Ashkenazi Jews (Hebrew: יהודים אשכנזים) (Yiddish: אַשקענאַזי יהודים), also known as Ashkenazic Jews, European Jews or simply Ashkenazim (Hebrew: אַשְׁכְּנַזִּים) are a Jewish ethnic division that come from Central and Eastern Europe, which had been their primary region of concentration and residence until recent times, evolving their distinctive characteristics and diasporic identity. Their millennia residence in Europe was largely brought to an end following the Holocaust, which resulted in the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Ashkenazi Jews during World War II in a program of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, throughout the German Reich and German-occupied territories.[1][2][3]
It is estimated that in the 11th century Ashkenazi Jews composed only three percent of the world's Jewish population, while at their peak in 1931 they accounted for 92 percent of the world's Jews. Immediately prior to the Holocaust, the number of Ashkenazi Jews stood at approximately 16.7 million.[4] Statistical figures vary for the contemporary demography of Ashkenazi Jews, oscillating between 10[5] and 11.2[6] million. Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi make up around 74% of Jews worldwide.[7] Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.[8] Ashkenazi Jews constitute around 35–36% of Israel's total population, or 47.5% of Israel's Jewish population.[9][10]
Although the copious number of genetic studies on Ashkenazim — researching both their paternal and maternal lineages — all point to certain ancient Levantine origins, the studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of their non-Levantine admixture.[11] These diverging conclusions focus particularly in respect to the extent of the predominant non-Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi paternal lineages.
Etymology[]
The name Ashkenazi derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10). Gomer has been identified with the Cimmerians, while the biblical term Ashkenaz here may be an error for 'Ashkuz', from Assyrian Aškūza (A/Is-k/gu-zu-ai/Asguzi in cuneiform inscriptions)[12] a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates.[13] This ethnonym perhaps denoted the Scythians, though the identification is problematic.[13][14] The theory presupposes a scribal confusion between נ/ו(waw/nun), creating A-shkenaz from a-Shkuz.[15] In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni and Ararat, perhaps corresponding to Urartu, called on by God to resist Babylon.[15][16]
- ↑ Wilhelm Höttl, an SS officer and a Doctor of History, testified at the Nuremberg Trials and Eichmann's trial that at a meeting he had with Eichmann in Budapest in late August 1944, "Eichmann ... told me that, according to his information, some 6,000,000 (six million) Jews had perished until then – 4,000,000 (four million) in extermination camps and the remaining 2,000,000 (two million) through shooting by the Operations Units and other causes, such as disease, etc."[1] [2] [3]
- ↑ Martin Gilbert (2002). The Routledge atlas of the Holocaust, 3rd Ed.. London: Routledge. p. 245. ISBN 0-415-28145-8. "By the most exact estimates of recent research, the number of Jews killed in Europe between September 1939 and May 1945 was nearly six million. This estimate is a minimum; the deaths shown opposite total just over 5,750,000, and are based on such country-by-country and region-by-region records as survive."
- ↑ Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1986). The war against the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Bantam Books. p. 403. ISBN 0-553-34302-5.
- ↑ "The Jewish Population of the World (2010)". Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html., based on American Jewish Year Book. American Jewish Committee. http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=10142.
- ↑ "Ashkenazi Jews". The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. http://hugr.huji.ac.il/AshkenaziJews.aspx. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
- ↑ "Johns Hopkins Gazette: September 8, 1997". Jhu.edu. http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/julsep97/sep0897/briefs.html. Retrieved 2013-07-24.
- ↑ Sergio DellaPergola, ’"Sephardic and Oriental" Jews in Israel and Countries: Migration, Social Change, and Identification,’ in Peter Y. Medding (ed.) Sephardic Jewry and Mizrahi Jews, vol. X11 Oxford University Press 2008 pp. 3–42, p. 14. DellaPergola does not analyse or mention the Ashkenazi statistics, but the figure is implied by his rough estimate that in 2000, Oriental and Sephardic Jews constituted 26% of the population of world Jewry.
- ↑ Focus on Genetic Screening Research edited by Sandra R. Pupecki P:58
- ↑ "Ashkenazi (people)". Encyclopedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/38290/Ashkenazi. Retrieved 2013-09-04.
- ↑ Khazzoom, Loolwa. "Jews of the Middle East". Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/mejews.html. Retrieved 2013-09-04.
- ↑ "Summary of Recent Genetic Studies". Science Magazine.. http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2013/10/did-modern-jews-originate-italy. Retrieved 2013-08-13.
- ↑ Russell E. Gmirkin,Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch, T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 2006 p.148, p.149 n.57.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Sverre Bøe,Gog and Magog: Ezekiel 38-39 as Pre-text for Revelation 19, 17–21 and 20, 7–10, Mohr Siebeck, 2001 p.48. Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "Bøe" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Nadav Naʼaman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction, Eisenbrauns, 2005 p. 364 and note 37.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Paul Kriwaczek, Yiddish Civilisation, Hachette 2011 p. 173 n. 9.
- ↑ Otto Michel 'Σκύθης,' in Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey William Bromiley, Gerhard Friedrich (eds.)Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, William B.Erdmanns, (1971) 1995 vol. 11, pp. 447–50, p. 448