20 Facts About Ashkenazi Jewish

Rabbinical term Ashkenazi Jewish refers to diaspora Jews who established communities along the Rhine in western Germany and northern France during the Middle Ages.

However, the Ashkenazi population was decimated shortly after as a result of the Holocaust that was carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, which affected almost every Jewish European family.

Name Ashkenazi Jewish 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.

Substantial Ashkenazi Jewish population emerged in northern Gaul by the Middle Ages, but Ashkenazi Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orleans.

Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jewish Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and the United States after the war.

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In Israel, the term Ashkenazi Jewish is used in a manner unrelated to its original meaning, often applied to all Jews who settled in Europe and sometimes including those whose ethnic background is actually Sephardic.

Jews of any non-Ashkenazi Jewish background, including Mizrahi, Yemenite, Kurdish and others who have no connection with the Iberian Peninsula, have similarly come to be lumped together as Sephardic.

Religious Ashkenazi Jewish Jews living in Israel are obliged to follow the authority of the chief Ashkenazi Jewish rabbi in halakhic matters.

France's blended Ashkenazi Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that is going on among Jews throughout the world.

One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition and concentrated in the southwest, while the other community was Ashkenazi Jewish, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, and mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish.

The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi Jewish culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe.

Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of region.

Term Ashkenazi Jewish refers to the nusach Ashkenaz used by Ashkenazi Jewish Jews in their Siddur.

In some instances, Ashkenazi Jewish communities have accepted significant numbers of Sephardi newcomers, sometimes resulting in intermarriage and the possible merging between the two communities.

Achievements of so many Ashkenazi Jewish Jews, have led some to the view that Ashkenazi Jewish Jews have higher than average intelligence.

Collectively, Ashkenazi Jews are less genetically diverse than other Jewish ethnic divisions, due to their genetic bottleneck.

The majority of genetic findings to date concerning Ashkenazi Jewish Jews conclude that the male lines were founded by ancestors from the Middle East.

Testing was performed on the full 16,600 DNA units composing mitochondrial DNA in all their subjects, and the study found that the four main female Ashkenazi Jewish founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years in the past while most of the remaining minor founders have a deep European ancestry.

The greatest affinity and shared ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews were found to be with both southern Europeans and Levantines such as Druze, Cypriot, Lebanese and Samaritan groups.

People of Ashkenazi Jewish descent are at much higher risk of being a carrier for Tay-Sachs disease, which is fatal in its homozygous form.