Ашкеназские евреи

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Ашкеназские евреи

Ашкеназские евреи ( Йехудей Ашкеназ ) Ашкеназише Йидн ‎ ( Ashkenazishe Yidn )
Общая численность населения
10 –11.2 миллион
Регионы со значительной численностью населения
Соединенные Штаты	5–6 миллионов
Израиль	2,8 миллиона
Россия	194 000–500 000; по данным FJCR , до 1 миллиона лиц еврейского происхождения
Аргентина	300,000
Великобритания	260,000
Канада	240,000
Франция	200,000
Germany	200,000
Ukraine	150,000
Australia	120,000
South Africa	80,000
Belarus	80,000
Brazil	80,000
Hungary	75,000
Chile	70,000
Belgium	30,000
Netherlands	30,000
Moldova	30,000
Italy	28,000
Poland	25,000
Mexico	18,500
Sweden	18,000
Latvia	10,000
Romania	10,000
Austria	9,000
Turkey	7,000
New Zealand	5,000
Colombia	4,900
Azerbaijan	4,300
Lithuania	4,000
Czech Republic	3,000
Slovakia	3,000
Ireland	2,500
Estonia	1,000
Languages
Predominantly spoken: Hebrew (Ashkenazi Hebrew, liturgical) English Russian German French and others Traditional: Yiddish
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions and Samaritans; various Middle Eastern and European ethnic groups

The Jews in Central Europe (1881)

Евреи-ашкенази ( / ˌ ɑː ʃ k ə ˈ n ɑː z i , ˌ æ ʃ -/ A(H)SH -kə- NAH -zee ; Иврит : Йехудей Ашкеназ , латинизировано : Йехудей Ашкеназ , букв.   « Евреи Германии ​ » ; Идиш : Ashkenazishe Yidus , латинизированный : Ashkenazishe Yidn ), также известный как евреи-ашкенази или ашкенази , представляют собой еврейскую диаспору , возникшую в Священной Римской империи примерно в конце первого тысячелетия нашей эры. Традиционно они говорили на идише. и в основном мигрировали в Северную и Восточную Европу в период позднего средневековья из-за преследований . Иврит в основном использовался как литературный и священный язык до его возрождения в 20 веке в качестве общего языка в Израиле.

Ашкенази адаптировали свои традиции к Европе и претерпели трансформацию в своей интерпретации иудаизма. В конце XVIII и XIX веках евреи, оставшиеся или вернувшиеся на исторические немецкие земли, пережили культурную переориентацию. Под влиянием Хаскалы и борьбы за эмансипацию, а также интеллектуального и культурного брожения в городских центрах некоторые постепенно отказались от идиша в пользу немецкого языка и разработали новые формы еврейской религиозной жизни и культурной самобытности .

Throughout the centuries, Ashkenazim made significant contributions to Europe's 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 some six million Jews, affecting almost every European Jewish family. In 1933, prior to World War II, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3 million. Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio D. Pergola implied that Ashkenazim comprised 65–70% of Jews worldwide in 2000, while other estimates suggest more than 75%. As of 2013, the population was estimated to be between 10 million and 11.2 million.

Genetic studies indicate that Ashkenazim have both Levantine and European (mainly southern European) ancestry. These studies draw diverging conclusions about the degree and sources of European admixture, with some focusing on the European genetic origin in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, contrasting with the predominantly Middle Eastern genetic origin in paternal lineages.

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 (Genesis 10). The name of Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.

The Biblical Ashkenaz is usually derived from Assyrian Aškūza (cuneiform Aškuzai/Iškuzai), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates; the name Aškūza is identified with the Scythians. The intrusive n in the Biblical name is likely due to a scribal error confusing a vav ו‎ with a nun נ‎.

In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni and Ararat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon. In the Yoma tractate of the Babylonian Talmud the name Gomer is rendered as Germania, which elsewhere in rabbinical literature was identified with Germanikia in northwestern Syria, but later became associated with Germania. Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia, viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, as early as a 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius.

In the 10th-century History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (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 Saquliba or Slavic territories, and such usage covered also the lands of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe. In modern times, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical "Ashkenaz" with Khazaria.

Sometime in the Early Medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by this term. Conforming to the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was denominated Sefarad (Obadiah 20), France was called Tsarefat (1 Kings 17:9), and Bohemia was called the Land of Canaan. By the high medieval period, Talmudic commentators like Rashi began to use Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz to designate Germany, earlier known as Loter, where, especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most important Jewish communities arose. Rashi uses leshon Ashkenaz (Ashkenazi language) to describe Yiddish, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim. Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany and France.

History

Like other Jewish ethnic groups, the Ashkenazi originate from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Ashkenazi Jews share a significant amount of ancestry with other Jewish populations and derive their ancestry mostly from populations in the Middle East, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. Other than their origins in ancient Israel, the question of how Ashkenazi Jews came to exist as a distinct community is unknown, and has given rise to several theories.

Early Jewish communities in Europe

Beginning in the fourth century BCE, Jewish colonies sprang up in southern Europe, including the Aegean Islands, Greece, and Italy. Jews left ancient Israel for a number of causes, including a number of push and pull factors. More Jews moved into these communities as a result of wars, persecution, unrest, and for opportunities in trade and commerce.

Jews migrated to southern Europe from the Middle East voluntarily for opportunities in trade and commerce. Following Alexander the Great's conquests, Jews migrated to Greek settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean, spurred on by economic opportunities. Jewish economic migration to southern Europe is also believed to have occurred during the Roman period.

In 63 BCE, the Siege of Jerusalem saw the Roman Republic conquer Judea, and thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were brought to Rome as slaves. After gaining their freedom, they settled permanently in Rome as traders. It is likely that there was an additional influx of Jewish slaves taken to southern Europe by Roman forces after the capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Herod the Great with assistance from Roman forces in 37 BCE. It is known that Jewish war captives were sold into slavery after the suppression of a minor Jewish revolt in 53 BCE, and some were probably taken to southern Europe.

Regarding Jewish settlements founded in southern Europe during the Roman era, E. Mary Smallwood wrote that "no date or origin can be assigned to the numerous settlements eventually known in the west, and some may have been founded as a result of the dispersal of Palestinian Jews after the revolts of AD 66–70 and 132–135, but it is reasonable to conjecture that many, such as the settlement in Puteoli attested in 4 BC, went back to the late republic or early empire and originated in voluntary emigration and the lure of trade and commerce."

Jewish-Roman Wars

Main article: Jewish–Roman wars

The first and second centuries CE saw a series of unsuccessful large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome. The Roman suppression of these revolts led to wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and enslavement. The First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Two generations later, the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE) erupted. Judea's countryside was devastated, and many were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony under the name of Aelia Capitolina, and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death. Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt.

With their national aspirations crushed and widespread devastation in Judea, despondent Jews migrated out of Judea in the aftermath of both revolts, and many settled in southern Europe. In contrast to the earlier Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, the movement was by no means a singular, centralized event, and a Jewish diaspora had already been established before.

During both of these rebellions, many Jews were captured and sold into slavery by the Romans. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, 97,000 Jews were sold as slaves in the aftermath of the first revolt. In one occasion, Vespasian reportedly ordered 6,000 Jewish prisoners of war from Galilee to work on the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece. Jewish slaves and their children eventually gained their freedom and joined local free Jewish communities.

Late antiquity

Many Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege in 212 CE. Jews were required to pay a poll tax until the reign of Emperor Julian in 363 CE. In the late Roman Empire, Jews were free to form networks of cultural and religious ties and enter into various local occupations. However, after Christianity became the official religion of Rome and Constantinople in 380 CE, Jews were increasingly marginalized.

The Synagogue in the Agora of Athens is dated to the period between 267 and 396 CE. The Stobi Synagogue in Macedonia was built on the ruins of a more ancient synagogue in the 4th century, while later in the 5th century, the synagogue was transformed into a Christian basilica. Hellenistic Judaism thrived in Antioch and Alexandria, and many of these Greek-speaking Jews would convert to Christianity.

Sporadic epigraphic evidence in gravesite excavations, particularly in Brigetio (Szőny), Aquincum (Óbuda), Intercisa (Dunaújváros), Triccinae (Sárvár), Savaria (Szombathely), Sopianae (Pécs) in Hungary, and Mursa (Osijek) in Croatia, attest to the presence of Jews after the 2nd and 3rd centuries where Roman garrisons were established. There was a sufficient number of Jews in Pannonia to form communities and build a synagogue. Jewish troops were among the Syrian soldiers transferred there, and replenished from the Middle East. After 175 CE Jews and especially Syrians came from Antioch, Tarsus, and Cappadocia. Others came from Italy and the Hellenized parts of the Roman Empire. The excavations suggest they first lived in isolated enclaves attached to Roman legion camps and intermarried with other similar oriental families within the military orders of the region.

Raphael Patai states that later Roman writers remarked that they differed little in either customs, manner of writing, or names from the people among whom they dwelt; and it was especially difficult to differentiate Jews from the Syrians. After Pannonia was ceded to the Huns in 433, the garrison populations were withdrawn to Italy, and only a few, enigmatic traces remain of a possible Jewish presence in the area some centuries later. No evidence has yet been found of a Jewish presence in antiquity in Germany beyond its Roman border, nor in Eastern Europe. In Gaul and Germany itself, with the possible exception of Trier and Cologne, the archeological evidence suggests at most a fleeting presence of very few Jews, primarily itinerant traders or artisans.

Estimating the number of Jews in antiquity is a task fraught with peril due to the nature of and lack of accurate documentation. The number of Jews in the Roman Empire for a long time was based on the accounts of Syrian Orthodox bishop Bar Hebraeus who lived between 1226 and 1286 CE, who stated by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as many as six million Jews were already living in the Roman Empire, a conclusion which has been contested as highly exaggerated. The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world. Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing. The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens and thus included non-Jews, the figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' Chronicon. Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken. Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in Egypt. Brian McGing rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the Jewish demographic in the ancient world. Sometimes the scholars who accepted the high number of Jews in Rome had explained it by Jews having been active in proselytising. The idea of ancient Jews trying to convert Gentiles to Judaism is nowadays rejected by several scholars. The Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of the land of Israel/Judaea. They collected an annual temple tax from Jews both in and outside of Israel. The revolts in and suppression of diaspora communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete during the Kitos War of 115–117 CE had a severe impact on the Jewish diaspora.

A substantial Jewish population emerged in northern Gaul by the Middle Ages, but Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orléans. Throughout this period and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to Christianity. King Dagobert I of the Franks expelled the Jews from his Merovingian kingdom in 629. Jews in former Roman territories faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were enforced.

Early Middle Ages

Charlemagne's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome, brought on a brief period of stability and unity in Francia. This created opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle again north of the Alps. Charlemagne granted the Jews freedoms similar to those once enjoyed under the Roman Empire. In addition, Jews from southern Italy, fleeing religious persecution, began to move into Central Europe. Returning to Frankish lands, many Jewish merchants took up occupations in finance and commerce, including money lending, or usury. (Church legislation banned Christians from lending money in exchange for interest.) From Charlemagne's time to the present, Jewish life in northern Europe is well documented. By the 11th century, when Rashi of Troyes wrote his commentaries, Jews in what came to be known as "Ashkenaz" were known for their halakhic learning, and Talmudic studies. They were criticized by Sephardim and other Jewish scholars in Islamic lands for their lack of expertise in Jewish jurisprudence and general ignorance of Hebrew linguistics and literature. Yiddish emerged as a result of Judeo-Latin language contact with various High German vernaculars in the medieval period. It is a Germanic language written in Hebrew letters, and heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic, with some elements of Romance and later Slavic languages.

High and Late Middle Ages migrations

The Old Synagogue in Erfurt, Germany is thought to be the oldest synagogue building intact in Europe

Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 11th century, Jewish settlers moving from southern European and Middle Eastern centers (such as Babylonian Jews and Persian Jews) and Maghrebi Jewish traders from North Africa who had contacts with their Ashkenazi brethren and had visited each other from time to time in each's domain appear to have begun to settle in the north, especially along the Rhine, often in response to new economic opportunities and at the invitation of local Christian rulers. Thus Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, invited Jacob ben Yekutiel and his fellow Jews to settle in his lands; and soon after the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror likewise extended a welcome to continental Jews to take up residence there. Bishop Rüdiger Huzmann called on the Jews of Mainz to relocate to Speyer. In all of these decisions, the idea that Jews had the know-how and capacity to jump-start the economy, improve revenues, and enlarge trade seems to have played a prominent role. Typically, Jews relocated close to the markets and churches in town centres, where, though they came under the authority of both royal and ecclesiastical powers, they were accorded administrative autonomy.

In the 11th century, both Rabbinic Judaism and the culture of the Babylonian Talmud that underlies it became established in southern Italy and then spread north to Ashkenaz.

Numerous massacres of Jews occurred throughout Europe during the Christian Crusades. Inspired by the preaching of a First Crusade, crusader mobs in France and Germany perpetrated the Rhineland massacres of 1096, devastating Jewish communities along the Rhine River, including the SHuM cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. The cluster of cities contain the earliest Jewish settlements north of the Alps, and played a major role in the formation of Ashkenazi Jewish religious tradition, along with Troyes and Sens in France. Nonetheless, Jewish life in Germany persisted, while some Ashkenazi Jews joined Sephardic Jewry in Spain. Expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (15th century), gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewry eastward, to Poland (10th century), Lithuania (10th century), and Russia (12th century). 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) 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

In Poland, Jews were granted special protection by the Statute of Kalisz of 1264. By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This area, which eventually fell under the domination of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (Germany) following the Partitions of Poland, and was later largely regained by reborn Poland in the interbellum, would remain the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.

The answer to why there was so little assimilation of Jews in central and eastern Europe for so long would seem to lie in part in the probability that the alien surroundings in central and eastern Europe were not conducive, though there was some assimilation. Furthermore, Jews lived almost exclusively in shtetls, maintained a strong system of education for males, heeded rabbinic leadership, and had a very different lifestyle to that of their neighbours; all of these tendencies increased with every outbreak of antisemitism.

In parts of Eastern Europe, before the arrival of the Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe, some non-Ashkenazi Jews were present who spoke Leshon Knaan and held various other Non-Ashkenazi traditions and customs. In 1966, the historian Cecil Roth questioned the inclusion of all Yiddish speaking Jews as Ashkenazim in descent, suggesting that upon the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe to Eastern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, there were a substantial number of non-Ashkenazim Jews already there who later abandoned their original Eastern European Jewish culture in favor of the Ashkenazi one. However, according to more recent research, mass migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews occurred to Eastern Europe, from Central Europe in the west, who due to high birth rates absorbed and largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi Jewish groups of Eastern Europe (whose numbers the demographer Sergio Della Pergola considers to have been small). Genetic evidence also indicates that Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews largely descend from Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from central to eastern Europe and subsequently experienced high birthrates and genetic isolation.

Some Jewish immigration from southern Europe to Eastern Europe continued into the early modern period. During the 16th century, as conditions for Italian Jews worsened, many Jews from Venice and the surrounding area migrated to Poland and Lithuania. During the 16th and 17th centuries, some Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire migrated to Eastern Europe, as did Arabic-speaking Mizrahi Jews and Persian Jews.

Medieval references

Jews from Worms (Germany) wearing 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 and the country of Ashkenaz. 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.

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 Jews in Syria Palaestina, 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 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 Dolberger's family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to Worms to repay the favor. 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.

Modern history

Material relating to the history of German Jews has been preserved in the communal accounts of certain communities on the Rhine, a Memorbuch, and a Liebesbrief, documents that are now part of the Sassoon Collection. Heinrich Graetz also added to the history of German Jewry in modern times in the abstract of his seminal work, History of the Jews, which he entitled "Volksthümliche Geschichte der Juden."

In an essay on Sephardi Jewry, Daniel Elazar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs summarized the demographic history of Ashkenazi Jews in the last thousand years. He noted 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"; 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." By 1930, Arthur Ruppin estimated that Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry. These factors are sheer demography showing the migration patterns of Jews from Southern and Western Europe to Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1740, a family from Lithuania became the first Ashkenazi Jews to settle in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.

In the generations after emigration from the west, Jewish communities in places like Poland, Russia, and Belarus enjoyed a comparatively stable socio-political environment. A thriving publishing industry and the printing of hundreds of biblical commentaries precipitated the development of the Hasidic movement as well as major Jewish academic centers. 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.

In the context of the European Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation began in 18th century France and spread throughout Western and Central Europe. Disabilities that had limited the rights of Jews since the Middle Ages were abolished, including the requirements to wear distinctive clothing, pay special taxes, and live in ghettos isolated from non-Jewish communities and the prohibitions on certain professions. Laws were passed to integrate Jews into their host countries, forcing Ashkenazi Jews to adopt family names (they had formerly used patronymics). Newfound inclusion into public life led to cultural growth in the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, with its goal of integrating modern European values into Jewish life. As a reaction to increasing antisemitism and assimilation following the emancipation, Zionism developed in central Europe. Other Jews, particularly those in the Pale of Settlement, turned to socialism. These tendencies would be united in Labor Zionism, the founding ideology of the State of Israel.

The Holocaust

Main article: The Holocaust

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 50–90% 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 devastation in a few countries, including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia. As the large majority of the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage dropped from an estimate of 92% of world Jewry in 1930 to nearly 80% of world Jewry today. 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 Jewish victims of the Holocaust, around 5 million, were Yiddish speakers. Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and the United States after the war.

Following the Holocaust, some sources place Ashkenazim today as making up approximately 83%–85% of Jews worldwide, while Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi make up a notably lower figure, less than 74%. Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.

Israel

Main article: Ashkenazi Jews in Israel

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 that 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.

Ashkenazi Jews 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". That is to say, all Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were strongly encouraged to "meltdown" their own particular exilic identities within the general social "pot" in order to become Israeli.

United States of America

Main article: American Jews

As of 2020, 63% of American Jews are Ashkenazim. A disproportionate amount of Ashkenazi Americans are religious compared to American Jews of other racial groups. They live in large populations in the states of New York, California, Florida, and New Jersey. The majority of American Ashkenazi Jewish voters vote for the Democratic Party, although Orthodox ones tend to support the Republican Party, while Conservative, Reform, and non denominational ones tend to support the Democratic Party.

Definition

See also: Who is a Jew?

By religion

Religious Jews have minhagim, customs, in addition to halakha, or religious law, and different interpretations of the 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. Reform Judaism, which does not necessarily follow those minhagim, did nonetheless originate among Ashkenazi Jews.

In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and ritual follow 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.

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. 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 historical synagogues, and so forth. It is a definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular.

As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel, or immigration to North America, and other English-speaking areas such as South Africa; and 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. (There are numerous Ashkenazi Jewish anglophones and Russian-speakers as well, although English and Russian are not originally Jewish languages.)

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 mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish. (The third community of Provençal Jews living in Comtat Venaissin were technically outside France, and were later absorbed into the Sephardim.) The two communities were so separate and different that the National Assembly emancipated them separately in 1790 and 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 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 diverse political movements. After the Vichy years and the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, first by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, and later by Sephardi immigrants and refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone.

Ashkenazi Jews did not record their traditions or achievements by text, instead these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe. Reasoning for this could be related to the development of a new style of Jewish arts and culture developed by the Jews of Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, which in conjunction with the decimation of European Ashkenazi Jews and their culture by the Nazi regime made it easier to assimilate to the new style of ritual rather than try to repair the older traditions. This new style of tradition was referred to as the Mediterranean Style, and was noted for its simplicity and metaphorical rejuvenation of Jews abroad. This was intended to replace the Galut traditions, which were more sorrowful in practice.

Then, in the 1990s, yet another Ashkenazi Jewish wave began to arrive from countries of the former Soviet Union and Central 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.

By ethnicity

In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews who settled in Central 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 argued that genetic variations have been identified that show high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population, be they for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) and for matrilineal markers (mitotypes). Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and non-Jews.

Customs, laws and traditions

The example of the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society, Prague, 1772

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 requirements – this level is commonly referred to as Beth Yosef. Meat products that 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 often 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 (tallis in Ashkenazi Hebrew) is worn by all Ashkenazi men after marriage, except western European Ashkenazi men, who wear it from bar mitzvah. In Sephardi or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.

Ashkenazic liturgy

The term Ashkenazi also refers to the Nusach Ashkenaz, the liturgical tradition used by Ashkenazi Jews in their siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition's choice of prayers, the order of prayers, the 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 the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, used by those in Chabad.

Relations with Sephardim

Further information: Racism in Israel § Intra-Jewish racism: Racism between Jews

Relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim have at times been tense and clouded by arrogance, snobbery and claims of racial superiority with both sides claiming the inferiority of the other, based upon such features as physical traits and culture.

North African Sephardim and Berber Jews were often looked down upon by Ashkenazim as second-class citizens during the first decade after the creation of Israel. This has led to protest movements such as the Israeli Black Panthers led by Saadia Marciano, a Moroccan Jew. Research in 2010 revealed a genetic common ancestry of all Jewish populations. In some instances, Ashkenazi communities have accepted significant numbers of Sephardi newcomers, sometimes resulting in intermarriage and the possible merging between the two communities.

Notable Ashkenazim

See also: List of Ashkenazi Jews

Ashkenazi Jews have a notable history of achievement in Western societies in the fields of natural and social sciences, mathematics, literature, finance, politics, media, and others. 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. Though Ashkenazi Jews have never exceeded 3% of the American population, Jews account for 37% of the winners of the U.S. National Medal of Science, 25% of the American Nobel Prize winners in literature, 40% of the American Nobel Prize winners in science and economics .

Genetics

Main article: Genetic studies on Jews

Genetic origins

Efforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. There are three types of genetic origin testing, autosomal DNA (atDNA), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA). Autosomal DNA is a mixture from an individual's entire ancestry. Y-DNA shows a male's lineage along his paternal line. mtDNA shows any person's lineage only along their maternal line. Genome-wide association studies have also been used for genetic origin testing.

Like most DNA studies of human migration patterns, the earliest studies on Ashkenazi Jews focused on the Y-DNA and mtDNA segments of the human genome. Both segments are unaffected by recombination (except for the ends of the Y chromosome – the pseudoautosomal regions known as PAR1 and PAR2), thus allowing tracing of direct maternal and paternal lineages.

These studies revealed that Ashkenazi Jews originate from an ancient (2000–700 BCE) population of the Middle East who spread to Europe. Ashkenazic Jews display the homogeneity of a genetic bottleneck, meaning they descend from a larger population whose numbers were greatly reduced but recovered through a few founding individuals. Although the Jewish people, in general, were present across a wide geographical area as described, genetic research 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."

Various studies have drawn diverging conclusions about the degree and sources of the non-Levantine admixture in Ashkenazim, particularly the extent of the non-Levantine origin in maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Levantine genetic origin in paternal lineages. But all studies agree that both lineages have genetic overlap with the Fertile Crescent, albeit at differing rates. Collectively, Ashkenazi Jews are less genetically diverse than other Jewish ethnic divisions, due to their genetic bottleneck.

Male lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA

Most genetic studies of Ashkenazi Jews conclude that the male lines were from the Middle East.

A 2000 study by Hammer et al. found that the Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon among indigenous Europeans. This suggests that Ashkenazim male ancestors are mostly from the Middle East. Ashkenazi had less than 0.5% male genetic admixture per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with "relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim," and the 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." "Past research found that 50%–80% of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East," Richards said. The population has subsequently spread out.

A 2001 study by Nebel et al. showed that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews share overall Near Eastern paternal 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 study also found Eu 19 (R1a) chromosomes had elevated frequency among Ashkenazi Jews (13%), and they are very frequent in Central and Eastern Europeans (54–60%). They hypothesized that the differences among Ashkenazim could reflect low-level gene flow from surrounding European populations or genetic drift during isolation. A 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 Central and Eastern Europeans. However, a 2017 study, of Ashkenazi Levites where the proportion reaches 50%, found a "rich variation of haplogroup R1a outside of Europe which is phylogenetically separate from the typically European R1a branches", and concludes that the particular R1a-Y2619 sub-clade is evidence for a local origin, and that this validates the "Middle Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi Levite lineage" which had previously been concluded based on a few samples.

Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA

Until recently, geneticists largely attributed the ethnogenesis of most of the world's Jewish populations, including Ashkenazim, to "women from each local population" whom the Jewish men "took as wives and converted to Judaism". Thus, in 2002, in line with this theory, David Goldstein reported that unlike Ashkenazi male lineages, female lineages "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." 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."

A 2006 study by Behar et al., of 1,000 units of haplogroup K (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of today's Ashkenazim descend from just four women who were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. The rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA reportedly originated from about 150 women, most of whom were also likely of Middle Eastern origin. Specifically, although haplogroup K is common throughout western Eurasia, its global distribution makes it very unlikely that "the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population".

A 2013 study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by a team led by Martin B. Richards agreed with the older hypothesis of the origin. It tested all 16,600 DNA units of mtDNA, and found that the four main female Ashkenazi founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years in the past while most of the remaining minor founders also have a deep European ancestry. The study argued that the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Near East or the Caucasus, but instead assimilated within Europe, primarily of Italian and Old French origins. The study estimated that more than 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to (mainly prehistoric Western) Europe, and only 8% from the Near East, while the origin of the remainder is undetermined. According to the study this "point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities." Karl Skorecki criticized the study, arguing that while it "re-opened the question of the maternal origins of Ashkenazi Jewry, the phylogenetic analysis in the manuscript does not 'settle' the question."

A 2014 study by Fernández et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their maternal DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of the Behar study in 2006. Fernández noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the 2013 study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages.

Association and linkage studies (autosomal DNA)

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.

A 2006 study by Seldin et al. used over 5,000 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%, while most southern Europeans (Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards) showed >85%. Both Ashkenazi and 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".

A 2007 study by Bauchet et al. found that Ashkenazim were most closely clustered with Arabic North African populations than with the global population, and in the European structure analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east Mediterranean origins.

A 2010 study of Jewish ancestry by Atzmon-Ostrer et al. identified two major groups: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews, by using "principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis". "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 the two groups share ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago. The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome and finds that the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi) share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships, and that each studied Jewish group (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. 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 this similarity may be due to inter-marriage and conversions in during the Roman Empire. It was also found that any two Ashkenazi Jewish participants shared about as much DNA as fourth or fifth cousins.

Исследование 2010 года, проведенное Бреем и соавт. , используя SNP микрочипов методы и анализ сцепления , обнаружили, что, если предположить, что популяции друзов и палестинских арабов представляют собой ссылку на геном предков мирового еврейства, от 35% до 55% современного генома ашкенази могут иметь европейское происхождение, и что европейская «примесь значительно выше, чем предыдущие оценки исследований, в которых использовалась Y-хромосома в качестве эталонной точки. Авторы интерпретировали это неравновесие связей в еврейском населении ашкенази как совпадающие признаки «скрещивания или «смеси» между ближневосточным и европейским населением». По поводу Брея и др. Евреи-ашкенази оказались генетически более дивергентной популяцией, чем русские , оркадцы , французы, баски , сардинцы , итальянцы и тосканцы . Исследование также показало, что ашкенази более разнообразны, чем их ближневосточные родственники, что противоречило здравому смыслу, поскольку предполагается, что ашкенази являются подмножеством, а не надмножеством предполагаемого географического происхождения населения. Брей и др. следовательно, можно предположить, что эти результаты отражают историю смешения генетически различных популяций в Европе. Однако возможно, что высокая гетерозиготность ашкенази была обусловлена ​​смягчением предписаний о браке у их предков, тогда как низкая гетерозиготность на Ближнем Востоке обусловлена ​​сохранением там брака FBD . Таким образом, отличительные черты ашкенази, обнаруженные в работе Bray et al. исследование может исходить из их этнической эндогамии (этнического инбридинга), позволившей им «добывать» свой предковый генофонд в условиях относительной репродуктивной изоляции от европейских соседей, а не из клановой эндогамии (кланового инбридинга). Следовательно, их более высокое разнообразие по сравнению с жителями Ближнего Востока обусловлено брачными практиками последних, а не обязательно смешением первых с европейцами.

Полногеномное генетическое исследование 2010 года, проведенное Behar et al. изучили генетические связи между всеми основными еврейскими группами, включая ашкенази, и их генетическое родство с нееврейским этническим населением. Было обнаружено, что сегодняшние евреи (за исключением индийских и эфиопских евреев) тесно связаны с выходцами из Леванта . Авторы объяснили, что «самым скупым объяснением этих наблюдений является общее генетическое происхождение, которое согласуется с историческим представлением о еврейском народе как потомке древних евреев и израильтян , жителей Леванта».

Исследование Бехара и соавт., проведенное в 2013 году. нашел среди ашкенази свидетельства смешанного европейского и левантийского происхождения. Авторы обнаружили, что ашкенази имели наибольшее родство и общее происхождение, во-первых, с другими еврейскими группами из южной Европы, Сирии и Северной Африки, а во-вторых, как с южными европейцами (такими как итальянцы), так и с современными левантийцами (такими как друзы , киприоты, ливанцы и самаритяне ). Исследование не выявило родства ашкенази с населением Северного Кавказа, а также не выявило большего сходства с современным населением Южного Кавказа и восточной Анатолии (таким как армяне , азербайджанцы , грузины и турки), чем обнаружено у других евреев или нееврейских жителей Ближнего Востока (таких как курды , иранцы , друзы и ливанцы).

Аутосомное исследование 2017 года, проведенное Сюэ, Шай Карми и др. обнаружили примесь ближневосточного и европейского происхождения у евреев-ашкенази: европейский компонент составляет ≈50–70% (по оценкам, «возможно, 60%)» и в основном имеет южноевропейское происхождение и восточноевропейское меньшинство, а оставшаяся часть (по оценкам, ≈40%) имеет ближневосточное происхождение, демонстрируя наибольшую близость к левантийскому населению, такому как друзы и ливанцы.

Исследование 2018 года, ссылающееся на популярную теорию происхождения евреев-ашкенази (AJ) в «первоначальном поселении в Западной Европе (Северная Франция и Германия), с последующей миграцией в Польшу и экспансией там и в остальной части Восточной Европы», проверило « являются ли евреи-ашкенази, недавно родившиеся в Восточной Европе, генетически отличными от западноевропейских ашкенази». Исследование пришло к выводу, что «западные AJ состоят из двух слегка различающихся групп: одна происходит от подмножества первоначальных основателей [которые остались в Западной Европе], а другая мигрирует туда обратно из Восточной Европы, возможно, после поглощения ограниченной степени генов». поток".

Исследование данных генома средневекового еврейского кладбища в Эрфурте, проведенное в 2022 году , выявило как минимум две родственные, но генетически различные еврейские группы: одна тесно связана с населением Ближнего Востока и особенно похожа на современных евреев-ашкенази из Франции и Германии и современных евреев-сефардов из Турции; в другую группу внес значительный вклад население Восточной Европы. Но сегодня евреи-ашкенази из Восточной Европы больше не демонстрируют этой генетической изменчивости, и вместо этого их геномы напоминают почти равномерную смесь двух эрфуртских групп (около 60% из первой группы и 40% из второй).

Хазарская гипотеза

Основная статья: Хазарская гипотеза о происхождении ашкенази

В конце 19 века было высказано предположение, что ядро ​​евреев-ашкенази генетически произошло от гипотетической хазарской еврейской диаспоры , которая мигрировала на запад из современной России и Украины в современную Францию ​​и Германию (в отличие от существующей в настоящее время теории о том, что евреи мигрировали из Франция и Германия в Восточную Европу). Гипотеза не подтверждается историческими источниками. и не подтверждено генетикой, но ее до сих пор иногда поддерживают ученые, которым удалось сохранить эту теорию в академическом сознании.

Эта теория иногда использовалась еврейскими авторами, такими как Артур Кестлер, как часть аргумента против традиционных форм антисемитизма (например, утверждения о том, что «евреи убили Христа»), точно так же, как аналогичные аргументы выдвигались от имени крымских караимов. . Однако сегодня эту теорию чаще связывают с антисемитизмом. и антисионизм .

Трансгеномное исследование 2013 года, проведенное 30 генетиками из 13 университетов и академий из девяти стран, собрав самый большой доступный на сегодняшний день набор данных для оценки генетического происхождения евреев-ашкенази, не обнаружило никаких доказательств хазарского происхождения среди евреев-ашкенази. Авторы пришли к выводу:

Таким образом, анализ евреев-ашкенази вместе с большой выборкой из региона Хазарского каганата подтверждает более ранние результаты о том, что евреи-ашкенази ведут свое происхождение в первую очередь от населения Ближнего Востока и Европы, что они обладают значительным общим происхождением с другими еврейскими популяциями, и что нет никаких признаков значительного генетического вклада ни изнутри, ни с севера Кавказского региона.

Авторы не обнаружили никакого сходства у ашкенази с населением Северного Кавказа, а также не обнаружили большего сходства у ашкенази с населением Южного Кавказа или Анатолии, чем обнаруженное у евреев-неашкенази и неевреев с Ближнего Востока (таких как курды, иранцы, друзы и ливанский). Было обнаружено, что наибольшее родство и общее происхождение евреев-ашкенази (после евреев других еврейских групп из южной Европы, Сирии и Северной Африки) имеют как южные европейцы, так и левантийцы, такие как друзы, киприоты, ливанцы и самаритяне.

Восточноазиатское происхождение

Помимо генетического вклада соседних европейцев, жителей Ближнего Востока и Северной Африки, евреи-ашкенази разделяют некоторые восточноевразийские гаплогруппы, такие как N9a, A и M33c, с китайским населением. Это происходит из-за их экономического и культурного обмена на Шелковом пути .

Медицинская генетика

Основная статья: Медицинская генетика евреев

В литературе по медицинской и популяционной генетике много упоминаний о евреях-ашкенази. Действительно, большая часть осведомленности о «евреях-ашкенази» как об этнической группе или категории связана с большим количеством генетических исследований болезней, в том числе многих из которых широко освещаются в средствах массовой информации, которые проводились среди евреев. Еврейское население изучено более тщательно, чем большинство других человеческих популяций, по ряду причин:

• Еврейское население, и особенно большое еврейское население ашкенази, идеально подходит для таких исследований, поскольку они демонстрируют высокую степень эндогамии , но при этом они значительны.
• Еврейские общины сравнительно хорошо информированы о генетических исследованиях и поддерживают усилия сообщества по изучению и предотвращению генетических заболеваний.

Результатом является своего рода предвзятость в оценках . Иногда это создает впечатление, что евреи более восприимчивы к генетическим заболеваниям, чем другие группы населения. Медицинских работников часто учат считать, что лица ашкеназского происхождения подвергаются повышенному риску развития рака толстой кишки . Люди ашкеназского происхождения подвергаются гораздо более высокому риску стать переносчиками болезни Тея-Сакса , которая в гомозиготной форме смертельна.

Генетическое консультирование и генетическое тестирование часто проводятся парами, оба партнера которых имеют ашкеназское происхождение. Некоторые организации, в первую очередь «Дор Ешорим» , организуют программы скрининга для предотвращения гомозиготности по генам , вызывающим сопутствующие заболевания.

См. также

• Еврейские этнические подразделения
• Список израильских евреев-ашкенази

Ссылки

Источники

• Дэвис, Алан (1992). «Дело Кигстры» . В Дэвисе, Алане (ред.). Антисемитизм в Канаде: история и интерпретация . Издательство Университета Уилфрида Лорье. стр. 227–248. ISBN  978-0-889-20216-0 .
• Фогт, Джудит (1975). «Левый «антисионизм» в Норвегии». Образцы предрассудков . 9 (6): 15–q8. дои : 10.1080/0031322X.1975.9969275 .

Ссылки на тему «Кто такой еврей-ашкенази?»

• Голдберг, Харви Э. (2001). Жизнь иудаизма . Издательство Калифорнийского университета. ISBN  978-0-520-21267-1 .
• Зильберштейн, Лоуренс (2000). Картирование еврейской идентичности . Издательство Нью-Йоркского университета. ISBN  978-0-8147-9769-3 .
• Веттштейн, Ховард (2002). Диаспоры и изгнанники: разновидности еврейской идентичности . Издательство Калифорнийского университета. ISBN  978-0-520-22864-1 .
• Векс, Майкл (2005). Рожденный в Квече: язык идиш и культура во всех его настроениях . Пресса Святого Мартина. ISBN  978-0-312-30741-7 .

Другие ссылки

• Бейдер, Александр (2001): Словарь ашкеназских имен: их происхождение, структура, произношение и миграция . Авотайну. ISBN   978-1-886223-12-7 .
• Биале, Дэвид (2002): Культуры евреев: новая история . Книги Шокена. ISBN   978-0-8052-4131-0 .
• Бирнбаум, Соломон А. (ноябрь 1946 г.). «Культурная структура восточноашкеназского еврейства» . Славянское и восточноевропейское обозрение . 25 (64).
• Брук, Кевин Алан (2003): «Происхождение восточноевропейских евреев» в русской истории/Histoire Russe vol. 30, нет. 1–2, стр. 1–22.
• Гросс, Н. (1975): Экономическая история евреев . Schocken Books , Нью-Йорк.
• Хауманн, Хейко (2001): История восточноевропейских евреев . Издательство Центральноевропейского университета . ISBN   978-963-9241-26-8 .
• Кривачек, Пол (2005): Идишская цивилизация: взлет и падение забытой нации . Альфред А. Кнопф , Нью-Йорк. ISBN   978-1-4000-4087-2 .
• Льюис, Бернард (1984): Евреи ислама . Издательство Принстонского университета . ISBN   978-0-691-05419-3 .
• Буковец, Предраг: евреи Восточной и Юго-Восточной Европы в 19 и 20 веках , Европейская история онлайн , Майнц: Институт европейской истории , 2010, дата обращения: 17 декабря 2012 г.
• Виталь, Дэвид (1999): Народ отдельно: История евреев в Европе . Издательство Оксфордского университета . ISBN   978-0-19-821980-4 .
• Ярдумян, Арам; Шурр, Теодор Г. (1 июня 2019 г.). «География еврейского этногенеза» . Журнал антропологических исследований . 75 (2): 206–234. дои : 10.1086/702709 . ISSN   0091-7710 . S2CID   167051866 .

Внешние ссылки

• Энциклопедия евреев Восточной Европы YIVO
• Каплан, Карен (18 апреля 2009 г.). «Еврейское наследие заложено в генах?» . Лос-Анджелес Таймс . Проверено 23 декабря 2009 г.
• «Распределение гаплогрупп мтДНК ашкеназских евреев варьируется в зависимости от отдельных субпопуляций: уроки субструктуры населения в закрытой группе» - Европейский журнал генетики человека , 2007 г.
• «Анализ генетических вариаций у евреев-ашкенази методом SNP-генотипирования высокой плотности»
• Нусач Ашкеназ и дискуссионный форум
• Ашкеназское наследие