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 America, predominantly from within the normative Jewish (Ashkenazi and Sephardi) communities resident in Latin America. Among these immigrants from Latin America, however, there are also some, but not many, persons of Sephardic Bnei Anusim origin that have also immigrated, most of which arrived in Israel after official reversions/conversions outside Israel. It has been reported in the Israeli media that some Sephardic Bnei Anusim have regularized their status once in Israel after arriving as tourists or visitors. Other Sephardic Bnei Ansuim have been deported or threatened with deportation. In one instance in 2009, the Interior Ministry sought to deport the elderly