Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on January 12, 2017

Ashkenaz is a term found in a number of contexts. It is found in the Hebrew Bible to refer to one of the descendants of Noah as well as to a reference to a kingdom of Ashkenaz. Ashkenaz is the first son of Gomer, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations.

His name is likely a derivation from the Assyrian Akza (Akuzai, Ikuzai), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates,[1] The Assyrian name is likely based on that of the Scythians. The intrusive n in the Hebrew form of the name has been explained as a scribal mistake confusing a waw with a nun (i.e. writing aknz for akz ).[2][3][4]

The association of the term by medieval Jewry with the geographical area centered on the Rhineland led to the Jewish culture that developed in that area to be called Ashkenazi, the only form that the term is still used today.

In the genealogies of the Hebrew Bible, Ashkenaz (Hebrew: Aknaz) was a descendant of Noah. He was the first son of Gomer and brother of Riphath and Togarmah (Genesis 10:3, 1 Chronicles 1:6), with Gomer being the grandson of Noah through Japheth.

According to Jeremiah 51:27, a kingdom of Ashkenaz was called together with Ararat and Minni against Babylon, which reads:

According to the Encyclopaedia Biblica, "Ashkenaz must have been one of the migratory peoples which in the time of Esar-haddon, burst upon the northern provinces of Asia Minor, and upon Armenia. One branch of this great migration appears to have reached Lake Urumiyeh; for in the revolt which Esar-haddon chastised, the Mannai, who lived to the SW of that lake, sought the help of Ispakai 'of the land of Asguza,' a name (originally perhaps Asgunza) which the skepticism of Dillmann need not hinder us from identifying with Ashkenaz, and from considering as that of a horde from the north, of Indo-Germanic origin, which settled on the south of Lake Urumiyeh."

In rabbinic literature, the kingdom of Ashkenaz was first associated with the Scythian region, then later with the Slavic territories,[5] and, from the 11th century onwards, with northern Europe and Germany.[6] The region of Ashkenaz was centred on the Rhineland and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer), in what is now the westernmost part of Germany. Its geographic extent did not coincide with the German Christian principalities of the time, and it included northern France.

How the name of Ashkenaz came to be associated in the rabbinic literature with the Rhineland is a subject of speculation.[6]

In rabbinic literature from the 11th century, Ashkenaz was considered the ruler of a kingdom in the North and of the Northern and Germanic people.[citation needed] (See below.)

Geneticist Eran Elhaik, a proponent of the minoritarian Khazar hypothesis, believes Ashkenazi Jews to originate from north-east Turkey. According to him, four village names in that region are derived from the word "Ashkenaz": Iskenz (or Eskenaz), Eskenez (or Eskens), Ashanas, and Ashchuz.[7][not in citation given]

Sometime in the early medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by the name Ashkenazim,[4] in conformity with the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain being identified as Sefarad (Obadiah 20), France as Tsarefat (1 Kings 17:9), and Bohemia as Land of Canaan.[8] By the high medieval period, Talmudic commentators like Rashi began to use Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz to designate Germany, earlier known as Loter,[4][9] where, especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most important Jewish communities arose.[10] Rashi uses leshon Ashkenaz (Ashkenazi language) to describe the German language, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim.[9] Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to both the Jews of medieval Germany and France.[11] Ashkenazi Jewish culture later spread into Eastern Europe and then to all parts of the world with the migrations of Ashkenazi Jews.

In Armenian tradition, Ashkenaz, along with Togarmah, was considered among the ancestors of the Armenians. Koriun, the earliest Armenian historian, calls the Armenians an "Askanazian (ie., Ashkenazi) nation". He starts the "Life of Mashtots" with these words:

Later Armenian authors concur with this. Hovhannes Draskhanakerttsi (10th century) writes:

Because of this tradition, Askanaz is a male given name still used today by Armenians.

In 1498, a monk named Annio da Viterbo published fragments known as "Pseudo-Berossus", now considered a forgery, claiming that Babylonian records had shown that Noah had more than the three sons listed in the Bible. Specifically, Tuiscon or Tuisto is given as the fourth son of Noah, who had been the first ruler of Scythia and Germany following the dispersion of peoples, with him being succeeded by his son Mannus as the second king.

Later historians (e.g. Johannes Aventinus and Johann Hbner) managed to furnish numerous further details, including the assertion by James Anderson in the early 18th century that this Tuiscon was in fact none other than the biblical Ashkenaz, son of Gomer.[14] James Anderson's 1732 tome Royal genealogies reports a significant number of antiquarian or mythographic traditions regarding Askenaz as the first king of ancient Germany, for example the following entry:

In the 19th century, German theologian, August Wilhelm Knobel, again equated Ashkenaz with the Germans deriving the name of the Aesir from Ashkenaz.[15]

Read more from the original source:
Ashkenaz - Wikipedia

Category: Ashkenazi
Tags: