Ashkenazi Jews are a Jewish diaspora community whose distinct communal and, later, linguistic (Yiddish) identity developed in the Rhineland and subsequently across Central and Eastern Europe from roughly the ninth century onward, historically distinguished from Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula and the Middle East/North Africa respectively. Ashkenazi Jewish communities were the primary target of the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered approximately six million European Jews between 1941 and 1945, an atrocity that is extensively documented and remains central to contemporary Ashkenazi communal memory and to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Today Ashkenazi Jews form a majority of the Jewish population of Israel, the United States and most of the Jewish diaspora outside the Middle East and North Africa. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountEthnoreligious diaspora community 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountOriginating in Central and Eastern Europe (the Rhineland, later Germany, Poland, Russia and neighboring regions); today concentrated in Israel, the United States and other diaspora communities worldwide 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically Yiddish; Hebrew (liturgical, and as the vernacular of the State of Israel) and the majority language of the country of residence 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically urban craft, trade and, from the medieval period in parts of Europe, moneylending occupations shaped in part by restrictions on land ownership and guild membership imposed by surrounding Christian societies. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateestimated 10 million worldwide 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountAshkenazi population figures depend on how Jewish religious versus ethnic self-identification is counted across different national surveys, and on the degree of intermarriage-driven ancestry counted, producing varying totals. Connections
Associated With
Ashkenazi Jewish communities historically practiced strong in-group endogamy, a pattern also reflected in the distinctive genetic and genealogical profile of the population.
Source Wikipedia: Endogamy
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Ashkenazi Jews
WikipediaIntroductionQuote, Introduction
Ashkenazi Jews form a distinct ethnic subdivision of the Jewish diaspora, emerging from the Jewish communities that consolidated during the 10th century in the Rhineland and in northern France, having migrated there from centers such as the Italian Peninsula and the Southern Levant.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.