page_title: Sephardi Jews
section_title: North African Sephardim
hierarchical_section_title: Sephardi Jews / Divisions / North African Sephardim
caption_attribution_description: English: Description: This elaborate eight-piece costume is an example of the traditional festive dress of Moroccan Jewish women, worn by brides and at other celebrations. It is probably based on medieval Spanish Jewish costume, with its origins usually traced to the 15th century Spanish vertugada (hoop skirt, known as a &quot;farthingale&quot; in England). Date: 19/20th century Persistent URL: digital.cjh.org/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&amp;object_id=367849 Repository: Yeshiva University Museum, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011 Call Number: 1977.160 Rights Information: No known copyright restrictions; may be subject to third party rights. For more copyright information, click here. See more information about this image and others at CJH Digital Collections. Digital images created by the Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History
context_page_description: Sephardi Jews, also known as Sephardic Jews, Hispanic Jews or Sephardim are a Jewish ethnic division originating from traditionally established communities in the Iberian Peninsula; most were expelled from the region in the late 15th century. They had developed a distinctive diasporic identity that they carried with them to North Africa, South-eastern and Southern Europe, Anatolia, and the Levant, as well as the Americas, and all other places of their exiled settlement. They sometimes settled near existing Jewish communities, or were the first in new frontiers.
  Their millennial residence as an open and organised Jewish community in Iberia began to decline with the Reconquista. Its decline began with the Alhambra Decree by Spain's Catholic Monarchs in 1492. In 1496 Portuguese king Manuel I issued an edict of expulsion of Jews and Muslims. These actions resulted in a combination of internal and external migrations, mass conversions, and executions.
  In 2015 both Spain and Portugal passed laws which allowed Sephardim who could prove their ancestral origins in those countries to apply for citizenship.
context_section_description: North African Sephardim consist of the descendants of the expellees from Spain who also left as Jews in 1492. This branch settled in North Africa (except Egypt, see Eastern Sephardim above). Settling mostly in Morocco and Algeria, they spoke a variant of Judaeo-Spanish known as Haketia. They also spoke Judeo-Arabic in a majority of cases. They settled in the areas with already established Arabic-speaking Jewish communities in North Africa and eventually merged with them to form new communities based solely on Sephardic customs.
  Several of the Moroccan Jews emigrated back to the Iberian Peninsula to form the core of the Gibraltar Jews.
  In the 19th century, modern Spanish, French and Italian gradually replaced Haketia and Judeo-Arabic as the mother tongue among most Moroccan Sephardim and other North African Sephardim.
  In recent times, with the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, principally after the creation of Israel in 1948, most North African Sephardim have relocated to Israel (total pop. est. 1,400,000 in 2015), and most others to France (361,000) and the US (300,000), as well as other countries. As of 2015 there was a significant community still in Morocco (10,000).
  North African Sephardim still also often carry common Spanish surnames, as well as other specifically Sephardic surnames from 15th century Spain with Arabic or Hebrew language origins (such as Azoulay, Abulafia, Abravanel) which have since disappeared from Spain when those that stayed behind as conversos adopted surnames that were solely Spanish in origin. Other North African Sephardim have since also translated their Hispanic surnames into local languages or have modified them to sound local.
caption: 19th century Moroccan Sephardic wedding dress.
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