Neither Grossman nor James Atz, an ichthyologist who researched the name for three years, knows the exact origin. But its anti-Semitic roots are obvious, they say. Atz traces it back at least 300 years to a book by English adventurer William Dampier, who wrote in 1697 that the grouper was so named because it was a kosher fish popular among Jews in Jamaica. Atz believes that's because the shark's head is shaped like a hat that many Jews were forced to wear at the time. At least 40 fish species, from Japan and Australia to the Americas, have been called jewfish over the years.
None swim off the shores of Israel.
Atz wrote, along with kosher fish expert Richard Gould, in a 1996 article published in the magazine Tropical Fish Hobbyist. Miami-Dade Jewish leaders, accustomed to the name, merely shrugged. Art Teitelbaum, the Anti-Defamation League's southern area director, said the group gets only a couple of calls a year from curious or angry tourists who drive across Jewfish Creek Bridge. Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar, an education director at the Central Agency for Jewish Education, understood the scientists' motivation, but the idea made her pause. The new name, goliath grouper, though, did tickle her.