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Concept
Ashkenazi Jews
Summary
Ashkenazi Jews (ˌɑːʃkəˈnɑːzi,_ˌæʃ- ; יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, Jews of Germania; Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim, are a Jewish diaspora population who formed in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. Their traditional diaspora language is Yiddish (a West Germanic language with Jewish and Slavic linguistic elements, which uses the Hebrew alphabet), which developed during the Middle Ages after they had moved from Germany and France into Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. For centuries, Ashkenazim in Europe used Hebrew only as a literary and sacred language until the revival of Hebrew as a common language in 20th-century Israel. Throughout their numerous centuries living in Europe, Ashkenazim have made many important contributions to its philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and science.
The rabbinical term Ashkenazi refers to diaspora Jews who established communities along the Rhine in western Germany and northern France during the Middle Ages. Upon their arrival, they adapted traditions carried over from the Holy Land, Babylonia, and the western Mediterranean to their new European environment. The Ashkenazi religious rite developed in cities such as Mainz, Worms, and Troyes. The eminent rishon from medieval France, Rashi, has had a significant influence on the interpretations of Judaism by Ashkenazim. In the late Middle Ages, due to widespread persecution, the majority of the Ashkenazi population steadily shifted eastward, moving out of the Holy Roman Empire into the areas that later became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; these areas today comprise parts of present-day Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
Over the course of the late-18th and 19th centuries, those Jews who remained in or returned to historical 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 centres, they gradually abandoned the use of Yiddish and adopted German while developing new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.
Official source
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