Editing Sephardic Jews (section)

=== Eastern Sephardim ===
{{main|Eastern Sephardim}}
[[File:1900 photo of a Sephardi couple from Sarajevo.png|thumb|Sephardi Jewish couple from [[Sarajevo]] in traditional clothing (1900)]]

Eastern Sephardim comprise the descendants of the expellees from Spain who left as Jews in 1492 or earlier. This sub-group of Sephardim settled mostly [[History of the Jews in Turkey|in various parts of the Ottoman Empire]], which then included areas in West Asia's [[Near East]] such as [[Anatolia]], the [[Levant]] and Egypt; in Southeastern Europe, some of the [[Dodecanese]] islands and the [[Balkans]]. They settled particularly in European cities ruled by the Ottoman Empire, including [[History of the Jews of Thessaloniki|Salonica]] in present-day Greece; [[Constantinople]], which today is known as [[Istanbul]] on the European portion of modern Turkey; and [[Sarajevo]], in what is today [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. Sephardic Jews also lived in [[Bulgaria]], where they absorbed into their community the [[Romaniote Jews]] they found already living there. They had a presence as well in [[Walachia]] in what is today southern Romania, where there is still a functioning Sephardic Synagogue.<ref>[http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Romania]{{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160422135529/http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Romania|date=22 April 2016}}<span> YIVO</span>{{!}}<span>Romania</span>.</ref> Their traditional language is referred to as ''[[Judezmo]]'' ("Jewish [language]"). It is [[Judaeo-Spanish]], also known as Ladino, which consisted of the medieval Spanish and Portuguese they spoke in Iberia, with admixtures of Hebrew, and the languages around them, especially Turkish. It was often written in [[Rashi script]].
[[File:Epoca_1902_Issue.jpg|thumb|A 1902 Issue of ''[[La Epoca (Ladino newspaper)|La Epoca]]'', a Ladino newspaper from Salonica ([[Thessaloniki]])]]
Regarding the [[Middle East]], some Sephardim went further east into the West Asian territories of the [[Ottoman Empire]], settling among the long-established Arabic-speaking Jewish communities in [[History of the Jews in Syria|Damascus]] and [[History of the Jews in Syria|Aleppo]] in Syria, as well as in the [[Land of Israel]], and as far as [[History of the Jews in Iraq|Baghdad]] in Iraq. Although technically Egypt was a North African Ottoman region, those Jews who settled in [[History of the Jews in Egypt|Alexandria]] are included in this group, due to Egypt's cultural proximity to the other West Asian provinces under Ottoman rule.

For the most part, Eastern Sephardim did not maintain their own separate Sephardic religious and cultural institutions from pre-existing Jews. Instead the local Jews came to adopt the liturgical customs of the recent Sephardic arrivals.<!-- Was this because the new people were more numerous? --> Eastern Sephardim in European areas of the Ottoman Empire, as well as in Palestine, retained their culture and language, but those in the other parts of the West Asian portion gave up their language and adopted the local Judeo-Arabic dialect. This latter phenomenon is just one of the factors which have today led to the broader and eclectic religious definition of Sephardi Jews.

Thus, the Jewish communities in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt are partly of Spanish Jewish origin and they are counted as Sephardim proper. The great majority of the Jewish communities in Iraq, and all of those in Iran, Eastern Syria, Yemen, and Eastern Turkey, are descendants of pre-existing indigenous Jewish populations. They adopted the Sephardic rites and traditions through cultural diffusion, and are properly termed [[Mizrahi Jews]].{{citation needed|date=September 2017}}

Going even further into South Asia, a few of the Eastern Sephardim followed the spice trade routes as far as the [[Malabar coast]] of southern India, where they settled among the established [[Cochin Jews|Cochin Jewish]] community. Their culture and customs were absorbed by the local Jews. {{citation needed|date=September 2017}}. Additionally, there was a large community of Jews and crypto-Jews of Portuguese origin in the Portuguese colony of [[Goa]]. [[Gaspar Jorge de Leão Pereira]], the first archbishop of Goa, wanted to suppress or expel that community, calling for the initiation of the [[Goa Inquisition]] against the [[Sephardic Jews in India]].

In recent times, principally after 1948, most Eastern Sephardim have since relocated to Israel, and others to the US and Latin America.

Eastern Sephardim still often carry common Spanish surnames, as well as other specifically Sephardic surnames from 15th-century Spain with Arabic or Hebrew language origins (such as [[Azoulay]], [[Abulafia (surname)|Abulafia]], [[Abravanel]]) which have since disappeared from Spain when those that stayed behind as conversos adopted surnames that were solely Spanish in origin. Other Eastern Sephardim have since also translated their Hispanic surnames into the languages of the regions they settled in, or have modified them to make them sound more local.