Sephardi Hebrew Sephardi Hebrew Sephardi Hebrew (or Sepharadi Hebrew) is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jewish practice. Its phonology was influenced by contact languages such as Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino), Arabic, Portuguese and Modern Greek. There is some variation between the various forms of Sephardi Hebrew, but the following generalisations may be made: This last difference is the standard shibboleth for distinguishing Sephardi from Ashkenazi (and Yemenite) Hebrew. The differentiation between kamatz gadol and kamatz katan is made according to purely phonetic rules, without regard to etymology, which occasionally leads to spelling pronunciations at variance with
Haredim and Zionism Sephardi or Mizrahi rabbis is far lower than among Ashkenazi rabbis, and these constitute a small minority of the Sephardi Haredi leadership. The Sephardi Haredi political party in the Knesset is Shas, which represents the vast majority of Sephardi Haredim, and is headed by Aryeh Deri. In 2010, Shas joined the World Zionist Organization, and officially became the first Zionist Haredi party. The party's long-time spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, opposed saying Hallel in the Yom HaAtzmaut prayer service, but writes that, "One may say Hallel after the completion of the prayers, without the blessing..." While in the past, when