WikiVidi.com
Ashkenazi Jews
 [^]  Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or simply Ashkenazim,
are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced as a distinct community in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium.
The traditional diaspora language of Ashkenazi Jews is Yiddish, with Hebrew used only as a sacred language until relatively recently.
Throughout their time in Europe, Ashkenazim have made many important contributions to philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music and science.
Ashkenazim originate from the Jews who settled along the Rhine River, in Western Germany and in Northern France.
There they became a distinct diaspora community with a unique way of life that adapted traditions from Babylon, The Land of Israel,
and the Western Mediterranean to their new environment. The Ashkenazi religious rite developed in cities such as Mainz, Worms, and Troyes.
The eminent French Rishon Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki would have a significant impact on the Jewish religion. In the late Middle Ages,
the majority of the Ashkenazi population shifted steadily eastward,
moving out of the Holy Roman Empire into the areas later comprised in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the course of the late 18th
and 19th centuries, those Jews who remained in or returned to the German lands experienced a cultural reorientation;
under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation, as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centers,
they gradually abandoned the use of Yiddish, while developing new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.
The genocidal impact of the Holocaust devastated the Ashkenazim and their culture, affecting almost every Jewish family.
It is estimated that in the 11th century Ashkenazi Jews composed only three percent of the world's total Jewish population,
while an estimate made in 1930 had them as 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. Statistical figures vary for the contemporary demography of Ashkenazi Jews, ranging from 10 million to 11.2 million.
Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi Jews make up less than 74% of Jews worldwide.
Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide. Genetic studies on Ashkenazim researching both their paternal
and maternal lineages suggest a significant proportion of Middle Eastern and European ancestry. Those studies have arrived
at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of their European ancestry,
and have generally focused on the extent of the European genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages.
Ashkenazi Jews are popularly contrasted with Sephardi Jews, who descend from Jews who settled in the Iberian Peninsula, and Mizrahi Jews,
who descend from Jews who remained in the Middle East. There are some differences in how the groups pronounce certain Hebrew letters,
and in points of ritual.
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. The name of Gomer has often been linked to the ethnonym Cimmerians.
Biblical Ashkenaz is usually derived from Assyrian Aškūza, a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates,
whose name is usually associated with the name of the Scythians. The intrusive n in the Biblical name is likely due
to a scribal error confusing a waw ו with a nun נ. 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.
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.
In the 10th-century History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia, as it was occasionally in Jewish usage,
where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Crimea and areas to the east. His contemporary Saadia Gaon identified Ashkenaz
with the Saquliba or Slavic territories, and such usage covered also the lands of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe.
In modern times, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical "Ashkenaz" with Khazaria. Sometime in the early medieval period, the Jews of central
and eastern Europe came to be called by this term. Conforming to the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names,
Spain was denominated Sefarad, France was called Tsarefat, and Bohemia was called the Land of Canaan. By the high medieval period,
Talmudic commentators like Rashi began to use Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz to designate Germany, earlier known as Loter, where,
especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most important Jewish communities arose. Rashi uses leshon Ashkenaz
to describe German speech, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim.
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.
History of Jews in Europe before the Ashkenazim
Outside of their origins in ancient Israel, the history of Ashkenazim is shrouded in mystery,
and many theories have arisen speculating on their emergence as a distinct community of Jews.
The best supported theory is the one that details a Jewish migration from Israel through what is now Italy and other parts of southern Europe.
The historical record attests to Jewish communities in southern Europe since pre-Christian times.
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",
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. 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 Christian basilica. Hellenistic Judaism thrived in Antioch and Alexandria,
many of these Greek-speaking Jews would convert to Christianity. Sporadic epigraphic evidence in grave site excavations, particularly in Brigetio,
Aquincum, Intercisa, Triccinae, Savaria, Sopianae in Hungary, and Mursa  in Croatia, attest to the presence of Jews after the 2nd
and 3rd centuries where Roman garrisons were established, 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 C.E. 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.
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. 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.
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. A substantial Jewish population emerged in northern Gaul
by the Middle Ages, but Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orleans. Throughout this period
and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to Christianity.
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. 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.
Yiddish emerged as a result of Judeo-Latin language contact with various High German vernaculars in the medieval period.
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.
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 century.
By the 11th century Jewish settlers, moving from southern European and Middle Eastern centers, 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. 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. 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. 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, along with Troyes and Sens in France.
Nonetheless Jewish life in Germany persisted, while some Ashkenazi Jews joined Sephardic Jewry in Spain. Expulsions from England, France,
and parts of Germany, gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewry eastward, to Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. 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 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. This area,
which eventually fell under the domination of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, 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 contempt did not prevent some assimilation. Furthermore, Jews lived almost exclusively in shtetls, maintained a strong system of education
for males, heeded rabbinic leadership, and scorned the lifestyle of their neighbors; and all of these tendencies increased
with every outbreak of antisemitism.
WikiVidi.com
[ Visit WikiVidi.com or browse the channel ]
