Sephardi Jews

Statue of the Sephardic philosopher Maimonides, in Córdoba, Spain

Jewish Festival in Tetuan, Alfred Dehodencq, 1865, Paris Museum of Jewish Art and History

Sephardi Jewish couple from Sarajevo in traditional clothing (1900)

A 1902 Issue of La Epoca, a Ladino newspaper from Salonica (Thessaloniki)

19th-century Moroccan Sephardic wedding dress.

First Cemetery of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Shearith Israel (1656–1833) in Manhattan, New York City

Emma Lazarus, American poet. Born into a large New York Sephardi family.

Sephardi family from Misiones Province, Argentina, circa 1900.

The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (in the year 1492) by Emilio Sala Francés

Dedication at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem written in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, and Judeo-Spanish

13th-century depiction of a Jew and Muslim playing chess in Al-Andalus

Observing the Havdalah ritual, 14th-century Spain

A representation of the 1506 Jewish Massacre in Lisbon.

Interior of the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam, c. 1680

Execution of Mariana de Carabajal in Mexico City, daughter of Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal, in 1601 by the Santo Oficio.

A young woman weeps during the deportation of Jews of Ioannina (Greece) on 25 March 1944.

Sephardi Jews (יהדות ספרד, ; Djudíos Sefardíes), also known as Sephardic Jews or Sephardim, and referred to by modern scholars as Hispanic Jews,

- Sephardi Jews

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History of the Jews in Portugal

The location of Portugal (dark green) in Europe (with possessions Azores and Madeira in circles)

Expulsion of the Jews in 1497, in a 1917 watercolour by Alfredo Roque Gameiro

Epistola de victoria contra infideles habita, 1507

The first Cemetery of the first Spanish and Portuguese community Synagogue (Shearith Israel, active 1656-1833), Manhattan, New York City.

A road sign indicating a small Village in the Algarve called 'Monte Judeu', (in English 'Jewish Mount'), influenced by the Jews who lived in the region.

Benjamin N. Cardozo was an American Jurist.

Jorge Sampaio, of Jewish ancestry, was the 18th President of Portugal, from 1996 to 2006.

Portuguese-American actress Daniela Ruah.

The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain).

Sephardic law and customs

Mishneh Torah, a code of Jewish law by Maimonides, a Sephardic Jew

The Shulchan Aruch. One of the codes of Jewish law reflecting Sephardic laws and customs.

Sephardic law and customs are the practice of Judaism by the Sephardim, the descendants of the historic Jewish community of the Iberian Peninsula.

History of the Jews in Egypt

Egyptian Jews constitute both one of the oldest and youngest Jewish communities in the world.

Marriage document of Ananiah and Tamut, written in Aramaic, July 3, 449 B.C.E., Brooklyn Museum

Demonstration in Egypt in 1919 holding the Egyptian flag with Crescent, the Cross and Star of David on it.

Egyptian Alexandria Jewish choir of Rabbin Moshe Cohen at Samuel Menashe synagogue. Alexandria.

Egyptian Jewish girls from Alexandria, probably between the late '50s and early '60s, during Bat Mitzva

Though Egypt had its own community of Egyptian Jews, after the Jewish expulsion from Spain more Sephardi and Karaite Jews began to migrate to Egypt, and then their numbers increased significantly with the growth of trading prospects after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

History of the Jews in Turkey

Now Turkey.

Sardis Synagogue was a section of a large bath-gymnasium complex, that was in use for about 450–500 years.

A Krymchak, a Turkic-speaking Crimean Jew (Crimean Khanate, Ottoman Empire)

Sultan Bayezid II sent Kemal Reis to save the Sephardi Jews of Spain from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 and granted them permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire.

Painting of a Jewish man from the Ottoman Empire, 1779

Jewish leader Abraham Salomon Camondo's silver Torah case, Constantinople, 1860 – Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme

Morris Schinasi, Ottoman Jewish businessman, who immigrated to the United States in 1890

A 1902 Issue of La Epoca, a Ladino newspaper from Salonica (Thessaloniki) during the Ottoman Empire

Administrative building backside of the Grand Synagogue of Edirne

Neve Shalom Synagogue, completed in 1951 in the Galata district of Istanbul, Turkey

Bet Yaakov Synagogue was built in 1878 at the Kuzguncuk district of Istanbul.

There have been Jewish communities in Anatolia since at least the fifth century BCE and many Spanish and Portuguese Jews expelled from Spain by the Alhambra Decree were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire in the late 15th century, including regions now part of Turkey, centuries later, forming the bulk of the Ottoman Jews.

Expulsion of Jews from Spain

The expulsion from Spain following the Alhambra Decree in 1492, which was enacted in order to eliminate their influence on Spain's large converso population and to ensure its members did not revert to Judaism, many Jews in Spain either converted or were expelled.

Interior of the Synagogue of El Transito of Toledo

At the Feet of the Saviour, massacre of Jews in Toledo, oil on canvas by Vicente Cutanda (1887)

Slaughter of Jews in Barcelona in 1391 (Josep Segrelles, c. 1910).

Miniature of a Spanish haggadah of the 14th century

Jewish man celebrating havdalah, detail of 14th century miniature.

The painting Virgen de los Reyes Católicos in which appears kneeling behind the king Ferdinand the Catholic, the inquisitor general Tomás de Torquemada and kneeling behind the queen the inquisitor of Aragon Pedro of Arbués

Isabel I of Castile and Fernando II of Aragon.

Descent to the Gate of San Andrés, in the judería of Segovia

Tomas de Torquemada, first inquisitor general.

Luis de Santángel, a Valencian convert who collaborated with Isaac Abarbanel in the organization of the journey of the expelled Jews.

Expulsion of European Jewish communities between 1100 and 1600. The main routes that the Spanish Jews followed are marked in light brown.

Monument to Tolerance in Seville, located in the place where five Jews were burned alive.

Sephardic family of Ottoman Bosnia (19th century).

In 1924, the regime of Miguel Primo de Rivera granted Spanish citizenship to the entire Sephardic Jewish diaspora.

Jewish diaspora

[[File:Jewish people around the world.svg|thumb|Map of the Jewish diaspora.

Scene from Lachish Relief: Judahites from Lachish in Assyrian captivity, playing a later form of the Egyptian lyre

Routes of Jewish expulsion and deportation

Copy of relief panel from the Arch of Titus in the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish People, depicting the triumphal parade of Roman soldiers celebrating Judaea Capta ("Judaea is enslaved/conquered") and leading newly enslaved Jews, while displaying spoils of the siege of Jerusalem.

European Jewish immigrants arriving in New York

During the Middle Ages, due to increasing migration and resettlement, Jews divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two primary geographical groupings: the Ashkenazi of Northern and Eastern Europe, and the Sephardic Jews of Iberia (Spain and Portugal), North Africa and the Middle East.

History of the Jews in Spain

While the history of the Jews in the current-day Spanish territory stretches back to Biblical times according to legendary Jewish tradition, the settlement of organised Jewish communities in the Iberian Peninsula possibly traces back to the times after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

13th-century illustration from the Libro de los juegos depicting Jews playing chess.

Map of Phoenician (red) and Greek colonies (blue) at about 550 BCE

A Jew and a Muslim playing chess in 13th century al-Andalus. Libro de los juegos, commissioned by Alphonse X of Castile, 13th century. Madrid.

Image of a cantor reading the Passover story, from the 14th-century Barcelona Haggadah

An illustration from the Sarajevo Haggadah, written in fourteenth-century Spain

At the Feet of the Savior, massacre of Jews in Toledo, oil on canvas by Vicente Cutanda (1887)

A lane in the old Jewish Quarter, called "El Call", of Girona, which includes the Girona Synagogue. Girona's Jewish community was lost as a result of the Expulsion.

Marranos: Secret Seder in Spain during the times of inquisition, an 1892 painting by Moshe Maimon

Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca, Toledo

100,000–200,000) were expelled, creating diaspora communities in Europe, north Africa and western Asia (Sephardi Jews).

Mizrahi Jews

Mizrahi Jews (יהודי המִזְרָח), also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) or Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי) and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach (עֲדוֹת-הַמִּזְרָח, ), are a grouping of Jewish communities comprising those who remained in the Land of Israel and those who existed in diaspora throughout and around the Middle East and North Africa

The Westerners street in Jerusalem, Israel; coined after the Maghrebi Jews

Children in a Jewish school in Baghdad, 1959

Jewish Departure and Expulsion Memorial from Arab Lands and Iran on the Sherover Promenade, Jerusalem

Before the declaration of independence of the State of Israel in 1948, the various now-Mizrahi Jewish communities did not identify themselves as a distinctive Jewish subgroup, and instead characterized themselves as Sephardi Jews as they largely followed the Sephardic customs and traditions of Judaism (with some differences in minhagim between particular communities).

Alhambra Decree

Edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of practising Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.

Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600

Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 by Emilio Sala Francés

Thus, Sephardic Jews who could prove that they are the descendants of those Jews expelled from Spain because of the Alhambra Decree could "become Spaniards without leaving home or giving up their present nationality."

History of the Jews in France

The history of the Jews in France deals with Jews and Jewish communities in France since at least the Early Middle Ages.

Funerary stele from Narbonne at the 7th-century beginning of the reign of Egica. The text begins with the Latin phrase requiescunt in pace and includes the Hebrew phrase שלום על שראל. In various sources it is described as a Jewish inscription dated with the local calendar—the regnal year of Egica—rather than the Hebrew calendar, an "inscription relating to the Jews of France", or as a "Christian inscription".

Various costumes of medieval French Jews.

A miniature from Grandes Chroniques de France depicting the expulsion

A gathering of thirteenth-century French Rabbis (from the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).

Miniature from the North French Hebrew Miscellany of Noah's Ark landing on the Mountains of Ararat (fol. 521a, c. 1278-98)

A bronze Hanukkah lamp dating from before the expulsion of 1394 Museum of Jewish Art and History

Loi relative aux Juifs, the 1791 decree giving the Jews full citizenship Museum of Jewish Art and History

Joseph David Sinzheim was the president of the Grand Sanhedrin, an imperial Jewish high court sanctioned by Napoleon.

Sermon in an israelite oratory Museum of Jewish Art and History

Adolphe Crémieux, founder of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme

1893 edition of Edouard Drumont's antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole.

Newspaper front page with Émile Zola's letter, J'Accuse...! (I Accuse), addressing the President of the Republic, and accusing the government with antisemitism in the Dreyfus affair.

Antisemitic Exposition during Nazi occupation of France (1942).

Haïm Korsia, the current Chief Rabbi of France.

The majority of French Jews in the 21st century are Sephardi and Mizrahi North African Jews, many of whom (or their parents) emigrated from former French colonies of North Africa after those countries gained independence in the 1950s and 1960s.