Sephardic Jews in the context of "New Christians"

The history of the Jews in Turkey (Turkish: Türk Yahudileri or Türk Musevileri; Hebrew: יהודים טורקים, romanized: Yehudim Turkim; (Ladino: Djudios Turkos) covers the 2400 years that Jews have lived in what is now Turkey.

There have been Jewish communities in Anatolia since at least the beginning of the common era. Anatolia's Jewish population before Ottoman times primarily consisted of Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews, with a handful of dispersed Karaite communities. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, many Sephardic Jews from Spain, Portugal and South Italy expelled by the Alhambra Decree found refuge across the Ottoman Empire, including in regions now part of Turkey. This influx played a pivotal role in shaping the predominant identity of Ottoman Jews.

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 few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.

The main present-day communities of Spanish and Portuguese Jews exist in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, and several other Jewish communities in the Americas have Spanish and Portuguese Jewish roots though they no longer follow the distinctive customs of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.

The Old Yishuv (Hebrew: היישוב הישן, haYishuv haYashan) were the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah waves, and the consolidation of the new Yishuv by the end of World War I. Unlike the new Yishuv, characterized by secular and Zionist ideologies promoting labor and self-sufficiency, the Old Yishuv primarily consisted of religious Jews who relied on external donations (halukka) for support.

The Old Yishuv evolved following a significant decline in Jewish communities across the region during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and was composed of three clusters. Firstly, Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish communities settled in the region during the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods, alongside Arabic-speaking Musta'arabi communities, who had already been living there since before the coming of Islam and had been culturally and linguistically Arabized. Secondly, Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries, forming another group. A third wave of Yishuv members arrived in the late 19th century, hailing from Europe, North Africa, Yemen, Persia, and the Caucasus. These migrations gave rise to two distinct communities within the Old Yishuv—the Sephardim (including Musta'arabim) and the Askhenazim.

Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Temanim (Hebrew: יהודי תימן, romanized: Yehudei Teman; Arabic: اليهود اليمنيون, romanized: al-yahūd al-yamaniyyūn), are a Jewish diaspora group who live or once lived in Yemen and their descendants who maintain their customs. After several waves of persecution, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews emigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet between June 1949 and September 1950. Most Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, with smaller communities in the United States and elsewhere. As of 2024, reputedly only one Jew, Levi Marhabi, remains in Yemen. However, Ynet cited local sources stating that the actual number is five.

Yemenite Jews observe a unique religious tradition that distinguishes them from Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and other Jewish groups. They have been described as "the most Jewish of all Jews" and "the ones who have preserved the Hebrew language the best". Yemeni Jews are considered Mizrahi or "Eastern" Jews. However, they differ from other Mizrahis, who have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic law and customs. While the Shami Yemeni Jews did adopt a Sephardic-influenced rite, this was primarily due to it being forced upon them, and did not reflect a demographic or general cultural shift among the vast majority of Yemenite Jews.

Allah (/ˈælə, ˈɑːlə, əˈlɑː/ A(H)L-ə, ə-LAH; Arabic: الله, IPA: [ɑɫˈɫɑːh] ) is the Arabic language term for God, specifically the monotheistic God of Abraham. Outside of Arabic languages, it is principally associated with Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), although the term was used in pre-Islamic Arabia and continues to be used today by Arabic-speaking adherents of any of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism and Christianity. It is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh (الاله, lit. 'the god') and is linguistically related to other semitic God names, such as Aramaic (ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ ʼAlāhā) and Hebrew (אֱלוֹהַּ ʾĔlōah).

The word "Allah" now conveys the superiority or sole existence of one God, but among the pre-Islamic Arabs, Allah was a supreme deity and was worshipped alongside lesser deities in a pantheon. Many Jews, Christians, and early Muslims used "Allah" and "al-ilah" synonymously in Classical Arabic. The word is also frequently, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian Christians, Maltese Christians, and Sephardic Jews, as well as by the Gagauz people.

The history of the Jews in Europe spans a period of over two thousand years. Jews, a Semitic people descending from the Judeans of Judea in the Southern Levant, began migrating to Europe just before the rise of the Roman Empire (27 BCE), although Alexandrian Jews had already migrated to Rome, and some Gentiles had undergone Judaization on a few occasions. A notable early event in the history of the Jews in the Roman Empire was the 63 BCE siege of Jerusalem, where Pompey had interfered in the Hasmonean civil war.

Jews have had a significant presence in European cities and countries since the fall of the Roman Empire, including Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Russia. In Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, the monarchies forced Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave and they established offices of the Inquisition to enforce Catholic orthodoxy of converted Jews. These actions shattered Jewish life in Iberia and saw mass migration of Sephardic Jews to escape religious persecution. Many resettled in the Netherlands and re-judaized, starting in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the religiously tolerant, Protestant Dutch Republic Amsterdam prospered economically and as a center of Jewish cultural life, the "Dutch Jerusalem". Ashkenazi Jews lived in communities under continuous rabbinic authority. In Europe Jewish communities were largely self-governing autonomous under Christian rulers, usually with restrictions on residence and economic activities. In Poland, from 1264 (from 1569 also in Lithuania as part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), under the Statute of Kalisz until the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, Jews were guaranteed legal rights and privileges. The law in Poland after 1264 (in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in consequence) toward Jews was one of the most inclusive in Europe. The French Revolution removed legal restrictions on Jews, making them full citizens. Napoleon implemented Jewish emancipation as his armies conquered much of Europe. Emancipation often brought more opportunities for Jews and many integrated into larger European society and became more secular rather than remaining in cohesive Jewish communities.

Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish (autonym Djudeo-Espanyol, Hebrew script: גֿודֿיאו-איספאנייול), also known as Ladino or Judezmo or Spaniolit, is a Romance language derived from Castilian Old Spanish.

It was originally spoken by Sephardic Jews in parts of the Iberian Peninsula and then, after the Edict of Expulsion, it spread throughout the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, West Asia, and North Africa) as well as France, Italy, the Netherlands, Morocco, and England. It is today spoken mainly by Sephardic minorities in more than 30 countries, with most speakers residing currently in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, and France. In 2017, it was formally recognised by the Royal Spanish Academy.