Editing Jewish diaspora (section)

====Sephardic Jews====
[[Sephardi Jews]] are Jews whose ancestors lived in Spain or Portugal. Some 300,000 Jews resided in Spain before the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century, when the [[Catholic Monarchs|Reyes Católicos]] reconquered Spain from the Arabs and ordered the Jews to convert to Catholicism, leave the country or face execution without trial. Those who chose not to convert, between 40,000 and 100,000, were expelled from Spain in 1492 in the wake of the [[Alhambra decree]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/10631714/Spain-invites-descendants-of-Sephardic-Jews-expelled-500-years-ago-to-return.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/10631714/Spain-invites-descendants-of-Sephardic-Jews-expelled-500-years-ago-to-return.html |archive-date=2022-01-12 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Spain invites descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled 500 years ago to return|website=www.telegraph.co.uk|date=11 February 2014 }}{{cbignore}}</ref> Sephardic Jews subsequently migrated to North Africa (Maghreb), Christian Europe (Netherlands, Britain, France and Poland), throughout the [[Ottoman Empire]] and even the newly discovered [[Latin America]]. In the Ottoman Empire, the Sephardim mostly settled in the European portion of the Empire, and mainly in the major cities such as: [[Istanbul]], [[Thessaloniki|Selânik]] and [[Bursa]]. Selânik, which is today known as Thessaloniki and found in modern-day Greece, had a large and flourishing Sephardic community as was the community of Maltese Jews in [[Malta]].

A small number of Sephardic refugees who fled via the Netherlands as [[Marrano]]s settled in Hamburg and Altona Germany in the early 16th century, eventually appropriating Ashkenazic Jewish rituals into their religious practice. One famous figure from the Sephardic Ashkenazic population is [[Glückel of Hameln]]. Some relocated to the United States, establishing the country's first organized community of Jews and erecting the United States' first synagogue. Nevertheless, the majority of Sephardim remained in Spain and Portugal as [[Converso]]s, which would also be the fate for those who had migrated to Spanish and Portuguese ruled Latin America. Sephardic Jews evolved to form most of North Africa's Jewish communities of the modern era, as well as the bulk of the Turkish, Syrian, Galilean and Jerusalemite Jews of the Ottoman period.