Origins of Rabbinic Judaism considered the Jews a most "philosophical" people because of their belief in a god that cannot be represented visually), and growing Jewish interest in Greek philosophy, which sought to establish universal truths, thus leading—potentially—to the idea of monotheism, at least in the sense that "all gods are one." It was also at this time that the notion of a clearly bounded Jewish nation identical with the Jewish religion formed. According to one scholar, the clash between the early Christians and Pharisees that ultimately led to the birth of the Christian religion and Rabbinic Judaism reflected the struggle by Jews to
Sephardic law and customs basis of the later Sephardic tradition. The Catalan rite was intermediate in character between the Castilian rite and that of Provence: Haham Gaster classified the rites of Oran and Tunis in this group. After the expulsion from Spain, the Sephardim took their liturgy with them to countries throughout the Arab and Ottoman world, where they soon assumed positions of rabbinic and communal leadership. They formed their own communities, often maintaining differences based on their places of origin in the Iberian peninsula. In Salonica, for instance, there were more than twenty synagogues, each using the rite of a different locality in