The Romaniote Jews or the Romaniotes are a Greek-speaking ethnic Jewish community native to the Eastern Mediterranean. They are one of the oldest Jewish communities in existence and the oldest Jewish community in Europe. The Romaniotes have been, and remain, historically distinct from the Sephardim, some of whom settled in Ottoman Greece after the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal after 1492.
SephardicJews, 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.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
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 Latin America began with conversos who joined the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to the continents. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 led to the mass conversion of Spain's Jews to Catholicism and the expulsion of those who refused to do so. However, the vast majority of conversos never made it to the New World and remained in Spain slowly assimilating to the dominant Catholic culture. This was due to the requirement by Spain's Blood Statutes to provide written documentation of Old Christian lineage to travel to the New World. However, the first Jews came with the first expedition of Christopher Columbus, including Rodrigo de Triana and Luis De Torres.
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 baqashot are a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung by the Sephardic Syrian, Moroccan, and Turkish Jewish communities for centuries each week on Shabbat mornings from the early hours of the morning until dawn. They are usually recited during the weeks of winter, from the Jewish festival of Sukkot through Purim, when the nights are much longer. The baqashot services can last for three to four hours. The Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem is the center of the Syrian practice today, and communities in Ashdod and Montreal are the center of the Moroccan practice.
The Sephardic Jews that were exiled from Spain and the Mediterranean area in 1492 and 1497, coupled with other migrations dating from the 1700s and during World War II contributed to Dominican ancestry.
Musta'arabi Jews were the Arabic-speaking Jews, largely Mizrahi Jews and Maghrebi Jews, who lived in the Middle East and North Africa prior to the arrival and integration of Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Following their expulsion, Sephardi Jewish exiles moved into the Middle East and North Africa, and settled among the Musta'arabi.
The American Sephardi Federation, a founding member of the Center for Jewish History, is a non-profit Jewish organization that strengthens and organizes the religious and cultural activities of Sephardic Jews, preserves Sephardic heritage, tradition and culture in the United States, and assists in the publication of books and literature dealing with the Sephardic culture and tradition. The federation also works to further awareness of the former existence of large Jewish communities in the Muslim and Arab world.
Adio Kerida: Goodbye my Dear Love is a 2002 documentary by American anthropologist Ruth Behar that follows her trip to Cuba, which her family left when she was four. She searches for memories from her past and investigates the dwindling Sephardic Jewish community that remains, estimated at less than 800 in 2011.
Trees Cry for Rain: A Sephardic Journey is a short documentary film by American documentary filmmaker Bonnie Burt that follows "America's Internet Champion of Ladino" Rachel Amado Bortnick, as she explores her Jewish-Turkish heritage and the vanishing world of Sephardic culture and the Ladino language. The film was officially released in 1989, but drew public attention in 1992 with screenings at a number of Jewish film festivals worldwide, including the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and the Madrid "Festival de Cine Judio" which was dubbed "the biggest Jewish cultural event held in Spain in 500 years". This was followed by a public screening at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, and airing on The Jewish Channel.
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.
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.
The History of the Jews in Colombia begins in the Spanish colonial period with the arrival of the first Jews during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Jews in Los Angeles comprise approximately 17.5 percent of the city's population, and 7% of the county's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of New York City and Israel. As of 2015, over 700,000 Jews live in the County of Los Angeles, and 1.232 million Jews live in California overall. Jews have immigrated to Los Angeles since it was part of the Mexican state of Alta California, but most notably beginning at the end of the 19th century to the present day. The Jewish population rose from about 2,500 in 1900 to at least 700,000 in 2015. The large Jewish population has led to a significant impact on the culture of Los Angeles. The Jewish population of Los Angeles has seen a sharp increase in the past several decades, owing to internal migration of Jews from the East Coast, as well as immigration from Israel, France, the former Soviet Union, the UK, South Africa, and Latin America, and also due to the high birth rate of the Hasidic and Orthodox communities who comprise about 10% of the community's population.
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.
The Expulsion of Jews from Spain was the expulsion of practicing Jews following the Alhambra Decree in 1492, which was enacted to eliminate their influence on Spain's large converso population and to ensure its members did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted to Catholicism as a result of the Massacre of 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. Many of those who remained decided to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism, and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. An unknown number returned to Spain in the following years. The expulsion led to mass migration of Jews from Spain to Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Mediterranean Basin. One result of the migration was new Jewish surnames appearing in Italy and Greece. The surnames Faraggi, Farag and Farachi, for example, originated from the Spanish city of Fraga.
