Ashkenazi Jews - Wikipedia

5/3/22, 3:48 PM Ashkenazi Jews - Wikipedia
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews (/ˌɑːʃkəˈnɑːzi, ˌæʃ-/ AHSH-kə-NAH-zee,
Ashkenazi Jews
ASH-;[18] Hebrew: ‫ְי הּוֵד י ַא ְׁש ְּכ ַנז‬, romanized: Yehudei Ashkenaz,
lit. 'Jews of Germania'), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ‫ְי הּוֵד י ַא ְׁש ְּכ ַנז‬‎(Yehudei Ashkenaz)
Ashkenazim,[a] are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced Total population
in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the 1st millennium
CE.[20] Their traditional diaspora language is Yiddish (a West 10[1]–11.2[2] million
Germanic language with Jewish linguistic elements, including the Regions with significant
Hebrew alphabet),[20] which developed during the Middle Ages populations
after they had moved from Germany and France into Northern United States 5–6 million[3]
Europe and Eastern Europe. For centuries, Ashkenazim in
Europe used Hebrew only as a sacred language until the revival of Israel 2.8 million[1][4]
Hebrew as a common language in 20th-century Israel. Russia 194,000–
500,000;
Throughout their numerous centuries living in Europe, according to the
Ashkenazim have made many important contributions to its
FJCR, up to 1
philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and
[21][22][23][24] million of Jewish
science.
descent.
The rabbinical term Ashkenazi refers to diaspora Jews who Argentina 300,000
established communities along the Rhine in western Germany
United 260,000
and northern France during the Middle Ages.[25] Upon their
arrival, they adapted traditions carried over from the Holy Land, Kingdom
Babylonia, and the western Mediterranean to their new European Canada 240,000
environment.[26] The Ashkenazi religious rite developed in cities France 200,000
such as Mainz, Worms, and Troyes. The eminent rishon from
medieval France, Shlomo Itzhaki, has had a significant influence Germany 200,000
on the interpretations of Judaism by Ashkenazim. Ukraine 150,000
Australia 120,000
In the late Middle Ages, due to widespread persecution, the
majority of the Ashkenazi population steadily shifted South Africa 80,000
eastward,[27] moving out of the Holy Roman Empire into the Belarus 80,000
areas that later became part of the Polish–Lithuanian
Brazil 80,000
Commonwealth; these areas today comprise parts of present-day
Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Hungary 75,000
Slovakia, and Ukraine.[28][29] Chile 70,000
Over the course of the late-18th and 19th centuries, those Jews Belgium 30,000
who remained in or returned to historical German lands Netherlands 30,000
generated a cultural reorientation; under the influence of the
Moldova 30,000
Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation as well as the
intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, they gradually Italy 28,000
abandoned the use of Yiddish and adopted German while Poland 25,000
developing new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural
Mexico 18,500
identity.[30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews 1/35
It is estimated that in the 11th century, Ashkenazim comprised 3 Sweden 18,000

percent of the global Jewish population, while an estimate made
Latvia 10,000
in 1930 (near the population's peak) listed them as comprising 92
percent of the world's Jewish population.[31] However, the Romania 10,000
Ashkenazi population was decimated shortly after as a result of Austria 9,000
the Holocaust that was carried out by Nazi Germany during
New Zealand 5,000
World War II, which affected almost every Jewish European
family.[32][33] Immediately prior to the Holocaust, the worldwide Colombia 4,900
Jewish population stood at approximately 16.7 million people.[34] Azerbaijan 4,300
Statistical figures vary for the contemporary demography of Lithuania 4,000
Ashkenazi Jews, ranging from 10 million[1] to 11.2 million.[2]
Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio D. Pergola, in a rough Czech 3,000
calculation of Sephardi Jews and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Republic
Ashkenazi Jews made up 65–70 percent of Jews worldwide in Slovakia 3,000
2000.[35] Other estimates place the Ashkenazim as comprising
Ireland 2,500
upwards of 75 percent of the global Jewish population.[36]
Estonia 1,000
Genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews—researching both their Languages
paternal and maternal lineages as well as autosomal DNA—
indicate that they are of mixed Levantine and European (mainly Predominantly spoken:
western European and southern European) ancestry. These Hebrew (Ashkenazi Hebrew,
studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the liturgical) · English · Russian · and
degree and the sources of their European admixture, with some others
focusing on the extent of the European genetic origin observed in
Traditional:
Ashkenazi maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the
predominant Middle Eastern genetic origin observed in Yiddish[5]
Ashkenazi paternal lineages.[37][38][39][40] Religion
Judaism (major)
Christianity (minor)
Contents Related ethnic groups
Etymology Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, other
History Jewish ethnic divisions and
Jewish settlement of Europe in antiquity Samaritans;[6][7][8] Kurds,[8] other
High and Late Middle Ages migrations Levantines,[7] Assyrians,[6][7]
Medieval references Arabs,[6][7][9][10] Mediterranean
Modern history groups (Italians,[11][12]
The Holocaust Spaniards)[13][14][15][16][17]
Israel
Definition
By religion
By culture
By ethnicity
Customs, laws and traditions
Ashkenazic liturgy
Ashkenazi as a surname
Relations with Sephardim
Notable Ashkenazim
Genetics
Genetic origins
Male lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA
Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA
Association and linkage studies (autosomal dna)
The Khazar hypothesis
Medical genetics
See also
Explanatory notes
The Jews in Central Europe (1881)
References
Citations
References for "Who is an Ashkenazi Jew?"
Other references
External links
Etymology
The name Ashkenazi derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, son of
Japhet, son of Noah, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10).
The name of
Gomer has often been linked to the ethnonym Cimmerians.
Biblical Ashkenaz is usually derived from Assyrian Aškūza (cuneiform Aškuzai/Iškuzai), a people who
expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates;[41] the name Aškūza is
usually associated with the name of the Scythians.[42][43] The intrusive n in the Biblical name is likely
due to a scribal error confusing a vav ‫ו‬‎with a nun ‫נ‬‎.[43][44][45]
In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni
and Ararat, perhaps corresponding to Urartu, called on by God to resist Babylon.[45][46] In the Yoma
tractate of the Babylonian Talmud the name Gomer is rendered as Germania, which elsewhere in
rabbinical literature was identified with Germanikia in northwestern Syria, but later became
associated with Germania. Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia, viewed as the cradle of Germanic
tribes, as early as a 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius.[47]
In the 10th-century History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1.15), Ashkenaz was

associated with Armenia,[48] as it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at
times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Crimea and areas to the east.[49] His contemporary Saadia Gaon
identified Ashkenaz with the Saquliba or Slavic territories,[50] and such usage covered also the lands
of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe.[49] In modern times, Samuel Krauss
identified the Biblical "Ashkenaz" with Khazaria.[51]
Sometime in the Early Medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by
this term.[45]
Conforming to the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names,
Spain was denominated Sefarad (Obadiah 20), France was called Tsarefat (1 Kings 17:9), and
Bohemia was called the Land of Canaan.[52] By the high medieval period, Talmudic commentators
like Rashi began to use Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz to designate Germany, earlier known as
Loter,[45][47] where, especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most
important Jewish communities arose.[53] Rashi uses leshon Ashkenaz (Ashkenazi language) to
describe Yiddish, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as
Ashkenazim.[47] Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany
following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval
Germany and France.[54]
History
Jewish settlement of Europe in antiquity
Jewish communities appeared in southern Europe as early as the third century BCE, in the Aegean
Islands, Greece, and Italy. Jews migrated to southern Europe from the Middle East voluntarily for
opportunities in trade and commerce. Following Alexander the Great's conquests, Jews migrated to
Greek settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean, spurred on by economic opportunities. Jewish
economic migration to southern Europe is also believed to have occurred during the Roman era.
Regarding Jewish settlements founded in southern Europe during the Roman era, E. Mary
Smallwood wrote that "no date or origin can be assigned to the numerous settlements eventually
known in the west, and some may have been founded as a result of the dispersal of Palestinian Jews
after the revolts of AD 66–70 and 132–135, but it is reasonable to conjecture that many, such as the
settlement in Puteoli attested in 4 BC, went back to the late republic or early empire and originated in
voluntary emigration and the lure of trade and commerce."[55][56][57] In 63 BCE, the Siege of
Jerusalem saw the Roman Republic conquer Judea, and thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were
brought to Rome as slaves. After gaining their freedom, they settled permanently in Rome as
traders.[58] It is likely that there was an additional influx of Jewish slaves taken to southern Europe by
Roman forces after the capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Herod the Great with assistance from
Roman forces in 37 BCE. It is known that Jewish war captives were sold into slavery after the
suppression of a minor Jewish revolt in 53 BCE, and some were probably taken to southern
Europe.[59]
The Roman Empire decisively crushed two large-scale Jewish rebellions in Judea, the First Jewish–
Roman War, which lasted from 66 to 73 CE, and the Bar Kokhba revolt, which lasted from 132 to 135
CE. Both of these revolts ended in widespread destruction in Judea. The holy city of Jerusalem and
Herod's Temple were destroyed in the first revolt, and during the Bar-Kokhba revolt, Jerusalem was
totally razed, and Hadrian built the colony of Aelia Capitolina over its ruins, totally forbidding Jews
and Jewish Christians from entering. During both of these rebellions, many Jews were captured and
sold into slavery by the Romans. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, 97,000 Jews were sold
as slaves in the aftermath of the first revolt.[60] Jewish slaves and their children eventually gained
their freedom and joined local free Jewish communities.[61] With their national aspirations crushed
and widespread devastation in Judea, despondent Jews migrated out of Judea in the aftermath of
both revolts, and many settled in southern Europe. The movement was by no means a single,
centralized event, nor was it a compulsory relocation as the earlier Assyrian and Babylonian
captivities had been.[62] Indeed, for centuries prior to the war or its particularly destructive
conclusion, Jews had lived across the known world.
Outside of their origins in ancient Israel, the history of Ashkenazim is shrouded in mystery,[63] and
many theories have arisen speculating on their emergence as a distinct community of Jews.[64] The
historical record attests to Jewish communities in southern Europe since pre-Christian times.[65]
Many Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this
privilege in 212. Jews were required to pay a poll tax until the reign of Emperor Julian in 363. In the
late Roman Empire, Jews were free to form networks of cultural and religious ties and enter into
various local occupations. But, after Christianity became the official religion of Rome and
Constantinople in 380, Jews were increasingly marginalized.
The history of Jews in Greece goes back to at least the Archaic Era of Greece when the classical culture
of Greece was undergoing a process of formalization after the Greek Dark Age. The Greek historian
Herodotus knew of the Jews, whom he called "Palestinian Syrians",[66] and listed them among the
levied naval forces in service of the invading Persians. While Jewish monotheism was not deeply
affected by Greek polytheism, the Greek way of living was attractive for many wealthier Jews.[67] The
Synagogue in the Agora of Athens is dated to the period between 267 and 396 CE. The Stobi
Synagogue in Macedonia was built on the ruins of a more ancient synagogue in the 4th century, while
later in the 5th century, the synagogue was transformed into a Christian basilica.[68] Hellenistic
Judaism thrived in Antioch and Alexandria, and many of these Greek-speaking Jews would convert to
Christianity.[69]
Sporadic[70] epigraphic evidence in gravesite excavations, particularly in Brigetio (Szőny), Aquincum

(Óbuda), Intercisa (Dunaújváros), Triccinae (Sárvár), Savaria (Szombathely), Sopianae (Pécs) in
Hungary, and Mursa (Osijek) in Croatia, attest to the presence of Jews after the 2nd and 3rd centuries
where Roman garrisons were established.[71] There was a sufficient number of Jews in Pannonia to
form communities and build a synagogue. Jewish troops were among the Syrian soldiers transferred
there, and replenished from the Middle East. After 175 CE Jews and especially Syrians came from
Antioch, Tarsus, and Cappadocia. Others came from Italy and the Hellenized parts of the Roman
Empire. The excavations suggest they first lived in isolated enclaves attached to Roman legion camps
and intermarried with other similar oriental families within the military orders of the region.[70]
Raphael Patai states that later Roman writers remarked that they differed little in either customs,
manner of writing, or names from the people among whom they dwelt; and it was especially difficult
to differentiate Jews from the Syrians.[72][73] After Pannonia was ceded to the Huns in 433, the
garrison populations were withdrawn to Italy, and only a few, enigmatic traces remain of a possible
Jewish presence in the area some centuries later.[74] No evidence has yet been found of a Jewish
presence in antiquity in Germany beyond its Roman border, nor in Eastern Europe. In Gaul and
Germany itself, with the possible exception of Trier and Cologne, the archeological evidence suggests
at most a fleeting presence of very few Jews, primarily itinerant traders or artisans.[75]
Estimating the number of Jews in antiquity is a task fraught with peril due to the nature of and lack of
accurate documentation. The number of Jews in the Roman Empire for a long time was based on the
accounts of Syrian Orthodox bishop Bar Hebraeus who lived between 1226 and 1286 CE, who stated
by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as many as six million Jews were
already living in the Roman Empire, a conclusion which has been contested as highly exaggerated.
The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world. Salo
Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing.[76] The figure of seven million within and one
million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis
Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census
of total Roman citizens and thus included non-Jews, the figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in
Eusebius' Chronicon.[77]: 90, 94, 104–05 [78] Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure,
now states that he and Baron were mistaken.[79]: 185 Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in
Egypt. Brian McGing rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the
Jewish demographic in the ancient world.[77]: 97–103 Sometimes the scholars who accepted the high
number of Jews in Rome had explained it by Jews having been active in proselytising,[80] but the
current consensus rejects the idea of ancient Jews trying to convert Gentiles to Judaism.[81] The
Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of the land of Israel/Judaea. They
collected an annual temple tax from Jews both in and outside of Israel. The revolts in and suppression
of diaspora communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete during the Kitos War of 115–117 CE had a severe
impact on the Jewish diaspora.
A substantial Jewish population emerged in northern Gaul by the Middle Ages,[82] but Jewish
communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orléans.[83]
Throughout this period and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant
Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to Christianity.[84] King Dagobert I of the
Franks expelled the Jews from his Merovingian kingdom in 629. Jews in former Roman territories
faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were enforced.
Charlemagne's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome,
brought on a brief period of stability and unity in Francia. This created opportunities for Jewish
merchants to settle again north of the Alps. Charlemagne granted the Jews freedoms similar to those
once enjoyed under the Roman Empire. In addition, Jews from southern Italy, fleeing religious
persecution, began to move into Central Europe. Returning to Frankish lands, many Jewish
merchants took up occupations in finance and commerce, including money lending, or usury. (Church
legislation banned Christians from lending money in exchange for interest.) From Charlemagne's
time to the present, Jewish life in northern Europe is well documented. By the 11th century, when
Rashi of Troyes wrote his commentaries, Jews in what came to be known as "Ashkenaz" were known
for their halakhic learning, and Talmudic studies. They were criticized by Sephardim and other
Jewish scholars in Islamic lands for their lack of expertise in Jewish jurisprudence and general
ignorance of Hebrew linguistics and literature.[85] Yiddish emerged as a result of Judeo-Latin
language contact with various High German vernaculars in the medieval period.[86] It is a Germanic
language written in Hebrew letters, and heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic, with some
elements of Romance and later Slavic languages.[87]
High and Late Middle Ages migrations
Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as
the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 11th century, Jewish settlers moving from southern European and
Middle Eastern centers (such as Babylonian Jews[88] and Persian Jews[89]) and Maghrebi Jewish
traders from North Africa who had contacts with their Ashkenazi brethren and had visited each other
from time to time in each's domain[90] appear to have begun to settle in the north, especially along the
Rhine, often in response to new economic opportunities and at the invitation of local Christian rulers.
Thus Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, invited Jacob ben Yekutiel and his fellow Jews to settle in his
lands; and soon after the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror likewise extended a
welcome to continental Jews to take up residence there. Bishop Rüdiger Huzmann called on the Jews
of Mainz to relocate to Speyer. In all of these decisions, the idea that Jews had the know-how and
capacity to jump-start the economy, improve revenues, and enlarge trade seems to have played a
prominent role.[91] Typically, Jews relocated close to the markets and churches in town centres,
where, though they came under the authority of both royal and ecclesiastical powers, they were
accorded administrative autonomy.[91]
In the 11th century, both Rabbinic Judaism and the culture of the Babylonian Talmud that underlies it
became established in southern Italy and then spread north to Ashkenaz.[92]
Numerous massacres of Jews occurred throughout Europe during the Christian Crusades. Inspired by
the preaching of a First Crusade, crusader mobs in France and Germany perpetrated the Rhineland
massacres of 1096, devastating Jewish communities along the Rhine River, including the SHuM cities
of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. The cluster of cities contain the earliest Jewish settlements north of the
Alps, and played a major role in the formation of Ashkenazi Jewish religious tradition,[26] along with
Troyes and Sens in France. Nonetheless, Jewish life in Germany persisted, while some Ashkenazi
Jews joined Sephardic Jewry in Spain.[93] Expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts
of Germany (15th century), gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewry eastward, to Poland (10th century),
Lithuania (10th century), and Russia (12th century). Over this period of several hundred years, some
have suggested, Jewish economic activity was focused on trade, business management, and financial
services, due to several presumed factors: Christian European prohibitions restricting certain
activities by Jews, preventing certain financial activities (such as "usurious" loans)[94] between
Christians, high rates of literacy, near-universal male education, and ability of merchants to rely upon
and trust family members living in different regions and countries.
By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland

were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora.[95] This
area, which eventually fell under the domination of Russia,
Austria, and Prussia (Germany), would remain the main center of
Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.
The answer to why there was so little assimilation of Jews in

central and eastern Europe for so long would seem to lie in part in
the probability that the alien surroundings in central and eastern
Europe were not conducive, though there was some assimilation.
Furthermore, Jews lived almost exclusively in shtetls, maintained The Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth at its greatest
a strong system of education for males, heeded rabbinic
extent.
leadership, and had a very different lifestyle to that of their
neighbours; all of these tendencies increased with every outbreak
of antisemitism.[96]
In parts of Eastern Europe, before the arrival of the Ashkenazi Jews from Central, some non-
Ashkenazi Jews were present who spoke Leshon Knaan and held various other Non-Ashkenazi
traditions and customs.[97] In 1966, the historian Cecil Roth questioned the inclusion of all Yiddish
speaking Jews as Ashkenazim in descent, suggesting that upon the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from
central Europe to Eastern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, there were a substantial
number of non-Ashkenazim Jews already there who later abandoned their original Eastern European
Jewish culture in favor of the Ashkenazi one.[98] However, according to more recent research, mass
migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews occurred to Eastern Europe, from Central Europe in
the west, who due to high birth rates absorbed and largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi
Jewish groups of Eastern Europe (whose numbers the demographer Sergio Della Pergola considers to
have been small).[99] Genetic evidence also indicates that Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews
largely descend from Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from central to eastern Europe and subsequently
experienced high birthrates and genetic isolation.[100]
Some Jewish immigration from southern Europe to Eastern Europe continued into the early modern
period. During the 16th century, as conditions for Italian Jews worsened, many Jews from Venice and
the surrounding area migrated to Poland and Lithuania. During the 16th and 17th centuries, some
Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire migrated to Eastern
Europe, as did Arabic-speaking Mizrahi Jews and Persian Jews.[101][102][103][104]
Medieval references
In the first half of the 11th century, Hai Gaon refers to questions
that had been addressed to him from Ashkenaz, by which he
undoubtedly means Germany. Rashi in the latter half of the 11th
century refers to both the language of Ashkenaz[105] and the
country of Ashkenaz.[106] During the 12th century, the word
appears quite frequently. In the Mahzor Vitry, the kingdom of
Ashkenaz is referred to chiefly in regard to the ritual of the
synagogue there, but occasionally also with regard to certain other
observances.[107]
In the literature of the 13th century, references to the land and the Jews from Worms (Germany)
language of Ashkenaz often occur. Examples include Solomon ben wearing the mandatory yellow
Aderet's Responsa (vol. i., No. 395); the Responsa of Asher ben badge.
Jehiel (pp. 4, 6); his Halakot (Berakot i. 12, ed. Wilna, p. 10); the
work of his son Jacob ben Asher, Tur Orach Chayim (chapter 59);
the Responsa of Isaac ben Sheshet (numbers 193, 268, 270).
In the Midrash compilation, Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Berechiah mentions Ashkenaz, Riphath, and
Togarmah as German tribes or as German lands. It may correspond to a Greek word that may have
existed in the Greek dialect of the Jews in Syria Palaestina, or the text is corrupted from "Germanica".
This view of Berechiah is based on the Talmud (Yoma 10a; Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 71b), where
Gomer, the father of Ashkenaz, is translated by Germamia, which evidently stands for Germany, and
which was suggested by the similarity of the sound.
In later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern and western Germany, the ritual of
which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany and Poland. Thus the prayer-book of
Isaiah Horowitz, and many others, give the piyyutim according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz and
Poland.
According to 16th-century mystic Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, Ashkenazi Jews lived in Jerusalem during
the 11th century. The story is told that a German-speaking Jew saved the life of a young German man
surnamed Dolberger. So when the knights of the First Crusade came to siege Jerusalem, one of
Dolberger's family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to
Worms to repay the favor.[108] Further evidence of German communities in the holy city comes in the
form of halakhic questions sent from Germany to Jerusalem during the second half of the 11th
century.[109]
Modern history
Material relating to the history of German Jews has been preserved in the communal accounts of
certain communities on the Rhine, a Memorbuch, and a Liebesbrief, documents that are now part of
the Sassoon Collection.[110] Heinrich Graetz has also added to the history of German Jewry in modern
times in the abstract of his seminal work, History of the Jews, which he entitled "Volksthümliche
Geschichte der Juden."
In an essay on Sephardi Jewry, Daniel Elazar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs[111]
summarized the demographic history of Ashkenazi Jews in the last thousand years. He notes that at
the end of the 11th century, 97% of world Jewry was Sephardic and 3% Ashkenazi; in the mid-17th
century, "Sephardim still outnumbered Ashkenazim three to two"; by the end of the 18th century,
"Ashkenazim outnumbered Sephardim three to two, the result of improved living conditions in
Christian Europe versus the Ottoman Muslim world."[111] By 1930, Arthur Ruppin estimated that
Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry.[31] These factors are sheer demography
showing the migration patterns of Jews from Southern and Western Europe to Central and Eastern
Europe.
In 1740, a family from Lithuania became the first Ashkenazi Jews to settle in the Jewish Quarter of
Jerusalem.[112]
In the generations after emigration from the west, Jewish communities in places like Poland, Russia,
and Belarus enjoyed a comparatively stable socio-political environment. A thriving publishing
industry and the printing of hundreds of biblical commentaries precipitated the development of the
Hasidic movement as well as major Jewish academic centers.[113] After two centuries of comparative
tolerance in the new nations, massive westward emigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries in
response to pogroms in the east and the economic opportunities offered in other parts of the world.
Ashkenazi Jews have made up the majority of the American Jewish community since 1750.[95]
In the context of the European Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation began in 18th century France
and spread throughout Western and Central Europe. Disabilities that had limited the rights of Jews
since the Middle Ages were abolished, including the requirements to wear distinctive clothing, pay
special taxes, and live in ghettos isolated from non-Jewish communities and the prohibitions on
certain professions. Laws were passed to integrate Jews into their host countries, forcing Ashkenazi
Jews to adopt family names (they had formerly used patronymics). Newfound inclusion into public
life led to cultural growth in the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, with its goal of integrating
modern European values into Jewish life.[114] As a reaction to increasing antisemitism and
assimilation following the emancipation, Zionism was developed in central Europe.[115] Other Jews,
particularly those in the Pale of Settlement, turned to socialism. These tendencies would be united in
Labor Zionism, the founding ideology of the State of Israel.
The Holocaust
Of the estimated 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II, the majority of
whom were Ashkenazi, about 6 million – more than two-thirds – were systematically murdered in the
Holocaust. These included 3 million of 3.3 million Polish Jews (91%); 900,000 of 1.5 million in
Ukraine (60%); and 50–90% of the Jews of other Slavic nations, Germany, Hungary, and the Baltic
states, and over 25% of the Jews in France. Sephardi communities suffered similar depletions in a few
countries, including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia.[116]
As the large majority of
the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage dropped from an estimate of 92% of world Jewry in
1930[31] to nearly 80% of world Jewry today. The Holocaust also effectively put an end to the dynamic
development of the Yiddish language in the previous decades, as the vast majority of the Jewish
victims of the Holocaust, around 5 million, were Yiddish speakers.[117] Many of the surviving
Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and the United
States after the war.
Following the Holocaust, some sources place Ashkenazim today as making up approximately 83–85
percent of Jews worldwide,[118][119][120][121] while Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of
Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi make up a notably lower figure, less than
74%.[35] Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.[36][122]
Israel
In Israel, the term Ashkenazi is now used in a manner unrelated to its original meaning, often applied
to all Jews who settled in Europe and sometimes including those whose ethnic background is actually
Sephardic. Jews of any non-Ashkenazi background, including Mizrahi, Yemenite, Kurdish and others
who have no connection with the Iberian Peninsula, have similarly come to be lumped together as
Sephardic. Jews of mixed background are increasingly common, partly because of intermarriage
between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi, and partly because many do not see such historic markers as
relevant to their life experiences as Jews.[123]
Religious Ashkenazi Jews living in Israel are obliged to follow the authority of the chief Ashkenazi
rabbi in halakhic matters. In this respect, a religiously Ashkenazi Jew is an Israeli who is more likely
to support certain religious interests in Israel, including certain political parties. These political
parties result from the fact that a portion of the Israeli electorate votes for Jewish religious parties;
although the electoral map changes from one election to another, there are generally several small
parties associated with the interests of religious Ashkenazi Jews. The role of religious parties,
including small religious parties that play important roles as coalition members, results in turn from
Israel's composition as a complex society in which competing social, economic, and religious interests
stand for election to the Knesset, a unicameral legislature with 120 seats.[124]
Ashkenazi Jews have played a prominent role in the economy, media, and politics[125] of Israel since
its founding. During the first decades of Israel as a state, strong cultural conflict occurred between
Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews (mainly east European Ashkenazim). The roots of this conflict, which
still exists to a much smaller extent in present-day Israeli society, are chiefly attributed to the concept
of the "melting pot".[126] That is to say, all Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were strongly
encouraged to "meltdown" their own particular exilic identities[127] within the general social "pot" in
order to become Israeli.[128]
Definition
By religion
Religious Jews have minhagim, customs, in addition to halakha, or religious law, and different
interpretations of the law. Different groups of religious Jews in different geographic areas historically
adopted different customs and interpretations. On certain issues, Orthodox Jews are required to
follow the customs of their ancestors and do not believe they have the option of picking and choosing.
For this reason, observant Jews at times find it important for religious reasons to ascertain who their
household's religious ancestors are in order to know what customs their household should follow.
These times include, for example, when two Jews of different ethnic background marry, when a non-
Jew converts to Judaism and determines what customs to follow for the first time, or when a lapsed or
less observant Jew returns to traditional Judaism and must determine what was done in his or her
family's past. In this sense, "Ashkenazic" refers both to a family ancestry and to a body of customs
binding on Jews of that ancestry. Reform Judaism, which does not necessarily follow those
minhagim, did nonetheless originate among Ashkenazi Jews.[129]
In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and ritual follow Ashkenazi
practice. Until the Ashkenazi community first began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers
of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad and in Islamic Spain. Ashkenaz
(Germany) was so distant geographically that it developed a minhag of its own. Ashkenazi Hebrew
came to be pronounced in ways distinct from other forms of Hebrew.[130]
In this respect, the counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic, since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews
follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they are ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a
Sephardic or Mizrahi woman who marries into an Orthodox or Haredi Ashkenazi Jewish family raises
her children to be Ashkenazi Jews; conversely an Ashkenazi woman who marries a Sephardi or
Mizrahi man is expected to take on Sephardic practice and the children inherit a Sephardic identity,
though in practice many families compromise. A convert generally follows the practice of the beth din
that converted him or her. With the integration of Jews from around the world in Israel, North
America, and other places, the religious definition of an Ashkenazi Jew is blurring, especially outside
Orthodox Judaism.[131]
New developments in Judaism often transcend differences in religious practice between Ashkenazi
and Sephardic Jews. In North American cities, social trends such as the chavurah movement, and the
emergence of "post-denominational Judaism"[132][133] often bring together younger Jews of diverse
ethnic backgrounds. In recent years, there has been increased interest in Kabbalah, which many
Ashkenazi Jews study outside of the Yeshiva framework. Another trend is the new popularity of
ecstatic worship in the Jewish Renewal movement and the Carlebach style minyan, both of which are
nominally of Ashkenazi origin.[134] Outside of Haredi communities, the traditional Ashkenazi
pronunciation of Hebrew has also drastically declined in favor of the Sephardi-based pronunciation of
Modern Hebrew.
By culture
Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means
"Jewishness" in the Yiddish language.[135] Yiddishkeit is specifically the Jewishness of Ashkenazi
Jews.[136] Before the Haskalah and the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of Torah
and Talmud for men, and a family and communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for
men and women. From the Rhineland to Riga to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi
Hebrew, and spoke Yiddish in their secular lives. But with modernization, Yiddishkeit now
encompasses not just Orthodoxy and Hasidism, but a broad range of movements, ideologies,
practices, and traditions in which Ashkenazi Jews have participated and somehow retained a sense of
Jewishness. Although a far smaller number of Jews still speak Yiddish, Yiddishkeit can be identified
in manners of speech, in styles of humor, in patterns of association. Broadly speaking, a Jew is one
who associates culturally with Jews, supports Jewish institutions, reads Jewish books and periodicals,
attends Jewish movies and theater, travels to Israel, visits historical synagogues, and so forth. It is a
definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular.
As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel, or immigration to
North America, and other English-speaking areas such as South Africa; and Europe (particularly
France) and Latin America, the geographic isolation that gave rise to Ashkenazim have given way to
mixing with other cultures, and with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in
distinct geographic locales. Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many
Ashkenazi Jews, although many Hasidic and Hareidi groups continue to use Yiddish in daily life.
(There are numerous Ashkenazi Jewish anglophones and Russian-speakers as well, although English
and Russian are not originally Jewish languages.)
France's blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that is going on among
Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle
Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were two distinct Jewish populations. One consisted
of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition and concentrated in the southwest, while
the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, and mainly speaking a
German dialect similar to Yiddish. (The third community of Provençal Jews living in Comtat
Venaissin were technically outside France, and were later absorbed into the Sephardim.) The two
communities were so separate and different that the National Assembly emancipated them separately
in 1790 and 1791.[137]
But after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was
wracked by the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe
arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian revolution, and the economic
turmoil of the Great Depression. By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, and many Jews
were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years and the Holocaust, the French
Jewish population was augmented once again, first by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, and
later by Sephardi immigrants and refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone.
Ashkenazi Jews did not record their traditions or achievements by text, instead these traditions were
passed down orally from one generation to the next.[138] The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust
traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern
Europe.[138] Reasoning for this could be related to the development of a new style of Jewish arts and
culture developed by the Jews of Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, which in conjunction with the
decimation of European Ashkenazi Jews and their culture by the Nazi regime made it easier to
assimilate to the new style of ritual rather than try to repair the older traditions.[139] This new style of
tradition was referred to as the Mediterranean Style, and was noted for its simplicity and
metaphorical rejuvenation of Jews abroad.[139] This was intended to replace the Galut traditions,
which were more sorrowful in practice.[139]
Then, in the 1990s, yet another Ashkenazi Jewish wave began to arrive from countries of the former
Soviet Union and Central Europe. The result is a pluralistic Jewish community that still has some
distinct elements of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic culture. But in France, it is becoming much more
difficult to sort out the two, and a distinctly French Jewishness has emerged.[140]
By ethnicity
In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews who settled in
Central Europe. For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated
population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration,
conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have argued
that genetic variations have been identified that show high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but
not in the general European population, be they for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes)
and for matrilineal markers (mitotypes).[141] Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi
Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of
region[142]
Customs, laws and traditions
The Halakhic practices of (Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jews may differ

from those of Sephardi Jews, particularly in matters of custom.
Differences are noted in the Shulkhan Arukh itself, in the gloss of
Moses Isserles. Well known differences in practice include:
Observance of Pesach (Passover): Ashkenazi Jews

traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, and rice The example of the chevra kadisha,
(quinoa, however, has become accepted as foodgrain in the
the Jewish burial society, Prague,
North American communities), whereas Sephardi Jews
1772
typically do not prohibit these foods.
Ashkenazi Jews freely mix and eat fish and milk products;
some Sephardic Jews refrain from doing so.
Ashkenazim are more permissive toward the usage of wigs as a hair covering for married and
widowed women.
In the case of kashrut for meat, conversely, Sephardi Jews have stricter requirements – this level
is commonly referred to as Beth Yosef. Meat products that are acceptable to Ashkenazi Jews as
kosher may therefore be rejected by Sephardi Jews. Notwithstanding stricter requirements for the
actual slaughter, Sephardi Jews permit the rear portions of an animal after proper Halakhic
removal of the sciatic nerve, while many Ashkenazi Jews do not. This is not because of different
interpretations of the law; rather, slaughterhouses could not find adequate skills for correct
removal of the sciatic nerve and found it more economical to separate the hindquarters and sell
them as non-kosher meat.
Ashkenazi Jews often name newborn children after deceased family members, but not after living
relatives. Sephardi Jews, in contrast, often name their children after the children's grandparents,
even if those grandparents are still living. A notable exception to this generally reliable rule is
among Dutch Jews, where Ashkenazim for centuries used the naming conventions otherwise
attributed exclusively to Sephardim such as Chuts.
Ashkenazi tefillin bear some differences from Sephardic tefillin. In the traditional Ashkenazic rite,
the tefillin are wound towards the body, not away from it. Ashkenazim traditionally don tefillin while
standing, whereas other Jews generally do so while sitting down.
Ashkenazic traditional pronunciations of Hebrew differ from those of other groups. The most
prominent consonantal difference from Sephardic and Mizrahic Hebrew dialects is the
pronunciation of the Hebrew letter tav in certain Hebrew words (historically, in postvocalic
undoubled context) as an /s/ and not a /t/ or /θ/ sound.
The prayer shawl, or tallit (or tallis in Ashkenazi Hebrew), is worn by the majority of Ashkenazi
men after marriage, but western European Ashkenazi men wear it from Bar Mitzvah. In Sephardi
or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.[143]
Ashkenazic liturgy
The term Ashkenazi also refers to the nusach Ashkenaz (Hebrew, "liturgical tradition", or rite) used
by Ashkenazi Jews in their Siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition's choice
of prayers, the order of prayers, the text of prayers, and melodies used in the singing of prayers. Two
other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazic Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the
Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, as used by Lubavitch
Hasidim.
Ashkenazi as a surname
Several famous people have Ashkenazi as a surname, such as Vladimir Ashkenazy. However, most
people with this surname hail from within Sephardic communities, particularly from the Syrian
Jewish community. The Sephardic carriers of the surname would have some Ashkenazi ancestors
since the surname was adopted by families who were initially of Ashkenazic origins who moved to
countries with Sephardi communities and joined those communities. Ashkenazi would be formally
adopted as the family surname having started off as a nickname imposed by their adopted
communities. Some have shortened the name to Ash.
Relations with Sephardim

Relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim have at times been tense and clouded by arrogance,
snobbery and claims of racial superiority with both sides claiming the inferiority of the other, based
upon such features as physical traits and culture.[144][145][146][147][148]
North African Sephardim and Berber Jews were often looked down upon by Ashkenazim as second-
class citizens during the first decade after the creation of Israel. This has led to protest movements
such as the Israeli Black Panthers led by Saadia Marciano, a Moroccan Jew. Nowadays, relations are
getting warmer.[149] In some instances, Ashkenazi communities have accepted significant numbers of
Sephardi newcomers, sometimes resulting in intermarriage and the possible merging between the two
communities.[150][151][152]
Notable Ashkenazim
Ashkenazi Jews have a notable history of achievement in Western societies[153] in the fields of natural
and social sciences, mathematics, literature, finance, politics, media, and others. In those societies
where they have been free to enter any profession, they have a record of high occupational
achievement, entering professions and fields of commerce where higher education is required.[154]
Ashkenazi Jews have won a large number of the Nobel awards.[155]
Time magazine's person of the 20th century, Albert Einstein,[156] was an Ashkenazi Jew. According to
a study performed by Cambridge University, 21% of Ivy League students, 25% of the Turing Award
winners, 23% of the wealthiest Americans, 38% of the Oscar-winning film directors, and 29% of Oslo
awardees are Ashkenazi Jews.[157]
The achievements of so many Ashkenazi Jews, and the fact that the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is a
half to one full standard deviation above the mean IQ of other white Europeans, have led some to the
view that Ashkenazi Jews have higher than average intelligence.[158][159][160]
Genetics
Genetic origins
Efforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. Currently,
there are three types of genetic origin testing, autosomal DNA (atDNA), mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA), and Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA). Autosomal DNA is a mixture from an individual's
entire ancestry, Y-DNA shows a male's lineage only along his strict paternal line, mtDNA shows any
person's lineage only along the strict maternal line. Genome-wide association studies have also been
employed to yield findings relevant to genetic origins.
Like most DNA studies of human migration patterns, the earliest studies on Ashkenazi Jews focused
on the Y-DNA and mtDNA segments of the human genome. Both segments are unaffected by
recombination (except for the ends of the Y chromosome – the pseudoautosomal regions known as
PAR1 and PAR2), thus allowing tracing of direct maternal and paternal lineages.
These studies revealed that Ashkenazi Jews originate from an ancient (2000–700 BCE) population of
the Middle East who had spread to Europe.[161] Ashkenazic Jews display the homogeneity of a genetic
bottleneck, meaning they descend from a larger population whose numbers were greatly reduced but
recovered through a few founding individuals. Although the Jewish people, in general, were present
across a wide geographical area as described, genetic research done by Gil Atzmon of the Longevity
Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine suggests "that Ashkenazim branched off from
other Jews around the time of the destruction of the First Temple, 2,500 years ago ... flourished
during the Roman Empire but then went through a 'severe bottleneck' as they dispersed, reducing a
population of several million to just 400 families who left Northern Italy around the year 1000 for
Central and eventually Eastern Europe."[162]
Various studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of the
non-Levantine admixture in Ashkenazim,[37] particularly with respect to the extent of the non-
Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the
predominant Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi paternal lineages. All studies
nevertheless agree that genetic overlap with the Fertile Crescent exists in both lineages, albeit at
differing rates. Collectively, Ashkenazi Jews are less genetically diverse than other Jewish ethnic
divisions, due to their genetic bottleneck.[163]
Male lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA
The majority of genetic findings to date concerning Ashkenazi Jews conclude that the male lines were
founded by ancestors from the Middle East.[164][165][166]
A study of haplotypes of the Y-chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of
Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al.[167] found that the Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews
contained mutations that are also common among other Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in
the autochthonous European population. This suggested that the male ancestors of the Ashkenazi
Jews could be traced mostly to the Middle East. The proportion of male genetic admixture in
Ashkenazi Jews amounts to less than 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with
"relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim," and a total
admixture estimate "very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%." This supported the finding
that "Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more
closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors." "Past research found that 50–80 percent of
DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the
Near East," Richards said. The population has subsequently spread out.
A 2001 study by Nebel et al. showed that both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish populations share the
same overall paternal Near Eastern ancestries. In comparison with data available from other relevant
populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the
Fertile Crescent. The authors also report on Eu 19 (R1a) chromosomes, which are very frequent in
Central and Eastern Europeans (54–60%) at elevated frequency (13%) in Ashkenazi Jews. They
hypothesized that the differences among Ashkenazim Jews could reflect low-level gene flow from
surrounding European populations or genetic drift during isolation.[168] A later 2005 study by Nebel
et al., found a similar level of 11.5% of male Ashkenazim belonging to R1a1a (M17+), the dominant Y-
chromosome haplogroup in Central and Eastern Europeans.[169] However, a 2017 study,

concentrating on the Ashkenazi Levites where the proportion reaches 50%, while signalling that
there's a "rich variation of haplogroup R1a outside of Europe which is phylogenetically separate from
the typically European R1a branches", precises that the particular R1a-Y2619 sub-clade testifies for a
local origin, and that the "Middle Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi Levite lineage based on what was
previously a relatively limited number of reported samples, can now be considered firmly
validated."[170]
Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA
Before 2006, geneticists had largely attributed the ethnogenesis of most of the world's Jewish
populations, including Ashkenazi Jews, to Israelite Jewish male migrants from the Middle East and
"the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism." Thus, in
2002, in line with this model of origin, David Goldstein, now of Duke University, reported that unlike
male Ashkenazi lineages, the female lineages in Ashkenazi Jewish communities "did not seem to be
Middle Eastern", and that each community had its own genetic pattern and even that "in some cases
the mitochondrial DNA was closely related to that of the host community." In his view, this suggested,
"that Jewish men had arrived from the Middle East, taken wives from the host population and
converted them to Judaism, after which there was no further intermarriage with non-Jews."[141]
In 2006, a study by Behar et al.,[38] based on what was at that time high-resolution analysis of
haplogroup K (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended
matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine
mtDNA pool" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Additionally, Behar et al.
suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from ~150 women, and that most of those
were also likely of Middle Eastern origin.[38] In reference specifically to Haplogroup K, they suggested
that although it is common throughout western Eurasia, "the observed global pattern of distribution
renders very unlikely the possibility that the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the
Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population".
In 2013, a study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by a team led by Martin B. Richards of the
University of Huddersfield in England reached different conclusions, in line with the pre-2006 origin
hypothesis. Testing was performed on the full 16,600 DNA units composing mitochondrial DNA (the
2006 Behar study had only tested 1,000 units) in all their subjects, and the study found that the four
main female Ashkenazi founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000
years in the past[171] while most of the remaining minor founders also have a deep European ancestry.
The study argued that the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the
Near East or the Caucasus, but instead assimilated within Europe, primarily of Italian and Old French
origins.[172] The Richards study estimated that more than 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry
comes from women indigenous to (mainly prehistoric Western) Europe, and only 8 percent from the
Near East, while the origin of the remainder is undetermined.[15][171] According to the study these
findings "point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi
communities."[15][16][173][174][175] Karl Skorecki criticized the study for perceived flaws in phylogenetic
analysis. "While Costa et al have re-opened the question of the maternal origins of Ashkenazi Jewry,
the phylogenetic analysis in the manuscript does not 'settle' the question."[176]
A 2014 study by Fernández et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in
their maternal DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of
the Behar study in 2006. Fernández noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the
2013 study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K
lineages.[39]
Association and linkage studies (autosomal dna)
In genetic epidemiology, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) is an examination

of all or most of the genes (the genome) of different individuals of a particular species to see how
much the genes vary from individual to individual. These techniques were originally designed for
epidemiological uses, to identify genetic associations with observable traits.[177]
A 2006 study by Seldin et al. used over five thousand autosomal SNPs to demonstrate European
genetic substructure. The results showed "a consistent and reproducible distinction between
'northern' and 'southern' European population groups". Most northern, central, and eastern
Europeans (Finns, Swedes, English, Irish, Germans, and Ukrainians) showed >90% in the "northern"
population group, while most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italians,
Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards) showed >85% in the "southern" group. Both Ashkenazi Jews as well
as Sephardic Jews showed >85% membership in the "southern" group. Referring to the Jews
clustering with southern Europeans, the authors state the results were "consistent with a later
Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups".[14]
A 2007 study by Bauchet et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews were most closely clustered with Arabic
North African populations when compared to Global population, and in the European structure
analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east
Mediterranean origins.[178][179]
A 2010 study on Jewish ancestry by Atzmon-Ostrer et al. stated "Two major groups were identified by
principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis: Middle Eastern Jews and
European/Syrian Jews. The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other
and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted
large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the
formation of Ashkenazi Jewry", as both groups – the Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews
– shared common ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago. The study examines genetic
markers spread across the entire genome and shows that the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi and non-
Ashkenazi) share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships and that each of the Jewish
groups in the study (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi) has its own genetic
signature but is more closely related to the other Jewish groups than to their fellow non-Jewish
countrymen.[180] Atzmon's team found that the SNP markers in genetic segments of 3 million DNA
letters or longer were 10 times more likely to be identical among Jews than non-Jews. Results of the
analysis also tally with biblical accounts of the fate of the Jews. The study also found that with respect
to non-Jewish European groups, the population most closely related to Ashkenazi Jews are modern-
day Italians. The study speculated that the genetic-similarity between Ashkenazi Jews and Italians
may be due to inter-marriage and conversions in the time of the Roman Empire. It was also found
that any two Ashkenazi Jewish participants in the study shared about as much DNA as fourth or fifth
cousins.[181][182]
A 2010 study by Bray et al., using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis found that when
assuming Druze and Palestinian Arab populations to represent the reference to world Jewry ancestor
genome, between 35 and 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome can possibly be of European
origin, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that
used the Y chromosome" with this reference point.[183] Assuming this reference point the linkage
disequilibrium in the Ashkenazi Jewish population was interpreted as "matches signs of interbreeding
or 'admixture' between Middle Eastern and European populations".[184] On the Bray et al. tree,
Ashkenazi Jews were found to be a genetically more divergent population than Russians, Orcadians,
French, Basques, Sardinians, Italians and Tuscans. The study also observed that Ashkenazim are
more diverse than their Middle Eastern relatives, which was counterintuitive because Ashkenazim are
supposed to be a subset, not a superset, of their assumed geographical source population. Bray et al.
therefore postulate that these results reflect not the population antiquity but a history of mixing
between genetically distinct populations in Europe. However, it is possible that the relaxation of
marriage prescription in the ancestors of Ashkenazim drove their heterozygosity up, while the
maintenance of the FBD rule in native Middle Easterners has been keeping their heterozygosity values
in check. Ashkenazim distinctiveness as found in the Bray et al. study, therefore, may come from their
ethnic endogamy (ethnic inbreeding), which allowed them to "mine" their ancestral gene pool in the
context of relative reproductive isolation from European neighbors, and not from clan endogamy
(clan inbreeding). Consequently, their higher diversity compared to Middle Easterners stems from the
latter's marriage practices, not necessarily from the former's admixture with Europeans.[185]
The genome-wide genetic study carried out in 2010 by Behar et al. examined the genetic relationships
among all major Jewish groups, including Ashkenazim, as well as the genetic relationship between
these Jewish groups and non-Jewish ethnic populations. The study found that contemporary Jews
(excluding Indian and Ethiopian Jews) have a close genetic relationship with people from the Levant.
The authors explained that "the most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common
genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending
from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant".[186]
A study by Behar et al. (2013) found evidence in Ashkenazim of mixed European and Levantine
origins. The authors found the greatest affinity and shared ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews to be firstly
with other Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa, and secondly with both
southern Europeans (such as Italians) and modern Levantines (such as the Druze, Cypriots, Lebanese
and Samaritans). In addition to finding no affinity in Ashkenazim with northern Caucasus
populations, the authors found no more affinity in Ashkenazi Jews to modern south Caucasus and
eastern Anatolian populations (such as Armenians, Azeris, Georgians, and Turks) than found in non-
Ashkenazi Jews or non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and
Lebanese).[187]
A 2017 autosomal study by Xue, Shai Carmi et al. found an approximately even mixture of Middle-
Eastern and European ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews: with the European component being largely
Southern European with a minority being Eastern European, and the Middle Eastern ancestry
showing the strongest affinity to Levantine populations such as the Druze and Lebanese.[40]
A 2018 study, referencing the popular theory of Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) origins in "an initial
settlement in Western Europe (Northern France and Germany), followed by migration to Poland and
an expansion there and in the rest of Eastern Europe", tested "whether Ashkenazi Jews with recent
origins in Eastern Europe are genetically distinct from Western European Ashkenazi". The study
concluded that that "Western AJ consist of two slightly distinct groups: one that descends from a
subset of the original founders [who remained in Western Europe], and another that migrated there
back from Eastern Europe, possibly after absorbing a limited degree of gene flow".[188]
The Khazar hypothesis
In the late 19th century, it was proposed that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jewry are genetically
descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward from modern
Russia and Ukraine into modern France and Germany (as opposed to the currently held theory that
Jews migrated from France and Germany into Eastern Europe). The hypothesis is not corroborated
by historical sources,[189] and is unsubstantiated by genetics, but it is still occasionally supported by
scholars who have had some success in keeping the theory in the academic consciousness.[190]
The theory has sometimes been used by Jewish authors such as Arthur Koestler as part of an
argument against traditional forms of antisemitism (for example the claim that "the Jews killed
Christ"), just as similar arguments have been advanced on behalf of the Crimean Karaites. Today,
however, the theory is more often associated with antisemitism[191] and anti-Zionism.[192][193]
A 2013 trans-genome study carried out by 30 geneticists, from 13 universities and academies, from
nine countries, assembling the largest data set available to date, for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish
genetic origins found no evidence of Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews. The authors concluded:
Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the
Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their
ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess
considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no
indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the
Caucasus region.
The authors found no affinity in Ashkenazim with north Caucasus populations, as well as no greater
affinity in Ashkenazim to south Caucasus or Anatolian populations than that found in non-Ashkenazi
Jews and non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and Lebanese). The
greatest affinity and shared ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews were found to be (after those with other
Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa) with both southern Europeans and
Levantines such as Druze, Cypriot, Lebanese and Samaritan groups.[187]
Medical genetics
There are many references to Ashkenazi Jews in the literature of medical and population genetics.
Indeed, much awareness of "Ashkenazi Jews" as an ethnic group or category stems from the large
number of genetic studies of disease, including many that are well reported in the media, that have
been conducted among Jews. Jewish populations have been studied more thoroughly than most other
human populations, for a variety of reasons:
Jewish populations, and particularly the large Ashkenazi Jewish population, are ideal for such
research studies, because they exhibit a high degree of endogamy, yet they are sizable.[194]
Jewish communities are comparatively well informed about genetics research, and have been
supportive of community efforts to study and prevent genetic diseases.[194]
The result is a form of ascertainment bias. This has sometimes created an impression that Jews are
more susceptible to genetic disease than other populations.[194] Healthcare professionals are often
taught to consider those of Ashkenazi descent to be at increased risk for colon cancer.[195]
Genetic counseling and genetic testing are often undertaken by couples where both partners are of
Ashkenazi ancestry. Some organizations, most notably Dor Yeshorim, organize screening programs to
prevent homozygosity for the genes that cause related diseases.[196][197]
See also
Jewish ethnic divisions
List of Israeli Ashkenazi Jews
Explanatory notes
a. /ˌɑːʃkəˈnɑːzɪm, ˌæʃ-/ AHSH-kə-NAH-zim, ASH-;[18] Hebrew: ‫ַא ְׁש ְּכ ַנִּז ים‬, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation:
[ˌaʃkəˈnazim], singular: [ˌaʃkəˈnazi], Modern Hebrew: [(ʔ)aʃkenaˈzim, (ʔ)aʃkenaˈzi][19]
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ancient Gauls (the people of Gallia, meaning, mainly the people from modern France, Belgium,
and the Alpine region) and the ancient Franks (of, both, France, and Germany). According to
Gedaliah ibn Jechia the Spaniard, in the name of Sefer Yuchasin (see: Gedaliah ibn Jechia,
Shalshelet Ha-Kabbalah (https://www.hebrewbooks.org/6618), Jerusalem 1962, p. 219; p. 228 in
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which include such peoples as Goths, whether Ostrogoths or Visigoths, Vandals and Franks,
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... be considered as sure, though it is more probable than an identification with Magog." Nadav
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dislocation, ... cannot have accounted for more than a fraction of the diaspora ... The vast bulk of
Jews who dwelled abroad in the Second Temple Period did so voluntarily." (2)"Diaspora did not
await the fall of Jerusalem to Roman power and destructiveness. The scattering of Jews had
begun long before—occasionally through forced expulsion, much more frequently through
voluntary migration."
63. Cecil Roth (1966). Cecil Roth; I. H. Levine (eds.). The World History of the Jewish People: The
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03. "Was the great Eastern European Jewry of the 19th century preponderantly descended (as is
normally believed) from immigrants from the Germanic lands further west who arrived as refugees
in the later Middle Ages, bearing with them their culture? Or did these new immigrants find
already on their arrival a numerically strong Jewish life, on whom they were able to impose their
superior culture, including even their tongue (a phenomenon not unknown at other times and
places – as for example in, the 16th century, after the arrival of the highly cultured Spanish exiles
in the Turkish Empire)?) Does the line of descent of Ashkenazi Jewry of today go back to a quasi-
autochthonous Jewry already established in these lands, perhaps even earlier than the time of the
earliest Franco-German settlement in the Dark Ages? This is one of the mysteries of Jewish
history, which will probably never been solved."
64. Bernard Dov Weinryb (1972). The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish
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67. David Sacks, A Dictionary of the Ancient Greek World, p. 126
68. Dan Urman, Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, eds. Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and
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medcentral.com/1471-2156/9/14)
Nusach Ashkenaz, and Discussion Forum (http://www.kayj.org/)
Ashkenaz Heritage (http://www.moreshesashkenaz.org/)
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5/3/22, 3:48 PM Ashkenazi Jews - Wikipedia

It is estimated that in the 11th century, Ashkenazim comprised 3 Sweden 18,000

In the 10th-century History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1.15), Ashkenaz was

Jewish settlement of Europe in antiquity

Sporadic[70] epigraphic evidence in gravesite excavations, particularly in Brigetio (Szőny), Aquincum

High and Late Middle Ages migrations

By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland

The answer to why there was so little assimilation of Jews in

Customs, laws and traditions

The Halakhic practices of (Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jews may differ

Observance of Pesach (Passover): Ashkenazi Jews

Relations with Sephardim

Male lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA

chromosome haplogroup in Central and Eastern Europeans.[169] However, a 2017 study,

Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA

Association and linkage studies (autosomal dna)

In genetic epidemiology, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) is an examination

The Khazar hypothesis

19. Ashkenaz, based on Josephus. AJ (https://pace.webhosting.rug.nl/york/york/showText?book=1&c

69. "Hellenism" (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hellenism.html).

106. Talmud, Hullin 93a

127. Nitza Ben-Ari, "The Melting Pot Policy" (https://kotar.cet.ac.il/KotarApp/Index/Chapter.aspx?nBook

References for "Who is an Ashkenazi Jew?"

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ashkenazi_Jews&oldid=1085756915"

This page was last edited on 2 May 2022, at 07:50 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0;

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