Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands of Sephardic Jewry in Amsterdam, the Mahamad also closely controlled the process of re-judaization - that is helping those whose families had been secretly living as Jews while being outwardly Catholic return to a full Jewish life. In this process, several individuals rejected Rabbinic Judaism or advanced ideas outside of the norms of Judaism at that time and were disciplined by the Mahamad through the process of herem, which could be anything from denial of Torah honors to an outright ban on the individual. The most famous of those to receive a full ban herem was philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose
Sephardic Bnei Anusim Sephardic Bnei Anusim Sephardic Bnei Anusim (, , lit. "Children [of the] coerced [converted] Spanish [Jews]) is a modern term used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jewish which were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th century in Spain. The vast majority of Conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, their descendants in both these countries numbering in the millions. The small minority of Conversos who did emigrate normally chose destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but also more