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 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