Ashkenazim
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Ashkenazic Jews, or Ashkenazim—the other major branch of
Judaism, came from Northern and Eastern Europe, and Russia. Yiddish,
a combination of medieval German and Hebrew, developed among
Ashkenazim around 1100. Trading contacts between communities and
periodic migrations in the face of persecution gradually turned Yiddish
into a universal language for Northern and Central European Jews.
After the early 1800s, the majority of American Jews were Ashkenazim.
Much of the food, vocabulary, and culture considered "Jewish" in the U.S.
today is actually Ashkenazic. Yiddish language communities arose in
large cities, especially New York, where Yiddish theater and literature
flourished. Isaac Bashevis Singer is probably the most famous
American author to write in Yiddish, while Sholem Aleichem wrote
Yiddish tales from Russia. At its peak before World War II, 11 million
people spoke Yiddish. Today some 5 million Ashkenazim around the
world speak Yiddish.
Judaism, came from Northern and Eastern Europe, and Russia. Yiddish,
a combination of medieval German and Hebrew, developed among
Ashkenazim around 1100. Trading contacts between communities and
periodic migrations in the face of persecution gradually turned Yiddish
into a universal language for Northern and Central European Jews.
After the early 1800s, the majority of American Jews were Ashkenazim.
Much of the food, vocabulary, and culture considered "Jewish" in the U.S.
today is actually Ashkenazic. Yiddish language communities arose in
large cities, especially New York, where Yiddish theater and literature
flourished. Isaac Bashevis Singer is probably the most famous
American author to write in Yiddish, while Sholem Aleichem wrote
Yiddish tales from Russia. At its peak before World War II, 11 million
people spoke Yiddish. Today some 5 million Ashkenazim around the
world speak Yiddish.
The name "askhenaz" was the name that the Jews themselves used for Germany, a name taken from
Genesis 10:3.
The Ashkenazi communities were from the start of organized like small cities inside a Christian city. The Jews
had their own laws, they had social contact only with each other, and they organized and armed themselves in
order to protect their communities against villains and thieves.
The language of the Ashkenazi Jews was Yiddish, a language close to German. In modern times, Yiddish is in
danger of dying out.
HISTORY
10th century: Jewish merchants start settling in France and Germany. Their main asset were good
connections with Mediterranean and the East, allowing them a wide range of products. As the Jews formed
small communities in cities, many of them became craftsmen and artisans. The main centres for Jewish
scholarship were Mainz, Worms, Troyes and Sens.
11th century: Rabbenu Gershom of Mainz stands out as the first major scholar in the Ashkenazi tradition.
1182: The Jews are expelled from France.
14th century: Following riots and massacres, many Jews move from Germany into Poland.
16th century: Eastern Europe has become the centre of Ashkenazi Judaism.
19th century: Many Ashkenazi Jews move to North America.
1809: In some Ashkenazi communities, Reform Judaism is starting to be defined and developed.
1845: As a reaction towards Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism is defined.
20th century: Ashkenazi Jews move into Palestine, and becomes the largest Jewish group of what would
become the State of Israel.
© Copyright 1996-2007 LexicOrient. All rights reserved
By: Tore Kjeilen
Genesis 10:3.
The Ashkenazi communities were from the start of organized like small cities inside a Christian city. The Jews
had their own laws, they had social contact only with each other, and they organized and armed themselves in
order to protect their communities against villains and thieves.
The language of the Ashkenazi Jews was Yiddish, a language close to German. In modern times, Yiddish is in
danger of dying out.
HISTORY
10th century: Jewish merchants start settling in France and Germany. Their main asset were good
connections with Mediterranean and the East, allowing them a wide range of products. As the Jews formed
small communities in cities, many of them became craftsmen and artisans. The main centres for Jewish
scholarship were Mainz, Worms, Troyes and Sens.
11th century: Rabbenu Gershom of Mainz stands out as the first major scholar in the Ashkenazi tradition.
1182: The Jews are expelled from France.
14th century: Following riots and massacres, many Jews move from Germany into Poland.
16th century: Eastern Europe has become the centre of Ashkenazi Judaism.
19th century: Many Ashkenazi Jews move to North America.
1809: In some Ashkenazi communities, Reform Judaism is starting to be defined and developed.
1845: As a reaction towards Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism is defined.
20th century: Ashkenazi Jews move into Palestine, and becomes the largest Jewish group of what would
become the State of Israel.
© Copyright 1996-2007 LexicOrient. All rights reserved
By: Tore Kjeilen
Of all the countries in Europe, Germany is one of the richest in Jewish history and tradition. While the country is probably
most famous, or infamous, in Jewish history for being the epicenter of the Nazis' "Final Solution," even the Holocaust was
unable to bring to an end the 1600 years of continuous habitation and cultural flourishing in Germany. Ashkenaz Jewry has
been shaped for a millennia and a half in the tumultuous, ever-changing German political, social and economic landscape.
Crusaders would routinely massacre whole Jewish communities on their way to the Holy Land. Communities in Worms,
Mainz and Cologne were devastated; in Mainz, for example, 1,100 Jews were killed in one day in 1096, and the synagogue
and other communities buildings were razed. It is important to note that while the Pope occasionally condemned these
attacks on Jews, the condemnations were neither vocal nor frequent. Moreover, the lack of any punishment or reprisals
against the violators of the Pope's orders gave the rioters implicit approval, and the attacks continued during the next seven
crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries.
While none of these future Crusades were as devastating to the German Jews as the first, which caught them unaware,
their lives and communities were nonetheless changed irrevocably. Jews ceased to be exclusively a merchant class; much
of Europe was now accessible after having been traversed by Crusaders, and international trade could be performed by
non-Jews. Instead, in line with the Jew's newfound subjugation at the hands of the Church, Jews became known as
moneylenders. Because Christians could not lend money at interest, Jews had a niche waiting for them. Of course, such a
profession did little to endear the Jews to their neighbors, some of whom would just as soon kill the moneylender as repay
his loan.
Jews' community lives changed as well. No longer could Jews hold public office, or blithely interact with their Christian
neighbors. Instead, the Jews of each city banded together in ghettos. While the word has in our times acquired a decisively
negative connotation in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the ghettos of Medieval Germany were locked from the inside as
well as from the outside. No Jew could wander around the city without risking taunts and attacks, but few Jews had a
reason or desire to leave the ghetto in the first place. The Jewish community, or kahal, was mostly autonomous –
sometimes the ruler of the surrounding city would set limits on inhabitants of the ghetto, and they would always impose a
heavy tax burden, but the collecting of taxes and enforcing of population quotas was all done by the Jewish governing
board, the kehilla. Any interaction with non-Jewish rulers, businessmen, or neighbors was handled by the shtadlan, a
community representative
The collective isolation of the Jews also led to the rise of Yiddish. The Jews continued speaking a medieval dialect of
German, even as the language was advancing and changing in the outside world. The language gradually incorporated
elements of Hebrew, and eventually became a language unto itself, which was often incomprehensible to the non-Jewish
Germans.
The centuries that followed the Crusades were difficult ones for the Jews of Western Europe. In the thirteenth century, the
Catholic Church instituted the Inquisition. Secular and religious rulers alike attacked "heretics" – a category that sometimes
included Jews – with savagery, subjecting them to imprisonment, forced conversion and often death. At the same time, the
Jews were accused of killing children for ritual purposes (blood libels), of host desecration, and, during the Black Plague in
the fourteenth century, of poisoning wells. These accusations, and the violence that followed them (Juddenschlacht, or
"Jews slaughter), led to the repeated expulsion of the Jews of Germany from their towns. The evictions continued through
the Middle Ages and the Reformation, and were the result of the uncertain status of Jews as citizens of the cities they lived
in. Within each German city, the ruler granted the Jews a certain number of rights in a charter. This charter set the taxes that
the Jews would pay, outlined the area of the city they could live in, and guaranteed them protection; the remainder of the
laws were left in the hands of the kehilla. In essence, the Jews agreed to become the property of whichever ruler granted
them a protective charter. This agreement occurred on the largest scale in 1236, when Emperor Frederick II issued the
Servi Camerae Nostrae ("Servants of the Treasury"), which formally made the Jews the property of the empire. Implicit in the
charter agreements was the fact that the charter could be rescinded whenever the ruler of the region wished – and the
regional rulers frequently did so.
Since by tradition, Jewish status is inherited and follows the maternal lineage, someone who is maternally descended
from a Jew, even if totally unaware of their Jewish heritage, or even if a practitioner of another religion, is from a
traditional Jewish legal perspective still a Jew. Likewise, a person born of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother is not
considered Jewish by traditional Jewish law, even they were raised to believe they were Jewish.
most famous, or infamous, in Jewish history for being the epicenter of the Nazis' "Final Solution," even the Holocaust was
unable to bring to an end the 1600 years of continuous habitation and cultural flourishing in Germany. Ashkenaz Jewry has
been shaped for a millennia and a half in the tumultuous, ever-changing German political, social and economic landscape.
Crusaders would routinely massacre whole Jewish communities on their way to the Holy Land. Communities in Worms,
Mainz and Cologne were devastated; in Mainz, for example, 1,100 Jews were killed in one day in 1096, and the synagogue
and other communities buildings were razed. It is important to note that while the Pope occasionally condemned these
attacks on Jews, the condemnations were neither vocal nor frequent. Moreover, the lack of any punishment or reprisals
against the violators of the Pope's orders gave the rioters implicit approval, and the attacks continued during the next seven
crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries.
While none of these future Crusades were as devastating to the German Jews as the first, which caught them unaware,
their lives and communities were nonetheless changed irrevocably. Jews ceased to be exclusively a merchant class; much
of Europe was now accessible after having been traversed by Crusaders, and international trade could be performed by
non-Jews. Instead, in line with the Jew's newfound subjugation at the hands of the Church, Jews became known as
moneylenders. Because Christians could not lend money at interest, Jews had a niche waiting for them. Of course, such a
profession did little to endear the Jews to their neighbors, some of whom would just as soon kill the moneylender as repay
his loan.
Jews' community lives changed as well. No longer could Jews hold public office, or blithely interact with their Christian
neighbors. Instead, the Jews of each city banded together in ghettos. While the word has in our times acquired a decisively
negative connotation in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the ghettos of Medieval Germany were locked from the inside as
well as from the outside. No Jew could wander around the city without risking taunts and attacks, but few Jews had a
reason or desire to leave the ghetto in the first place. The Jewish community, or kahal, was mostly autonomous –
sometimes the ruler of the surrounding city would set limits on inhabitants of the ghetto, and they would always impose a
heavy tax burden, but the collecting of taxes and enforcing of population quotas was all done by the Jewish governing
board, the kehilla. Any interaction with non-Jewish rulers, businessmen, or neighbors was handled by the shtadlan, a
community representative
The collective isolation of the Jews also led to the rise of Yiddish. The Jews continued speaking a medieval dialect of
German, even as the language was advancing and changing in the outside world. The language gradually incorporated
elements of Hebrew, and eventually became a language unto itself, which was often incomprehensible to the non-Jewish
Germans.
The centuries that followed the Crusades were difficult ones for the Jews of Western Europe. In the thirteenth century, the
Catholic Church instituted the Inquisition. Secular and religious rulers alike attacked "heretics" – a category that sometimes
included Jews – with savagery, subjecting them to imprisonment, forced conversion and often death. At the same time, the
Jews were accused of killing children for ritual purposes (blood libels), of host desecration, and, during the Black Plague in
the fourteenth century, of poisoning wells. These accusations, and the violence that followed them (Juddenschlacht, or
"Jews slaughter), led to the repeated expulsion of the Jews of Germany from their towns. The evictions continued through
the Middle Ages and the Reformation, and were the result of the uncertain status of Jews as citizens of the cities they lived
in. Within each German city, the ruler granted the Jews a certain number of rights in a charter. This charter set the taxes that
the Jews would pay, outlined the area of the city they could live in, and guaranteed them protection; the remainder of the
laws were left in the hands of the kehilla. In essence, the Jews agreed to become the property of whichever ruler granted
them a protective charter. This agreement occurred on the largest scale in 1236, when Emperor Frederick II issued the
Servi Camerae Nostrae ("Servants of the Treasury"), which formally made the Jews the property of the empire. Implicit in the
charter agreements was the fact that the charter could be rescinded whenever the ruler of the region wished – and the
regional rulers frequently did so.
Since by tradition, Jewish status is inherited and follows the maternal lineage, someone who is maternally descended
from a Jew, even if totally unaware of their Jewish heritage, or even if a practitioner of another religion, is from a
traditional Jewish legal perspective still a Jew. Likewise, a person born of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother is not
considered Jewish by traditional Jewish law, even they were raised to believe they were Jewish.
(from Hebrew Ashkenaz, “Germany”), plural
Ashkenazim, any of the Jews who lived in the
Rhineland valley and in neighbouring France
before their migration eastward to Slavic lands (e.
g., Poland, Lithuania, Russia) after the Crusades
(11th–13th century). After the 17th-century
persecutions in eastern Europe, large numbers
of these Jews resettled in western Europe,
where they assimilated, …
Ashkenazim, any of the Jews who lived in the
Rhineland valley and in neighbouring France
before their migration eastward to Slavic lands (e.
g., Poland, Lithuania, Russia) after the Crusades
(11th–13th century). After the 17th-century
persecutions in eastern Europe, large numbers
of these Jews resettled in western Europe,
where they assimilated, …
Maurer, Rossfeld, Fallenstein, Kohne, Sachs: German & Jewish (Ashkenazic) origin
| While Sephardi Jews have long since adopted the Spanish practice of surnames, the Ashkenazis have been very conservative, still following the antique custom of using their first, plus father's first name, in a Hebrew -Yiddish form, Dawid ben Solomon, for example. "==Yes, I think it very likely that most of the Jews to the east of Germany who were surnamed variations of Ashkenazi, were Jews who had originated in Germany, a region known as "Ashkenaz" among Jews. I'm not sure that initially most Jews "chose" their surnames--rather, the locals attached surnames to families as a way of referring to a specific one, just as the names Gross and Klein, Lang and Kurz, Schwartz and Weiss were bestowed. " Most of the Jews from countries captured by Napoleon Russia, Poland, and Germany were ordered to get surnames. The reason for the last names were for tax purposes. After Napoleon's defeat many Jews dropped their surnames and returned to "son of" names like MENDELSOHN, JACOBSON, LEVINSON, etc. During the so called Emancipation, Jews were once more ordered to take on surnames. When Jews adopted family names in the 18th and 19th centuries, the choice was frequently the patronymic and first names thus became family names. In Austria The Emperor Joseph made Jews take on last names in the late 1700s. Poland in 1821 and Russia in 1844. Probably some of our families have only had last names for 175 years or less. In France and the Anglo Saxon countries surnames went back to the 16th century. Also Sephardic Jews had surnames stretching back centuries. (Spain prior Ferdinand and Isabella was a golden spot for Jews) They were expelled by Isabella in the same year that Columbus discovered America. The earliest American Jews were Sephardic. With Dutch Jews, it was common practice to name the children after their parents while still alive, as opposed to the Ashkenazi. The name of a child is not a very efficient way of establishing whether the ancestor was Ashkenazi or Sephardi. Germany - Germans Jews had no official surnames prior to the introduction of Judenregelment in 1797. Michael Bernet posted the following: "the customs of Western Ashkenazim (German, Dutch and Alsatian Jews) who settled in England and established their first congregation in 1690 - just 35 years after the re-admission of Jews to England. These Jews retained the Germanic pattern by taking their father's first name as the second element of their name (e.g. London's first Chief Rabbi, Solomon Hirschel, was the son of R. Hirschel Levin; as Frankfurt's Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch was the son of Rafael Frankfurter). In other words, their custom was to add the father's name to their own but did not assume their father's name. It was these Germanic Jews who established the rituals of Britain's United Synagogue that remains the English standard, even after the arrival of Polish/Russian immigrant Jews a full two centuries later (starting around 1890). Prussia - Prussia introduced similar to the Austrian law in 1797 known as Judenregelment and forced the use of Germanic surnames on the Jewish population of captured during three Partitions: Pomorze (Gdansk), Chelmno, Warmia part of Wielkopolska with Bydgoszcz, Torun and Malbork were captured in 1772. This territory became known as West Prussia. Following Prussian 1793 acquisitions (2nd Partition) the rest of Wielkopolska (Gniezno, Poznan), Plock, Lodz, Czestochowa regions were also incorporated and became known as South Prussia. 1795 (3rd Partition) Prussian new acquisitions of Mazowsze (included Warsaw) became known as Mazovia, and NW region west of Niemen River (Bialystok) was named New East Prussia. The new territory located south of Czestochowa was named New Silesia. E.T.A ( Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, a vicious anti-Semitic Prussian law officer was placed in charge of the enforcing Germanic sounding surnames through the new Prussian territories. Hoffmann developed a list of an 'acceptable' for Jews surnames, and he and his malignant staff clerks foisted unpleasant surnames on the poor Jews, who were unable to came up with a bribe to secure a 'pleasant' surname. Hoffmann became later famous after the publication of opera "The Tales of Hoffmann".] Email JWebindex@gmail.com |
"Inherited surnames were virtually non-existent among European Jews at the
beginning of the 19th century. Depending on where your family came from,
adoption of surnames occurred officially as late as 1845 in Prussia, 1826 in
Russia. Jews in Prussia were forced to take surnames in 1812. The rules
were applied in Austria in 1787, under French (Napoleonic) rule in 1808, and in
most of Germany before 1820."
beginning of the 19th century. Depending on where your family came from,
adoption of surnames occurred officially as late as 1845 in Prussia, 1826 in
Russia. Jews in Prussia were forced to take surnames in 1812. The rules
were applied in Austria in 1787, under French (Napoleonic) rule in 1808, and in
most of Germany before 1820."
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