Ashkanaz

Ashkanaz, or Ashkenazi Jews, are a segment of the Jewish people descended from central and eastern Europe. As an ethnic group, they constitute the largest segment of the Jewish population in the world today, with estimates varying between 8 and 11 million people, or about 80% of the global Jewish population. Now living throughout the Jewish Diaspora as well as in Israel, they developed into a distinct group in western Germany and northeastern France, near the banks of the Rhine River, in the eighth and ninth centuries. Literally meaning “German Jews,” the term Ashkanaz comes from the old Hebrew word for Germany.

Together with Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews (who are usually grouped together demographically), Ashkenazi Jews make up nearly the entire population of Jews in the world. There are many cultural differences between the two subgroups—the result of centuries of geographical separation due to the different regions the Jewish Diaspora settled in. For centuries after Roman exile, Sephardic Jews lived primarily on the Iberian Peninsula and migrated to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. Ashkenazi Jews, on the other hand, lived throughout central and eastern Europe after many moved on from Germany and France, settling in modern-day countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, The Netherlands, Ukraine, Latvia, Romania, and Russia. One key difference between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews that led to their divergent cultures is that the Ashkenazi lived primarily under a Christian majority, while the Sephardic lived under Muslim rulers.

Early in its history, beginning in the ninth century, Ashkenazi Judaism was centered along the Rhineland and northeastern France. These Jews benefited from strong trading connections with the Mediterranean, and many worked as artisans and craftsmen. In towns and cities such as Worms and Mainz in Germany, and Troyes and Sens in France, they generally lived independently from the Christian majority, organizing themselves under an elected board. They also had their own judicial courts, which they based on the Halakha, or Jewish religious law. Focusing heavily on biblical and Talmudic studies, they built many centers of religious scholarship in their towns. Jews in Europe at this time also adhered more closely to the teachings of the rabbis encoded in the Talmud, rather than directly to biblical law. One major scholarly figure who emerged out of this early Ashkenazic period was Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaqi, 1040–1105), born in Troyes. His commentary on the Bible and the Talmud is considered an integral part of Yeshiva study to this day.

[Page 68]In the 15th century, many Ashkenazi Jews began to migrate out of the Rhineland after being expelled from France in 1182 (and then again in 1394) and facing anti-Semitism in Germany. They began settling in other parts of Europe, with most moving eastward into parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and as far as Russia. They carried with them the same Jewish traditions that they had developed throughout their time in the Rhineland, and they continued to focus their studies on the Torah. Many of these Jews in eastern Europe lived in shtetles, the Yiddish word for a small town where a majority of the population consisted of Jews. Prohibited from working in certain professions, a large number of them worked as financiers and moneylenders to the majority Christian population, as Christians were not allowed to charge interest on loans among themselves. The Jewish community in Poland grew to become the largest Jewish population in the world, beginning in the 16th century, and would remain so until the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s. Prominent Jewish scholars from eastern Europe around this time included Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserlis, 1520–1572), born in Cracow, Poland, and known for his fundamental work of Halakha titled HaMapa, and Baal Shem Tov (Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, 1698–1760), born in Okopy, Poland, and the founder of Hasidic Judaism. Outside the realm of religious study, the composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), the writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924), the psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and the physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) were all Ashkenazi Jews who contributed greatly to the advancement of society.

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