Western Sephardim
| Languages | |
|---|---|
| Judaeo-Portuguese, Judaeo-Spanish, later English, Dutch, Low German | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other Sephardic Jews, other Jews, and Sephardic Bnei Anusim. |
Western Sephardim (also known more ambiguously as Spanish and Portuguese Jews, Spanish Jews, Portuguese Jews and Jews of the Portuguese Nation, acronymed S&P) are a distinctive sub-group of Iberian Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the immediate generations following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.
Although the 1492 and 1497 expulsions of unconverted Jews from Spain and Portugal were separate events from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions (which was established over a decade earlier in 1478), they were ultimately linked, as the Inquisition eventually also led to the fleeing out of Iberia of many descendants of Jewish converts to Catholicism in subsequent generations.
Despite the fact that the original Edicts of Expulsion did not apply to Jewish-origin New Christian conversos, as they were now legally Christians, the discriminatory practices which the Inquisition placed upon conversos, which were often lethal, placed pressure on many of them to also emigrate from Spain and Portugal in the immediate generations following the expulsion of unconverted Jews.
The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion) was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of all unconverted practicing Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, including from all its territories and possessions, by 31 July of that year. The primary purpose of the expulsion was to eliminate the influence of unconverted Jews on Spain's by then large Jewish-origin New Christian converso population, to ensure that the prior did not encourage the latter to relapse and revert to Judaism.
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