BEING A SEPHARDIC JEW

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

There are two main groups in the Jewish world today. Some are called Ashkenazic Jews, namely those who come from Eastern Europe, and Sephardic Jews, that is those who are of Spanish origin. (The word SEFARAD means "Spain" in Hebrew). This division is old and goes back to the early medieval times.

A large number of Jews arrived in Spain in 711, after Tarik ibn Ziyyad, a Berber Moslem, and  his army crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and conquered southern Spain. When North African Jews got there, they found a small Visigothic Jewish community, but they quickly overwhelmed them with their numbers and high culture. During the next few hundred years, Jews created a “Golden Age” in Spain, which included great luminaries, such as the biblical commentator, Abraham ibn Ezra, the Aristotelian philosopher, Moses Maimonides and the great Hebrew poet, Judah Halevi. However, their lives began to sour with the Reconquista, when Christian forces began to push down the Arabs. In 1391, many Jews were killed in Seville during a riot. Finally in 1492, claiming that the Jews were a bad influence on the new Christian converts, King Ferdinand and his wife, queen Isabela, issued a decree of expulsion for all Jews. From then on, Spanish Jews started to spread all over Europe and north Africa. A number of them eventually arrived in the Ottoman Empire ,which gladly welcomed them because of the special skills they possessed. (By the way, Spain revoked the decree in 1968).

There are a number of cultural and religious differences between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews. The first used Yiddish, based on German, as their daily language, whereas Sephardic Jews, developed Ladino, based on Spanish. They also differ on the special chant each one uses for the weekly chanting of the Hebrew Bible, the great variety of foods they are proud to have, and the inclusion of different Hebrew poetry in their daily liturgy.

In addition to Sephardic Jews, who are of Spanish/Portuguese origin,  there are many other Jews, like Iranian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Ethiopian Jews, who are often called Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews, and follow the Sephardic customs but they are not technically Sephardic, because they did  not come out of Spain. 

Today, Sephardic Jews can be found in many parts of the world, many in Israel, but also in South America, Europe and Turkey. Most Sephardic Jews tend to be more traditionalist. However, with greater intermingling between these two groups, the differences are beginning to diminish. For example, I, a Sephardic Jew from Turkey, married an Ashkenazic Jewish woman from Argentina, and we happily keep a mixed house.