Total population | |
---|---|
2,200,000 up to 16% of world Jewish population |
|
Regions with significant populations | |
Israel | 1.4 million |
France | 300,000–400,000 |
United States | 200,000–300,000 |
Argentina | 50,000 |
Spain | 40,000 |
Canada | 30,000 |
Turkey | 26,000 |
Italy | 24,930 |
Mexico | 15,000 |
United Kingdom | 8,000 |
Panama | 8,000 |
Colombia | 7,000 |
Morocco | 6,000 |
Greece | 6,000 |
Tunisia | 2,000 |
Bosnia and Herzegovina | 2,000 |
Bulgaria | 2,000 |
Cuba | 1,500 |
Serbia | 1,000 |
Netherlands | 600 |
Languages | |
Historical: Ladino, Arabic, Haketia, Judeo-Portuguese, Berber, Catalanic, Shuadit, local languages Modern: Local languages, primarily Hebrew, French, English, Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, Italian, Ladino, Arabic. |
|
Religion | |
Judaism | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions, Samaritans, other Levantines, Assyrians, other Near Eastern Semitic people, Spaniards, Portuguese and Hispanics/Latinos |
Sephardi Jews, also known as Sephardic Jews or simply Sephardim (Hebrew: סְפָרַדִּים, Modern Hebrew: Sfaraddim, Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm; also יְהוּדֵי סְפָרַד Y'hudey Spharad, lit. "The Jews of Spain"), are a Jewish ethnic division whose ethnogenesis and emergence as a distinct community of Jews coalesced in the Iberian Peninsula around the start of the 2nd millennium (i.e., about the year 1000). They established communities throughout Spain and Portugal, where they traditionally resided, evolving what would become their distinctive characteristics and diasporic identity. Their millennial residence as an open and organised Jewish community in Iberia was brought to an end starting with the Alhambra Decree by Spain's Catholic Monarchs in the late 15th century, which resulted in a combination of internal and external migrations, mass conversions and executions.
Historically, the vernacular languages of Sephardim and their descendants have been:
More broadly, the term Sephardim has today also come to refer to traditionally Eastern Jewish communities of West Asia and beyond who, although not having genealogical roots in the Jewish communities of Iberia, have adopted a Sephardic style of liturgy and Sephardic law and customs imparted to them by the Iberian Jewish exiles over the course of the last few centuries. This article deals with Sephardim within the narrower ethnic definition.