Western Sephardim, also called Spanish and Portuguese Jews or the Portuguese Nation, are descended mostly from the New Christians of Spain and Portugal: Jews forcibly converted in 1391 and 1497 whose descendants left Iberia generations later and returned to Judaism. From the 1590s they built communities in Amsterdam, Hamburg, London and southwestern France, and from there in the Caribbean and North America. They founded the first synagogues in the Americas. See also Portuguese Jews and Eastern Sephardim.
Origins
The Western Sephardim began as conversos. After the forced baptisms in Portugal in 1497 and the Inquisition that followed, many New Christian families kept some Jewish memory or practice in secret. When they could, especially after Spain and Portugal came under one crown in 1580, they left for countries where they could live openly as Jews. Many had grown up Catholic, and they had to relearn Judaism as adults; see Spanish Jews and the Portuguese Inquisition.
The European communities
- Amsterdam. Portuguese Jews formed congregations from about 1602; three merged in 1639 into Talmud Torah. Its Portuguese Synagogue, the Esnoga, was inaugurated in 1675 and is still in use. Menasseh ben Israel founded Amsterdam’s first Hebrew press in 1626.
- Hamburg. Portuguese Jews lived there from the 1590s; the Beth Israel synagogue was founded in 1652.
- London. Menasseh ben Israel came to London in 1655 to ask Oliver Cromwell to readmit the Jews, and the community dates its readmission to 1656. Its synagogue, Bevis Marks, opened in 1701; sermons there were preached in Portuguese until 1830.
- France. Portuguese New Christians settled in Bordeaux and Bayonne, where a synagogue existed by 1660.
The Americas
In Dutch Brazil (1630–1654), Jews in Recife founded Kahal Zur Israel in 1636, the first synagogue in the Americas. When Portugal retook the colony in 1654, most of its Jews left. In September 1654, 23 of them reached New Amsterdam and founded Shearith Israel, the only Jewish congregation in New York until 1825.
- Curaçao. The Snoa of Mikve Israel, built in 1732, is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the Americas.
- The Caribbean. Spanish and Portuguese congregations grew in Suriname, Barbados, Jamaica, St. Thomas, St. Eustatius and Nevis.
- North America. The congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, dates to 1658; its Touro Synagogue opened in 1763. Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia and the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal, founded in 1768, followed.
Religious life
Western Sephardim follow the Spanish and Portuguese rite, which kept older Sephardi customs and added relatively few of the later kabbalistic prayers. Communities were governed by a lay board, the Mahamad, with strict authority over members. In 1656 Amsterdam’s community excommunicated the young Baruch Spinoza.
Language and culture
Portuguese was the everyday and official language of the early communities, and Spanish the language of prayer-book translations and literature. Over time they gave way to Dutch, English and French; the first official English translation of the London prayer book appeared in 1836. Unlike the Eastern Sephardim, the Western communities did not speak Judeo-Spanish.
The community today
Spanish and Portuguese congregations still worship in Amsterdam, London (Bevis Marks, Lauderdale Road and Wembley), New York (Shearith Israel), Philadelphia (Mikveh Israel), Montreal, Curaçao and Kingston. Most of their members today come from many Jewish backgrounds, but the rite and customs continue.
Notable people
- Menasseh ben Israel 1604–1657 · La Rochelle, Lisbon or Madeira Rabbi and printer in Amsterdam; won the Jews’ readmission to England.
- Baruch Spinoza 1632–1677 · Amsterdam Philosopher, born into Amsterdam’s Portuguese community.
- Emma Lazarus 1849–1887 · New York Poet of “The New Colossus” (1883); her Lazarus ancestors came from Portugal.
- Benjamin N. Cardozo 1870–1938 · New York Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1932–1938; member of Shearith Israel.
Sources and further reading
- Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Indiana University Press, 1997).
- Yosef Kaplan, An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Brill, 2000).
- Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Littman Library, 2000).
- “Spanish and Portuguese Jews”, Wikipedia.
Revised October 2026 to correct errors in an earlier version of this page.
