Sephardic Jews

Sephardic Jews are a Jewish diaspora community rooted in the Iberian Peninsula, especially communities shaped by the expulsions from Spain and Portugal and their settlement around the Mediterranean and Balkans.

Jewish communities in medieval Iberia: Jewish communities that lived under Christian and Muslim rule across the Iberian Peninsula before the early modern period. These communities formed the historical roots of Sephardic Jewish life.
Sephardic Judaism: The religious traditions and customs associated with Sephardic Jewish communities. It describes the liturgy and practices that developed within Sephardic communities.
Maimonides: A twelfth-century Jewish philosopher, legal scholar, and physician born in Córdoba. His work exemplifies the intellectual life of medieval Iberian Jewry.
Sephardic music: Musical traditions associated with Sephardic communities, including Ladino songs and regional liturgical styles. It carries memories of migration and local cultural exchange.
Conversos: Jews in the Iberian Peninsula who converted to Christianity, voluntarily or under pressure, and their descendants. Their varied histories complicate any simple boundary between exile and conversion.
Alhambra Decree: The 1492 edict ordering Jews to leave the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon or convert to Christianity. It drove a major wave of Jewish migration from Spain.
Ladino: A group of Jewish languages rooted in medieval Spanish, especially the language historically spoken by many Sephardim in the Ottoman world. Ladino preserves a distinctive linguistic legacy of Iberian exile.
Joseph Caro: A sixteenth-century Jewish legal scholar born in Toledo and active in the Ottoman Empire. His legal code became central to Sephardic religious practice.
Sephardic cuisine: Food traditions shaped by Sephardic Jewish communities across the Mediterranean, Balkans, and beyond. Regional dishes show how exile and local adaptation entered everyday life.
Crypto-Judaism: The private practice of Judaism by people who publicly profess another religion, especially under coercion. It emerged among some converso families facing religious persecution.

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