Question: Where did the Sephardi Jews used to have a large presence?
About the article "Greece", section "Religion".

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This is a list of notable Mizrahi Jews and Sephardi Jews in Israel, including both original immigrants who obtained Israeli citizenship and their Israeli descendants.
Traditionally the terms "Mizrahi Jews" and "Sephardi Jews" were used as all encompassing terms referring to the Jews descended from the Jewish communities of Iberia, North Africa and the Middle East; but due to the melting pot effect of the Israeli society the terms have gradually become more vague.
Many Israeli descendants of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jewish immigrants have gradually adopted the Israeli culture and intermarried with descendants of other Jewish communities. 
According to a 2008 study by Adams the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula have an average of 20% of Sephardi Jewish ancestry with significant geographical variations ranging from 0% on Minorca to 36.3% in southern Portugal (the term Sephardi is used here in its strict sense to mean the Jews settled in the Iberian peninsula before the expulsions in and after 1492).
Part of this admixture might also, according to the authors, be of Neolithic origin. 
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahim (), also referred to as Adot HaMizrach (עֲדוֹת-הַמִּזְרָח; Communities of the East; Mizrahi Hebrew: ""), are Jews descended from local Jewish communities of the Middle East (as opposed to those from Europe, Africa, and other places).
The term "Mizrahi" is most commonly used in Israel to refer to Jews who trace their roots back to Muslim-majority countries.
This includes descendants of Babylonian Jews from modern Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Kurdish areas, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yemenite and Georgian Jews are usually included within the Mizrahi Jews group.
Some also expand the definition of Mizrahim to Maghrebi and Sephardic.
Furthermore, some even reclassify the whole Israeli Jewish society as "Mizrahi" as compared with the Western Jews of Europe and the Americas.
The use of the term Mizrahi can be somewhat controversial.
Before the establishment of the state of Israel, Mizrahi Jews did not identify themselves as a separate ethnic subgroup.
Instead, Mizrahi Jews generally characterized themselves as Sephardi, because they follow the traditions of Sephardic Judaism (although with some differences among the minhagim of the particular communities).
This has resulted in a conflation of terms, particularly in Israel, and in religious usage, where "Sephardi" is used in a broad sense to include Mizrahi Jews and Maghrebi Jews as well as Sephardim proper.
Indeed, from the point of view of the official Israeli rabbinate, any rabbis of Mizrahi origin in Israel are under the jurisdiction of the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Today Sephardic rite make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population, and Mizrahi Jews proper are a major part of them.
Before the mass immigration of 1,000,000 from the former Soviet Union, mostly of Ashkenazi rite, followers of the Sephardic rite made up over 70% of Israel's Jewish population. 
The "Halakhic" practices of (Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jews may differ from those of Sephardi Jews, particularly in matters of custom.
Differences are noted in the "Shulkhan Arukh" itself, in the gloss of Moses Isserles.
Well known differences in practice include:  Observance of "Pesach" (Passover): Ashkenazi Jews traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, and rice (quinoa, however, has become accepted as foodgrain in the North American communities), whereas Sephardi Jews typically do not prohibit these foods.
Ashkenazi Jews freely mix and eat fish and milk products; some Sephardic Jews refrain from doing so.
Ashkenazim are more permissive toward the usage of wigs as a hair covering for married and widowed women.
In the case of "kashrut" for meat, conversely, Sephardi Jews have stricter requirements – this level is commonly referred to as "Beth Yosef".
Meat products which are acceptable to Ashkenazi Jews as kosher may therefore be rejected by Sephardi Jews.
Notwithstanding stricter requirements for the actual slaughter, Sephardi Jews permit the rear portions of an animal after proper Halakhic removal of the sciatic nerve, while many Ashkenazi Jews do not.
This is not because of different interpretations of the law; rather, slaughterhouses could not find adequate skills for correct removal of the sciatic nerve and found it more economical to separate the hindquarters and sell them as non-kosher meat.
Ashkenazi Jews frequently name newborn children after deceased family members, but not after living relatives.
Sephardi Jews, in contrast, often name their children after the children's grandparents, even if those grandparents are still living.
A notable exception to this generally reliable rule is among Dutch Jews, where Ashkenazim for centuries used the naming conventions otherwise attributed exclusively to Sephardim such as Chuts.
Ashkenazi tefillin bear some differences from Sephardic tefillin.
In the traditional Ashkenazic rite, the tefillin are wound towards the body, not away from it.
Ashkenazim traditionally don tefillin while standing, whereas other Jews generally do so while sitting down.
Ashkenazic traditional pronunciations of Hebrew differ from those of other groups.
The most prominent consonantal difference from Sephardic and Mizrahic Hebrew dialects is the pronunciation of the Hebrew letter tav in certain Hebrew words (historically, in postvocalic undoubled context) as an /s/ and not a /t/ or /θ/ sound.
The prayer shawl, or tallit (or tallis in Ashkenazi Hebrew), is worn by the majority of Ashkenazi men after marriage, but western European Ashkenazi men wear it from Bar Mitzvah.
In Sephardi or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.  
Since 1442, when the Kingdom of Naples came under Spanish rule, considerable numbers of Sephardi Jews came to live in Southern Italy.
Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, from Portugal in 1495 and from the Kingdom of Naples in 1533, many moved to central and northern Italy.
One famous refugee was Don Isaac Abravanel.
Over the next few centuries they were joined by a steady stream of conversos leaving Spain and Portugal.
In Italy they ran the risk of prosecution for Judaizing, given that in law they were baptized Christians; for this reason they generally avoided the Papal States.
The Popes did allow some Spanish-Jewish settlement at Ancona, as this was the main port for the Turkey trade, in which their links with the Ottoman Sephardim were useful.
Other states found it advantageous to allow the conversos to settle and mix with the existing Jewish communities, and to turn a blind eye to their religious status; while in the next generation, the children of conversos could be brought up as fully Jewish with no legal problem, as they had never been baptized.
The main places of settlement were as follows.
Venice.
The Venetian Republic often had strained relations with the Papacy; on the other hand they were alive to the commercial advantages offered by the presence of educated Spanish-speaking Jews, especially for the Turkey trade.
Previously the Jews of Venice were tolerated under charters for a fixed term of years, periodically renewed.
In the early 16th century these arrangements were made permanent, and a separate charter was granted to the "Ponentine" (western) community.
The price paid for this recognition was the confinement of the Jews to the newly established Venetian Ghetto.
Nevertheless for a long time the Venetian Republic was regarded as the "goldene medinah" for Jews, equivalent to the Netherlands in the 17th century or the United States in the 20th century.
Sephardic immigration was also encouraged by the Este princes, in their possessions of Reggio, Modena and Ferrara.
In 1598 Ferrara was repossessed by the Papal States, leading to some Jewish emigration from there.
In 1593, Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, granted Portuguese Jews charters to live and trade in Pisa and Livorno (see Jewish community of Livorno).
On the whole the Spanish and Portuguese Jews remained separate from the native Italian Jews, though there was considerable mutual religious and intellectual influence between the groups.
The "Scola Spagnola" of Venice was originally regarded as the "mother synagogue" for the Spanish and Portuguese community world wide, as it was among the earliest to be established, and the first prayer book was published there: later communities, such as Amsterdam, followed its lead on ritual questions.
With the decline in the importance of Venice in the 18th century, the leading role passed to Livorno (for Italy and the Mediterranean) and Amsterdam (for western countries).
The Livorno synagogue was destroyed in the Second World War: a modern building was erected in 1958-62.
In addition to Spanish and Portuguese Jews strictly so called, Italy has been host to many Sephardi Jews from the eastern Mediterranean.
Dalmatia and many of the Greek islands, where there were large Jewish communities, were for several centuries part of the Venetian Republic, and there was a "Levantine" community in Venice.
This remained separate from the "Ponentine" (i.e.
Spanish and Portuguese) community and close to their eastern roots, as evidenced by their use in the early 18th century of a hymn book classified by maqam in the Ottoman manner (see Pizmonim).
(Today both synagogues are still in use, but the communities have amalgamated.)
Later on the community of Livorno acted as a link between the Spanish and Portuguese and the eastern Sephardic Jews and as a clearing house of musical and other traditions between the groups.
Many Italian Jews today have "Levantine" roots, for example in Corfu, and before the Second World War Italy regarded the existence of the eastern Sephardic communities as a chance to expand Italian influence in the Mediterranean.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, many Italian Jews (mostly but not exclusively from the Spanish and Portuguese group) maintained a trading and residential presence in both Italy and countries in the Ottoman Empire: even those who settled permanently in the Ottoman Empire retained their Tuscan or other Italian nationality, so as to have the benefit of the Ottoman Capitulations.
Thus in Tunisia there was a community of "Juifs Portugais", or "L'Grana" (Livornese), separate from, and regarding itself as superior to, the native Tunisian Jews ("Tuansa").
Smaller communities of the same kind existed in other countries, such as Syria, where they were known as "Señores Francos", though they generally were not numerous enough to establish their own synagogues, instead meeting for prayer in each other's houses.
European countries often appointed Jews from these communities as their consular representatives in Ottoman cities.
Between the two World Wars Libya was an Italian colony and, as in other North African countries, the colonial power found the local Jews useful as an educated elite.
Following Libyan independence, and especially after the Six-Day War in 1967, many Libyan Jews left either for Israel or for Italy, and today most of the "Sephardi" synagogues in Rome are in fact Libyan.
(The Tempio Spagnolo, no doubt originally Spanish and Portuguese as implied by the name, now considers itself "Italian" by contrast with these newer communities.)