Jewish, Spanish (Türkiye (Turkey))

Sephardic Jews take their name from Sepharad, the Hebrew name of Iberia. After the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, many exiles were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire by Sultan Bayezid II and settled in Istanbul, Izmir, Edirne, Salonika (Thessaloniki), Sarajevo, Sofia, Rhodes and Jerusalem. There they kept a Castilian-based language, Judeo-Spanish or Ladino (also called Judezmo, Spanyolit, and Haketia in its Moroccan form), written in Hebrew script and enriched with Hebrew, Turkish, Greek and later French words. Salonika had a Jewish majority until 1912. In the 20th century the community was scattered and destroyed: Turkey's language and assimilation policies and pogroms drove emigration, the Holocaust annihilated the Sephardim of Greece and Yugoslavia (about 50,000 of Salonika's Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 1943), and Bulgaria's c. 45,000 surviving Jews moved almost entirely to Israel in 1948-49. Today the Ladino-heritage Sephardim live mainly in Israel, Turkey, the United States (Seattle, New York, Los Angeles), France and Latin America, with a few hundred to a thousand in Greece. JP lists them twice, as 'Jewish, Spanish' (ROP3 115653) and 'Ladino' (ROP3 119603); the two are one people. Names: Sephardim, Spanish Jews, Spanyolim (Hebrew), Djudios Sefaradis (Ladino), Judeo-Spanish or Judezmo speakers.

Ladino culture lives on in romansas (medieval Spanish ballads), kantigas sung by women at weddings, births and mourning, proverbs (refranes) and the Me'am Lo'ez Bible commentary. The Ottoman-Sephardi kitchen gave burekas, bulemas, borekitas, huevos haminados (eggs slow-cooked overnight), sutlach (rice pudding) and pastel. Life-cycle customs include the banyo de novia (bride's ritual bath with music), the fadas naming ceremony for baby girls and the reading of the ketubah with Ottoman melodies. Since the 1990s Israel's National Authority for Ladino and its Culture, the Akademia Nasionala del Ladino linked to the Royal Spanish Academy, university centres and Ladino radio, music and theatre have worked to revive the language. Spain's 2015 Sephardic citizenship law (c. 132,000 applications) and Portugal's parallel law reconnected many descendants with Iberia.

Ottoman Sephardi Judaism is traditional and family-centred rather than sectarian: synagogue on Sabbath and festivals, the Sephardi prayer rite sung in Turkish-Balkan maqam melodies, the Passover Haggadah read partly in Ladino, pilgrimages to rabbis' graves and a rich folk religion of blessings, amulets and remedies against the evil eye. In Israel many descendants have become secular or joined mainstream Sephardi Orthodox institutions; Bulgarian and Yugoslav Jews were strongly secular and Zionist. In Turkey the community is traditional and organised around Istanbul's synagogues under the Chief Rabbinate.

The Hebrew Bible is available, and Ladino Bibles exist from the Ferrara Bible of 1553 to the Ladino Bible printed in Constantinople by 19th-century Protestant missionaries who worked among the Jews of Istanbul and Salonika. Today there is little Christian material in Ladino; Sephardim are reached in Hebrew, Turkish, Spanish or English. The memory of the Inquisition, forced baptism and expulsion by Catholic Spain and Portugal is a deep and specific barrier to Christian witness.