page_title: Spanish and Portuguese Jews
section_title: India
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish and Portuguese Jews / Communities, past and present / Asia / India
caption_attribution_description: English: Rabbi Salomon Halevi(Last Rabbi of Madras) and Rebecca Cohen, Paradesi Jews of Madras
context_page_description: Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic 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, 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 these were now legally Christians— the discriminatory practices that the Inquisition nevertheless placed upon them, which were often lethal, put immense pressure on many of the Jewish-origin Christians to also emigrate out of Spain and Portugal in the immediate generations following the expulsion of their unconverted Jewish brethren.
caption: Rabbi Salomon Halevi(Last Rabbi of Madras Synagogue) and his wife Rebecca Cohen, Paradesi Jews of Madras
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