Waw ( wāw "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads , including Arabic wāw و , Aramaic waw 𐡅, Hebrew vav ו , Phoenician wāw 𐤅, and Syriac waw ܘ.
180-506: Ashkenazi Jews ( / ˌ ɑː ʃ k ə ˈ n ɑː z i , ˌ æ ʃ -/ A(H)SH -kə- NAH -zee ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim ) constitute a Jewish diaspora population that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE . They traditionally speak Yiddish , a language that originated in the 9th century, and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during
360-480: A mater lectionis for an o vowel, in which case it is known as a ḥolam male , which in pointed text is marked as vav with a dot above it. It is pronounced [ o̞ ] ( phonemically transcribed more simply as /o/ ). The distinction is normally ignored, and the HEBREW POINT HOLAM (U+05B9) is used in all cases. The vowel can be denoted without the vav, as just the dot placed above and to
540-533: 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
720-638: 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
900-560: A Roman colonia and foreign cults. It is commonly held that this was done as an insult to the Jews and as a means of erasing the land's Jewish identity, Others argued that this project was expressive of an intention of establishing administratively and culturally a firm Roman imperial presence, and thus incorporating the province, now called Syro-Palaestina, into the Roman world system. These political measures were, according to Menachem Mor, devoid of any intention to eliminate Judaism, indeed,
1080-742: 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
1260-604: A clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant." "The most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant." In conclusion the authors are stating that the genetic results are concordant "with the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout
1440-475: A consonantal vav with ḥolam ḥaser correctly, the typeface must either support the vav with the Unicode combining character "HEBREW POINT HOLAM HASER FOR VAV" (U+05BA, HTML Entity (decimal) ֺ) or the precomposed character וֹ (U+FB4B). Compare the three: Vav can also be used as a mater lectionis for [ u ] , in which case it is known as a shuruk , and in text with niqqud
1620-452: A denigrated minority, stripped of such rights, in the host society. Sometimes diaspora and galut are defined as 'voluntary' as opposed to 'involuntary' exile. Diaspora, it has been argued, has a political edge, referring to geopolitical dispersion, which may be involuntary, but which can assume, under different conditions, a positive nuance. Galut is more teleological , and connotes a sense of uprootedness. Daniel Boyarin defines diaspora as
1800-611: A different phonemic value and phonetic realisation: ו as initial letter: ו וּ ו וֹ ו In modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of vav, out of all the letters, is one of the highest, about 10.00%. Consonantal vav ( ו ) generally represents a voiced labiodental fricative (like the English v ) in Ashkenazi , European Sephardi , Persian, Caucasian, Italian and modern Israeli Hebrew , and
1980-694: A disputed province of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria. In the early part of the 2nd century BCE, a revolt against the Seleucids led to the establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmoneans adopted a deliberate policy of imitating and reconstituting the Davidic kingdom, and as part of this forcibly converted to Judaism their neighbours in the Land of Israel. The conversions included Nabateans ( Zabadeans ) and Itureans ,
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#17327660024392160-572: 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
2340-592: 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
2520-533: A firm Christian majority. Judaism was the only non-Christian religion tolerated, but the Jews were discriminated against in various ways. They were prohibited from building new houses of worship, holding public office, or owning slaves. The 7th century saw the Jewish revolt against Heraclius , which broke out in 614 during the Byzantine–Sasanian War . It was the last serious attempt by Jews to gain autonomy in
2700-411: A full one-tenth (10%) of the population of the ancient city of Rome itself. Finally, if the sums confiscated by the governor Lucius Valerius Flaccus in the year 62/61 BCE represented the tax of a didrachma per head for a single year, it would imply that the Jewish population of Asia Minor numbered 45,000 adult males, for a total of at least 180,000 persons. The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave
2880-539: A letter with a ְ ( Shva ), and it does the ⟨ʔu⟩ sound. Vav in gematria represents the number six, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years , it means 6000 (i.e. ותשנד in numbers would be the date 6754.) Vav at the beginning of the word has several possible meanings: (Note: Older Hebrew did not have "tense" in a temporal sense, "perfect," and "imperfect" instead denoting aspect of completed or continuing action. Modern Hebrew verbal tenses have developed closer to their Indo-European counterparts, mostly having
3060-589: A majority of the population until some time after Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4th century. The ban on Jewish settlement in Jerusalem was maintained. There was a minor Jewish rebellion against a corrupt governor from 351 to 352 which was put down. In the 5th century, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire resulted in Christian migration into Palestine and the development of
3240-689: A military class that successively served the Persian , the Ptolemaic and Roman governments down to the early decades of the second century CE, when the revolt against Trajan destroyed them. Their presence was buttressed by numerous Jewish administrators who joined them in Egypt's military and urban centres. According to Josephus , when Ptolemy I took Judea, he led 120,000 Jewish captives to Egypt, and many other Jews, attracted by Ptolemy's liberal and tolerant policies and Egypt's fertile soil, emigrated from Judea to Egypt of their own free will. Ptolemy settled
3420-651: 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
3600-491: 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
3780-484: A reminder of the hallowed past, and, through most of the era, a Jewish regime existed in Palestine. Yet the Jews of the diaspora, from Italy to Iran, far outnumbered those in the homeland. Although Jerusalem loomed large in their self-perception as a nation, few of them had seen it, and few were likely to. Israel Yuval contends the Babylonian captivity created a promise of return in the Jewish consciousness which had
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#17327660024393960-509: 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 . Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th centuries. By
4140-494: A result, many Jews emigrated to Babylon under the more tolerant Sassanid Empire , where autonomous Jewish communities continued to flourish, lured by the promise of economic prosperity and the ability to lead a full Jewish life there. Between the 3rd and 7th centuries, estimates indicate that the Babylonian Jewish community numbered approximately one million, which may have been the largest Jewish diaspora population of
4320-547: 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. 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
4500-408: A similar semantic range, bear some distinct differences in connotation. The former has no traditional equivalent in Hebrew usage. Steven Bowman argues that diaspora in antiquity connoted emigration from an ancestral mother city, with the emigrant community maintaining its cultural ties with the place of origin. Just as the Greek city exported its surplus population, so did Jerusalem, while remaining
4680-736: A single event. There is no sudden expansion of the population base of 30,000 and no credible indication of any special interest in Yehud . Although most of the Jewish people during this period, especially the wealthy families, were to be found in Babylonia, the existence they led there, under the successive rulers of the Achaemenids , the Seleucids , the Parthians , and the Sassanians ,
4860-411: A state where people have a dual cultural allegiance, productive of a double consciousness , and in this sense a cultural condition not premised on any particular history, as opposed to galut, which is more descriptive of an existential situation, that properly of exile, conveying a particular psychological outlook. The Greek word διασπορά (dispersion) first appears as a neologism in the translation of
5040-568: A state's function would be to 'sustain Jewish nationhood' in the diaspora. In 722 BCE, the Assyrians , under Sargon II , successor to Shalmaneser V , conquered the Kingdom of Israel , and many Israelites were deported to Mesopotamia . The Jewish proper diaspora began with the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE. After the overthrow of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (see Babylonian captivity ) and
5220-554: A study by Doron Behar and Karl Skorecki of the Technion and Ramban Medical Center in Haifa, Israel demonstrated that the vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews, both men and women, have Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Nicholas Wades' 2010 Autosomal study Ashkenazi Jews share a common ancestry with other Jewish groups and Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews have roughly 30% European ancestry with the rest being Middle Eastern. According to Hammer,
5400-405: A temporal quality rather than denoting aspect. As a rule, Modern Hebrew does not use the "Vav Consecutive" form.) In Yiddish , the letter (known as vov ) is used for several orthographic purposes in native words: The single vov may be written with a dot on the left when necessary to avoid ambiguity and distinguish it from other functions of the letter. For example, the word vu 'where'
5580-463: A vav with dagesh and is additionally pointed with a zeire , " ֵ ", denoting /e/ ). In the word שִׁוּוּק ( /ʃiˈvuk/ ), "marketing", the first (" וּ ") denotes a vav with dagesh, the second a shuruk, being the vowel attributed to the first. When a vav with a dot in the middle comes at the start of a word without a vowel attributed to it, it is a vav conjunctive (see below) that comes before ב , ו, מ , פ , or
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5760-544: 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
5940-542: 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
6120-540: 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
6300-427: Is determined by prior knowledge or must be derived through context. Some non standard spellings of the sound [ w ] are sometimes found in modern Hebrew texts, such as word-initial double-vav: וואללה – /ˈwala/ (word- medial double-vav is both standard and common for both / v / and / w / , see table above) or, rarely, vav with a geresh : ו׳יליאם – /ˈwiljam/ . Vav can be used as
6480-443: Is marked with a dot in the middle (on the left side). Shuruk and vav with a dagesh look identical (" וּ ") and are only distinguishable through the fact that in text with niqqud, vav with a dagesh will normally be attributed a vocal point in addition, e.g. שׁוּק ( /ʃuk/ ), "a market", (the " וּ " denotes a shuruk ) as opposed to שִׁוֵּק ( /ʃiˈvek/ ), "to market" (the " וּ " denotes
6660-466: Is named واو wāw /waːw/ , it is the 6th letter in the ʾabjadī order and the 27th in the Hijāʾī order, and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: Wāw is used to represent four distinct phonetic features: As a vowel, wāw can serve as the carrier of a hamza : ؤ . The isolated form of waw (و) is believed to be the origins of the numeral 9. Wāw is the sole letter of
6840-540: Is no doubt of a Middle Eastern origin. In June 2010, Behar et al. "shows that most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster with common genetic origin, that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews ( Beta Israel ) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochini ) cluster with neighboring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite
7020-468: Is only after the destruction of Jerusalem that Jews are found in northern Europe and along the western Mediterranean coast. Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan challenge the "widespread notion" the Jews in Judea were only expelled after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the Jewish defeat during Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. They also contend it is "misleading" that the expulsion from Judea created
7200-647: Is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel ) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe. In terms of the Hebrew Bible , the term "Exile" denotes the fate of the Israelites who were taken into exile from the Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BCE, and the Judahites from the Kingdom of Judah who were taken into exile during
7380-519: 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
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7560-642: 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. Of
7740-662: 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
7920-522: The "Crisis under Caligula" (37–41) was the "first open break between Rome and the Jews". Meanwhile, the Kitos War , a rebellion by Jewish diaspora communities in Roman territories in the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, led to the destruction of Jewish communities in Crete, Cyprus, and North Africa in 117 CE, and consequently the dispersal of Jews already living outside of Judea to further reaches of
8100-487: The 2 Kings 17:23 's reference to the deportation of the Judean elite to Babylonia. Stéphane Dufoix, in surveying the textual evidence, draws the following conclusion: galuth and diaspora are drawn from two completely different lexicons. The first refers to episodes, precise and datable, in the history of the people of Israel, when the latter was subjected to a foreign occupation, such as that of Babylon, in which most of
8280-546: The Ashkenazi of Northern and Eastern Europe, and the Sephardic Jews of Iberia (Spain and Portugal), North Africa and the Middle East . These groups have parallel histories sharing many cultural similarities as well as a series of massacres, persecutions and expulsions, such as the expulsion from England in 1290 , the expulsion from Spain in 1492 , and the expulsion from Arab countries in 1948–1973 . Although
8460-424: The Ashkenazi of Northern and Eastern Europe, and the Sephardic Jews of Iberia (Spain and Portugal), North Africa and the Middle East . These groups have parallel histories sharing many cultural similarities as well as a series of massacres, persecutions and expulsions, such as the expulsion from England in 1290 , the expulsion from Spain in 1492 , and the expulsion from Arab countries in 1948–1973 . Although
8640-764: 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
8820-726: 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. 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
9000-478: 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
9180-629: The Isthmus of Corinth in Greece. Jewish slaves and their children eventually gained their freedom and joined local free Jewish communities. 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
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#17327660024399360-580: 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
9540-726: The Jewish-American Zionist academic Simon Rawidowicz , who to some degree argued for the acceptance of the Jewish presence outside the Land of Israel as a modern reality and an inevitability. The Greek term for diaspora (διασπορά) also appears three times in the New Testament , where it refers to the scattering of Israel, i.e., the Ten Northern Tribes of Israel as opposed to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, although James (1:1) refers to
9720-489: The Land of Israel prior to modern times. Jewish rebels aided the Persians in capturing Jerusalem , where the Jews were permitted autonomous rule until 617, when the Persians reneged on their alliance. After Byzantine Emperor Heraclius promised to restore Jewish rights, the Jews aided him in ousting the Persians. Heraclius subsequently went back on his word and ordered a general massacre of the Jewish population, devastating
9900-735: The Old Testament known as the Septuagint , where it occurs 14 times, starting with a passage reading: ἔση διασπορὰ ἐν πάσαις βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς (‘thou shalt be a diaspora (or dispersion) in all kingdoms of the earth’, Deuteronomy 28:25 ), translating 'ləza‘ăwāh', whose root suggests 'trouble, terror'. In these contexts it never translated any term in the original Tanakh drawn from the Hebrew root glt ( גלה ), which lies behind galah, and golah , nor even galuth. Golah appears 42 times, and galuth in 15 passages, and first occurs in
10080-590: The Qur'an in this way, and also in the generally fixed construction والله wallāh ("By Allah !" or "I swear to God!"). The word also appears, particularly in classical verse, in the construction known as wāw rubba , to introduce a description. With an additional triple dot diacritic above waw , the letter then named ve is used to represent distinctively the consonant / w / in Arabic-based Uyghur , Kazakh and Kyrgyz . / o / in Kurdish , Beja , and Kashmiri ; / v / in Arabic-based Kazakh ; / ø / in Uyghur. Thirty-fourth letter of
10260-427: The Republican Party , while Conservative, Reform, and non denominational ones tend to support the Democratic Party. 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
10440-450: The Roman province of Judaea . The Judean population revolted against the Roman Empire in 66 CE in the First Jewish–Roman War , which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. During the siege, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and most of Jerusalem . This watershed moment, the elimination of the symbolic centre of Judaism and Jewish identity motivated many Jews to formulate a new self-definition and adjust their existence to
10620-652: 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
10800-411: 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
10980-572: The diaspora uprisings of 116–117 CE resulted in the near-total destruction of Jewish communities in Cyrenaica and Egypt. By the third century, Jewish communities began to re-establish themselves in Egypt and Cyrenaica, primarily through immigration from the Land of Israel. Roman rule in Judea began in 63 BCE with the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey . After the city fell to Pompey's forces, thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were brought from Judea to Rome and sold into slavery. After these Jewish slaves were manumitted, they settled permanently in Rome on
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#173276600243911160-418: 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
11340-422: 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
11520-401: 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
11700-437: The 6th century BCE. While in exile, the Judahites became known as "Jews" ( יְהוּדִים , or Yehudim ). The first exile was the Assyrian exile , the expulsion from the Kingdom of Israel begun by Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria in 733 BCE. This process was completed by Sargon II with the destruction of the kingdom in 722 BCE, concluding a three-year siege of Samaria begun by Shalmaneser V . The next experience of exile
11880-410: The Ashkenazi population expanded through a series of bottlenecks—events that squeeze a population down to small numbers—perhaps as it migrated from the Middle East after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, to Italy, reaching the Rhine Valley in the 10th century. David Goldstein, a Duke University geneticist and director of the Duke Center for Human Genome Variation, has said that the work of
12060-670: The Azerbaijani Arabic script, represents ü / y / . A variant of Kurdish û وو / uː / (rarely used); historically for Serbo-Croatian / o / . Also used in Kyrgyz for Үү /y/. / y / in Uyghur. Also found in Quranic Arabic as in صلۈة ṣalāh "prayer" for an Old Higazi / oː / merged with / aː / , in modern spelling صلاة . / ʉː / in Southern Kurdish . In Jawi script for / v / . Also used in Balochi for / ɯ / and / oː / . See Arabic script in Unicode Hebrew spelling: וָו or וָאו or וָיו . Vav has three orthographic variants, each with
12240-497: The Babylonian destruction of Judah, the Roman destruction of Judea, and the subsequent rule of Christians and Muslims. After the revolt, the Jewish religious and cultural center shifted to the Babylonian Jewish community and its scholars. For the generations that followed, the destruction of the Second Temple event came to represent a fundamental insight about the Jews who had become a dispossessed and persecuted people for much of their history. Erich S. Gruen contends that focusing on
12420-415: The Crusaders. The majority of Jerusalem's Jewish population was killed during the Crusader Siege of Jerusalem and the few thousand survivors were sold into slavery. Some of the Jews sold into slavery later had their freedom bought by Jewish communities in Italy and Egypt, and the redeemed slaves were taken to Egypt. Some Jewish prisoners of war were also deported to Apulia in southern Italy. Relief for
12600-424: The Empire. Jerusalem had been left in ruins from the time of Vespasian . Sixty years later, Hadrian, who had been instrumental in the expulsion from Palestine of Marcius Turbo after his bloody repression of Jews in the diaspora in 117 CE, on visiting the area of Iudaea , decided to rebuild the city in 130 CE, and settle it, circumstantial evidence suggesting it was he who renamed it Ælia Capitolina , with
12780-419: The Euphrates and in Adiabene (Kurdistan). In Josephus' own words, he had informed "the remotest Arabians" about the destruction. Jewish communities also existed in southern Europe, Anatolia, Syria, and North Africa. Jewish pilgrims from the diaspora, undeterred by the rebellion, had actually come to Jerusalem for Passover prior to the arrival of the Roman army, and many became trapped in the city and died during
12960-621: The Great Revolt, a Jewish uprising to fight for independence, which began in 66 CE and was eventually crushed in 73 CE, culminating in the Siege of Jerusalem and the burning and destruction of the Temple, the centre of the national and religious life of the Jews throughout the world. The Jewish diaspora at the time of the Temple's destruction, according to Josephus , was in Parthia (Persia), Babylonia (Iraq), Arabia, as well as some Jews beyond
13140-528: 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
13320-587: The Jewish academies of Palestine, and by the end of the third century they were reliant on donations from Babylon. The effect that the destruction of Jerusalem had on the Jewish diaspora has been a topic of considerable scholarly discussion. David Aberbach has argued that much of the European Jewish diaspora, by which he means exile or voluntary migration, originated with the Jewish wars which occurred between 66 and 135 CE. Martin Goodman states that it
13500-549: The Jewish communities of Jerusalem and the Galilee. As a result, many Jews fled to Egypt. In 638, Palestine came under Muslim rule with the Muslim conquest of the Levant . One estimate placed the Jewish population of Palestine at between 300,000 and 400,000 at the time. However, this is contrary to other estimates which place it at 150,000 to 200,000 at the time of the revolt against Heraclius. According to historian Moshe Gil ,
13680-510: The Jewish people to tribute. As early as the third century BCE Jewish communities sprang up in the Aegean islands, Greece, Asia Minor, Cyrenaica, Italy and Egypt. In Palestine, under the favourable auspices of the long period of peace—almost a whole century—which followed the advent of the Ptolemies, the new ways were to flourish. By means of all kinds of contacts, and particularly thanks to
13860-555: The Jewish population of Palestine came when the Ayyubid dynasty defeated the Crusaders and conquered Palestine (see 1187 Battle of Hattin ). Some Jewish immigration from the diaspora subsequently took place, but this came to an end when Mamluks took over Palestine (see 1291 Fall of Acre ). The Mamluks severely oppressed the Jews and greatly mismanaged the economy, resulting in a period of great social and economic decline. The result
14040-558: The Jews in China for pre-Roman (and post-) diasporic populations. King Agrippa I , in a letter to Caligula , enumerated among the provinces of the Jewish diaspora almost all the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient. This enumeration was far from complete as Italy and Cyrene were not included. The epigraphic discoveries from year to year augment the number of known Jewish communities but must be viewed with caution due to
14220-480: The Jews in Egypt to employ them as mercenaries. Philadelphus subsequently emancipated the Jews taken to Egypt as captives and settled them in cleruchs , or specialized colonies, as Jewish military units. Jews began settling in Cyrenaica (modern-day eastern Libya) around the third century BCE, during the rule of Ptolemy I of Egypt, who sent them to secure the region for his kingdom. By the early first century BCE,
14400-580: 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
14580-495: The Jews in Judaea in 70 CE and again in 135 CE, with large numbers of Jewish captives from Judea sold into slavery and an increase in voluntary Jewish emigration from Judea as a result of the wars, meant a drop in Palestine's Jewish population was balanced by a rise in diaspora numbers. Jewish prisoners sold as slaves in the diaspora and their children were eventually manumitted and joined local free communities. It has been argued that
14760-495: The Jews. Heavy taxes on agricultural land forced many Jews to migrate from rural areas to towns. Social and economic discrimination caused significant Jewish emigration from Palestine, and Muslim civil wars in the 8th and 9th centuries pushed many Jews out of the country. By the end of the 11th century the Jewish population of Palestine had declined substantially. During the First Crusade , Jews in Palestine, along with Muslims, were indiscriminately massacred and sold into slavery by
14940-800: The Middle Ages. The Ashkenazi Jews later migrated from Germany (and elsewhere in Central Europe) into Eastern Europe as a result of persecution. Some Ashkenazi Jews also have minor ancestry from Sephardi Jews exiled from Spain, first during Islamic persecutions (11th–12th centuries) and later during Christian reconquests (13th–15th centuries) and the Spanish Inquisition (15th–16th centuries). Ashkenazi Jews are of mixed Middle Eastern and European ancestry, as they derive part of their ancestry from non-Jewish Europeans who intermixed with Jews of migrant Middle Eastern origin. In 2006,
15120-478: 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. 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
15300-487: The Old World". Regarding the samples he used Behar points out that "Our conclusion favoring common ancestry (of Jewish people) over recent admixture is further supported by the fact that our sample contains individuals that are known not to be admixed in the most recent one or two generations." A 2013 study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by Costa et al., reached the conclusion that the four major female founders and most of
15480-544: 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
15660-577: The Roman Legions during their conquests. However, for the most part, modern Ashkenazi Jews originated with Jews who migrated or were forcibly taken from the Middle East to southern Europe in antiquity, where they established Jewish communities before moving into northern France and lower Germany during the High and Late Middle Ages . They also descend to a lesser degree from Jewish immigrants from Babylon, Persia, and North Africa who migrated to Europe in
15840-439: The Technion and Ramban team served only to confirm that genetic drift played a major role in shaping Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited in a matrilineal manner. Goldstein argues that the Technion and Ramban mtDNA studies fail to actually establish a statistically significant maternal link between modern Jews and historic Middle Eastern populations. This differs from the patrilineal case, where Goldstein said there
16020-528: The Temple rebuilt. The differences in content and tone of the two decrees, one in Hebrew and one in Aramaic, have caused some scholars to question their authenticity. The Cyrus Cylinder , an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that
16200-407: The accession of recruits from various quarters, it awoke to a consciousness of itself, and strove once again for national independence and political enfranchisement and sovereignty. The first Jewish diaspora in Egypt arose in the last century of pharaonic rule , apparently with the settlement there, either under Ashurbanipal or during the reign of Psammeticus of a colony of Jewish mercenaries,
16380-613: The archaeological evidence is suggestive of a Roman genocide taking place during the Second revolt. A significant movement of gentiles and Samaritans into villages formerly with a Jewish majority appears to have taken place thereafter. During the Crisis of the Third Century , civil wars in the Roman Empire caused great economic disruption, and taxes imposed to finance these wars impacted the Jewish population of Palestine heavily. As
16560-423: 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
16740-530: 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
16920-403: The commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus , there were over 7,000 Jews in Rome (though this is only the number that is said to have escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Archelaus ; compare: Bringmann: Klaus: Geschichte der Juden im Altertum, Stuttgart 2005, S. 202. Bringmann talks about 8,000 Jews who lived in the city of Rome.). Many sources say that the Jews constituted
17100-458: The common Arabic word wa, the primary conjunction in Arabic, equivalent to "and". In writing, it is prefixed to the following word, sometimes including other conjunctions, such as وَلَكِن wa-lākin , meaning "but". Another function is the " oath ", by preceding a noun of great significance to the speaker. It is often literally translatable to "By..." or "I swear to...", and is often used in
17280-497: 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
17460-411: The creation of political and war refugees, enslavement, deportation, overpopulation, indebtedness, military employment, and opportunities in business, commerce, and agriculture. Before the middle of the first century CE, in addition to Judea, Syria and Babylonia, large Jewish communities existed in the Roman provinces of Egypt, Crete and Cyrenaica , and in Rome itself. In 6 CE the region was organized as
17640-455: The cultural and religious centre or metropolis ( ir-va-em be-yisrael ) for the outlying communities. It could have two senses in Biblical terms, the idea of becoming a ' guiding light unto the nations ' by dwelling in the midst of gentiles, or of enduring the pain of exile from one's homeland. The conditions of diaspora in the former case were premised on the free exercise of citizenship or resident alien status. Galut implies by comparison living as
17820-661: 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
18000-459: 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
18180-432: The cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem. Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than
18360-630: The day of Tisha B'Av . There was a further shift of the center of religious authority from Yavne , as rabbis regrouped in Usha in the western Galilee, where the Mishnah was composed. This ban struck a blow at Jewish national identity within Palestine, while the Romans however continued to allow Jews in the diaspora their distinct national and religious identity throughout the Empire. The military defeats of
18540-568: 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. 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
18720-552: The deportation of a considerable portion of its inhabitants to Mesopotamia , the Jews had two principal cultural centers: Babylonia and the land of Israel . Deportees returned to the Samaria after the Neo-Babylonian Empire was in turn conquered by Cyrus the Great . The biblical book of Ezra includes two texts said to be decrees allowing the deported Jews to return to their homeland after decades and ordering
18900-511: The destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, more Jews lived in the Diaspora than in Israel. Jonathan Adelman estimated that around 60% of Jews lived in the diaspora during the Second Temple period. According to Gruen: Perhaps three to five million Jews dwelled outside Palestine in the roughly four centuries that stretched from Alexander to Titus . The era of the Second Temple brought the issue into sharp focus, inescapably so. The Temple still stood,
19080-662: The destruction of the Temple misses the point that already before this, the diaspora was well-established. Gruen argues compulsory dislocation of Jews during the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE) cannot explain more than a fraction of the eventual diaspora. Rather, the Jewish diaspora during this time period was created from various factors, including through the creation of political and war refugees, enslavement, deportation, overpopulation, indebtedness, military employment, and opportunities in business, commerce, and agriculture. Avrum Ehrlich also states that already well before
19260-577: The development of commerce, Hellenism infiltrated on all sides in varying degrees. The ports of the Mediterranean coast were indispensable to commerce and, from the very beginning of the Hellenistic period, underwent great development. In the Western diaspora Greek quickly became dominant in Jewish life and little sign remains of profound contact with Hebrew or Aramaic, the latter probably being
19440-471: The diaspora. Israel Bartal contends that Shlomo Sand is incorrect in his claim that the original Jews living in Israel were not exiled by the Romans, instead arguing that this view is negligible among serious Jewish study scholars. These scholars argue that the growth of diaspora Jewish communities was a gradual process that occurred over the centuries, starting with the Assyrian destruction of Israel,
19620-406: The domain of history, but of theology.' In Talmudic and post-Talmudic Rabbinic literature, this phenomenon was referred to as galut (exile), a term with strongly negative connotations, often contrasted with geula (redemption). Eugene Borowitz describes Galut as "fundamentally a theological category The modern Hebrew concept of Tefutzot תפוצות, "scattered", was introduced in the 1930s by
19800-546: 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. Charlemagne 's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome, brought on
19980-537: The early Roman period, particularly in Alexandria. It was not least for this reason that the Jewish people became a major political factor, especially since the Jews in the diaspora, notwithstanding strong cultural, social and religious tensions, remained firmly united with their homeland. Smallwood writes that, 'It is reasonable to conjecture that many, such as the settlement in Puteoli attested in 4 BCE went back to
20160-605: 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 . 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
20340-526: 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
20520-408: The effect of enhancing the Jewish self-perception of Exile after the destruction of the Second Temple, albeit their dispersion was due to an array of non-exilic factors. According to Hasia R. Diner , the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, followed by the dissolution, in 132 CE, of Jewish sovereignty over the territory renamed Syria Palaestina, had launched the second dispersion of the diaspora,
20700-576: 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
20880-517: 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
21060-456: The figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken. Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in Egypt. John R. Bartlett rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the Jewish demographic in the ancient world. 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 suppression of
21240-485: The first being the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE. She writes that, "Although many Jews had lived outside Judea even before that [the destruction of Judea], the ending of home rule set in motion the world’s longest diaspora." In the 4th century, the Roman Empire split and Palestine came under the control of the Byzantine Empire . There was still a significant Jewish population there, and Jews probably constituted
21420-626: 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. Jewish diaspora The Jewish diaspora ( Hebrew : גוֹלָה , romanized : gōlā ), dispersion ( Hebrew : תְּפוּצָה , romanized : təfūṣā ) or exile (Hebrew: גָּלוּת gālūṯ ; Yiddish : golus )
21600-594: The following period of Jewish–Roman Wars . Ashkenazi Jews is a general category of Jewish populations who immigrated to what is now Germany and northeastern France during the Middle Ages and until modern times used to adhere to the Yiddish culture and the Ashkenazi prayer style . There is evidence that groups of Jews had immigrated to Germania during the Roman Era ; they were probably merchants who followed
21780-437: 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
21960-464: The former, while consequential on the latter, was a psycho-spiritual framework that was not wholly dependent on the conditions of life in diasporic exile, since one could technically remain in galut even in Eretz Israel . Whereas Theodor Herzl and his follows thought that the establishment of a Jewish state would put an end to the diasporic exile, Ahad Ha-am thought to the contrary that such
22140-498: The general social "pot" in order to become Israeli. 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
22320-592: The geographer Strabo identified Jews as one of the four main groups residing in the city of Cyrene . While communities in Alexandria and Rome dated back to before the Maccabean Revolt , the population in the Jewish diaspora expanded after the Pompey's campaign in 62 BCE. Under the Hasmonean princes, who were at first high priests and then kings, the Jewish state displayed even a certain luster and annexed several territories. Soon, however, discord within
22500-407: 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
22680-475: The influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation, as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, some gradually abandoned Yiddish in favor of German and developed new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity . Throughout the centuries, Ashkenazim made significant contributions to Europe's philosophy , scholarship, literature , art , music , and science . As
22860-462: 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
23040-514: 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,
23220-583: The lack of precise evidence of their numbers. According to the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, the next most dense Jewish population after the Land of Israel and Babylonia was in Syria , particularly in Antioch , and Damascus , where 10,000 to 18,000 Jews were massacred during the great insurrection. The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo gives the number of Jewish inhabitants in Egypt as one million, one-eighth of
23400-632: 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
23580-649: 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
23760-429: The late Middle Ages due to persecution . Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel. Ashkenazim adapted their traditions to Europe and underwent a transformation in their interpretation of Judaism. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands experienced a cultural reorientation. Under
23940-464: The late (pre-Roman Empire) Roman Republic or early Empire and originated in voluntary emigration and the lure of trade and commerce." Many Jews migrated to Rome from Alexandria due to flourishing trade relations between the cities. Dating the numerous settlements is difficult. Some settlements may have resulted from Jewish emigration following the defeat of Jewish revolts. Others, such as the Jewish community in Rome, were far older, dating back to at least
24120-568: The late Roman period to the present. By 1764 there were about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . The worldwide Jewish population (comprising the Middle East and the rest of Europe) was estimated at 1.2 million. After the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, Judah ( יְהוּדָה Yehuda ) became a province of the Persian empire . This status continued into the following Hellenistic period , when Yehud became
24300-438: The late Roman period to the present. Diaspora has been a common phenomenon for many peoples since antiquity, but what is particular about the Jewish instance is the pronounced negative, religious, indeed metaphysical connotations traditionally attached to dispersion and exile ( galut ), two conditions which were conflated. The English term diaspora , which entered usage as late as 1876, and the Hebrew word galut though covering
24480-462: 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
24660-438: The left of the letter it points, and it is then called ḥolam ḥaser . Some inadequate typefaces do not support the distinction between the ḥolam male ⟨ וֹ ⟩ /o/ , the consonantal vav pointed with a ḥolam ḥaser ⟨ וֺ ⟩ /vo/ (compare ḥolam male ⟨ מַצּוֹת ⟩ /maˈts o t/ and consonantal vav- ḥolam ḥaser ⟨ מִצְוֺת ⟩ /mitsˈ vo t/ ). To display
24840-445: The majority of the population was Jewish or Samaritan . The land gradually came to have an Arab majority as Arab tribes migrated there. Jewish communities initially grew and flourished. Umar allowed and encouraged Jews to settle in Jerusalem. It was the first time in about 500 years that Jews were allowed to freely enter and worship in their holiest city. In 717, new restrictions were imposed against non-Muslims that negatively affected
25020-416: The mid second century BCE, although it expanded greatly following Pompey’s campaign in 62 BCE. In 6 CE the Romans annexed Judaea. Only the Jews in Babylonia remained outside of Roman rule. Unlike the Greek speaking Hellenized Jews in the west the Jewish communities in Babylonian and Judea continued the use of Aramaic as a primary language. As early as the middle of the 2nd century BCE the Jewish author of
25200-402: 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
25380-502: The minor female founders had ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. According to the study these findings 'point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities" and their intermarriage with Jewish men of Middle Eastern origin. Vav (letter) It represents the consonant [ w ] in classical Hebrew , and [ v ] in modern Hebrew, as well as
25560-492: The more prevalent. Jews migrated to new Greek settlements that arose in the Eastern Mediterranean and former subject areas of the Persian Empire on the heels of Alexander the Great 's conquests, spurred on by the opportunities they expected to find. The proportion of Jews in the diaspora in relation to the size of the nation as a whole increased steadily throughout the Hellenistic era and reached astonishing dimensions in
25740-434: 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
25920-455: The occurrences are found. The second, perhaps with a single exception that remains debatable, is never used to speak of the past and does not concern Babylon; the instrument of dispersion is never the historical sovereign of another country. Diaspora is the word for chastisement, but the dispersion in question has not occurred yet: it is potential, conditional on the Jews not respecting the law of God. . . It follows that diaspora belongs, not to
26100-1051: 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
26280-564: The pagan reframing of Jerusalem may have been a strategic move designed to challenge, rather, the growing threat, pretensions and influence of converts to Christianity, for whom Jerusalem was likewise a crucial symbol of their faith. Implementation of these plans led to violent opposition, and triggered a full-scale insurrection with the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), assisted, according to Dio Cassius , by some other peoples, perhaps Arabs who had recently been subjected by Trajan. The revolt
26460-553: The peoples of the former Philistine cities, the Moabites , Ammonites and Edomites . Attempts were also made to incorporate the Samaritans , following takeover of Samaria. The success of mass-conversions is however questionable, as most groups retained their tribal separations and mostly turned Hellenistic or Christian, with Edomites perhaps being the only exception to merge into the Jewish society under Herodian dynasty and in
26640-614: The population. Alexandria was by far the most important of the Egyptian Jewish communities. The Jews in the Egyptian diaspora were on a par with their Ptolemaic counterparts and close ties existed for them with Jerusalem. As in other Hellenistic diasporas, the Egyptian diaspora was one of choice not of imposition. To judge by the later accounts of wholesale massacres in 115 CE , the number of Jewish residents in Cyrenaica , Cyprus , and Mesopotamia must also have been large. At
26820-474: 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
27000-399: The preexilic emigrants in Egypt. . . Galut is a religious–nationalist term, which implies exile from the homeland as a result of collective sins, an exile that will be redeemed at YHWH’s pleasure. Jewish messianism is closely connected with the concept of galut.’ In Zionist debates a distinction was made between galut and golus/gola . The latter denoted social and political exile, whereas
27180-514: 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
27360-455: 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
27540-506: The prospect of an indefinite period of displacement. In 132 CE, Bar Kokhba led a rebellion against Hadrian , a revolt connected with the renaming of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina . After four years of devastating warfare, the uprising was suppressed, and Jews were forbidden access to Jerusalem. During the Middle Ages , due to increasing migration and resettlement, Jews divided into distinct regional groups that today are generally addressed according to two primary geographical groupings:
27720-418: The right bank of the Tiber as traders. In 37 BCE, the forces of the Jewish client king Herod the Great captured Jerusalem with Roman assistance, and there was likely an influx of Jewish slaves taken into the diaspora by Roman forces. In 53 BCE, a minor Jewish revolt was suppressed and the Romans subsequently sold Jewish war captives into slavery. Roman rule continued until the First Jewish-Roman War , or
27900-445: 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
28080-426: The royal family and the growing disaffection of the pious towards rulers who no longer evinced any appreciation of the real aspirations of their subjects made the Jewish nation easy prey for the ambitions of the now increasingly autocratic and imperial Romans, the successors of the Seleucids. In 63 BCE Pompey invaded Jerusalem, the Jewish people lost their political sovereignty and independence, and Gabinius subjected
28260-432: The scattering of all twelve tribes. In modern times, the contrasting meanings of diaspora/galut have given rise to controversy among Jews. Bowman states this in the following terms, (Diaspora) follows the Greek usage and is considered a positive phenomenon that continues the prophetic call of Israel to be a 'light unto the nations' and establish homes and families among the gentiles. The prophet Jeremiah issues this call to
28440-507: The second half of the 11th century. 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
28620-430: The siege. According to Josephus, about 97,000 Jewish captives from Judea were sold into slavery by the Romans during the revolt. Many other Jews fled from Judea to other areas around the Mediterranean. Josephus wrote that 30,000 Jews were deported from Judea to Carthage by the Romans. Exactly when Roman Anti-Judaism began is a question of scholarly debate, however historian Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson has proposed that
28800-399: The third book of the Oracula Sibyllina addressed the "chosen people," saying: "Every land is full of thee and every sea." The most diverse witnesses, such as Strabo , Philo , Seneca , Luke (the author of the Acts of the Apostles ), Cicero , and Josephus , all mention Jewish populations in the cities of the Mediterranean basin . See also History of the Jews in India and History of
28980-412: 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
29160-602: The time, possibly outnumbering those in the Land of Israel. Palestine and Babylon were both great centers of Jewish scholarship during this time, but tensions between scholars in these two communities grew as many Jewish scholars in Palestine feared that the centrality of the land to the Jewish religion would be lost with continuing Jewish emigration. Many Palestinian sages refused to consider Babylonian scholars their equals and would not ordain Babylonian students in their academies, fearing they would return to Babylon as rabbis. Significant Jewish emigration to Babylon adversely affected
29340-432: The two branches comprise many unique ethno-cultural practices and have links to their local host populations (such as Central Europeans for the Ashkenazim and Hispanics and Arabs for the Sephardim), their shared religion and ancestry, as well as their continuous communication and population transfers, has been responsible for a unified sense of cultural and religious Jewish identity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim from
29520-432: The two branches comprise many unique ethno-cultural practices and have links to their local host populations (such as Central Europeans for the Ashkenazim and Hispanics and Arabs for the Sephardim), their shared religion and ancestry, as well as their continuous communication and population transfers, has been responsible for a unified sense of cultural and religious Jewish identity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim from
29700-441: The vowels [ u ] and [ o ] . In text with niqqud , a dot is added to the left or on top of the letter to indicate, respectively, the two vowel pronunciations. It is the origin of Greek Ϝ (digamma) and Υ (upsilon), Cyrillic Ѕ , У and V , Latin F and V and later Y , and the derived Latin- or Roman-alphabet letters U and W . The letter likely originated with an Egyptian hieroglyph which represented
29880-418: 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
30060-533: 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." 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,
30240-516: 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
30420-397: The word mace (transliterated as ḥḏ , hedj ): A mace was a ceremonial stick or staff, similar to a scepter, perhaps derived from weapons or hunting tools. In Modern Hebrew, the word וָו vav is used to mean both "hook" and the letter's name (the name is also written וי״ו ), while in Syriac and Arabic, waw to mean "hook" has fallen out of use. The Arabic letter و
30600-440: 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
30780-433: Was crushed, with the Jewish population of Judea devastated. Jewish war captives were again captured and sold into slavery by the Romans. According to Jewish tradition, the Romans deported twelve boatloads of Jews to Cyrenaica . Voluntary Jewish emigration from Judea in the aftermath of the Bar-Kokhba revolt also expanded Jewish communities in the diaspora. Jews were forbidden entrance to Jerusalem on pain of death, except for
30960-545: 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
31140-422: 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
31320-476: 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. In Poland, Jews were granted special protection by
31500-471: Was large-scale migration from Palestine, and the population declined. The Jewish population shrunk especially heavily, as did the Christian population. Though some Jewish immigration from Europe, North Africa, and Syria also occurred in this period, which potentially saved the collapsing Jewish community of Palestine from disappearing altogether, Jews were reduced to an even smaller minority of the population. The result of these waves of emigration and expulsion
31680-461: Was obscure and devoid of political influence. The poorest but most fervent of the exiles returned to Judah / the Land of Israel during the reign of the Achaemenids (c. 550–330 BCE). There, with the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem as their center, they organized themselves into a community, animated by a remarkable religious ardor and a tenacious attachment to the Torah as the focus of their identity. As this little nucleus increased in numbers with
31860-416: Was originally a labial-velar approximant /w/ . In modern Israeli Hebrew, some loanwords , the pronunciation of whose source contains / w / , and their derivations , are pronounced with [ w ] : ואחד – /ˈwaχad/ (but: ואדי – /ˈvadi/ ). Modern Hebrew has no standardized way to distinguish orthographically between [ v ] and [ w ] . The pronunciation
32040-442: 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,
32220-590: Was that the Jewish population of Palestine was reduced to a few thousand by the time the Ottoman Empire conquered Palestine, after which the region entered a period of relative stability. At the start of Ottoman rule in 1517, the estimated Jewish population was 5,000, composed of both descendants of Jews who had never left the land and migrants from the diaspora. During the Middle Ages , due to increasing geographical dispersion and re-settlement, Jews divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two primary geographical groupings:
32400-426: Was the Babylonian captivity , in which portions of the population of the Kingdom of Judah were deported in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE by the Neo-Babylonian Empire under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar II . A Jewish diaspora existed for several centuries before the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Jewish diaspora in the second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE) was created from various factors, including through
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