Ashkenazim adapted their traditions to Europe and underwent a transformation in their interpretation of Judaism.[12] In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands experienced 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, some gradually abandoned Yiddish in favor of German and developed new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.[13]
As a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930 near the population's peak.[18] The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, which killed some six million Jews, affecting practically every European Jewish family.[19][20] In 1933, prior to World War II, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3 million.[21]Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio D. Pergola implied that Ashkenazim comprised 65–70% of Jews worldwide in 2000,[22] while other estimates suggest more than 75%.[23] As of 2013[update], the population was estimated to be between 10 million[1] and 11.2 million.[2]
Genetic studies indicate that Ashkenazim have both Levantine and European (mainly southern European) ancestry. These studies draw diverging conclusions about the degree and sources of European admixture, with some focusing on the European genetic origin in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, contrasting with the predominantly Middle Eastern genetic origin in paternal lineages.[24][25][26][27][28]
^Ashkenaz, based on Josephus. AJ. 1.6.1.,Perseus ProjectAJ1.6.1,. and his explanation of Genesis 10:3, is considered to be the progenitor of the ancient Gauls (the people of Gallia, meaning, mainly the people from modern France, Belgium, and the Alpine region) and the ancient Franks (of, both, France, and Germany). According to Gedaliah ibn Jechia the Spaniard, in the name of Sefer Yuchasin (see: Gedaliah ibn Jechia, Shalshelet Ha-KabbalahArchived 13 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Jerusalem 1962, p. 219; p. 228 in PDF), the descendants of Ashkenaz had also originally settled in what was then called Bohemia, which today is the present-day Czech Republic. These places, according to the Jerusalem Talmud (Megillah 1:9 [10a], were also called simply by the diocese "Germamia". Germania, Germani, Germanica have all been used to refer to the group of peoples comprising the Germanic tribes, which include such peoples as Goths, whether Ostrogoths or Visigoths, Vandals and Franks, Burgundians, Alans, Langobards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi and Alamanni. The entire region east of the Rhine river was known by the Romans as "Germania" (Germany).
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^Mosk (2013), p. 143. "Encouraged to move out of the Holy Roman Empire as persecution of their communities intensified during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Ashkenazi community increasingly gravitated toward Poland."
^Harshav, Benjamin (1999). The Meaning of Yiddish. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 6. "From the fourteenth and certainly by the sixteenth century, the center of European Jewry had shifted to Poland, then ... comprising the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including today's Byelorussia), Crown Poland, Galicia, the Ukraine and stretching, at times, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the approaches to Berlin to a short distance from Moscow."
^Cite error: The named reference shum was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Ben-Sasson, Haim Hillel; et al. (2007). "Germany". In Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred (eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 7 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. pp. 526–28. ISBN978-0-02-866097-4. The cultural and intellectual reorientation of the Jewish minority was closely linked with its struggle for equal rights and social acceptance. While earlier generations had used solely the Yiddish and Hebrew languages among themselves, ... the use of Yiddish was now gradually abandoned, and Hebrew was by and large reduced to liturgical usage.
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