their global legacy in royal finance, exile, mysticism, and diaspora networks. Drawing upon biblical genealogy, historical archives, travel narratives, and oral traditions, these essays challenge the dominant narrative of Jewish whiteness and offer a sweeping reassessment of Sephardic memory through the lens of race, exile, commerce, prophecy, and covenant.

From the black Jewish families of medieval Iberia to their descendants in Amsterdam, the Caribbean, Suriname, Morocco, and the American South, this work traces a noble lineage of dark-skinned Hebrews who rose to prominence as royal treasurers, scientific innovators, crypto-Jewish survivors, and mystical advisors to kings. Women like Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, scientists like Abraham Zacuto, and dynasties such as the Ibn Yahya and Abravanel families emerge as the pillars of a history that is simultaneously sacred, global, and revolutionary.

The final essay presents a bold new synthesis—the New Moorish Paradigm of Moorish Jews (2025)—weaving together Moorish Science, prophetic timelines, biblical exile, and sacred geography to reimagine Zion as both a spiritual condition and a terrestrial reclamation. 

1. The First Flame: Darker People of the Book
   Reveals the biblical and ethnographic roots of black and dark-skinned Jews in medieval Portugal and Iberia, emphasizing their African lineage and how modern historiography attempted to erase their presence.
    
2. Scrolls Across the Atlantic: The Black Jews of the Caribbean
   Documents the Caribbean settlements of Sephardic Jews of African descent — in Curaçao, Suriname, Jamaica, and Barbados — who preserved sacred traditions and merchant networks amidst slavery and empire.
    
3. Treasurers of Kings: Portuguese Jews in Royal Service
   Explores the economic power of Sephardic Jewish families like the Ibn Yahya and Abravanel dynasties who served Iberian monarchs, financed wars, and built the infrastructure of empires.
    
4. Princes Among Slaves
   Focuses on Afro-Sephardic Jews in Brazil, Suriname, and the American South — often navigating dual roles as exiles, merchants, and survivors within systems of slavery.
    
5. The Moors as Advisors Beyond Moorish Spain
   Traces the tradition of African and Moorish advisors — from Florence to Russia to Pan-Africanist movements — showing how “the wise Moor” became a recurring archetype of political counsel and spiritual strategy.
    
6. The Ibn Yahya Tablets
   Presents a rare body of financial records, charters, and inscriptions from the Ibn Yahya family, revealing the longstanding economic authority and rabbinic leadership of this Davidic dynasty.
    
7. Exile, Empire, and the Black Jew of Amsterdam
   Follows the emergence of dark-skinned Sephardim in Amsterdam and their influence in finance, trade, and intellectual life during the Dutch Golden Age.
    
8. The Moroccan Mirror
   Explores how Moroccan cities became sanctuaries for Iberian Jews, merging Maghrebi and Sephardic identities and preserving black Jewish heritage in a North African context.
    
9. Women Financiers of Sepharad
   Centers on Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi and other powerful Jewish women who leveraged financial networks to resist persecution and uphold Sephardic survival across generations.
    
10. Ibn Yahya vs. Abravanel
    Compares two great dynasties and their contrasting strategies of survival, religious authority, and political service, highlighting how Sephardic genius adapted across borders and courts.
     
11. Science & Finance — Abraham Zacuto’s Astronomical Tables
    Unveils the critical role of Jewish science in the Age of Discovery, showing how Zacuto’s astronomical work fueled Portugal’s maritime rise and expanded Jewish influence through navigation and trade.
     
12. The Black Atlantic Networks
    Analyzes Sephardic involvement in transatlantic trade and slavery, balancing harsh realities with the survival of Afro-Sephardic identity through memory, ritual, and family continuity.
     
13. The Final Covenant — The Moorish Paradigm of Moorish Jews
    Culminates in a prophetic vision linking ancient Hebrew covenants, Moorish traditions, and American sacred geography. It offers a new paradigm of Moorish Jews as heirs of exile and builders of a renewed Zion.

Download Essay 13 HERE

                   Think tanks are interest groups that pursue research and analysis to advance a set of values or ideas, often through political action and policy change, as well as through cultural and social influence. Some think tanks are truly non-partisan, regularly working with administrations of both main US political parties (we label them “centrist” in the list below), while others self-identify as non-partisan despite evidence to the contrary (we reserve the right to exercise our own judgment about such cases), and still others are explicitly or tacitly conservative, neo-conservative, libertarian, centrist, liberal, progressive, or socialist.

Some think tanks focus on domestic policy and some on foreign policy. Some pursue free-market capitalism and limited government, while others argue for increased taxes and social welfare spending. Still others debate revolution or monitor the growth of liberation movements in foreign countries. They wield influence by publishing reports and books, developing research tools, running media campaigns, holding events and conferences, directing lobbying action, and enlisting high-ranking and well-connected members. Some are broadly transparent about their sources of funding and support, while others are quite guarded about this information.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, think tanks have influenced your life and worldview. They do this through policy measures they help enact into law, through the media they shape and you consume, and—perhaps most insidiously—through the language they invent and you use. While you might know the names of a few think tanks, many of them are unfamiliar to the general public, and have bland names that do little to enlighten the uninitiated about their goals or focus.

This list covers the 50 most-influential think tanks in the world today. If you wish to be an active, well-informed citizen, it’s important to better understand who these organizations are and how they’re influencing the world around you. You may even want to get involved working with—or against—one of them!