Sephardic law and customs Spain or Portugal (as well as one Romaniot and one Ashkenazi synagogue). In a process lasting from the 16th through the 19th century, the native Jewish communities of most Arab and Ottoman countries adapted their pre-existing liturgies, many of which already had a family resemblance with the Sephardic, to follow the Spanish rite in as many respects as possible. Some reasons for this are: The most important theological, as opposed to practical, motive for harmonization was the Kabbalistic teachings of Isaac Luria and Ḥayim Vital. Luria himself always maintained that it was the duty of every Jew to abide by
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 (, ,