Ashkenazim אשכנזים
The Jews of medieval Germany and France and their descendants—from the Rhine communities to most of European and American Jewry.
"Ashkenaz" is a biblical name fixed in the Middle Ages to Germany. The small communities of Mainz, Worms and Speyer produced the school of Rabbenu Gershom and Rashi—and their own rite: their order of prayer, their melodies, later their language, Yiddish. Crusade pogroms and expulsions pushed the Ashkenazi world east, to Poland and Lithuania, where it grew into the largest part of the people.
By the early twentieth century nine of every ten Jews were Ashkenazim; the Shoah struck them hardest of all. Ashkenazi and Sephardi custom differ in hundreds of details—pronunciation to cooking—but the halakhah is one, and in Israel the two worlds live mingled for the first time in a thousand years.
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Sources
Tanakh
- Genesis 10:3 — Ashkenaz among the sons of Japheth
- I Chronicles 1:5–7 — the same list of the nations from Japheth, including Ashkenaz son of Gomer
Basis: Talmud and midrash.