Sephardic Jews were some of the first Jewish immigrants to the Pacific Northwestern United States with the arrival of Turkish and Greek Sephardim in the 20th century. [1]
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Sephardic Jews were some of the first Jewish immigrants to the Pacific Northwestern United States with the arrival of Turkish and Greek Sephardim in the 20th century. [1]
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The first Sephardic Jews in Seattle, Solomon Calvo (1879–1964) and Jacob (Jack) Policar (d. 1961), came from Marmara, Turkey and Rhodes, Greece. They brought with them their culinary heritage, Ladino language, and distinct Sephardic religious and legal tradition. [2]
Sephardim helped greatly develop the Pike Place Market in Seattle, WA, as they dominated the fishing industry of the city. [3]
Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the Iberian Peninsula. The term, which is derived from the Hebrew Sepharad, can also refer to the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, who were also heavily influenced by Sephardic law and customs. Many Iberian Jewish exiled families also later sought refuge in those Jewish communities, resulting in ethnic and cultural integration with those communities over the span of many centuries. The majority of Sephardim live in Israel.
Sephardic law and customs are the law and customs of Judaism which are practiced by Sephardim or Sephardic Jews ; the descendants of the historic Jewish community of the Iberian Peninsula, what is now Spain and Portugal. Many definitions of "Sephardic" also include Mizrahi Jews, most of whom follow the same traditions of worship as those which are followed by Sephardic Jews. The Sephardi Rite is not a denomination nor is it a movement like Orthodox Judaism, Reform Judaism, and other Ashkenazi Rite worship traditions. Thus, Sephardim comprise a community with distinct cultural, juridical and philosophical traditions.
Sephardic music is an umbrella term used to refer to the music of the Sephardic Jewish community. Sephardic Jews have a diverse repertoire the origins of which center primarily around the Mediterranean basin. In the secular tradition, material is usually sung in dialects of Judeo-Spanish, though other languages including Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, and other local languages of the Sephardic diaspora are widely used. Sephardim maintain geographically unique liturgical and para-liturgical traditions.
The history of the Jews in Greece can be traced back to at least the fourth century BCE. The oldest and the most characteristic Jewish group that has inhabited Greece are the Romaniotes, also known as "Greek Jews." The term "Greek Jew" is predominantly used for any Jew that lives in or originates from the modern region of Greece.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
The history of the Jews in Turkey (Turkish: Türk Yahudileri or Türk Musevileri; Hebrew: יהודים טורקים, romanized: Yehudim Turkim; covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey.
Marc D. Angel is an Open Orthodox rabbi and author, Rabbi emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York City, a position he has held since 1969.
Palestinian Jews or Jewish Palestinians were the Jews who inhabited Palestine prior to the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948.
Syrian Jews are Jews who live in the region of the modern state of Syria, and their descendants born outside Syria. Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: from the Jews who inhabited the region of today's Syria from ancient times, and sometimes classified as Mizrahi Jews ; and from the Sephardi Jews who fled to Syria after the Alhambra Decree forced the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
David de Sola Pool was a British-born American rabbi, scholar, author, and civic leader. He is considered to be the leading 20th-century Sephardic rabbi in the United States and a world leader of Judaism.
Solomon Gaon (1912–1994) was a Sephardic Rabbi and Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of the British Commonwealth.
From about 1590 on, there had been a Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg, whose qehilla existed until its compulsory merger with the Ashkenazi congregation in July 1939. The first Sephardic settlers were Portuguese Marranos, who had fled their country under Philip II and Philip III, at first concealing their religion in their new place of residence. Many of them had emigrated from Spain in the belief that they had found refuge in Portugal.
Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation (SBH) is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, in the United States, that practices in the Sephardic tradition.
La Vara was a Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) language weekly newspaper, published 1922–1948 in New York City, as a national Sephardi Jewish newspaper in the United States. It was edited by Albert Levy, a Salonican Jew, and had a circulation of 16,500 in 1928. Marc D. Angel counts it as one of the two most important such publications historically, the other being La America.
Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, also called The Sephardic Temple, is an unaffiliated Jewish congregation and synagogue that adopts Sephardi nusach, located at 10500 Wilshire Boulevard, in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, in the United States. Established on February 1, 1920 as the "Sephardic Community of Los Angeles", the congregation exists today as the merger of three major Sephardic organizations with approximately 600 member families.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term which is used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th centuries in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants, who number in the millions, live in both of these countries. The small minority of conversos who emigrated normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but some of them emigrated to more tolerant cities in Europe, where many of them immediately reverted to Judaism. In theory, very few of them would have traveled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, because only those Spaniards who could certify that they had no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were supposed to be allowed to travel to the New World. Recent genetic studies suggest that the arrival of the Sephardic ancestors of Latin American populations coincided with the initial colonization of Latin America, which suggests that significant numbers of recent converts were able to travel to the new world and contribute to the gene pool of modern Latin American populations despite an official prohibition on them doing so. In addition, later arriving Spanish immigrants would have themselves contributed additional converso ancestry in some parts of Latin America.
Eastern Sephardim are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews mostly descended from Jewish families which were exiled from Iberia in the 15th century, following the Alhambra Decree of 1492 in Spain and a similar decree in Portugal five years later. This branch of descendants of Iberian Jews settled across the Eastern Mediterranean.
Rabbi Albert E. (Abraham) Gabbai is an American rabbi, serving as the rabbi of the Sephardic synagogue Congregation Mikveh Israel since 1988. Mikveh Israel was founded in 1740, and is the second-oldest active congregation in the United States.
Magen David Sephardic Congregation-Beit Eliahu is a Modern Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in North Bethesda, Maryland, in the United States. The congregation practices in the Sephardi rite.