Yes, there were indeed Jewish pirates. Ed Kritzler has written a history of the seafaring scoundrels:
"The Jewish pirates were Sephardic. Once they were kicked out
of Spain (in 1492), the more adventurous Jews went to the New World,"
said Kritzler.
The phenomenon of Jewish piracy begins quite a bit earlier. In
the time of the Second Temple (63 BCE), Jewish historian Flavius
Josephus records that Hyrcanus accused Aristobulus, his brother and
leader of the Hashmonaim, of "acts of piracy at sea."
A more famous Jewish pirate – and one researched by Kritzler - was
Jean Lafitte, aka, the Corsair or the Buccaneer. His family fled from
Spain for France in 1765 after his maternal grandfather was put to
death for Judaism.
Lafitte was "unique" according to Edward Glick of the Jerusalem Post:
He was a Sephardi Jew, as was his first wife, who was born in the Danish Virgin Islands.
In
his prime, Lafitte ran not just one pirate sloop but a whole fleet of
them simultaneously. He even bought a blacksmith shop in New Orleans,
which he used as a front for fencing pirate loot. And he was one of the
few buccaneers who didn't die in battle, in prison or on the gallows.
During a plane trip, Glick happened to meet one of Lafitte's direct descendants, Melvyn Lafitte, who filled him in on more of the story:
"Our family, originally named Lefitto, lived in
the Iberian Peninsula for centuries. When Ferdinand and Isabella
reconquered Spain and expelled the Muslims and the Jews in 1492, most
of the Jews fled to North Africa. Others went to the Balkans or to
Greece and Turkey. But some Sephardi Jews, my ancestors among them,
crossed the Pyrenees and settled in France, where Jean was born in
about 1780. He moved to French Santo Domingo during the Napoleonic
period. However, a slave rebellion forced him to flee to New Orleans.
Eventually, he became a pirate, but he always called himself a
privateer because that label has a more legal ring to it.
"In 1814, the British sought his aid in their pending attack on
New Orleans," he continued. "However, he passed their plans to the
Americans and helped General Andrew Jackson beat them in 1815. A
grateful Jackson, not yet president, saw to it that Lafitte and his
family became American citizens."
Wikipedia: Anonymous portrait said to be of Jean Lafitte in the early 19th century, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas