"Ashkenazi" redirects here. For the surname see Ashkenazi (surname). Ashkenazi Jews ( Yehudei Ashkenaz) Moses Isserles Vilna Gaon Heinrich Heine Sigmund Freud Theodore Herzl Gustav Mahler Albert Einstein Emmy Noether Lise Meitner Franz Kafka Golda Meir George Gershwin John von Neumann Leonard Bernstein Anne Frank Total population 8111.22 million Regions with significant populations  United States 56 million3  Israel 2.84 million34 Languages
Historical: Yiddish Modern: Local languages primarily: English Hebrew Russian Religion
primarily Judaism Related ethnic groups
Sephardi Jews Mizrahi Jews and other Jewish ethnic divisions. The Jews in Central Europe (1881)
Ashkenazi Jews also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Hebrew: pronounced aknazim singular: aknazi; also Yehudei 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. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany. Thus Ashkenazim or Ashkenazi Jews are literally "German Jews." Later Jews from Western and Central Europe came to be called "Ashkenaz" because the main centers of Jewish learning were located in Germany. (See Usage of the name for the term's etymology.) Ashkenaz is also a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10).
Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated largely eastward forming communities in non German-speaking areas including Hungary Poland Belarus Lithuania Russia Ukraine Eastern Europe and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. With them they took and diversified Yiddish a basically Germanic language with Hebrew influence (see Jewish language). 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 Spira Warmatia and Magentza). The ShUM-cities are considered the cradle of the distinct Ashkenazi culture and liturgy.
Although in the 11th century they comprised only 3 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.5 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. This is especially true in the United States where most of the 5.3 million American Jewish population6 is Ashkenazi representing the world's single largest concentration of Ashkenazim. Contents 1 Definition 1.1 By religion 1.2 By culture 1.3 By ethnicity 1.4 Realignment in Israel 2 Origins 2.1 Background in the Roman Empire 2.2 Rabbinic Judaism moves to Ashkenaz 2.3 DNA clues 2.3.1 Male lineages: Y chromosomal DNA 2.3.2 Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA 2.3.3 Genome-wide association studies 3 High and Late Middle Ages migrations 3.1 Usage of the name 3.2 Medieval references 4 Customs laws and traditions 5 Relationship with other Jews 6 Medical genetics 7 Modern history 7.1 The Holocaust 7.2 In Israel 7.3 Achievements 8 Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis in the Yishuv and Israel 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 11.1 References for "Who is an Ashkenazi Jew" 11.2 Other references 12 External links // Definition
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 only be considered a Jew 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. By religion
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. Therefore 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"78 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.9 By culture
In a cultural sense an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit a word that literally means Jewishness in the Yiddish language. Of course there are other kinds of Jewishness. Yiddishkeit is simply 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 which 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 Dreyfuss 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 refugees from Eastern Europe and later by 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.10 By ethnicity
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 (mitochondrial haplotypes).11
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 2000 years has become more common. Jewish women and families who choose artificial insemination often choose a biological

father who is not Jewish to avoid common autosomal recessive genetic diseases.
A study by Michael Seldin a geneticist at the University of California Davis School of Medicine found Ashkenazi Jews to be a clear relatively homogenous 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 Ultra-Orthodox Jews particularly members 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 Ultra-Orthodox Jews often have extremely large families.12 Realignment in Israel
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.
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. Origins
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. Jews have lived in Germany or "Ashkenaz" at least since the early 4th century. 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 heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic. Background in the Roman Empire
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 132-135 CE. Though their numbers were greatly reduced Jews continued populate large parts of Iuadea 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.13
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.
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.14 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.
The Germanic invasions of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century by tribes such as the Visigoths Franks Lombards and Vandals caused massive economic and social instability within the western Empire contributing to its decline. 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. Rabbinic Judaism moves to Ashkenaz
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 ea

st. 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. This emphasis on literacy and learning a second language would eventually be of great benefit to the Jews allowing them to take on commercial and financial roles within Gentile societies where literacy was often quite low.
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.15 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. 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. DNA clues Main article: Genetic studies on Jews
Efforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. In fact it was from this research prompted by an observation of the different physical features between Ashkenazi Jews and other of the world's Jewish ethnic divisions that modern genetic genealogy was born. Dr. Karl Skorecki a Canadian nephrologist of Ashkenazi parentage noticed that a fellow-congregant of Sephardi parentage who was a Kohen like him had completely different physical features. According to Jewish tradition all Kohanim are descended from the priest Aaron brother of Moses. Skorecki reasoned that if Kohanim were indeed the descendants of only one man they should at least on the paternal line have a common set of genetic markers and should perhaps preserve some family resemblance to each other.
Like most DNA studies of human migration patterns these studies have 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 thus they provide an indicator of paternal and maternal origins respectively. Genome-wide association studies have also been employed to yield findings relevant to genetic origins. Male lineages: Y chromosomal DNA
A study of haplotypes of the Y chromosome published in 2000 addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al.16 found that the Y chromosome of some 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. The authors also report on Eu 19 chromosomes which are very frequent in Eastern Europeans (54%-60%) at elevated frequency (12.7%) in Ashkenazi Jews. They hypothesized that these chromosomes could reflect low-level gene flow from surrounding Eastern European populations or alternatively that both the Ashkenazi Jews with Eu 19 and to a much greater extent Eastern European populations in general might partly be descendants of Khazars. Again this study suggested a total male admixture estimation that is no larger than 12.5%.17
A 2005 study by Nebel et al. based on Y chromosome polymorphic markers showed that Ashkenazi Jews are more closely related to other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than to their host populations in Europe. However 11.5% of male Ashkenazim were found to belong to R-M17 the dominant Y chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europeans suggesting possible gene flow.18
A 2003 study of the Y-chromosome by Behar et al. points to multiple origins for Ashkenazi Levites a priestly class who comprise approximately 4% of Ashkenazi Jews. It found that Haplogroup R1a uncommon in the Middle East or among Sephardic Jews originating in Central Asia and dominant in Eastern Europe is present in over 50% of Ashkenazi Levites while the rest of Ashkenazi Levites' paternal lineage is of Middle Eastern origin. Behar suggests a founding event probably involving one or very few European men occurring at a time close to the initial formation and settlement of the Ashkenazi community as a possible explanation. Ashkenazi and Sephardic Cohanim and Israelites on the other hand were found to share the same genetic signature originating in the Middle East 2000 years earlier.19 Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA
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