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What is your favorite or most interesting-to-you thing about Sephardic Jewish culture?

Greetings everyone, I come here as a non-Jew wanting a bit of insight on a community I think is very important to my ancestry’s history, even if I’m not part of the tribe.

As someone of ethnic Portuguese descent, I was ecstatic upon finding out when I was younger that there was a unique Jewish subculture in the Iberian peninsula, especially since my conception beforehand was mostly from the Central/Eastern European Ashkenazi branch (as I grew up in the US). Fast forward later though, I learned unfortunately why they’re not that large in the region anymore, and it’s something that makes me really sad 🙁

In the future however, I plan on writing a book featuring characters inspired by the community’s culture, in honor of their contributions to my fatherland’s society. Evidently of course I’ll try and be careful with what I do, I’m aware of many (if not all) the tropes against Jewish people, and the potential issue of cultural appropriation.

I wanted to ask here then, is there anything really cool or beautiful you love about the Sephardic tradition? Whether it be clothes, food, people, ideas, the list goes on. Foremost if you’re from the present-day community, but I’ll take responses from all Jews really.

I plan on making my story fantasy-inspired, with a cast of anthropomorphic animals in a rather upbeat setting, meaning I’ll highlight joyful parts of the culture opposed to something based on antisemitism. I’ll try my best (and consult) to lightly address the issue, though it won’t be the main crux, I’m pretty sure stories related to Jewish life don’t always have to focus solely on discrimination, right?

But what do you guys think? Anything you love about Sephardim you wanna get off your chest? To start myself, I love hearing songs in Ladino, it’s like a blast-in-the-past Spanish written with the beautiful Hebrew alphabet lol, it’s really cool to see

TL;DR Want to write a story featuring Sephardim influence, wanna know if there’s anything cool y’all like about the culture + any concerns you might have

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