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 law and customs In the Sephardic world today, in particular in Israel, there are many popular prayer-books containing this Baghdadi rite, and this is what is currently known as "Minhag Edot ha-Mizraḥ" (the custom of the Oriental congregations). Other authorities, especially older rabbis from North Africa, reject these in favour of a more conservative Oriental-Sephardic text as found in the 19th century Livorno editions; and the "Shami" Yemenite and Syrian rites belong to this group. Others again, following R. Ovadia Yosef, prefer a form shorn of some of the Kabbalistic additions and nearer to what would have been known to R. Joseph Caro,