The Prince of Asturias Foundation
The Sephardim is the name given to those Jews who, after living in Spain for several centuries, were expelled by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 at the bidding of the Inquisition. Over a hundred thousand people were forced to leave the Iberian Peninsula for professing a religion other than the dominant one at that time.
The Sephardim initially settled in Portugal, North Africa and other nearby countries in the hope of returning to their homeland soon. When return was by then impossible, the Sephardim spread all over the world, forming major communities in Italy, the Low Countries, the Ottoman Empire, and elsewhere.
Many of the descendants of those Jews expelled from Spain still preserve today, five centuries later, the customs, traditions and very language of their ancestors. Judeo-Spanish, the language of the Sephardim, is basically Old Castilian Spanish (prior to the phonetic and grammatical evolution it underwent in the “Golden Age”) mixed with terms from Hebrew and other tongues.
Strictly speaking, the Sephardim are only those Jews expelled from the Peninsula in the 15th century, expressly excluding the Ashkenazim (an ethnic branch of Judaism with a different origin) and Jews of other branches, and who have preserved Hispanic cultural characteristics, most especially the Judeo-Spanish language.
After a first stage, immediately after their expulsion from the Peninsula, in which the Spanish Jews sought a new place to settle, the Sephardic communities underwent a period of relative stability during the 18th and 19th centuries until, a new migratory movement took place in the 20th century to younger countries. Nowadays, the major Sephardic Communities are no longer to be found in Morocco or the Eastern Mediterranean, but in the United States, Latin America and Israel.
From the 16th to the 18th century, translations of the bible into Spanish, banned on the Peninsula by the Inquisition, were almost exclusively the work of the expelled Jews. The oldest of these is the “Constantinople Pentateuch”, published in 1547. Another of the most famous translations, the “Ferrara Bible” was published in 1553 in Roman characters.
Sephardic literature has produced such important works as “Me’am Lo’ez”, a detailed commentary on the books of the Hebrew Bible in the form of a compendium, verses, proverbs, folk tales and ballads. The “Cancionero tradicional sephardí” [Collection of traditional Sephardi songs] is also very well-known; and newspapers and magazines written in Judeo-Spanish continue are still published nowadays in Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The “Kol Israel” radio station continues broadcasting Sephardic-language programmes from Jerusalem.
In Spain, there is a major centre for Sephardic Studies at the Instituto Arias Montano, as well as a Sephardi Museum located in the well-known Synagoga del Tránsito in Toledo. In 1992, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, different commemorations were held on the initiative of organisations from both the public (Grupo “Sefarad 92”, forming part of the Fifth Centenary Commission) and private (International Jewish Committee for “Sefarad 92”) spheres.
Up
