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 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