Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation In an anti-Semitic incident in September 2009, the synagogue was defaced with Nazi graffiti. Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation (SBH) is a Sephardic congregation with a synagogue in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The name "Bikur Holim" (which can be transliterated various ways into English) means visiting or comforting the sick, an important mitzvah. The first official name of the congregation was Spanish Hebrew Society and Congregation Bikur Holim, shortened to "Sephardic Bikur Holim" ("Sephardic" to avoid confusion with Seattle's similarly named Ashkenazic congregation). For a time in the 1930s, after amalgamation with another congregation,
Sephardic Bnei Anusim Only a small number of surnames held by Sephardic Bnei Anusim (or for that matter, only a very few surnames held by modern-day Sephardic Jews who may still carry Spanish and Portuguese surnames) are surnames that pertain exclusively to a Sephardic or Sephardic Anusim origin to the exclusion of any Old Christian carriers of the same surname. Among descendants of Sephardic Jews today, there are three categories of descendants: 1) Eastern Sephardim and North African Sephardim, being those who are today Jewish because they descend from Sephardim who remained Jewish (never becoming New Christians), and left Iberia before the deadline