Page "Sephardic law and customs" Paragraph 35

In the Sephardic world today, in particular in Israel, there are many popular prayer-books containing this Baghdadi rite, and this is what is currently known as Minhag Edot ha-Mizraḥ ( the custom of the Oriental congregations ).

Other authorities, especially older rabbis from North Africa, reject these in favour of a more conservative Oriental-Sephardic text as found in the 19th century Livorno editions ; and the Shami Yemenite and Syrian rites belong to this group.

Others again, following R. Ovadia Yosef, prefer a form shorn of some of the Kabbalistic additions and nearer to what would have been known to R. Joseph Caro, and seek to establish this as the standard " Israeli Sephardi " rite for use by all communities.

The liturgy of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews differs from all these ( more than the Eastern groups differ from each other ), as it represents an older form of the text, has far fewer Kabbalistic additions and reflects some Italian influence.

The differences between all these groups, however, exist at the level of detailed wording, for example the insertion or omission of a few extra passages: structurally, all Sephardic rites are very similar.