Les Sépharades et la mer

Abstract

After their expulsion from Spain and Portugal, the Sefardic Jews who had never shown a great interest for the sea, except in few ports where they lived before their enforced departure (1492-1496), chose to settle, in the East and in the West, near to it. In the Ottoman empire most of them settled in Salonica, Istanbul and Smyrna, where they lived in harmony with the sea. In the West, they scattered, the New Christians as well as the Jews, in the ports of the Atlantic ocean and North sea, from Bayonne to Hamburg, in Bordeaux, Rouen, London, Amsterdam as well as smaller ports. From Amsterdam, they sailed to Brazil, the Caribeans and other ports of America. In the New World, they owned and fît out ships or sailed either as officers or members of the crews. They more rarely settled in the hinterland than on the coast. Most of the Sefardim were seafaring people. Their Ashkenazic brethen discovered the sea only at the turn of the twentieth century.