Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on July 18, 2015

Ashkenazi Jews ( Y'hudey Ashkenaz in Ashkenazi Hebrew) Total population 10[1]11.2[2] million Regions with significant populations United States 56 million[3] Israel 2.8 million[1][4] Russia 194,000500,000 Argentina 300,000 United Kingdom ~ 260,000 Canada ~ 240,000 France 200,000 Germany 200,000 Ukraine 150,000 Australia 120,000 South Africa 80,000 Belarus 80,000 Hungary 75,000 Chile 70,000 Belgium 30,000 Brazil 30,000 Netherlands 30,000 Moldova 30,000 Poland 25,000 Mexico 18,500 Sweden 18,000 Latvia 10,000 Romania 10,000 Austria 9,000 New Zealand 5,000 Azerbaijan 4,300 Lithuania 4,000 Czech Republic 3,000 Slovakia 3,000 Estonia 1,000 Languages Historical: Yiddish Modern: Local languages, primarily: English, Hebrew, Russian Religion Judaism, some secular, irreligious Related ethnic groups Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions, Samaritans,[5]Assyrians,[5][6]Kurds,[7]Arabs, other Levantines,[5][6][8][9]Italians, Iberians and Greeks[10][11][12][13][14]

Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or simply Ashkenazim (Hebrew: , Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: [aknazim], singular: [aknazi], Modern Hebrew: [akenazim, akenazi]; also Y'hudey Ashkenaz, lit. "The Jews of Germany"),[15] are a Jewish ethnic division whose ethnogenesis and emergence as a distinct community of Jews coalesced in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the 1st millennium.[16] The traditional language of Ashkenazi Jews consisted of various dialects of Yiddish.

They established communities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, which had been their primary region of concentration and residence until recent times, evolving their own distinctive characteristics and diasporic identities.[17] Once emancipated, weaving Jewish creativity into the texture of European life (Hannah Arendt),[18] the Ashkenazi made a "quite disproportionate and remarkable contribution to humanity" (Eric Hobsbawm[19]), and to European culture in all fields of endeavour: philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music and science.[20][21] The genocidal impact of the Holocaust, the mass murder of approximately 6 million Jews during World War II devastated the Ashkenazi and their Yiddish culture, affecting almost every Jewish family.[22][23]

It is estimated that in the 11th century Ashkenazi Jews composed only three percent of the world's Jewish population, while at their peak in 1931 they accounted for 92 percent of the world's Jews. Immediately prior to the Holocaust, the number of Jews in the world stood at approximately 16.7 million.[24] Statistical figures vary for the contemporary demography of Ashkenazi Jews, oscillating between 10 million[1] and 11.2 million.[2]Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi make up less than 74% of Jews worldwide.[25] Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.[26]

Genetic studies on Ashkenazim have been conducted to determine how much of their ancestry comes from the Levant, and how much derives from European populations. These studiesresearching both their paternal and maternal lineagespoint to a significant prevalence of ancient Levantine origins. But they have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of their European ancestry.[27] These diverging conclusions focus particularly on the extent of the European genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages.

The name Ashkenazi derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, son of Khaphet, 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 Akza (cuneiform Akuzai/Ikuzai), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates,[28] whose name is usually associated with the name of the Scythians.[29][30] The intrusive n in the Biblical name is likely due to a scribal error confusing a waw with a nun .[29][30][31]

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.[31][32]

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.[33] In the 10th-century History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1.15) Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia,[28] as it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Crimea and areas to the east.[34] His contemporary Saadia Gaon identified Ashkenaz with the Saquliba or Slavic territories,[35] and such usage covered also the lands of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe.[34] In modern times, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical "Ashkenaz" with Khazaria.[35]

Sometime in the early medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by this term.[31] In conformity with 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.[36] By the high medieval period, Talmudic commentators like Rashi began to use Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz to designate Germany, earlier known as Loter,[31][33] where, especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most important Jewish communities arose.[37] Rashi uses leshon Ashkenaz (Ashkenazi language) to describe German speech, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim.[33] 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.[38]

The origins of the Ashkenazim are obscure,[39] and many theories have arisen speculating about their ultimate provenance.[40] The most well supported theory is the one that details a Jewish migration through what is now Italy and other parts of southern Europe.[41] The historical record attests to Jewish communities in southern Europe since pre-Christian times.[42] Many Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until 212 CE, when Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege. 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.

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