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Ashkenazi Jews

About half of Jewish people around the world today, including 90 percent of the American Jewish population, identify as Ashkenazi, meaning that they descend from Jews who lived in Central or Eastern Europe. The term was initially used to define a distinct cultural group of Jews who settled in the 10th century in the Rhineland in western Germany. shkenazi Jews are the Jewish ethnic identity most readily recognized by North Americans — the culture of matzah balls, black-hatted Hasidim and Yiddish.

Most pre-modern Diaspora communities are categorized into four major ethnic groups (in Hebrew, sometimes called eidot, “communities”). One of two major ancestral groups of Jewish people, Sephardic Jews includes those whose ancestors lived in Spain and Portugal - Iberia (in Hebrew, Sepharad). The other group is called Ashkenazi, whose ancestors lived in France and Central and Eastern Europe, including Germany, Poland, and Russia. Although the first American Jews were Sephardic, most Jewish people living in the United States are of Ashkenazi descent. Although often confused with Sephardic Jews (because they share many religious customs), Mizrahi Jews have a separate heritage. Mizrahi (in Hebrew, “Eastern” or “Oriental”) Jews come from Middle Eastern ancestry.

Within the observant minority, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi, are many who adhere to a religious way of life, regulated by Jewish religious law, while participating in the country's national life. They regard the modern Jewish state as the first step toward the coming of the Messiah and redemption of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. In contrast, some of the ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that Jewish sovereignty in the Land can be reestablished only after the coming of the Messiah. Maintaining strict adherence to Jewish religious law, they reside in separate neighborhoods, run their own schools, dress in traditional clothing, maintain distinct roles for men and women, and are bound by a closely circumscribed lifestyle.

The traditional diaspora language of Ashkenazi Jews is Yiddish (a Germanic language with elements of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic languages), developed after they had moved into northern Europe: beginning with Germany and France in the Middle Ages. In the late Middle Ages, due to religious persecution, the majority of the Ashkenazi population shifted steadily eastward, moving out of the Holy Roman Empire into the areas later part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, comprising parts of present-day Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

Some names have religious meanings, such as names indicating Kehina ("priesthood", i.e. descent from the first High Priest Aharon/Aaron, brother of Moshe/Moses); Cohen and its variants or translations: Cahen (France), Kohn (Germany), Kogan or Kagan (Russia, Ukraine), Kaplan (Polish for "priest"), Sacerdoti (Italian for "priestly").

A number of studies have found that Ashkenazi Jews in the United States have a high average IQ. It has been proposed by Cochran, Hardy and Harpending (2006) that this can be explained by the occupational constraints imposed on the Ashkenazi for many centuries in Europe, when they were largely confined to money-lending. They propose that this selected for the high verbal and mathematical intelligence that has several times been found in American Ashkenazim. A review of studies shows that Oriental Jews in Israel have an average IQ 14 points lower than that of European (largely Ashkenazi) Jews. It is proposed that this difference can be explained in terms of the Cochran, Hardy and Harpending theory because Oriental Jews were permitted to engage in a much wider range of occupations and hence did not come under the selection pressure to develop the high verbal and mathematical intelligence that was present for Ashkenazim. The selection is socializtion through family values and traditions, rather than biological.

Ashkenaz refers to a people and a country bordering on Armenia and the upper Euphrates; listed in Genesis 10:3 and I Chronicles 1:6 among the descendants of Gomer. The name Ashkenaz also occurs once in Jeremiah 51:27 in a passage calling upon the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz to rise and destroy Babylon. Since the Ashkuza are mentioned in conjunction with the Gimirrai-Cimmerians and the Ashkenaz with Gomer in Genesis, it is reasonable to infer that Ashkenaz is a dialectal form of Akkadian Ashkuza, identical with a group of Iranian-speaking people organized in confederations of tribes called Saka in Old Persian, whom Greek writers (e.g., Herodotus 1:103) called Scythians. They ranged from southern Russia through the Caucasus and into the Near East. Some scholars, however, have argued against this identification on philological grounds because of the presence of the "n" in the word Ashkenaz.

In medieval rabbinical literature the name was applied generally in medieval rabbinical literature to that country. Its origin in this particular is obscure. In the first half of the eleventh century Hai Gaon refers to religious questions that had been addressed to him from Ashkenaz, by which latter term he undoubtedly means Germany ("Sha'are ?ede?," No. 99, Leipsic, 1858). Rashi in the latter half of the eleventh century refers to both the language of Ashkenaz (Commentary on Deut. iii. 9; idem on Suk. 17a) and the country of Ashkenaz (?ul. 93a). During the twelfth century the word appears quite frequently. In the "Ma?zor Vitry" (ed. S. Hurwitz, pp. 112, 392, Berlin, 1892), a liturgical work, 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 (ib. p. 129).

Eliezer ben Nathan, in his history of the persecution during the Crusades ("Quellen zur Gesch. der Juden in Deutschland," ii. 36, Berlin, 1892), mentions a mob of Zarfatim (French) and Ashkenazim (Germans). The same words are used by Solomon ben Simson (ib. p. 1). German as the language of Ashkenaz is frequently referred to in the anonymous work on ritual, called "Asufot" (Güdemann, "Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Cultur in Frankreich und Deutschland," 1880, pp. 113, 131; see also pp. 50, 276).

About half of Jews today are identified as Ashkenazi, meaning that they originate from Jews living in Central or Eastern Europe. The term was initially used to define a distinct cultural group of Jews who settled in the 10th century in Germany's Rhineland. Despite much speculation, many gaps exist in understanding of their origins and demographic upheavals during the second millennium. For many centuries, Ashkenazi Jews lived in communities in Eastern Europe and were genetically isolated from their non-Jewish neighbors. Today, comparing Ashkenazi Jews from the United States and Israel, they’re very similar genetically, almost like the same population regardless of where they live.

Due to the "founder effect," the genetic makeup of Ashkenazi Jews is comparatively homogenous, making it easier to identify the location of genetic variations. The "founder effect" occurs when a population has a limited number of forebears and/or when one or more events substantially reduces a population. A group of people whose ancestry includes either or both of these characteristics is comparatively homogeneous in its genetic makeup. In founder populations, a larger proportion of individuals will exhibit similar, distinctive genetic traits. Also, a distinctive genetic trait is more likely to be the result of the same genetic variation within the founder population.

Ashkenazi Jews come from a small number of founders and during much of their history experienced significant population reductions. Although shrouded in history, the number of founders of the Ashkenazi Jewish population is believed to be extremely small. One study indicates that about 40% of today's Ashkenazi population come from just four "founding mothers." By the 16th century, almost all Ashkenazi Jews were located in the Pale of Settlement. The Ashkenazim had encountered a combination of plagues, wars and anti-Semitic persecution, contracting the population size to an estimated few hundred thousand. In the ensuing 500 years, however, these numbers increased dramatically.

But unlike today’s genetic uniformity, it turns out that the community was more diverse 600 years ago. The Erfurt medieval Jewish community existed between the 11th and 15th centuries, with a short gap following a 1349 massacre. At times, it was a thriving community and one of the largest in Germany. ancient Jewish DNA data is hard to come by, as Jewish law prohibits the disturbance of the dead in most circumstances. Investigation of the ancient DNA of 33 Ashkenazi Jews from medieval Erfurt disclosed that the community can be categorized into what seems like two groups. One relates more to individuals from Middle Eastern populations and the other to European populations, possibly including migrants to Erfurt from the East. The findings suggest that there were at least two genetically distinct groups in medieval Erfurt.

The physical Torah, the scripture of the Jewish religion, is different for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. For Ashkenazim, Torahs are encased in cloth and wound around two wooden sticks, while Sephardic Jews have a cylindrical Torah case, often plated with silver and gold. In areas where Ashkenazic Judaism was widely present, there was tension between Christians and Jews. Jews were usually isolated from their non-Jewish neighbors, both through voluntary separation and through imposed exclusion. Additionally, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews have different prayer services. Sephardic Jews use different melodies in their services. Holiday customs are also different. For example, Ashkenazi Jews have latkes and Sephardic Jews have jelly doughnuts to celebrate Hanukkah. In addition, the internationally recognized languages used by Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews are different. For Ashkenazi Jews, Yiddish is most common, while for Sephardic Jews, Ladino is most common.

A set of Ashkenazi men claim descent from Levi, the founder of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. (Names such as Levy, Levine and Levitt, for example, bespeak a Levite heritage.) The Torah go to lengths to keep the Levites completely separate from the rest of the Israelites. Unlike the other tribes, the tribe of Levi was split into family groups. Even the expression “by the clans of its ancestral houses”, often used in reference to the tribal censuses, is reversed in the case of the Levites; the Torah states that the Levites must be counted “by their ancestral house and by their clans.” One way to explain this is that the Levites were divided into clans based on their roles, not based on their tribal affiliation. The same genetic "signature" found on Levites strongly implying descent from a single common ancestor who lived in the Fertile Crescent between 1,500 and 2,500 years ago.

The increased genetic risk factors for various diseases seen in Ashkenazi populations appear to be rooted in a history of migrations, catastrophic reductions in population, and then re-population from a small number of surviving founder families over many centuries. These factors effectively concentrated genetic variations in a comparatively small population. Some disease mutations unusually common in Ashkenazi Jews, include Tay-Sachs disease and some forms of breast cancer, high cholesterol and hemophilia. Several rare diseases found at higher rates among Ashkenazi Jews, include Canavan, Crohn's, and Gaucher diseases. Non classical CAH - congenital adrenal hyperplasia - seems to represent the most frequent autosomal recessive disorder, being particularly frequent among Ashkenazi Jews, Hispanics, Italians and Yugoslavs. The prevalence of the disease among the Ashkenazi Jews was calculated to be 1:27 (3.7%).

The mutations that persisted represent whatever the people who had the most children happened to be carrying. Because Ashkenazi Jews tend to marry within their own population, those mutations remained common.