In 1948, with the birth of the state of Israel, Beirut's Sephardic Jews found the political climate rougher.
It's not uncommon, though, for Sephardic Jews to feel the pull of Spain.
He was a Sephardic Jew, a member of the tribe that had been expelled from Spain in the 15th century.
Many Sephardic Jews remember, too, their painful flight from North Africa when France's colonies gained their independence four decades ago.
"I'm still Spanish in my soul and in my heart, " says one British Sephardic Jew, who asked not to be named.
The proposed new law, if passed, is expected to allow all new citizens of Sephardic origin to keep their existing passports.
Religious revivalism, much of it inclined towards magic and mysticism, is sweeping through poor, largely Sephardic (oriental) areas of the big cities.
It's specific to Sephardic Jews and based on old Spanish, with words borrowed from Hebrew and the many countries in which they have settled since.
The Jews of Thessaloniki were mostly Sephardic ones, who immigrated to the city, then part of the Ottoman Empire, after 1492 to escape persecution in Spain.
Amedeo Modigliani was born in 1884, in the Italian port city of Livorno, the last of four children of a couple whose marriage united two Sephardic Jewish clans.
Mr Derrida's father was a salesman of Sephardic Jewish extraction.
Mr Abulafia notes with approval that Sephardic Jews, such as his own forebears, forced to leave Spain for Ottoman Smyrna, have been especially open to integration with surrounding cultures.
Within the dark walls of 97 Orchard Street, Germans, Irish, Italians, and Sephardic Greeks crammed their large families, with dead horses and filth of all description littering the nearby streets.
Rodrigue's parents spoke Ladino to each other but it has not been passed on to his children, or to most of the new generation of Sephardic Jews around the world.
Now almost 70, the outspoken Jerusalem-born Sephardic academic has in turn written drama, short stories and essays, as well as fiction, all exploring the spirit of Israel and what it means to be Jewish.
But blinded by greed and a lack of common sense, prominent politicians, public officials and rabbis were done in by the short bespectacled son of a rabbi who headed a Jewish Sephardic synagogue in Ocean Township, N.
The Centre Party had anyhow been coming apart at the seams, but Mr Barak is also having little joy from his two main coalition partners, the Sephardic- Orthodox Shas party and the leftist-secular Meretz party, which are at each other's throats over state finance for Shas schools.
The Casa de la Memoria de Al-Andalus (the House of Al-Andalus Memories) encased in a former Sephardic Jewish mansion in the higgledy-piggledy Santa Cruz quarter, has garnered an excellent reputation in recent years for its heavy Baroque atmosphere and skilful musicians who are not afraid to improvise.
"The only reason we sell is to fuel our ability to buy, " says David's son Helly, 29, who runs a gallery in the posh Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue. (Helly's cousin, also named Helly Nahmad after their grandfather Hillel in the Sephardic Jewish tradition, runs a gallery in London.) And while there is a cost to holding that inventory, the family's currency business helps support their art strategy.
应用推荐