Sephardi Jews - Sephardim and Mizrahim

Sephardim and Mizrahim

For religious purposes, the term Sephardim means all Jews who use a Sephardic style of liturgy, and therefore includes most Jews of Middle Eastern background, whether or not they have any historical connection to the Iberian Peninsula. Most of these communities (with some exceptions such as the Yemenites) do in fact use much the same religious ritual as the Sephardim proper and, like them, base their religious law on the Shulchan Aruch without the glosses of Moses Isserles. When used in this sense, "Sephardim" should be translated not as "Spanish Jews" but as "Jews of the Spanish rite". (In the same way, Ashkenazim means "Jews of the German rite", whether or not their families actually originate in Germany.)

Accordingly, in the vernacular of modern-day Jews in Israel and worldwide, especially many Ashkenazi Jews, "Sephardi" has become an umbrella term for any Jew who is not Ashkenazi. This nomenclature is often perceived as unsatisfactory, and a variety of other terms have been coined.

A term in common use for non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities that historically are not of Spanish descent is Mizrahim, which in Hebrew means "Easterners". In current use, Mizrahi Jews is a convenient way to refer collectively to a wide range of Jewish communities, most of which are as unrelated to each other as they are to either the Sephardi (in the narrower sense) or Ashkenazi communities. They include in particular the communities living in, or coming from, Southern Arabia (Yemen), Mesopotamia (Iraq), Syria, Persia (Iran) and India. The distinction between Sephardim and Mizrahim is not watertight as many communities (e.g. Syrian Jews) are ethnically speaking a mixture between local Jews and later arrivals of Jews from Spain and Portugal.

Moroccan and other North African Jews (sometimes known as "Maghrebi Jews") are closely associated with the Sephardim proper (Jews of Iberian descent), both because the Jewish community of Al-Andalus was itself partly of Maghrebi Jewish origin and because many Sephardim settled in North Africa after their expulsion from Spain.