Spanish and Portuguese Jews
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.
Painting of the Amsterdam Esnoga—considered the mother synagogue by the Spanish and Portuguese Jews—by Emanuel de Witte (ab. 1680).
Burning of Crypto-Jews in Lisbon, Portugal, 1497
Spanish Synagogue
Synagogue of Livorno
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.
Statue of the Sephardic rabbi, philosopher and physician Maimonides in Córdoba, Spain
Jewish Festival in Tetuan, Alfred Dehodencq, 1865, Paris Museum of Jewish Art and History
A 1902 Issue of La Epoca, a Ladino newspaper from Salonica (Thessaloniki)
19th-century Moroccan Sephardic wedding dress