The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish
admin | September 18, 2023
Background The geographical origin of the Biblical Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews (AJs), and Yiddish, are among the longest standing questions in history, genetics, and linguistics. Uncertainties concerning the meaning of Ashkenaz arose in the Eleventh century when the term shifted from a designation of the Iranian Scythians to become that of Slavs and Germans and finally of German (Ashkenazic) Jews in the Eleventh to Thirteenth centuries (Wexler, 1993). The first known discussion of the origin of German Jews and Yiddish surfaced in the writings of the Hebrew grammarian Elia Baxur in the first half of the Sixteenth century (Wexler, 1993)