Ashkenazi Jewish Diaspora

Ashkenazi Jews (/ˌæʃ-, ɑːʃkəˈnɑːzi/ ASH-, AHSH-kə-NAH-zee, also known as Ashkenazic Jews are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium.

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. For centuries they used Hebrew only as a sacred language, until the revival of Hebrew as a common language in Israel. Throughout their time in Europe, Ashkenazim have made many important contributions to its philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music and science

The term "Ashkenazi" refers to Jewish settlers who established communities along the Rhine river in Western Germany and in Northern France dating to the Middle Ages. Once there, they adapted traditions carried from Babylon, the Holy Land, and the Western Mediterranean to their new environment. The Ashkenazi religious rite developed in cities such as Mainz, Worms, and Troyes. The eminent French Rishon rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki (Rashi) would have a significant influence on the Jewish religion.

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, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.

In the course of the late 18th and 19th centuries, those Jews who remained in or returned to the German lands generated a cultural reorientation; under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation, as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centers, they gradually abandoned the use of Yiddish and adopted German, while developing new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.

The Holocaust of the Second World War decimated the Ashkenazim, affecting almost every Jewish family. It is estimated that in the 11th century Ashkenazi Jews composed three percent of the world's total Jewish population, while an estimate made in 1930 (near the population's peak) had them as 92 percent of the world's Jews. Immediately prior to the Holocaust, the number of Jews in the world stood at approximately 16.7 million. Statistical figures vary for the contemporary demography of Ashkenazi Jews, ranging from 10 million[1] to 11.2 million.[2] Sergio Della Pergola, in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi Jews make up less than 74% of Jews worldwide. Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.

Genetic studies on Ashkenazim—researching both their paternal and maternal lineages—suggest a predominant amount of shared Middle Eastern ancestry, complemented by varying percentages of European admixture. These studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of their European ancestry, and have generally focused on the extent of the European genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages. Ashkenazi Jews are popularly contrasted with Sephardi Jews (also called Sephardim), who descend from Jews who settled in the Iberian Peninsula, and Mizrahi Jews, who descend from Jews who remained in the Middle East.

EXPULSION AND READMISSION
Medieval European Jewry repeatedly faced banishment
for both economic and religious reasons.
Jewish Learning, Joshua Levy

Between 1290 and 1550, England, France, and most of southern and eastern Europe expelled their Jewish populations, at least once and sometimes several times (expulsion followed by readmission followed by expulsion). What did it mean to be “expelled”? How and why did expulsion emerge as a common expression of intolerance during this period?

Prior to the crescendo of expulsions that occurred in the 14th century, European Jewry experienced several brutal eruptions of intolerance, including, for example, the massacres that swept northern Europe in the wake of the Black Death (Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and thus causing the plague) and the The Great Conversion riots of 1391 in Spain, which resulted in the death of one third of the Spanish Jewish community.

These unprecedented incidences of violence resulted in an increasingly insecure existence for European Jewry in the later Middle Ages. For example, in the German lands, after the Black Death, Jewish settlement rights were more often than not limited in time to ten to twelve years, renewable and changeable at the discretion of the local ruler.

“A CIVILIZED WAY OF ELIMINATING JEWS”

It was in this context that expulsion, or banishment, became more common. Historian Salo Baron deemed it a “somewhat more civilized way of eliminating Jews.” Expulsion, he argued, certainly appeared legitimate, as it often amounted to the simple failure to renew an existing temporary residence permit. Baron also points to the medieval conception of Jews as permanent “exiles” as another way to understand the phenomenon of expulsion. While the exiles were tolerated in Christian communities as examples of Christian truth, this toleration could cease at the discretion of the local rulers.

Thus expulsion provided a “legitimate,” less violent way of eliminating the Jews from a region. But why eliminate them at all? The rationale for group expulsion was complex, but the most common reasons for doing so were economic and religious. When raising taxes failed to produce enough revenue for a local ruler, expelling a group and taking its land and possessions was often the next best alternative. (However, expulsion for economic gain proved counterproductive, as the loss of regular Jewish revenue depressed the economy in the long run.)

Popular anti-Jewish sentiment also fueled expulsions. In addition to the anti-Jewish witness theory, outlined above, rumors circulated regarding, for example, Jews killing Christians in mockery of the crucifixion (ritual murder), Jews desecrating the host (communal wafer), and Jews poisoning wells. (None of these rumors were true.)

In addition to economic and religious reasons for expelling the Jews in the late Middle Ages, historian Salo Baron adds his theory of nationalism and intolerance. Baron noticed that all of the regions that expelled the Jews during this period were evolving national states. In England, France, and the Iberian peninsula, argues Baron, the emergence of a national identity contributed to the decision to expel. In defining the national self, these states eliminated the most obvious “other,” the Jews. The expansion of two multinational states at the time–Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire– provided refuge for the exiles.

The following three examples of medieval Jewish expulsions include specific instances of the general circumstances outlined above.

IN ENGLAND, JEWS ARE OFFICIALLY OUT BY 1290

Jews arrived in England from northern France shortly after William of Normandy’s 1066 conquest of the island. Under the reign of Henry I (1100-1135), Jews were granted a charter of protection, guaranteeing them certain liberties including freedom of movement, exemption from tolls, and recourse to royal justice. Despite the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment in the 12th century, most notably a ritual murder accusation in the case of William of Norwich in 1144, English kings continued to extend a charter of residence to the Jews.

Beginning with the reign of Richard the Lion-Hearted in 1189, the situation of England’s Jews declined. Constant warfare between England and France meant the Jews were taxed heavily. The situation grew worse for the Jews during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), who forbade lending on interest in England, thereby depriving the Jews of their primary livelihood.

When the economy did not improve, Edward was confronted with a choice: confess the failure of his anti-Jewish policies or banish the Jews from England. He chose the latter: on July 18, 1290 (Tisha B’Av in the Jewish calendar), he issued an edict of expulsion. The Jews had to leave England by November 1, 1290. They were permitted to take their money and personal property; all of their real estate was turned over to the crown. The official Jewish presence in England ended. However, Jewish merchants soon returned and were tolerated because of the financial benefit they provided.

FRANCE: FOUR CENTURIES, AT LEAST FIVE EXPULSIONS

Establishment and rapid growth of French Jewry occurred between the 10th and 12th centuries. By the end of this period, French Jewish communities faced popular animosity, increased pressure from the Catholic Church, and higher taxes. The situation came to a head in April, 1182, when King Philip Augustus ordered all of the Jews to leave the royal domain (in this case, the area around Paris).

The Jews were permitted to sell their movable goods, but their real estate went to the crown, and synagogues became the property of the Church. Most Jews moved elsewhere in northern France. (The northern French Jewish communities were under the control of regional authorities.) In 1198 the Jews were permitted to return, but an additional tax was imposed on their activities.

From then on, French Jewish life was continually subjected to regulation and exploitation, primarily in the form of taxation to fund royal spending. Louis IX (1227-1270) forbade the Jews to lend money at interest, ordering them to live solely by their own labor in business. He also attacked Jewish intellectual life, outlawing the study of the Talmud on the grounds that it offended Christianity. Louis’s son, Philip III, maintained Louis’s policies and enforced ecclesiastical restrictions aimed at protecting Christians from Jewish influence.

The end of Jewish residence in Northern France occurred during the reign of Philip IV (1285-1314). After 1289, the Jews were expelled from Anjou, Maine, Gascony, and Nevers. Most of these Jews moved to Paris, where, even though they were subjected to restrictions, they were welcomed by the king. In 1306, Philip changed his mind and ordered the Jews to leave his realm. With no other choice, the Jews fled northeast to Flanders, east to Provence, or southwest to the Iberian peninsula.

Nine years later, King Louis X readmitted the Jews to France subject to certain conditions: the Jews had to purchase their readmission; they were not allowed to lend money (although pawnbroking was permissible); and they were forced to wear badges identifying them as Jews. But by 1321, Charles IV was unhappy with the revenue he received from the Jewish communities, and they were expelled once again.

Over the next 73 years, the Jews slowly moved back to southern France and re-established their businesses, until they were expelled for good by Charles VI in 1394.

SPAIN: THE MOST FAMOUS EUROPEAN EXPULSION

The most famous Jewish expulsion occurred in Spain in 1492. Spanish Jewry dates back to the late days of the Roman Empire. The community experienced an intellectual and cultural flourishing under Muslim rule. With the Christian reconquista (reconquest) of Spain, the Sephardim found themselves subject to the same animosity and pressures as their Ashkenazic brethren.

The decline of the Sephardim began in the middle of the 14th century. Higher taxes, a closer Church-state alliance, and popular anti-Jewish sentiment all contributed to this decline. The turning point came in 1391 when riots broke out in Seville. The violence quickly spread throughout Castile and Aragon, where the Jews endured over a year of attacks. Some Jews were forcibly converted; others felt that conversion was their only option. These Jews, known as conversos, were shunned by Jews and not fully accepted by Christians. In the 1440s, Spanish authorities realized that some of these conversos were returning to their Jewish heritage. To solve this problem, the Inquisition was authorized to find and deal with these backsliding Christians.

The conversos remained a problem in 1469, when Isabel, the sister of King Henry IV of Castile, married Ferdinand, the son of John II of Aragon. By 1479 they ruled Castile and Aragon together. Ferdinand and Isabel felt it was their duty to strengthen the standing of the Church in Spain, so they used the Inquisition to find conversos who secretly practiced Judaism. When the Inquisition did not produce the desired results, an edict of expulsion was issued. On March 31, 1492, the Jews of Spain were given four months to sell their property and leave the country. The reason given for this expulsion was simple: all prior attempts to stop Christians from returning to their Jewish roots had failed. Expulsion was the only way to guarantee that the Jews would have no influence on Christians in Spain.

Even though the root causes of these expulsions differed, the end result was the same: rulers profited, at least in the short run, from the expulsion of the Jews. Jewish merchants, officially or not, soon returned to England and France, where their financial contributions proved invaluable to the economy. In Spain, where the expulsion was for religious reasons, the Jews were not permitted to return. After 1492, Spain was officially a Christian nation with no religious minorities.

THE ASHKENAZI DIASPORA
'Atlas of the Jewish World'
Nicholas de Lange, 1985, pp50-51

Germany was known in medieval Hebrew by the biblical name of Ashkenaz, and its Jews came to be called Ashkenazim. The expulsions and persecutions had not succeeded in ending Jewish life completely, but material and cultural conditions were poor. Excluded from the cities, the Jews tended to be dispersed in small towns and villages. There was a steady stream of emigration eastwards to Poland, where from the 13th century Jews had been attracted by grants of special privileges. This movement became even more pronounced during the upheavals of the Reformation.

The Ashkenazi immigrants in Poland were so numerous that (like the Sephardim in Turkey) they imposed their language and religious culture on the native Jews. They filled an important economic role as a middle class between the feudal aristocracy and the peasants, and they managed most of the internal and foreign trade. Neither class hatred nor religious intolerance could seriously undermine their security, and they shared in the prosperity and cultural richness of the Polish renaissance of the 16th and 17th centuries. With the cooperation of the rulers they developed a strong internal self-government which was unique in the Jewish diaspora, and the “Council of the Four Lands” (Great Poland, Little Poland, Podolia and Volhynia; there was a separate council in Lithuania) exercised wide-ranging quasi- parliamentary powers.

This golden age of Polish Jewry was brought to an abrupt and violent end during the Cossack rebellion of 1648. Among the aims of its leader, Bogdan Chmielnicki, was the eradication of Judaism in the Ukraine. Huge numbers of Jews were killed, baptized or forced to flee. According to Jewish chroniclers, over 100,000 were put to death and 300 communities were destroyed. The massacres left a deep wound on the Polish Jewish mind, and the image of the rampaging Cossacks still haunts some Ashkenazi Jews to this day: it has entered Jewish mythology in the same category as the crusades and the Spanish expulsion. The Chmielnicki massacres were only a foretaste of violence which was to beset the Polish Jews periodically, culminating in the Nazi holocaust. Their immediate result was to inaugurate a gradual movement back towards the west, at first to Germany and ultimately to those new centers that had been pioneered by the Portuguese.

Poland was not emptied of Jews—in fact its Jewish population continued to grow dramatically, so that by the early 19th century it contained over half the Jews in the world—but the Ashkenazi diaspora became a permanent and dominant feature of the map of world Jewry.

Conditions in Germany had in the meantime become more stable. Although Jews were still banned from many places, some smaller states had begun to readmit them. During the Thirty Years' War (1618—48) Jews had been allowed into several of the large cities, and the previous tendency to dispersal in the countryside began to be reversed. The trend to urbanization became very marked in the centuries that followed. The war also provided opportunities for enrichment to small traders connected with the army, and the supplying of armies became, until the late 18th century, a characteristic Jewish occupation all over Europe and even in North America. The numerous German courts with their extravagant habits also offered opportunities to financiers and dealers in luxury goods. Some of the "court Jews" (Hofjuden) in the late 17th century and the early 18th were amazingly wealthy and powerful. Such men were exceptional, but by their established position in German society they paved the way for a greater degree of social acceptance of Jews as such (perhaps reinforcing in the process certain anti-Jewish prejudices). They gathered around them larger circles of Jews who became progressively assimilated to the prevailing culture. But meanwhile the German communities were being swollen by immigration, and the sumptuous lifestyle of the court Jews contrasted starkly with the poverty and overcrowding of the Judengassen.

The Ashkenazi diaspora spread gradually westwards. By the end of the 18th century there were some 20000 Jews in Alsace (against the German trend they were scattered over a large number of small centers), perhaps only slightly fewer in England (again surprisingly dispersed, although the majority were in London) and, remarkably, rather more in the single city of Amsterdam, whose Jewish community had for a century been the largest in western Europe and was by now probably the largest of any city in the world. Very few of the Ashkenazim belonged to the upper crust of wealthy financiers, jewelers and importers; most eked out a tenuous existence as small traders or semiskilled workers. Despite a gradual process of acculturation the Ashkenazim in some places continued to speak Yiddish well into the 19th century. The common language helped in the integration of new waves of immigrants as well as facilitating contacts with other Ashkenazi communities. It also tended, together with other cultural differences, to distinguish Ashkenazim from Sephardim. Whereas in Mediterranean lands the Ashkenazi minorities were generally assimilated within the Sephardi communities, in the northern European centers, such as Amsterdam and London, where the Ashkenazim formed the large majority, there was little fusion of the two groups. Intermarriage was frowned on (particularly by the Sephardim, with their sense of superior culture and, perhaps, a deeply engrained feeling of racial purity deriving from the hard years in the Christian Iberian peninsula), and separate synagogues and communal organizations were maintained. In time some of the barriers were broken down, and the differences only rarely occasioned real animosity, but the descendants of the two groups still feel a sentimental attachment to their distinctive pasts

THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

THE ASHKENAZI DIASPORA

Ashkenazi Jews

Expulsion and Readmission

The Ashkenazi Diaspora

The Diaspora is ‘The Jews or Jewish communities scattered “in exile” outside Judea/Palestine or present-day Israel.

Go to Countries and then click on the country of interest to you to find out what happened to them there.

(See also What is a Diaspora)

When the Catholic church developed from the church of Constantine 1 and was recognised by Theodosius 1 as the church of the Roman Empire it established itself as the only Christian church in Europe. It developed a strong hierarchy headed by the Pope in Rome. The East–West Schism of 1054, sometimes known as the Great Schism, divided it into the Eastern (Greek), the Eastern Orthodox and the Western (Latin) churches

Pope Urban II In 1095, called for a Holy War against the Mslims so that Jerusalem could be regained for the Christian faith (the Crusades). Defeat by the Moslems saw Papal concentration directed at Europe.

To preserve its position as the only church it developed the concept of heresy to eliminate others having different beliefs. For example in the 13th century the Cathars were seen as a direct challenge and denounced as "the Church of Satan" causing the death of up to 1.000,000 people. Later, the Pope established his own Inquisition within the Papal States. Spain and Portugal already had their own. These lasted until the 18th/19th centuries. Opposition to Catholicism in Europe led to to the establishment, and later, warfare with the Protestants

The attitude of Catholicism to the Jews was determined by Papal ideas. Anti-Jewish results are shown in issued bulls, some of which are listed below. The Jews were only one of the non-Catholic groups who suffered (see Christianity).

In 1998 the Commission reported on the responsibility, if any, the Church bore for the slaughter of millions of European Jews during World War 2.