Sinagoga Or Torah

The Sinagoga Or Torah (Light of the Torah Synagogue) is located in the old town of Ceuta on Calle Sargento Mena, in the neighbourhood that has historically been home to the city's Sephardic Jewish community. The synagogue serves a congregation whose origins trace back to the expulsion of Jews from Castile and Aragon in 1492 — the Edict of Expulsion of the Catholic Monarchs — which scattered approximately 200,000 Iberian Jewish families across the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and the Balkans. A significant community settled in northern Morocco and, following the establishment of the modern Spanish enclave in the 19th century, a portion of that community returned to Ceuta, reconstituting a Jewish presence in a Spanish city for the first time since the expulsion.

The Sephardic community of Ceuta has maintained a distinctive cultural identity marked by the use of Haketia — a Judeo-Spanish dialect derived from 15th-century Castilian Spanish and enriched over centuries with Arabic and Hebrew loanwords — and by the preservation of liturgical melodies, culinary traditions, and family customs that differ from those of the Ashkenazi Jewish mainstream or the Mizrahi communities of the broader Middle East. The Or Torah congregation follows the Sephardic rite, using the Hebrew prayer book in the textual tradition maintained continuously since pre-expulsion Spain.

The synagogue building, modestly sized to serve a community of several hundred members, follows the traditional Sephardic interior arrangement: the bimah (elevated reading platform) is positioned centrally in the nave rather than against the eastern wall, and the Aron ha-Kodesh (Torah ark) faces Jerusalem — in Ceuta's geography, to the east and south across the Strait. Interior decoration is traditional, with carved wooden fixtures, hanging Moorish-style lamps, and embroidered Torah mantles gifted by community families over generations.

Visitors wishing to attend Shabbat services or arrange a community visit should contact the community secretary in advance on +34 956 51 11 50. Shabbat services are held Friday evening and Saturday morning. The Comunidad Israelita de Ceuta occasionally organises cultural events linking the city's Jewish heritage to the broader Sephardic diaspora. A visit to the Or Torah synagogue offers an irreplaceable encounter with a living minority culture that has preserved Iberian Jewish identity on African soil for over five centuries.