Spanish and Portuguese Jews are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardi Jews, mostly descended from families forcibly converted to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal which later left for other countries where they could revert to Judaism. The main Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities are in Western Europe, Italy and the Americas.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews have a distinctive ritual based on that of pre-expulsion Spain, but also influenced by the Spanish-Moroccan rite and the Italian Jewish rite.
Read more about Spanish And Portuguese Jews: Relation To Other Jewish Communities, Terminology, Synagogues, Language, Liturgy, Communities, Past and Present, Prominent Rabbis, Other Prominent Personalities, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words spanish and/or jews:
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)