Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A descendant of the Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages until persecution culminating in expulsion in 1492 forced them to leave.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a Jew of Iberian ancestry, whose native language was Ladino

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a Jew who is of Spanish or Portuguese or North African descent

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Medieval Hebrew səpāraddî, Spaniard, from səpārad, Spain, adoption of Hebrew səpārad, placename of disputed location (mentioned in Obadiah 20).]

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Examples

  • The word Sephardi refers to Jews whose ancestors lived in Spain and Portugal until

    Original Signal - Transmitting Digg 2009

  • SHAS is concerned more with religion than ethnicity or social justice - as shown by its use of the religious term 'Sephardi' and not the sociopolitical appellation 'Mizrahi.'

    David Shasha: Israel's Sephardic-Ashkenazi Rift: The Shas Paradox 2010

  • Among major themes that emerged in late twentieth-century American Jewish fiction focusing on women, some of the most important included: the role of the Holocaust in the identity of survivors, their children, and the broader Jewish community; Israel as a focal point of American Jewish identity and a setting for the exploration of Jewish identity; a variety of religious and cultural subgroups within Jewish life, such as Sephardi Jewish communities, ultra-Orthodox communities, and feminist groups; sexual subgroups, such as Jewish lesbians and homosexuals; gendered relationships and the tension between intellectual and sensual, personal and professional, or Jewish and humanistic agendas in the lives of contemporary American Jewish women.

    Fiction in the United States. 2009

  • Again, there was a lot of cross fertilisation of ideas based on “my father says ...” stories and it was one of the Sephardi boys who told me that his father was very much a non zionist who had opposed partition and that he was always saying that some of the zionists were no better than thugs and that partition would end in tears.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » What’s Going on With Turkey 2010

  • Damascus had a Sephardi congregation of 500 families.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » What’s Going on With Turkey 2010

  • Last time I went to Tetouan, I was asked by a Sephardi friend to visit the Jewish Cemetery and check that a family tomb was in good order.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Let Turkey Have Gaza 2010

  • Many a “Portuguese Sailor” was a Sephardi Jew hiding from the Inquisitors.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » What’s Wrong with This Assertion? 2010

  • Unsolicited, you recounted your personal experiences as one of the non-Christians at an English public school, telling us what the father of a Sephardi Jewish student told him and he in turn told you about what in his view should have happened in the Mandate Territories.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » What’s Going on With Turkey 2010

  • I thought it was well-known that the community of Jews in the Netherlands started as Sephardi rather than Ashkenazy.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » What’s Wrong with This Assertion? 2010

  • On displacement — since my forebears along with many Sephardi Jews were displaced from Muslim Andalusia at the time of the Spanish Reconquista and we ended up in the UK, I feel some sympathy for all displaced persons and refugees.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Greenwald and Gaza 2010

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