Sephardic Museum Sephardic Museum The Museo Sefardí, in Toledo, Spain, occupies the former convent of the Knights of Calatrava, annexed to the Synagogue of El Tránsito. It shows historical, religious aspects and of the customs of the Jewish past in Spain, as well as of the Sephardim, the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian peninsula until 1492. In 1964, it was decided that the Synagogue of El Tránsito or synagogue of Samuel ha-Leví be the seat of the Sephardic Museum, which aims to preserve the legacy of Hispanic-Jewish and Sephardic culture to be integrated as an essential part of
Sephardic music and poems, but the melodies vary considerably. Because so many centuries have passed since the expulsion, a lot of the original melodies have been lost. Instead, Sephardic music has adopted the melodies and rhythms of the various countries where the Sephardim settled in. The Greek and Turkish traditions are fairly close. The Moroccan or “western” Sephardic traditions are not that close to the eastern/Greek/Turkish traditions. These song traditions spread from Spain to Morocco (the "Western Tradition") and several parts of the Ottoman Empire (the "Eastern Tradition") including Greece, Jerusalem, the Balkans and Egypt. Sephardic music adapted to each of these