Now when u know that freemasonry has been juwish controlled for some time now, and u know about the freemasonic protocols of ZION agenda... 2 and 2 is equal to: FREEMASONRY IS A SYSTEM USED BY SOME RICH FEW PEOPLE TO CONTROLL THE WORLD THRU THE FOCUS UPON A GROUP OF PEOPLE KNOWN AS JUWS..AKA EUROPEANZ GONE DESERT DWELLERS. NOW REALLY WHO R THESE ASHKENAZI JUWZ??
CHECK:
Ashkenazi Jews - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[h=1]Ashkenazi Jews[/h] From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other meanings see Ashkenaz (disambiguation).
[TABLE="class: infobox, width: 22"]
Ashkenazi Jews
(יהודי אשכנז
Y'hude Ashk'naz in
Biblical Hebrew;
Y'hudey Ashknoz in
Ashkenazi Hebrew) [TR]
[TD]
Moses Isserles
Vilna Gaon
Heinrich Heine
Sigmund Freud
Theodor Herzl
Gustav Mahler
Albert Einstein
Emmy Noether
Lise Meitner
Franz Kafka
Golda Meir
George Gershwin
John von Neumann
Leonard Bernstein
Anne Frank
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="bgcolor: #b0c4de"]Total population[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]8[SUP]
[1][/SUP]11.2[SUP]
[2][/SUP] million[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="bgcolor: #b0c4de"]Regions with significant populations[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD] [TABLE="width: 100%, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]
United States[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]56 million[SUP]
[3][/SUP][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
Israel[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]2.84 million[SUP]
[3][/SUP][SUP]
[4][/SUP][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="bgcolor: #b0c4de"]Languages[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
Historical: Yiddish
Modern: Local languages, primarily:
English,
Hebrew,
Russian
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="bgcolor: #b0c4de"]Religion[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD] primarily
Judaism
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH="bgcolor: #b0c4de"]Related ethnic groups[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]
Sephardi Jews,
Mizrahi Jews, and other
Jewish ethnic divisions.
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The Jews in
Central Europe (1881)
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as
Ashkenazic Jews or
Ashkenazim (
Hebrew:
אַשְׁכְּנַזִּים‎‎, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation:
[ˌaʃkəˈnazim], singular:
[ˌaʃkəˈnazi], Modern Hebrew:
[aʃkenaˈzim],
[aʃkenaˈzi]; also
יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכֲּנַז Y'hudey Ashkenaz, "The Jews of Ashkenaz"), are the
Jews descended from the
medieval Jewish communities along the
Rhine in Germany from
Alsace in the south to the
Rhineland in the north.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
The name
Ashkenazi derives from the biblical figure of
Ashkenaz, the first son of
Gomer, and a
Japhetic patriarch in the
Table of Nations (
Genesis 10). In the rabbinic literature, the kingdom of Ashkenaz was first associated with the
Scythian region, then later with the
Slavic territories,[SUP]
[5][/SUP] and, from the 11th century onwards, with northern Europe and Germany.[SUP]
[6][/SUP] The Jews living in these regions associated with Ashkenaz's kingdom thus came to call themselves the
Ashkenazi.[SUP]
[6][/SUP] Later, Jews from
Western and
Central Europe also came to be called Ashkenazi because the main centers of Jewish learning were located in Germany.
Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including
Bohemia,
Hungary,
Poland,
Belarus,
Lithuania,
Russia,
Ukraine,
Romania, and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. With them, they took and
diversified Yiddish, a
High German language written using the
Hebrew alphabet. It had developed in medieval times as the
lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews. The Jewish communities of three cities along the Rhine:
Speyer,
Worms and
Mainz, created the SHUM league (SHUM after the first Hebrew letters of Shpira, Vermayza, and Magentza). The
ShUM-cities are considered the cradle of the distinct Ashkenazi culture and
liturgy.
Although in the 11th century, they composed only three percent of the world's
Jewish population, at their peak in 1931, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for 92 percent of the world's Jews. Today they make up approximately 80 percent of Jews worldwide.[SUP]
[7][/SUP] Most Jewish communities with extended histories in Europe are Ashkenazim, with the exception of those associated with the
Mediterranean region. The majority of the Jews who migrated from Europe to other continents in the past two centuries are Ashkenazim,
Eastern Ashkenazim in particular.
[TABLE="class: toc"]
[TR]
[TD] [h=2]Contents[/h]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[h=2]Definition[/h] The
exact definition of Jewishness is not universally agreed uponneither by religious scholars (especially across different
denominations); nor in the context of politics (as applied to those who wish to make
Aliyah); nor even in the conventional, everyday sense where "Jewishness" may be loosely understood by the casual observer as encompassing both religious and
secular Jews, or religious Jews alone. This makes it especially difficult to define who is an Ashkenazi Jew. The people have been defined differently from religious, cultural, or ethnic perspectives.
Since the overwhelming majority of Ashkenazi Jews no longer live in Eastern Europe, the isolation that once favored a distinct religious tradition and culture has vanished. Furthermore, the word
Ashkenazi is being used in non-traditional ways, especially in
Israel. By conservative and orthodox philosophies, a person can be considered a Jew only if his or her mother was Jewish (meaning, more specifically, either matrilineal descent from a female believed to be present at Mt. Sinai when the ten commandments were given, or else descent from a female who was converted to Judaism before the birth of her children), or if he or she has personally converted to Judaism. This means that a person can be Ashkenazi but not considered a Jew by some of those within the Jewish communities, making the term "Ashkenazi" more applicable as broad ethnicity which evolved from the practice of Judaism in Europe.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
[h=3]By religion[/h] Religious Jews have
Minhagim, customs, in addition to
Halakha, or religious law, and different interpretations of 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.
In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and ritual follows 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.
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. Many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have joined liberal movements that originally developed within Ashkenazi Judaism. In recent decades, the congregations which they have joined have often embraced them, and absorbed new traditions into their
minhag.
Rabbis and
cantors in most non-Orthodox movements study
Hebrew in
Israel, where they learn Sephardic rather than Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation. Ashkenazi congregations are adopting Sephardic or modern Israeli melodies for many prayers and traditional songs. Since the middle of the 20th century, there has been a gradual
syncretism and fusion of traditions. This is affecting the
minhag of all but the most traditional congregations.
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"[SUP]
[8][/SUP][SUP]
[9][/SUP] 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.[SUP]
[10][/SUP]
[h=3]By culture[/h] Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of
Yiddishkeit, which means "Jewishness" in the
Yiddish language.
Yiddishkeit is specifically the Jewishness of Ashkenazi Jews.
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 ancient synagogues in
Prague, and so forth. It is a definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular.
Contemporary population migrations have contributed to a reconfigured Jewishness among Jews of Ashkenazi descent that transcends Yiddishkeit and other traditional articulations of Ashkenazi Jewishness. As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Eastern Europe, settling mostly in Israel, North America, and other English-speaking areas, the geographic isolation that gave rise to Ashkenazim has given way to mixing with other cultures, and with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales. For Ashkenazi Jews living in Eastern Europe, chopped liver and
gefilte fish were archetypal Jewish foods. To contemporary Ashkenazi Jews living both in
Israel and in the
diaspora, Middle Eastern foods such as
hummus and
falafel, neither traditional to the historic Ashkenazi experience, have become central to their lives as Ashkenazi Jews in the current era.
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.
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 speaking mainly Yiddish. The two communities were so separate and different that the
National Assembly emancipated them separately in 1791.
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 eastern 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 radical political movements. After the
Vichy years and the
Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, first by Ashkenazi refugees from Eastern Europe, and later by Sephardi immigrants and refugees from North Africa, many of them
francophone.
Then, in the 1990s, yet another Ashkenazi Jewish wave began to arrive from countries of the former
Soviet Union and Eastern 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.[SUP]
[11][/SUP]
[h=3]By ethnicity[/h] In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews of Central and Eastern 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 identified genetic variations that have high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population. This is true for patrilineal markers (
Y-chromosome haplotypes) as well as for matrilineal markers (
mitotypes).[SUP]
[12][/SUP]
Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of other nations and faiths, while some Jews have also adopted children from other ethnic groups or parts of the world and raised them as Jews. Conversion to Judaism, rare for nearly 2,000 years, has become more common.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
A 2006 study found Ashkenazi Jews to be a clear, homogeneous genetic subgroup. Strikingly, regardless of the place of origin, Ashkenazi Jews can be grouped in the same genetic cohort that is, regardless of whether an Ashkenazi Jew's ancestors came from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Lithuania, or any other place with a historical Jewish population, they belong to the same ethnic group. The research demonstrates the endogamy of the Jewish population in Europe and lends further credence to the idea of Ashkenazi Jews as an ethnic group. Moreover, though intermarriage among Jews of Ashkenazi descent has become increasingly more common, many Haredi Jews, particularly members of Hasidic or Hareidi sects, continue to marry exclusively fellow Ashkenazi Jews. This trend keeps Ashkenazi genes prevalent and also helps researchers further study the genes of Ashkenazi Jews with relative ease. It is noteworthy that these Haredi Jews often have extremely large families.[SUP]
[13][/SUP]
[h=3]Realignment in Israel[/h] In Israel, the term
Ashkenazi is now used in ways that have nothing to do with its original meaning; it is often applied to all Jews of European background living in Israel, including sometimes for 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.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
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 which 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.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
[h=2]History[/h] [h=3]History of Jews in Europe before the Ashkenazim[/h] Although the
historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.[SUP]
[14][/SUP] Jews have lived in Germany, or "Ashkenaz", at least since the early 4th century.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP] They brought with them both
Rabbinic Judaism and the Babylonian Talmudic culture that underlies it.
Yiddish, once spoken by the vast majority of Ashkenazi Jewry, is a
Germanic language that developed from the
Middle High German vernacular, written with Hebrew characters, and heavily influenced by
Hebrew and
Aramaic.
After the Roman empire had overpowered the Jewish resistance in the
First JewishRoman War in
Judea and destroyed the Jewish
Temple in
Jerusalem in 70 CE, the complete Roman takeover of Judea followed the
Bar Kochba rebellion of 132135 CE. Though their numbers were greatly reduced, Jews continued to populate large parts of Judaea province (renamed to Palaestina), remaining a majority in Galilee for several hundred years. However, the Romans no longer recognized the authority of the
Sanhedrin or any other Jewish body, and Jews were prohibited from living in Jerusalem. Outside the Roman Empire, a large Jewish community remained in
Mesopotamia. Other Jewish populations could be found dispersed around the Mediterranean region, with the largest concentrations in the
Levant,
Egypt,
Asia Minor,
Greece, and
Italy, including
Rome. Smaller communities are recorded in southern
Gaul (France), Spain, and
North Africa.[SUP]
[15][/SUP]
Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until 212 CE, when Emperor
Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege. But, as a penalty for the
first Jewish Revolt, 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, and brutally persecuted.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
In Syria-Palaestina and Mesopotamia, where Jewish religious scholarship was centered, the majority of Jews were still engaged in farming, as demonstrated by the preoccupation of early Talmudic writings with agriculture. In
diaspora communities, trade was a common occupation, facilitated by the easy mobility of traders through the dispersed Jewish communities.
Throughout this period and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to
Christianity.[SUP]
[16][/SUP] In Syria-Palaestina and Mesopotamia, the spoken language of Jews continued to be
Aramaic, but elsewhere in the diaspora, most Jews spoke Greek. Conversion and assimilation were especially common within the Hellenized or Greek-speaking Jewish communities, amongst whom the
Septuagint and
Aquila of Sinope (Greek translations and adaptations of the
Tanakh or Hebrew Bible) were the source of scripture. A remnant of this Greek-speaking Jewish population (the
Romaniotes) survives to this day.
In the late Roman Empire, Jews are known to have lived in
Cologne and
Trier, as well as in what is now France. However, it is unclear whether there is any continuity between these late Roman communities and the distinct Ashkenazi Jewish culture that began to emerge about 500 years later. King
Dagobert I of the
Franks expelled the Jews from his
Merovingian kingdom in 629. Jews in former Roman territories now faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were enforced.
In Mesopotamia, and in Persian lands free of Roman imperial domination, Jewish life fared much better. Since the conquest of
Judea by
Nebuchadnezzar II, this community had always been the leading
diaspora community, a rival to the leadership of Judea. After conditions for Jews began to deteriorate in Roman-controlled lands, many of the religious leaders of
Judea and the
Galilee fled to the east. At the academies of
Pumbeditha and
Sura near Babylon,
Rabbinic Judaism based on
Talmudic learning began to emerge and assert its authority over Jewish life throughout the diaspora. Rabbinic Judaism created a religious mandate for literacy, requiring all Jewish males to learn Hebrew and read from the Torah. It has been suggested that this mandate led to a higher literacy rate for Jewish minorities in both Christian and Islamic lands compared to the majority of gentiles, a result which gave these Jews a comparative advantage in urban commercial and financial roles which, to some extent, may explain their relative prevalence in these fields at the time.[SUP]
[17][/SUP]
After the Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, new opportunities for trade and commerce opened between the Middle East and Western Europe. The vast majority of Jews now lived in Islamic lands. Urbanization, trade, and commerce within the Islamic world allowed Jews, as a highly literate people, to abandon farming and live in cities, engaging in occupations where they could use their skills.[SUP]
[18][/SUP] The influential, sophisticated, and well organized Jewish community of Mesopotamia, now centered in Baghdad, became the center of the Jewish world. In the Caliphate of Baghdad, Jews took on many of the financial occupations that they would later hold in the cities of Ashkenaz. Jewish traders from Baghdad began to travel to the west, renewing Jewish life in the western Mediterranean region. They brought with them Rabbinic Judaism and Babylonian
Talmudic scholarship.
Charlemagne's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome, brought on a brief period of stability and unity in Western Europe. This created opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle once 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 once again to Frankish lands, many Jewish merchants took on 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, there is a well-documented record of Jewish life in northern Europe, and by the 11th century, when
Rashi of
Troyes wrote his commentaries, Ashkenazi Jews had emerged also as interpreters and commentators on the
Torah and
Talmud.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
[h=3]High and Late Middle Ages migrations[/h] Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the
Alps and
Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th century. By the end of the first millennium, Jewish populations were well-established in
Western Europe, later followed the
Norman Conquest into England in 1066, and settled in many cities of the Rhine area by the end of the 11th century.
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."[SUP]
[19][/SUP]
With the onset of the
Crusades, and the expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (15th century), Jewish migration pushed eastward into
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 (such as "
usurious" loans)[SUP]
[20][/SUP] 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.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at its greatest extent.
By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in
Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the
Diaspora.[SUP]
[21][/SUP] 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 Eastern Europe for so long would seem to lie in part in the probability that the alien surroundings in 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 life-style of their neighbors; and all of these tendencies increased with every outbreak of
antisemitism.[SUP]
[22][/SUP]
[h=3]Usage of the name[/h] In reference to the Jewish peoples of Northern Europe and particularly the
Rhineland, the word
Ashkenazi is often found in medieval
rabbinic literature. References to Ashkenaz in
Yosippon and
Hasdai ibn Shaprut's letter to the king of the
Khazars would date the term as far back as the 10th century, as would also
Saadia Gaon's commentary on Daniel 7:8.
The word
Ashkenaz first appears in the genealogy in the
Tanakh (Genesis 10) as a son of
Gomer and grandson of
Japheth. It is thought that the name originally applied to the
Scythians (Ishkuz), who were called
Ashkuza in Assyrian inscriptions, and lake
Ascanius and the region
Ascania in
Anatolia derive their names from this group.
Ashkenaz in later
Hebrew tradition became identified with the peoples of Germany, and in particular to the area along the Rhine.
Ashkenaz and the Ashkenazi contrast to the land of
Knaan, a geo-ethnological term denoting the Jewish populations living east of the
Elbe river as opposed to the Ashkenazi Jews living to the West of it, and the
Sephardic Jews of Iberian Peninsula.[SUP]
[23][/SUP]
The
autonym was usually
Yidn, however.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
[h=3]Medieval references[/h]
Jews from
Worms, Germany wear the mandatory
yellow badge.
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[SUP]
[24][/SUP] and the country of Ashkenaz.[SUP]
[25][/SUP] 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.[SUP]
[26][/SUP]
In the literature of the 13th century, references to the land and the language of Ashkenaz often occur. Examples include
Solomon ben Aderet's Responsa (vol. i., No. 395); the Responsa of
Asher ben 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
Palestinian Jews, 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
Palestinian 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 Dolbergers family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to
Worms to repay the favor.[SUP]
[27][/SUP] 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.[SUP]
[28][/SUP]
[h=3]Modern history[/h] In an essay on Sephardi Jewry,
Daniel Elazar at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs[SUP]
[7][/SUP] summarized the demographic history of Ashkenazi Jews in the last thousand years, noting 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", but 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."[SUP]
[7][/SUP] By 1931, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry.[SUP]
[7][/SUP]
Ashkenazi Jews developed the
Hasidic movement as well as major Jewish academic centers across Poland, Russia, and Belarus in the generations after emigration from the west. 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.[SUP]
[21][/SUP]
Ashkenazi cultural growth led to the
Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment, and the development of
Zionism in modern Europe.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
[h=4]The Holocaust[/h] 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 5090% 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.[SUP]
[29][/SUP] As the large majority of the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage dropped from nearly 92% of world Jewry in 1931 to nearly 80% of world Jewry today.[SUP]
[7][/SUP] 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 victims of the Holocaust, around five million, were Yiddish speakers.[SUP]
[30][/SUP] Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jews
emigrated to countries such as
Israel,
Canada,
Argentina,
Australia, and the
United States after the war.
[h=4]In Israel[/h] Today, Ashkenazi Jews constitute the largest group among Jews,[SUP]
[7][/SUP] and among
Israeli Jews as well. They have played a prominent role in the economy, media, and politics 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".[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP] That is to say, all Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were strongly encouraged to "melt down" their own particular exilic identities within the general social "pot" in order to become Israeli.[SUP][
citation needed][/SUP]
[h=5]Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis in the Yishuv and Israel[/h]
[h=2]Customs, laws and traditions[/h] 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 (quinoa, however, has become accepted as foodgrain in the North American communities), whereas Sephardi Jews 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 requirementsthis level is commonly referred to as Beth Yosef. Meat products which 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 frequently 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. Further information: Ashkenazi Hebrew
- 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.[SUP][31][/SUP]
[h=2]Relationship with other Jews[/h] [TABLE="class: vertical-navbox nowraplinks hlist, width: 22"]
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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, order of prayers, 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 Sephardi), which is the same as the general Polish (Hasidic) Nusach; and Nusach Chabad, otherwise known as Lubavitch Chasidic, Nusach
Arizal or
Nusach Ari.
This phrase is often used in contrast with Sephardi Jews, also called Sephardim, who are descendants of Jews from Spain and
Portugal. There are some differences in how the two groups pronounce certain Hebrew letters and in points of ritual.
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 move to Sephardi countries 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.
The theory that the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the non-Semitic converted
Khazars was advocated by various racial theorists and
antisemitic sources in the late-19th and 20th centuries, especially following the publication of
Arthur Koestler's
The Thirteenth Tribe.[SUP]
[32][/SUP][SUP]
[33][/SUP][SUP]
[34][/SUP] Despite recent genetic evidence to the contrary,[SUP]
[1][/SUP] and a lack of any real mainstream scholarly support,[SUP]
[35][/SUP] this belief is still popular among antisemites.[SUP]
[36][/SUP][SUP]
[37][/SUP]
[h=2]Notable Ashkenazim[/h] Main article:
Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence
Ashkenazi Jews have a noted history of achievement in western societies.[SUP]
[38][/SUP] They have won a large number of the Nobel awards.[SUP]
[39][/SUP][SUP]
[40][/SUP] 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.[SUP]
[41][/SUP] For example, during the 20th century in the United States, Ashkenazi Jews represented approximately 3% of the population, but won 27% of the US
Nobel Prizes in science, and 25% of the
ACM Turing Awards (the Nobel-equivalent in computer science).[SUP]
[42][/SUP]
[h=2]Genetics[/h] [h=3]Genetic origins[/h] Main article:
Genetic studies on Jews
Efforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. Like most DNA studies of human migration patterns, the earliest studies focused on two segments of the human genome, the
Y-chromosome (passed on only by males), and the mitochondrial genome (
mtDNA, passed on only by females). Both segments are unaffected by
recombination.
Genome-wide association studies have also been employed to yield findings relevant to genetic origins.
[h=4]Male lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA[/h] A study of
haplotypes of the Y-chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer
et al.[SUP]
[43][/SUP] found that the
Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and
Sephardic Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the general 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."
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 Eastern Europeans (54%60%) at elevated frequency (12.7%) in Ashkenazi Jews. They hypothesized that the differences among Ashkenazim Jews could reflect low-level gene flow from surrounding European populations and/or genetic drift during isolation.[SUP]
[44][/SUP] 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 Eastern Europeans, suggesting possible gene flow.[SUP]
[45][/SUP]
[h=4]Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA[/h] Before 2006, geneticists largely attributed the genesis of most of the
world's Jewish populations, including Ashkenazi Jews, to founding effects by males who migrated from the Middle East and "by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism." In line with this model of origin, David Goldstein, now of Duke University, reported in 2002 that, unlike male 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."[SUP]
[46][/SUP]
However, a 2006 study by Behar
et al.,[SUP]
[1][/SUP] based on 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. Although Haplogroup K 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:
"..Both the extent and location of the maternal ancestral
deme from which the Ashkenazi Jewry arose remain obscure. Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only four women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.."[SUP]
[1][/SUP][SUP]
[46][/SUP]
In addition, Behar
et al. have suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from ~150 women, most of those likely of Middle Eastern origin.[SUP]
[1][/SUP] However, other studies by Behar indicate that this mtDNA is different from other Jewish populations found outside of Europe, leaving the possibility of a separate origin or even a European origin a distinct possibility.[SUP]
[47][/SUP]
[h=4]Genome-wide association and linkage studies[/h] 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.[SUP]
[48][/SUP]
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".[SUP]
[49][/SUP]
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.[SUP]
[50][/SUP][SUP]
[51][/SUP]
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.[SUP]
[52][/SUP] 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.[SUP]
[14][/SUP][SUP]
[53][/SUP]
A 2010 study by Bray
et al, using
SNP microarray techniques and
linkage analysis, estimated that 35 to 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome may be of European origin, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome". The study assumed
Druze and
Palestinian Arabs populations to represent the reference to world Jewry ancestor genome. With 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". In their press release, Bray stated: "We were surprised to find evidence that Ashkenazi Jews have higher
heterozygosity than Europeans, contradicting the widely-held presumption that they have been a largely isolated group". The authors conclude that their results will require further investigation.[SUP]
[54][/SUP]
[h=3]Medical genetics[/h] [TABLE="class: metadata plainlinks ambox mbox-small-left ambox-content ambox-Refimprove"]
[TR]
[TD="class: mbox-image"]
[/TD]
[TD="class: mbox-text"]This section
needs additional citations for verification.
(August 2010)[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Main article:
Medical genetics of Jewish people
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:
- Geneticists are intrinsically interested in Jewish populations as a disproportionate percentage of genetics researchers are Jewish. Israel in particular has become an international center of such research.
- 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.
- Jewish populations are overwhelmingly urban, and are concentrated near biomedical centers where such research has been carried out. Such research is especially easy to carry out in Israel, where cradle-to-grave medical insurance is available, together with universal screening for genetic disease.
- Jewish communities are comparatively well informed about genetics research, and have been supportive of community efforts to study and prevent genetic diseases.
- Participation of Jewish scientists and support from the Jewish community alleviates ethical concerns that sometimes hinder such genetic studies in other ethnic groups.
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.[SUP]
[55][/SUP] Healthcare professionals are often taught to consider those of Ashkenazi descent to be at increased risk for colon cancer.[SUP]
[56][/SUP]
A study by the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine examines a particular genetic trait that increases the lifespan of the Ashkenazi population. The study focuses on
telomerase, the enzyme responsible for maintaining
telomeres at the ends of
chromosomes during
cell division.[SUP]
[57][/SUP][SUP]
[58][/SUP]
Genetic counseling and
genetic testing are recommended for 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 these diseases. E. L. Abel's book
Jewish Genetic Disorders: A Layman's Guide (McFarland, 2008:
ISBN 0-7864-4087-2) is a comprehensive reference text on the topic; also see the Chicago Center for Jewish Genetic Disorders[SUP]
[59][/SUP] for more information.
[h=2]See also[/h]
[h=2]Notes[/h]
- ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] [SUP]c[/SUP] [SUP]d[/SUP] [SUP]e[/SUP] Behar, Doron M.; Ene Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Alessandro Achilli, Yarin Hadid, Shay Tzur, Luisa Pereira, Antonio Amorim, Lluı's Quintana-Murci, Kari Majamaa, Corinna Herrnstadt, Neil Howell, Oleg Balanovsky, Ildus Kutuev, Andrey Pshenichnov, David Gurwitz, Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, Antonio Torroni, Richard Villems, and Karl Skorecki (March 2006). "The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event" (PDF). The American Journal of Human Genetics 78 (3): 48797. DOI:10.1086/500307. PMC 1380291. PMID 16404693. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
- ^ John Hopkins Gazette, September 8, 1997.
- ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] Gabriel E. Feldman, Do Ashkenazi Jews have a Higher than expected Cancer Burden?PDF (650 KB) , Israel Medical Association Journal, Volume 3, 2001.
- ^ "Ashkenazi Jews", Hebrew University of Jerusalem website. Retrieved November 10, 2009.
- ^ Kraus. S, 1932, Hashemot 'ashkenaz usefarad, Tarbiz 3:423-435
- ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, Paul Kriwaczek, (London 2011), Chapter 3, footnote 9
- ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] [SUP]c[/SUP] [SUP]d[/SUP] [SUP]e[/SUP] [SUP]f[/SUP] Elazar, Daniel J.. "Can Sephardic Judaism be Reconstructed?". Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Retrieved 2006-05-24.
- ^ Rosenthal, Rachel (2006). "What's in a name?". Kedma (Winter 2006).
- ^ Greenberg, Richard and Debra Nussbaum Cohen (2005). "Uncovering the Un-Movement" (PDF).
- ^ Donadio, Rachel (August 10, 2001). "Any Old Shul Won't Do for the Young and Cool". Archived from the original on 2006-10-07. Retrieved 2006-05-24.
- ^ Wall, Irwin. (2002) "Remaking Jewish Identity in France", in Howard Wettstein, Diaspora's and Exiles. University of California Press, pages 164190.
- ^ "New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe", New York Times, 14 Jan 2006
- ^ PLoS Genetics: European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations
- ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] Atzmon, G.; Hao, L.; Pe'er, I.; Velez, C.; Pearlman, A.; Palamara, P. F.; Morrow, B.; Friedman, E. et al. (2010). "Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry". American Journal of Human Genetics 86 (6): 850859. DOI:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015. PMC 3032072. PMID 20560205.
- ^ Schwartz, Seth (2001). Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE. Princeton University Press. pp. 103128. ISBN 0-691-11781-0.
- ^ Shaye J. D. Cohen (2001). The Beginnings of Jewishness. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22693-3.
- ^ Botticini, M.; Eckstein, Z. (January 2003). "From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History". CEPR Discussion Papers (3718).
- ^ Botticini, Maristella; Zvi Eckstein (March 2006). "From Farmers to Merchants, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History". Retrieved 2006-05-24.
- ^ "What Do a Bunch of Old Jews Know About Living Forever?by Jesse Green. New York Magazine. Published Nov 6, 2011[SUP][1][/SUP]
- ^ Ben-Sasson, Hayim (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-39730-4.
- ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] Schoenberg, Shira. "Ashkenazim". Jewish Virtual Library. Archived from the original on 27 April 2006. Retrieved 2006-05-24.
- ^ Feldman, Louis H. Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World : Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian. Ewing, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press, 1996. p 43.
- ^ (Polish) various authors; Szymon Datner (1983). Witold Tyloch. ed. Z dziejów Żydów w Polsce. Warsaw: Interpress. p. 6. ISBN 83-223-2095-7.
- ^ Commentary on Deuteronomy 3:9; idem on Talmud tractate Sukkah 17a
- ^ Talmud, Hullin 93a
- ^ ib. p. 129
- ^ Seder ha-Dorot", p. 252, 1878 ed.
- ^ Epstein, in "Monatsschrift," xlvii. 344; Jerusalem: Under the Arabs
- ^ "Estimated Number of Jews Killed in The Final Solution". Jewish Virtual Library. Archived from the original on 28 April 2006. Retrieved 2006-05-24.
- ^ Solomo Birnbaum, Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3.
- ^ Tallit: Jewish Prayer Shawl, Religion Facts. Retrieved December 13, 2008.
- ^ Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, UNC Press, ISBN 0-8078-4638-4, pp. 137142.
- ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan cults, esoteric nazism, and the politics of identity, NYU Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8147-3155-4, p. 237.
- ^ Paul F. Boller, Memoirs of an Obscure Professor and Other Essays, TCU Press, 1992, pp. 56.
- ^ "This theory
is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where the Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics." Lewis, Bernard. Semites and Anti-Semites, W.W. Norton and Company, ISBN 0-393-31839-7, p. 48.
- ^ "Of course an anti-Zionist (as well as an anti-Semitic) point is being made here: The Palestinians have a greater political right to Palestine than the Jews do, as they, not the modern-day Jews, are the true descendants of the land's Jewish inhabitants/owners." Morris, Benny. The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews, I.B.Tauris, 2003, ISBN 1-86064-989-0, p. 22.
- ^ "Arab anti-Semitism might have been expected to be free from the idea of racial odium, since Jews and Arabs are both regarded by race theory as Semites, but the odium is directed, not against the Semitic race, but against the Jews as a historical group. The main idea is that the Jews, racially, are a mongrel community, most of them being not Semites, but of Khazar and European origin." Yehoshafat Harkabi, "Contemporary Arab Anti-Semitism: its Causes and Roots", in Helen Fein, The Persisting Question: Sociological Perspectives and Social Contexts of Modern Antisemitism, Walter de Gruyter, 1987, ISBN 3-11-010170-X, p. 424.
- ^ Murray, Charles (April 2007). "Jewish Genius". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 2007-12-23. "Disproportionate Jewish accomplishment in the arts and sciences continues to this day."
- ^ Murray, Charles (April 2007). "Jewish Genius". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 2007-12-23. "In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the worlds population."
- ^ Pinker, Steven (2006-06-17). "THE LESSONS OF THE ASHKENAZIM:Groups and Genes". The New Republican. Archived from the original on 5 January 2008. Retrieved 2007-12-23. "Though never exceeding 3 percent of the American population, Jews account for 37 percent of the winners of the U.S. National Medal of Science, 25 percent of the American Nobel Prize winners in literature, 40 percent of the American Nobel Prize winners in science and economics, and so on."
- ^ Murray, Charles (April 2007). "Jewish Genius". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 2007-12-23. "From 1870 to 1950, Jewish representation in literature was four times the number one would expect. In music, five times. In the visual arts, five times. In biology, eight times. In chemistry, six times. In physics, nine times. In mathematics, twelve times. In philosophy, fourteen times."
- ^ G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659693 (2006).
- ^ Hammer, M. F.; A. J. Redd, E. T. Wood, M. R. Bonner, H. Jarjanazi, T. Karafet, S. Santachiara-Benerecetti, A. Oppenheim, M. A. Jobling, T. Jenkins, H. Ostrer, and B. Bonné-Tamir (May 9 2000). "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (12): 6769. Bibcode 2000PNAS...97.6769H. DOI:10.1073/pnas.100115997. PMC 18733. PMID 10801975.
- ^ Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Bernd Brinkmann, Partha P. Majumder, Marina Faerman, Ariella Oppenheim. "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East", The American Journal of Human Genetics (2001), Volume 69, number 5. pp. 1095112
- ^ Nebel A, Filon D, Faerman M, Soodyall H, Oppenheim A (March 2005). "Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews". Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 13 (3): 38891. DOI:10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201319. PMID 15523495.
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[h=2]References[/h] [h=3]References for "Who is an Ashkenazi Jew?"[/h]
[h=3]Other references[/h]
- Beider, Alexander (2001): A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names: Their Origins, Structure, Pronunciations, and Migrations. Avotaynu. ISBN 1-886223-12-2.
- Biale, David (2002): Cultures of the Jews: A New History. Schoken Books. ISBN 0-8052-4131-0.
- Brook, Kevin Alan (2003): "The Origins of East European Jews" in Russian History/Histoire Russe vol. 30, nos. 12, pp. 122.
- Gross, N. (1975): Economic History of the Jews. Schocken Books, New York.
- Haumann, Heiko (2001): A History of East European Jews. Central European University Press. ISBN 963-9241-26-1.
- Kriwaczek, Paul (2005): Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 14000040876
- Lewis, Bernard (1984): The Jews of Islam. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05419-3.
- Vital, David (1999): A People Apart: A History of the Jews in Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821980-6.
[h=2]External links[/h]