Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation In an anti-Semitic incident in September 2009, the synagogue was defaced with Nazi graffiti. Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation (SBH) is a Sephardic congregation with a synagogue in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The name "Bikur Holim" (which can be transliterated various ways into English) means visiting or comforting the sick, an important mitzvah. The first official name of the congregation was Spanish Hebrew Society and Congregation Bikur Holim, shortened to "Sephardic Bikur Holim" ("Sephardic" to avoid confusion with Seattle's similarly named Ashkenazic congregation). For a time in the 1930s, after amalgamation with another congregation,
Sephardic Bnei Anusim not in fact "Jewish" per se, but are simply German or Slavic surnames (including so-called "Jewish" names like Goldberg) which were adopted by Ashkenazi Jews, some of which became so overwhelmingly carried by Jews that they came to be seen as "Jewish", although there are gentile carriers of those same surnames, because it is with those gentile families that the surnames originated to begin with. Only some surnames found among Ashkenazi Jews today are surnames which are exclusively "Jewish" surnames being capable of, on their own, indicating Jewish origins of the carrier. Sephardic Bnei Anusim Sephardic Bnei Anusim (, ,