Sephardic law and customs

Sephardic law and customs are the law and customs of Judaism which are practiced by Sephardim or Sephardic Jews (lit. "Jews of Spain"); the descendants of the historic Jewish community of the Iberian Peninsula, what is now Spain and Portugal. Many definitions of "Sephardic" also include Mizrahi Jews, most of whom follow the same traditions of worship as those which Sephardic Jews follow. The Sephardi Rite is not a denomination nor a movement like Orthodox Judaism, Reform Judaism, and other Ashkenazi Rite worship traditions. Sephardim are communities with distinct cultural, juridical and philosophical traditions. Sephardim are the descendants of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. They may be divided into the families that left Spain during the Expulsion of 1492 and those families that remained in Spain as crypto-Jews, fleeing in the following few centuries. In religious parlance as well as in modern Israel, the term is broadly used for all Jews who have Ottoman or other Asian or North African backgrounds, whether or not they have any historical link to Spain, but some prefer to distinguish Sephardim proper from Mizrahi Jews. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews have similar religious practices. Whether or not they are "Spaniard Jews", they are all "Jews of the Spanish rite". There are three reasons for this convergence, which are explored in more detail below:

Jewish law is based on the Torah, as interpreted and supplemented by the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud in its final form dates from the Sasanian Empire and was the product of the Talmudic academies in Babylonia.

The two principal colleges of Sura and Pumbedita survived well into the Muslim world. Their presidents, known as Geonim, together with the Exilarch or Leader of the Jews of Lower Mesopotamia, were recognised by the Abbasid Caliphate as the supreme authority over the Jews of the Arab world. The Geonim provided written answers to questions on Halakha worldwide published in collections of responsa and enjoyed high authority. The Geonim also produced handbooks such as the Halachot Pesuqot by Yehudai ben Nahman and the Halachot Gedolot by Simeon Kayyara.

The learning of the Geonim was transmitted through the scholars of Kairouan, notably Chananel ben Chushiel and Nissim ben Jacob, to Spain, where it was used by Isaac Alfasi in his Sefer ha-Halakhot (code of Jewish law), which took the form of an edited and abridged Talmud. This, in turn, formed the basis for the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides. A feature of these early Tunisian and Spanish schools was a willingness to use the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian. Developments in France and Germany were somewhat different. They respected the rulings of the Geonim but also had strong local customs. The Tosafists did their best to explain the Talmud in a way consistent with these customs. A theory grew that custom trumps law (see minhag): this had some Talmudic support but was not nearly so prominent in Arabic-speaking countries as it was in Europe. Books on Ashkenazi custom were written by authors such as Yaakov Moelin. Further instances of Ashkenazi custom were contributed by the penitential manual of Eleazar of Worms and some additional stringencies on sheḥitah (the slaughter of animals) formulated in Jacob Weil's Sefer Sheḥitot u-Bediqot.

The learning of the Tosafists, but not the literature on Ashkenazi customs as such, was imported into Spain by Asher ben Jehiel, a German-born scholar who became chief rabbi of Toledo and the author of the Hilchot ha-Rosh - an elaborate Talmudic commentary, which became the third of the great Spanish authorities after Alfasi and Maimonides. A more popular résumé, known as the Arba'ah Turim, was written by his son, Jacob ben Asher, though he did not agree with his father on all points. The Tosafot were also used by scholars of the Catalan school, such as Nahmanides and Solomon ben Adret, who were also noted for their interest in Kabbalah. For a while, Spain was divided between the schools: in Catalonia the rulings of Nahmanides and ben Adret were accepted, in Castile those of the Asher family, and in Valencia those of Maimonides. (Maimonides' rulings were also accepted in most of the Arab world, especially Yemen, Egypt and the Land of Israel.)

Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Jewish law was codified by Yosef Karo in his Bet Yosef, which took the form of a commentary on the Arba'ah Turim, and Shulḥan Arukh, which presented the same results in the form of a practical abridgement. He consulted most of the authorities available to him but generally arrived at a pragmatic decision by following the majority among the three great Spanish authorities Alfasi, Maimonides, and Asher ben Yeḥiel, unless most of the other authorities were against them. Karo did not consciously intend to exclude non-Sephardi authorities. Still, he considered that the Ashkenazi school, so far as it had anything to contribute to Halakha as opposed to purely Ashkenazi custom, was adequately represented by Asher. However, since Alfasi and Maimonides generally agree, the overall result was overwhelmingly Sephardi in flavour, though in several cases, Karo set the result of this consensus aside and ruled in favour of the Catalan school (Nahmanides and Solomon ben Adret), some of whose opinions had Ashkenazi origins. Today, the Bet Yosef is accepted by Sephardim as the leading authority in Jewish law, subject to minor variants drawn from the rulings of later rabbis accepted in particular communities.

The Polish rabbi Moses Isserles, while acknowledging the merits of the Shulḥan Arukh, felt that it did not do justice to Ashkenazi scholarship and practice. He accordingly composed a series of glosses setting out all respects in which Ashkenazi practice differs, and the composite work is today accepted as the leading work on Ashkenazi halakha. Isserles felt free to differ from Karo on particular points of law. In principle, he accepted Karo's view that the Sephardic practice set out in the Shulḥan Arukh represents standard Jewish law while the Ashkenazi practice is essentially a local custom. So far, then, it is meaningless to speak of "Sephardic custom": all that is meant is Jewish law without the particular customs of the Ashkenazim. For this reason, the law accepted by other non-Ashkenazi communities, such as the Italian and Yemenite Jews, is basically similar to that of the Sephardim. There are of course customs peculiar to particular countries or communities within the Sephardic world, such as Syria and Morocco.

An important body of customs grew up in the Kabbalistic circle of Isaac Luria and his followers in Safed, and many of these have spread to communities throughout the Sephardi world: this is discussed further in the Liturgy section below. In some cases they are accepted by Greek and Turkish Sephardim and Mizrahi Jews but not by Western communities such as the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. These are customs in the true sense: in the list of usages below they are distinguished by an L sign.