Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews, Ashkenazis, or Ashkenazim, are a distinct ethnic subdivision of the Jewish diaspora. The Ashkenazim emerged from the Jewish communities that consolidated during the 10th century in the Rhineland (western Germany) and in northern France, having migrated there from centers such as the Italian Peninsula and the Southern Levant. After numerous massacres of Jews during the Crusades (11th–13th centuries), they began a gradual eastward migration due to mounting restrictions within the Holy Roman Empire and the favorable policies of Casimir III the Great of Poland and others. This migration ramped up after the persecution of Jews during the Black Death during the 14th century, such that by the 16th century, the bulk of the Ashkenazi Jews had migrated to the Kingdom of Poland, which includes modern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Russia. This area became the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.
Ashkenazim adapted their traditions, rites and customs to Europe. They traditionally follow the German rite synagogue ritual and until the Holocaust primarily spoke Yiddish, an offshoot of Middle High German written in a variety of the Hebrew script, with significant Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic influence. From the late 18th century onwards, Ashkenazi communities underwent significant religious and cultural transformations, under the influence of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and the struggle for Jewish emancipation in European states that restricted their rights. Among other things, Maskilim (adherents of the Haskalah) advocated the adoption of national languages instead of Yiddish, as well as increased study and usage of the Hebrew language, in order to modernize Jewish religious practice and identity. The Hebrew language, whose usage until then had been primarily liturgical and clerical, was progressively revived as a common language starting from the 19th century, fueled by these aspirations of both religious and national revival. The Yiddish language progressively declined in prestige, in favor of national languages and Hebrew, being stigmatized by both assimilationists and Zionists, though it remained spoken by over 11 million people worldwide prior to the Holocaust. The Yiddishist movement, which sought to preserve and revive the language, faded through the 20th century but is enjoying a revival in the 21st.
Starting from the 19th century, millions of Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from Europe, fleeing an increase in violent anti-Jewish bigotry that occurred, in part, as a reactionary response to Jewish emancipation. Ashkenazi Jews emigrated both to Ottoman Palestine, as part of the "Aliyah" movement, and to the United States, which today houses the largest Ashkenazi community in the world.
Throughout the centuries, Ashkenazim made significant contributions to Western philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and science. As a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930 near the population's peak. The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, which killed around six million Jews, affecting practically every European Jewish family.[ Page 186] in: Prior to World War II, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3–16.7 million, with 92% being Ashkenazi. Israeli demographer Sergio D. Pergola published statistics showing that Ashkenazim comprised 74% of Jews worldwide in 2000. Della Pergola does not analyze or mention the Ashkenazi statistics, but the figure is implied by his rough estimate that in 2000, Oriental and Sephardi Jews constituted 26% of the population of world Jewry. , the population of Ashkenazim was estimated to be around 10–13 million out of 15.8 million total Jews.
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 Cimmerians.
The Biblical Ashkenaz is usually derived from Assyrian (cuneiform Aškuzai/Iškuzai), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates; the name is identified with the Scythians.Vladimir Shneider, Traces of the Ten. Beer-sheva, Israel 2002. p. 237
In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni and Ararat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon. In Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Berekhiah (early 4th century) mentions Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah as German tribes or as German lands. Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia, viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, in a 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius.
In the 10th-century History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1.15), 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 slavim or Slavs. In 1932, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical "Ashkenaz" with northern Asia Minor and specifically with the Khazars, an argument disputed by his contemporary Jacob Mann.
Conforming to 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. By the start of the high medieval period, Hai Gaon refers to questions that had been addressed to him from Ashkenaz, by which he undoubtedly means Germany, and 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 (Ashkenazi language) to describe German expressions, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim. 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.ib. p. 129 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). Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany and France.
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.
Definition
There have been several different understandings of what "Ashkenazi" means. For the Rabbinical scholar Joseph Karo it was a geographical term, simply referring to Jews residing in Germany. For rabbis Isaac Luria, Elijah Levita, Moses Isserles and Jacob Castro, it was a geneological term, referring to descendents of medieval French and German communities, wherever they dwelt. For Ottoman rabbis such as David ben Hayyim of Corfu or Samuel de Medina, it referred to membership in specific Ashkenazi congregations. For the rabbi Jacob Heilbronn, it refers to those who follow the liturgical and legal practices codified in the German and central European lands. For the rabbi Joshua Falk and later the linguist Max Weinreich, it refers to speakers of Judeo-German languages such as Yiddish. More recently, it has been associated with particular genetic traits.
By religion In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and synagogue ritual follow Ashkenazi ritual customs and traditions (minhag), including interpretations of Jewish religious law (see Halakha) and order of prayers. 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 that were distinct from other forms of Hebrew.
In this respect, one counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic, since a majority of non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they are ethnically Sephardic. (Regardless, other traditions do exist: Yemenite Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Greek Jews, and other communities have and maintain their distinct minhagim). 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.
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" 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. Outside of Haredi communities, the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew has also drastically declined in favor of the Sephardi-based pronunciation of Modern Hebrew.
By culture
Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means "Jewishness" in the Yiddish language. 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.
As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel, or immigration to North America, South Africa, Europe (particularly France) and Latin America, the geographic isolation that gave rise to Ashkenazim have given way to mixing with other cultures, and with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales. 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.