Ashkenazi Jews

Ashkenazi Jews

יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז‎ (Yehudei Ashkenaz)
Total population
10[1]–11.2[2] million
Regions with significant populations
United States	5–6 million[3]
Israel	2.8 million[1][4]
Russia	194,000–500,000; according to the FJCR, up to 1 million of Jewish descent.
Argentina	300,000
United Kingdom	260,000
Canada	240,000
France	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
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 and others Traditional: Yiddish[5]
Religion
Judaism (major) Christianity (minor)[citation needed]
Related ethnic groups
Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions and Samaritans;[6][7][8] Kurds,[8] other Levantines,[7] Assyrians,[6][7] Arabs,[6][7][9][10] Mediterranean groups (Greeks, Italians,[11][12] Spaniards)[13][14][15][16][17]

The Jews in Central Europe (1881)

Ashkenazi Jews (/ˌɑːʃkəˈnɑːzi, ˌæʃ-/ AHSH-kə-NAH-zee, ASH-;^[18] Hebrew: יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, romanized: Yehudei Ashkenaz, lit. 'Jews of Germania'; Yiddish: אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, romanized: Ashkenazishe Eydn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim,^[a] are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE.^[20] Their traditional diaspora language is Yiddish (a West Germanic language with Jewish linguistic elements, including the Hebrew alphabet),^[20] which developed during the Middle Ages after they had moved from Germany and France into Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. For centuries, Ashkenazim in Europe used Hebrew only as a sacred language until the revival of Hebrew as a common language in 20th-century Israel.

Throughout their numerous centuries living in Europe, Ashkenazim have made many important contributions to its philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and science.^{[21][22][23][24]}

The rabbinical term Ashkenazi refers to diaspora Jews who established communities along the Rhine in western Germany and northern France during the Middle Ages.^[25] Upon their arrival, they adapted traditions carried over from the Holy Land, Babylonia, and the western Mediterranean to their new European environment.^[26] The Ashkenazi religious rite developed in cities such as Mainz, Worms, and Troyes. The eminent rishon from medieval France, Shlomo Itzhaki, has had a significant influence on the interpretations of Judaism by Ashkenazim.

In the late Middle Ages, due to widespread persecution, the majority of the Ashkenazi population steadily shifted eastward,^[27] moving out of the Holy Roman Empire into the areas that later became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; these areas today comprise parts of present-day Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.^[28][29]

Over the course of the late-18th and 19th centuries, those Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands generated a cultural reorientation; under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, they gradually abandoned the use of Yiddish and adopted German while developing new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.^[30]

It is estimated that in the 11th century, Ashkenazim comprised 3 percent of the global Jewish population, while an estimate made in 1930 (near the population's peak) listed them as comprising 92 percent of the world's Jewish population.^[31] However, the Ashkenazi population was decimated shortly after as a result of the Holocaust that was carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, which affected almost every Jewish European family.^[32][33] Immediately prior to the Holocaust, the worldwide Jewish population stood at approximately 16.7 million people.^{[34][better source needed]} Statistical figures vary for the contemporary demography of Ashkenazi Jews, ranging from 10 million^[1] to 11.2 million.^[2] Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio D. Pergola, in a rough calculation of Sephardi Jews and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi Jews made up 65–70 percent of Jews worldwide in 2000.^[35] Other estimates place the Ashkenazim as comprising upwards of 75 percent of the global Jewish population.^[36]

Genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews—researching both their paternal and maternal lineages as well as autosomal DNA—indicate that they are of mixed Levantine and European (mainly western European and southern European) ancestry. These studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of their European admixture, with some focusing on the extent of the European genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Middle Eastern genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi paternal lineages.^{[37][38][39][40]}

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