Spanish and Portuguese Jews |Part of a series on| |Jews and
Judaism| |Part of a series on| |Regions and groups| Spanish and
Portuguese Jews are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardi Jews,
mostly descended from families forcibly converted to Catholicism
in Spain and Portugal which later left for other countries where
they could revert to Judaism. The main Spanish and Portuguese
Jewish communities are in Western Europe, Italy and the
Americas. Spanish and Portuguese Jews have a distinctive ritual
based on that of pre-expulsion Spain, but also influenced by the
Spanish-Moroccan rite and the Italian Jewish rite. Relation to
other Jewish communities  "Sephardim" properly refers to Jews
whose families have extended histories in Spain and Portugal, to
the exclusion of other non-Ashkenazi Jews (particularly Mizrahi
Jews who have extended histories in the Greater Middle East and
North Africa) who are nonetheless ordinarily called "Sephardim"
in colloquial parlance due to similar styles of liturgy and a
certain amount of