Satan says we are innocent if we kill truth setting the stage for them to kill self religiously Truth

trumps Belief being why Believers hindsight vision will not see IT until blind sided when the the light at the end of tunnel shines a wee bit too late Religion the means to induce uncontrolled minds so they can be controlled to SIN Sane Insanity Normalcy ISRAEL Insane Sanity Realists Argue Evil Logistics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH_Bs-pN46s

The whole story of Zionist conspiracy

Pharisaic Parasite The Star of David in the Leningrad Codex, 1008 CE Upon independence in 1948, the new Jewish state was formally named Medinat Yisrael, or the State of Israel, after other proposed historical and religious names including Eretz Israel ("the Land of Israel"), Zion, and Judea, were considered and rejected.[25] In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett.[26] The name Israel has historically been used, in common and religious usage, to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel or the entire Jewish nation.[27] According to the Hebrew Bible the name "Israel" was given to the patriarch Jacob (Standard Yisrael, Isrl; Septuagint Greek: Isral;

"struggle with God"

[28]

after he successfully wrestled with the angel of the Lord.[29]

Jacob's twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. Jacob and his sons had lived in Canaan but were forced by famine to go into Egypt for four generations until Moses, a great-great grandson of Jacob,[30] led the Israelites back into Canaan during the "Exodus". The earliest archaeological artifact to mention the word "Israel" is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated to the late 13th century BCE).[31]

The area is also known as the

Holy Land,
being holy for all Abrahamic

religions including

Judaism, Christianity, Islam

and the Bah' Faith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugWCRliG4Rg A different story of Egypt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgsO0rE6EcE Kennedy, Bolshevism, Zionism & Jewish Secret Society http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVKGRB3cygg Israel killed Kennedy for trying to stop the Israel Lobby in America http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVKGRB3cygg Why the military knows Israel Did 9/11 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOQqhvplwdY Truth about Isreal Media Wont tell you CNN Israel occupied Territory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq2pGd9ViUM 9/11 Jewish Ex-marine speaks out on Israel movement USS Liberty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=745ACGtHf6U Rothschild Rockefeller Bohemian Grove http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWyjykrLbvU USS Liberty Israel attack cover-up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f98jxoUUrzg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNlkHR-AG8c Kick Palestine reps out of US http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50zeMhrqS5s Dominant Corporate press put spin on everything http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkVi_w0zXr0 Armed force officers most brainwashed Corporation Mercenaries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO24XmP1c5E Invisible Empire Invisible Hand http://www.youtube.com/watch? annotation_id=annotation_451395&feature=iv&src_vid=wq2pGd9ViUM&v=tRmRDsWJErc Gaddafi says JFK assassinated by Isreal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GKAAUoy8_s Why did German hate the Jews? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ei9ycAOdQ JFK praises Hitler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxNw8OhmVZE The President that told the Truth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THlaMUq6MKU Illuminati exposed by Muammar Gaddafi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4HZd_dNgOY&feature=relmfu House of Lords seeks Truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbQYls_5rTs Queen Pope Pedophile Ring http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3OIAgfUSEA Govt Steal Babies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2RRXgq2jW8 Freemasons Exposed

Do not do to others what you would not wish for self Recompense injury with Justice and Recompense kindness with kindness CIVILIZATION Coherency Inherently Vital Implicit Logistics Intended Zenith Asserts Truth Imperative Obstruction Nullification

www.Homegrowns13.com Humanity One Mother Earth Golden Rule Ordained Well-being Natural Spirit Truths Holistic Interactive Retrospect Transcendental Electromagnetic Equilibrium Enslavers Nemesis Rule of Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
The Rule of law in its most basic form is no one is above the law. Perhaps the most important application of the rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with, publicly disclosed laws, adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedural steps that are referred to as due process. The rule of law is hostile to dictatorship and to anarchy. According to modern Anglo-American thinking, hallmarks of adherence to the rule of law commonly include

a clear separation of powers, legal certainty,

the principle of legitimate expectation and equality of all before the law. publicly disclosed laws 52. (1) The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is,

to the extent of the inconsistency,

of no force or effect.

DOMESTICATION Domination Opulent Masticating Elite Substantive Thick Imperialist Capitalists Assert Truths Inherently Obstruct Nazism

The concept is not without controversy and it has been said that "the phrase the rule of law has become

meaningless
thanks to ideological abuse and general over- use" GO POE General Over-use Proclamations Only Elusivity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is

the belief
that the legitimacy of the state is created by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated to the social contract philosophers, among whom are Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Popular sovereignty expresses a concept and does not necessarily reflect or describe a political reality.[1] It is often contrasted with the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, and with individual sovereignty.

www.Sewage13.com A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed.[1] These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is. When these principles are written down into a single collection or set of legal documents, those documents may be said to comprise a written constitution. Constitutions concern different levels of organizations, from sovereign states to companies and unincorporated associations. A treaty which establishes an international organization is also its constitution in that it would define how that organization is constituted. Within states, whether sovereign or federated, a constitution defines the principles upon which the state is based, the procedure in which laws are made and by whom. Some constitutions, especially written constitutions, also act as limiters of state power by establishing lines which a state's rulers cannot cross such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution

fundamental rights.
Generally, every modern written constitution confers specific powers to an organization or institutional entity, established upon the primary condition that it

abides by the said constitution's limitations.

According to Scott Gordon, a political organization is constitutional to the extent that it "contain[s] institutionalized mechanisms of power control for

the protection of the interests and liberties of the citizenry,

including those that may be in the minority."[7]

Human rights are commonly understood as "inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being."[1] Human rights are thus conceived as universal (applicable everywhere) and egalitarian (the same for everyone). These rights may exist

as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national and international law.[2] The doctrine of human rights in international practice, within international law, global and regional institutions, in the policies of states and in the activities of non-governmental organizations, has been a cornerstone of public policy around the world. The idea of human rights[3] states, "if the public discourse of peacetime global society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights." Many of the basic ideas that animated the movement developed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the atrocities of The Holocaust, culminating in the adoption of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The ancient world did not possess the concept of universal human rights.[5]Ancient societies had "elaborate systems of duties... conceptions of justice, political legitimacy, and human flourishing that sought to realize human dignity, flourishing, or well-being entirely independent of human rights".[6] The modern concept of human rights developed during the early Modern period, alongside the European secularization of Judeo-Christian ethics.[7] The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval Natural law tradition that became prominent during the Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and featured prominently in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the twentieth century. Gelling as social activism and political rhetoric in many nations put it high on the world agenda.[8] All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)[9]

Despite this, the strong claims made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke considerable skepticism and debates about the content, nature and justifications of human rights to this day.

Indeed,
the question of what is meant by a "right" is itself controversial and the subject of continued philosophical debate.[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights. The Charter is intended to protect certain political and civil rights of people in Canada

****from****
the policies and actions of all levels of government. It is also supposed to unify Canadians around a set of principles that embody those rights.[3][4] The Charter was preceded by the Canadian Bill of Rights, which was introduced by the government of John Diefenbaker in 1960. However, the Bill of Rights was only a federal statute, rather than a constitutional document. Therefore, it was limited in scope and was easily amendable. This motivated some within government to improve rights protections in Canada.

The movement for human rights and freedoms that emerged after World War II also wanted to entrench the principles enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[5] Hence, the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau enacted the Charter in 1982. Universal Declaration of Human Rights The pursuit of human rights was a central reason for creating the UN. World War II atrocities and genocide led to a ready consensus that the new organization must work to prevent any similar tragedies in the future. An early objective was creating a legal framework for considering and acting on complaints about human rights violations. The UN Charter obliges all member nations to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights" and to take "joint and separate action" to that end. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

though not legally binding,

was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 as a common standard of achievement for all. The Assembly regularly takes up human rights issues. A large share of UN expenditures addresses the core UN mission of peace and security. The peacekeeping budget for the 20052006 fiscal year was approximately US$5 billion, 2.5 billion (compared to approximately US$1.5 billion, 995 million for the UN core budget over the same period), with some 70,000 troops deployed in 17 missions around the world.[60] UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular funding scale, but including a weighted surcharge for the five permanent Security Council members, who must approve all peacekeeping operations. This surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries. As of 1 January 2011, the top 10 providers of assessed financial contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations were: the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, China, Canada, Spain and the Republic of Korea.[61] Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget (such as UNICEF, the WFP and UNDP) are financed by voluntary contributions from other member governments. Most of this is financial contributions, but some is in the form of agricultural commodities donated for afflicted populations. Since their funding is voluntary, many of these agencies suffer severe shortages during economic recessions. In July 2009, the World Food Programme reported that it has been forced to cut services because of insufficient funding.[62] It has received barely a quarter of the total it needed for the 09/10 financial year. Many of the basic ideas that animated the movement developed in the aftermath of the Second World War and the atrocities of the Holocaust, culminating in the adoption of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The ancient world did not possess the concept of universal human rights.[5] Ancient societies had "elaborate systems of duties... conceptions of justice, political legitimacy, and human flourishing that sought to realize human dignity, flourishing, or well-being entirely independent of human rights".

[6] The modern concept of human rights developed during the early Modern period, alongside the European secularization of Judeo-Christian ethics.[7] The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval Natural law tradition, became prominent during the Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and featured prominently in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Multinational companies play an increasingly large role in the world, and have been responsible for numerous human rights abuses.[52] Although the legal and moral environment surrounding the actions of governments is reasonably well developed, that surrounding multinational companies is both controversial and ill-defined.[citation needed] Multinational companies' primary responsibility is to theirshareholders, not to those affected by their actions. Such companies may be larger than the economies of some of the states within which they operate, and can wield significant economic and political power. No international treaties exist to specifically cover the behavior of companies with regard to human rights, and national legislation is very variable. Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the right to food stated in a report in 2003: In August 2003 the Human Rights Commission's Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights produced draft Norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights.[54] These were considered by the Human Rights Commission in 2004,

but have no binding status on corporations and are not monitored.[55]

SUN Satanic United Nations http://www.scribd.com/doc/53187051/To-United-Nations http://www.scribd.com/doc/57985401/To-United-Nations-Again Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Hebrew: , Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: [ aknazim], singular: [aknazi], Modern Hebrew: [akena zim], [akenazi]; also Y'hudey Ashkenaz, "The Jews of Ashkenaz"), are anethnoreligious group who trace their origins to the indigenous Israelite tribes of Canaan in the Middle East, and probably began settling along the Rhine in Germany, from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north, during the early Middle Ages.[9] Today, "Ashkenazim" is a descriptive term for descendents of these settlers, including those who established communities in Eastern Europe centuries later. The name Ashkenazi derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (Genesis 10). In the rabbinic literature, the kingdom of Ashkenaz was first associated with the Scythian region, then later with the Slavic territories,[10] and, from the 11th century onwards, with northern Europe and Germany.[11] The Jews living in these regions associated with Ashkenaz's kingdom thus came to call themselves the Ashkenazi.[11] Later, Jews from Western and Central Europealso came to be called Ashkenazi because the main centers of Jewish learning were located in Germany. Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including Bohemia,Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. With them, they took and diversified Yiddish, a High

German language written using the Hebrew alphabet, and heavily influenced by classical Hebrewand Aramaic. It had developed in medieval times as the lingua franca among Ashkenazi Jews. The Jewish communities of three cities along the Rhine: Speyer, Worms and Mainz, created the SHUM league (SHUM after the first Hebrew letters of Shpira, Vermayza, and Magentza). The ShUMcities are considered the cradle of the distinct Ashkenazi culture and liturgy. Although in the 11th century, they composed only three percent of the world's Jewish population, at their peak in 1931, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for 92 percent of the world's Jews. Today, they make up approximately 80 percent of Jews worldwide.[12] Most Jewish communities with extended histories in Europe are Ashkenazim, with the exception of those associated with the Mediterranean region. The majority of the Jews who migrated from Europe to other continents in the past two centuries are Ashkenazim, Eastern Ashkenazimin particular. Contents [hide] 1 Definition 1.1 By religion 1.2 By culture 1.3 By ethnicity 1.4 Realignment in Israel 2 History 2.1 History of Jews in Europe before the Ashkenazim 2.2 High and Late Middle Ages migrations 2.3 Usage of the name 2.4 Medieval references 2.5 Modern history 2.5.1 The Holocaust 2.5.2 In Israel 2.5.2.1 Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis in the Yishuv and Israel 3 Customs, laws and traditions 4 Relationship with other Jews 5 Notable Ashkenazim 6 Genetics 6.1 Genetic origins 6.1.1 Male lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA 6.1.2 Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA 6.1.3 Genome-wide association and linkage studies 6.2 Medical genetics 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 9.1 References for "Who is an Ashkenazi Jew?" 9.2 Other references 10 External links [edit]Definition The exact definition of Jewishness is not universally agreed uponneither by religious scholars (especially across differentdenominations); nor in the context of politics (as applied to those who wish to make Aliyah); nor even in the conventional, everyday sense where "Jewishness" may be loosely understood by the casual observer as encompassing both religious and secular Jews, or religious Jews

alone. This makes it especially difficult to define who is an Ashkenazi Jew. The people have been defined differently from religious, cultural, or ethnic perspectives. Since the overwhelming majority of Ashkenazi Jews no longer live in Eastern Europe, the isolation that once favored a distinct religious tradition and culture has vanished. The center of Judaism today is once again in Israel, although a large community continues to live abroad, particularly in the United States of America, where Ashkenazi Jews live alongside other Jewish groups. Furthermore, the word Ashkenazi is often used in non-traditional ways, especially in Israel. By conservative and orthodox philosophies, a person can be considered a Jew only if his or her mother was Jewish (meaning, more specifically, either matrilineal descent from a female believed to be present at Mt. Sinai when the ten commandments were given, or else descent from a female who was converted to Judaism before the birth of her children), or if he or she has personally converted to Judaism. This means that a person can be Ashkenazi but not considered a Jew by some of those within the Jewish communities, making the term "Ashkenazi" more applicable as a broad ethnicity which evolved from the practice of Judaism in Europe.[citation needed] [edit]By religion Religious Jews have Minhagim, customs, in addition to Halakha, or religious law, and different interpretations of law. Different groups of religious Jews in different geographic areas historically adopted different customs and interpretations. On certain issues, Orthodox Jews are required to follow the customs of their ancestors, and do not believe they have the option of picking and choosing. For this reason, observant Jews at times find it important for religious reasons to ascertain who their household's religious ancestors are in order to know what customs their household should follow. These times include, for example, when two Jews of different ethnic background marry, when a nonJew converts to Judaism and determines what customs to follow for the first time, or when a lapsed or less observant Jew returns to traditional Judaism and must determine what was done in his or her family's past. In this sense, "Ashkenazic" refers both to a family ancestry and to a body of customs binding on Jews of that ancestry. Reform Judaism, which does not necessarily follow those minhagim, was, nonetheless, originated among Ashkenazi Jews (it began in Germany). In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and ritual follows Ashkenazi practice. Until the Ashkenazi community first began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad and in Islamic Spain. Ashkenaz (Germany) was so distant geographically that it developed a minhag of its own. Ashkenazi Hebrew came to be pronounced in ways distinct from other forms of Hebrew. In this respect, the counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic, since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they are ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi woman who marries into an Orthodox or Haredi Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her children to be Ashkenazi Jews; conversely an Ashkenazi woman who marries a Sephardi or Mizrahi man is expected to take on Sephardic practice and the children inherit a Sephardic identity, though in practice many families compromise. A convert generally follows the practice of the beth din that converted him or her. With the integration of Jews from around the world in Israel, North America, and other places, the religious definition of an Ashkenazi Jew is blurring, especially outside Orthodox Judaism. Many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have joined liberal movements that originally developed within Ashkenazi Judaism. In recent decades, the congregations which they have joined have often embraced them, and absorbed new traditions into their minhag. Rabbis and cantors in most non-Orthodox movements study Hebrew in Israel, where they learn Sephardic rather than Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation. Ashkenazi congregations are adopting Sephardic or modern Israeli melodies for many prayers and traditional songs. Since the middle of the 20th century, there has been a gradual syncretism and fusion of traditions. This is affecting the minhag of all but the most traditional congregations.

New developments in Judaism often transcend differences in religious practice between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. In North American cities, social trends such as thechavurah movement, and the emergence of "post-denominational Judaism"[13][14] often bring together younger Jews of diverse ethnic backgrounds. In recent years, there has been increased interest in Kabbalah, which many Ashkenazi Jews study outside of the Yeshiva framework. Another trend is the new popularity of ecstatic worship in the Jewish Renewalmovement and the Carlebach style minyan, both of which are nominally of Ashkenazi origin.[15] [edit]By culture Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means "Jewishness" in the Yiddish language. Yiddishkeit is specifically the Jewishness of Ashkenazi Jews. Before the Haskalah and the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of Torah and Talmud for men, and a family and communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men and women. From the Rhineland to Riga to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, and spoke Yiddish in their secular lives. But with modernization, Yiddishkeit now encompasses not just Orthodoxy and Hasidism, but a broad range of movements, ideologies, practices, and traditions in which Ashkenazi Jews have participated and somehow retained a sense of Jewishness. Although a far smaller number of Jews still speak Yiddish, Yiddishkeit can be identified in manners of speech, in styles of humor, in patterns of association. Broadly speaking, a Jew is one who associates culturally with Jews, supports Jewish institutions, reads Jewish books and periodicals, attends Jewish movies and theater, travels to Israel, visits ancient synagogues in Prague, and so forth. It is a definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular. Contemporary population migrations have contributed to a reconfigured Jewishness among Jews of Ashkenazi descent that transcends Yiddishkeit and other traditional articulations of Ashkenazi Jewishness. As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Central and Eastern Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel, or immigration to North America, and other English-speaking areas; and Europe (particularly France) and Latin America, the geographic isolation that gave rise to Ashkenazim has given way to mixing with other cultures, and with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales. For Ashkenazi Jews living in Eastern Europe, chopped liver and gefilte fish were archetypal Jewish foods. To contemporary Ashkenazi Jews living both in Israel and in the diaspora, Middle Eastern foods such as hummus and falafel, neither traditional to the historic Ashkenazi experience, have become central to their lives as Jews in the current era. Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews, although many Hasidic and Hareidi groups continue to use Yiddish in daily life. (There are numerous Ashkenazi Jewish anglophones and Russian-speakers as well, althoughEnglish and Russian are not originally Jewish languages.) France's blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that is going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were two distinct Jewish populations. One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from theInquisition and concentrated in the southwest, while the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, and speaking mainly Yiddish. The two communities were so separate and different that the National Assembly emancipated them separately in 1791. But after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian revolution, and the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. By the 1930s, Parishad a vibrant Yiddish culture, and many Jews were involved in radical political movements. After the Vichy years and the Holocaust, the

French Jewish population was augmented once again, first by Ashkenazi refugees from Eastern Europe, and later by Sephardi immigrants and refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone. Then, in the 1990s, yet another Ashkenazi Jewish wave began to arrive from countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The result is a pluralistic Jewish community that still has some distinct elements of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic culture. But in France, it is becoming much more difficult to sort out the two, and a distinctly French Jewishness has emerged.[16] [edit]By ethnicity In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have identified genetic variations that have high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population. This is true for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) as well as for matrilineal markers (mitotypes).[17] Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of other nations and faiths, while some Jews have also adopted children from other ethnic groups or from other parts of the world and have raised them as Jews. Conversion to Judaism, rare for nearly 2,000 years, has become more common.[18] A 2006 study found Ashkenazi Jews to be a clear, homogeneous genetic subgroup. Strikingly, regardless of the place of origin, Ashkenazi Jews can be grouped in the same genetic cohort that is, regardless of whether an Ashkenazi Jew's ancestors came from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Lithuania, or any other place with a historical Jewish population, they belong to the same ethnic group. The research demonstrates the endogamy of the Jewish population in Europe and lends further credence to the idea of Ashkenazi Jews as an ethnic group. Moreover, though intermarriage among Jews of Ashkenazi descent has become increasingly more common, many Haredi Jews, particularly members of Hasidic or Hareidi sects, continue to marry exclusively fellow Ashkenazi Jews. This trend keeps Ashkenazi genes prevalent and also helps researchers further study the genes of Ashkenazi Jews with relative ease. It is noteworthy that these Haredi Jews often have extremely large families.[19] [edit]Realignment in Israel In Israel, the term Ashkenazi is now used in ways that have nothing to do with its original meaning; it is often applied to all Jews of European background living in Israel, including sometimes for those whose ethnic background is actually Sephardic. Jews of any non-Ashkenazi background, including Mizrahi, Yemenite, Kurdish and others who have no connection with the Iberian Peninsula, have similarly come to be lumped together as Sephardic. Jews of mixed background are increasingly common, partly because of intermarriage between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi, and partly because many do not see such historic markers as relevant to their life experiences as Jews.[citation needed] Religious Ashkenazi Jews living in Israel are obliged to follow the authority of the chief Ashkenazi rabbi in halakhic matters. In this respect, a religiously Ashkenazi Jew is an Israeli who is more likely to support certain religious interests in Israel, including certain political parties. These political parties result from the fact that a portion of the Israeli electorate votes for Jewish religious parties; although the electoral map changes from one election to another, there are generally several small parties associated with the interests of religious Ashkenazi Jews. The role of religious parties, including small religious parties which play important roles as coalition members, results in turn from Israel's composition as a complex society in which competing social, economic, and religious interests stand for election to the Knesset, a unicameral legislature with 120 seats.[citation needed] [edit]History [edit]History of Jews in Europe before the Ashkenazim Although the historical record is limited, there is a genetic, cultural, linguistic, and scholarly consensus that places Ashkenazi Jewish origins in the Middle East. Jews began settling in Germany, or

"Ashkenaz", at least since the early 4th century.[20][21][22] Throughout Gaul and Germany for this period, with the possible exception of Trier, the archeological evidence suggests at most a fleeting presence of very few Jews, itinerant traders or artisans.[23] Yiddish eventually emerged as a pidgin language of Ashkenazi Jewry through contact with High German vernaculars in the medieval period.[24] It was written with Hebrew characters, and heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic. In the territory of what is now Austria, Jewish presence is documented since at least the 3rd century CE[25] In Hungary, minor Jewish presence was documented since the late Roman period.[26] In France, there was no substantial Jewish population in northern Gaul from late antiquity until the Middle Ages,[27] but Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orleans.[28] Jewish settlement in Romania dates back to 2nd century,[29] while Jewish settlement in Italy dates back to 1st century.[30] After the Roman empire had overpowered the Jewish resistance in the First JewishRoman War in Judea and destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the complete Roman takeover of Judea followed the Bar Kokhba rebellion of 132135 CE. Though their numbers were greatly reduced, Jews continued to populate large parts of Judea province (renamed Palaestina), remaining a majority in Galilee for several hundred years. However, the Romans no longer recognized the authority of the Sanhedrin or any other Jewish body, and Jews were prohibited from living in Jerusalem. Outside the Roman Empire, a large Jewish community remained in Mesopotamia. Other Jewish populations could be found dispersed around the Mediterranean region, with the largest concentrations in the Levant, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, including Rome. Smaller communities are recorded in southern Gaul (France), Spain, and North Africa.[31] Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until 212 CE, when Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege. But, as a penalty for the first Jewish Revolt, Jews were required to pay a poll tax until the reign of Emperor Julian in 363. In the late Roman Empire, Jews were free to form networks of cultural and religious ties and enter into various local occupations. But, after Christianity became the official religion of Rome and Constantinople in 380, Jews were increasingly marginalized, and brutally persecuted.[citation needed] In Syria-Palaestina and Mesopotamia, where Jewish religious scholarship was centered, the majority of Jews were still engaged in farming, as demonstrated by the preoccupation of early Talmudic writings with agriculture. In diaspora communities, trade was a common occupation, facilitated by the easy mobility of traders through the dispersed Jewish communities.[citation needed] Throughout this period and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to Christianity.[32] A remnant of this Greekspeaking Jewish population (the Romaniotes) survives to this day. In the late Roman Empire, Jews are known to have lived in Cologne[22] and Trier, as well as in what is now France. King Dagobert I of the Franks expelled the Jews from hisMerovingian kingdom in 629. Jews in former Roman territories now faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were enforced. In Mesopotamia, and in Persian lands free of Roman imperial domination, Jewish life fared much better. Since the conquest of Judea by Nebuchadnezzar II, this community had always been the leading diaspora community, a rival to the leadership of Judea. After conditions for Jews began to deteriorate in Roman-controlled lands, many of the religious leaders of Judea and the Galilee fled to the east. At the academies of Pumbeditha and Sura near Babylon, Rabbinic Judaism based on Talmudic learning began to emerge and assert its authority over Jewish life throughout the diaspora. Rabbinic Judaism created a religious mandate for literacy, requiring all Jewish males to learn Hebrew and read from the Torah. It has been suggested that this mandate led to a higher literacy rate for Jewish minorities in both Christian and Islamic lands compared to the majority of gentiles, a result which gave these Jews a comparative advantage in urban commercial and financial roles which, to some extent, may explain their relative prevalence in these fields at the time.[33]

In the Caliphate of Baghdad, Jews took on many of the financial occupations that they would later hold in the cities of Ashkenaz.[citation needed] Jewish traders from Baghdad began to travel to the west, renewing Jewish life in the western Mediterranean region.[34] They brought with them Rabbinic Judaism and Babylonian Talmudic scholarship. Charlemagne's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome, brought on a brief period of stability and unity in Western Europe. This created opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle once again north of the Alps. Charlemagne granted the Jews freedoms similar to those once enjoyed under the Roman Empire. In addition, Jews from southern Italy, fleeing religious persecution, began to move into central Europe. Returning once again to Frankish lands, many Jewish merchants took on occupations in finance and commerce, including money lending, or usury. (Church legislation banned Christians from lending money in exchange for interest.) From Charlemagne's time to the present, there is a well-documented record of Jewish life in northern Europe, and by the 11th century, when Rashi of Troyes wrote his commentaries, Ashkenazi Jews had emerged also as interpreters and commentators on the Torah and Talmud.[citation needed] [edit]High and Late Middle Ages migrations Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th century. By the end of the first millennium, Jewish populations were well-established in Western Europe, later followed the Norman Conquest into England in 1066, and settled in many cities of the Rhine area by the end of the 11th century. In the 11th century, both Rabbinic Judaism and the Talmudic Babylonian culture that underlies it became established in southern Italy and then spread north to Ashkenaz.[35] Although the Jewish people in general were present across a wide geographical area as described, genetic research done by Gil Atzmon of the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine suggests "that Ashkenazim branched off from other Jews around the time of the destruction of the First Temple, 2,500 years ago. . flourished during the Roman Empire but then went through a 'severe bottleneck' as they dispersed, reducing a population of several million to just 400 families who left Northern Italy around the year 1000 for Central and eventually Eastern Europe."[36] With the onset of the Crusades, and the expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (15th century), Jewish migration pushed eastward into Poland,Lithuania, and Russia. Over this period of several hundred years, some have suggested, Jewish economic activity was focused on trade, business management, and financial services, due to several presumed factors: Christian European prohibitions restricting certain activities by Jews, preventing certain financial activities (such as "usurious" loans)[37]between Christians, high rates of literacy, near universal male education, and ability of merchants to rely upon and trust family members living in different regions and countries.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at its greatest extent. By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora.[38] This area, which eventually fell under the domination

of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (Germany), would remain the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust. The answer to why there was so little assimilation of Jews in Eastern Europe for so long would seem to lie in part in the probability that the alien surroundings in Eastern Europe were not conducive, though contempt did not prevent some assimilation. Furthermore, Jews lived almost exclusively in shtetls, maintained a strong system of education for males, heeded rabbinic leadership, and scorned the lifestyle of their neighbors; and all of these tendencies increased with every outbreak of antisemitism.[39] [edit]Usage of the name In reference to the Jewish peoples of Northern Europe and particularly the Rhineland, the word Ashkenazi is often found in medieval rabbinic literature. References to Ashkenaz in Yosippon and Hasdai ibn Shaprut's letter to the king of the Khazars would date the term as far back as the 10th century, as would also Saadia Gaon's commentary on Daniel 7:8. The word Ashkenaz first appears in the genealogy in the Tanakh (Genesis 10) as a son of Gomer and grandson of Japheth. It is thought that the name originally applied to theScythians (Ishkuz), who were called Ashkuza in Assyrian inscriptions, and lake Ascanius and the region Ascania in Anatolia derive their names from this group. Ashkenaz in later Hebrew tradition became identified with the peoples of Germany, and in particular to the area along the Rhine. Ashkenaz and the Ashkenazi contrast to the land of Knaan, a geo-ethnological term denoting the Jewish populations living east of the Elbe river as opposed to the Ashkenazi Jews living to the West of it, and the Sephardic Jews of Iberian Peninsula.[40] The autonym was usually Yidn, however.[citation needed] [edit]Medieval references

Jews from Worms, Germany wear the mandatory yellow badge. In the first half of the 11th century, Hai Gaon refers to questions that had been addressed to him from Ashkenaz, by which he undoubtedly means Germany. Rashi in the latter half of the 11th century refers to both the language of Ashkenaz[41] and the country of Ashkenaz.[42]During the 12th century, the word appears quite frequently. In the Mahzor Vitry, the kingdom of Ashkenaz is referred to chiefly in regard to the ritual of the synagogue there, but occasionally also with regard to certain other observances.[43] In the literature of the 13th century, references to the land and the language of Ashkenaz often occur. Examples include Solomon ben Aderet's Responsa (vol. i., No. 395); the Responsa of Asher ben Jehiel (pp. 4, 6); his Halakot (Berakot i. 12, ed. Wilna, p. 10); the work of his son Jacob ben Asher, Tur Orach Chayim (chapter 59); the Responsa of Isaac ben Sheshet (numbers 193, 268, 270). In the Midrash compilation Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Berechiah mentions Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah as German tribes or as German lands. It may correspond to a Greek word that may have existed in the Greek dialect of the Palestinian Jews, or the text is corrupted from "Germanica." This view of Berechiah is based on the Talmud (Yoma 10a; Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 71b), where

Gomer, the father of Ashkenaz, is translated by Germamia, which evidently stands for Germany, and which was suggested by the similarity of the sound. In later times the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern and Western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of Eastern Germany and Poland. Thus the prayer-book of Isaiah Horowitz, and many others, give the piyyutim according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz and Poland. According to 16th century mystic Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, Ashkenazi Jews lived in Jerusalem during the 11th century. The story is told that a German-speaking Palestinian Jew saved the life of a young German man surnamed Dolberger. So when the knights of the First Crusade came to siege Jerusalem, one of Dolbergers family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to Worms to repay the favor.[44] Further evidence of German communities in the holy city comes in the form of halakhicquestions sent from Germany to Jerusalem during the second half of the 11th century.[45] [edit]Modern history In an essay on Sephardi Jewry, Daniel Elazar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs[12] summarized the demographic history of Ashkenazi Jews in the last thousand years, noting that at the end of the 11th century, 97% of world Jewry was Sephardic and 3% Ashkenazi; in the mid17th century, "Sephardim still outnumbered Ashkenazim three to two", but by the end of the 18th century, "Ashkenazim outnumbered Sephardim three to two, the result of improved living conditions in Christian Europe versus the Ottoman Muslim world."[12] By 1931, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry.[12] Ashkenazi Jews developed the Hasidic movement as well as major Jewish academic centers across Poland, Russia, and Belarus in the generations after emigration from the west. After two centuries of comparative tolerance in the new nations, massive westward emigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries in response to pogroms in the east and the economic opportunities offered in other parts of the world. Ashkenazi Jews have made up the majority of the American Jewish community since 1750. [38] Ashkenazi cultural growth led to the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment, and the development of Zionism in modern Europe.[citation needed] [edit]The Holocaust Of the estimated 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II, the majority of whom were Ashkenazi, about 6 million more than two-thirds were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. These included 3 million of 3.3 million Polish Jews (91%); 900,000 of 1.5 million in Ukraine (60%); and 5090% of the Jews of other Slavic nations, Germany, Hungary, and the Baltic states, and over 25% of the Jews in France. Sephardi communities suffered similar depletions in a few countries, including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia.[46] As the large majority of the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage dropped from nearly 92% of world Jewry in 1931 to nearly 80% of world Jewry today.[12] The Holocaust also effectively put an end to the dynamic development of the Yiddish language in the previous decades, as the vast majority of the victims of the Holocaust, around five million, were Yiddish speakers.[47] Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel, Canada, Argentina,Australia, and the United States after the war. [edit]In Israel Today, Ashkenazi Jews constitute the largest group among Jews,[12] and among Israeli Jews as well. They have played a prominent role in the economy, media, and politics of Israel since its founding. During the first decades of Israel as a state, strong cultural conflict occurred between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews (mainly east European Ashkenazim). The roots of this conflict, which still exists to a much smaller extent in present day Israeli society, are chiefly attributed to the concept of the "melting pot".[citation needed] That is to say, all Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were strongly

encouraged to "melt down" their own particular exilic identities within the general social "pot" in order to become Israeli.[citation needed] [edit]Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis in the Yishuv and Israel Abraham Isaac Kook: (23 February 1921 1 September 1935) Isaac Halevi Herzog: (1937 25 July 1959) Isser Yehuda Unterman: (19641972) Shlomo Goren: (19721983) Avraham Shapira: (19831993) Israel Meir Lau: (1993 3 April 2003) She'ar Yashuv Cohen (acting): (3 April 2003 14 April 2003) Yona Metzger: (14 April 2003 present) [edit]Customs, laws and traditions The Halakhic practices of (Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jews may differ from those of Sephardi Jews, particularly in matters of custom. Differences are noted in the Shulkhan Arukh itself, in the gloss of Moses Isserles. Well known differences in practice include:

The example of the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society, Prague, 1772 Observance of Pesach (Passover): Ashkenazi Jews traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, and rice (quinoa, however, has become accepted as foodgrain in the North American communities), whereas Sephardi Jews typically do not prohibit these foods. Ashkenazi Jews freely mix and eat fish and milk products; some Sephardic Jews refrain from doing so. Ashkenazim are more permissive toward the usage of wigs as a hair covering for married and widowed women. In the case of kashrut for meat, conversely, Sephardi Jews have stricter requirementsthis level is commonly referred to as Beth Yosef. Meat products which are acceptable to Ashkenazi Jews as kosher may therefore be rejected by Sephardi Jews. Notwithstanding stricter requirements for the actual slaughter, Sephardi Jews permit the rear portions of an animal after properHalakhic removal of the sciatic nerve, while many Ashkenazi Jews do not. This is not because of different interpretations of the law; rather, slaughterhouses could not find adequate skills for correct removal of the sciatic nerve and found it more economical to separate the hindquarters and sell them as non-kosher meat. Ashkenazi Jews frequently name newborn children after deceased family members, but not after living relatives. Sephardi Jews, in contrast, often name their children after the children's grandparents, even if those grandparents are still living. A notable exception to this generally reliable rule is among Dutch Jews, where Ashkenazim for centuries used the naming conventions otherwise attributed exclusively to Sephardim such as Chuts. Ashkenazi tefillin bear some differences from Sephardic tefillin. In the traditional Ashkenazic rite, the tefillin are wound towards the body, not away from it. Ashkenazim traditionally don tefillin while standing, whereas other Jews generally do so while sitting down. Ashkenazic traditional pronunciations of Hebrew differ from those of other groups. The most prominent consonantal difference from Sephardic and Mizrahic Hebrew dialects is the pronunciation of the Hebrew letter tav in certain Hebrew words (historically, in postvocalic undoubled context) as an /s/ and not a /t/ or // sound. Further information: Ashkenazi Hebrew

The prayer shawl, or tallit (or tallis in Ashkenazi Hebrew), is worn by the majority of Ashkenazi men after marriage, but western European Ashkenazi men wear it from Bar Mitzvah. In Sephardi or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.[48] [edit]Relationship with other Jews Part of a series on Jews and Judaism

Etymology Who is a Jew? Jewish peoplehood Jewish identity Religion[show] Texts[show] Communities[show] Population[show] Denominations[show] Culture[show] Languages[show] History[show] Politics[show] Category Portal WikiProject v t e The term Ashkenazi also refers to the nusach Ashkenaz (Hebrew, "liturgical tradition", or rite) used by Ashkenazi Jews in their Siddur(prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition's choice of prayers, order of prayers, text of prayers and melodies used in the singing of prayers. Two other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazic Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with Sephardi), which is the same as the general Polish (Hasidic) Nusach; and Nusach Chabad, otherwise known as Lubavitch Chasidic, Nusach Arizal orNusach Ari. This phrase is often used in contrast with Sephardi Jews, also called Sephardim, who are descendants of Jews from Spain and Portugal. There are some differences in how the two groups pronounce certain Hebrew letters and in points of ritual.

Several famous people have Ashkenazi as a surname, such as Vladimir Ashkenazy. However, most people with this surname hail from within Sephardic communities, particularly from the Syrian Jewish community. The Sephardic carriers of the surname would have some Ashkenazi ancestors since the surname was adopted by families who were initially of Ashkenazic origins who move to Sephardi countries and joined those communities. Ashkenazi would be formally adopted as the family surname having started off as a nickname imposed by their adopted communities. Some have shortened the name to Ash. The theory that the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are mainly the descendants of the non-Semitic converted Khazars or Europeans was advocated by various racial theorists and antisemitic sources in the late-19th and 20th centuries, especially following the publication ofArthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe and Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People.[49][50][51] Such proponents are motivated by the belief that if Ashkenazi Jews are primarily Khazar or European and not Semitic in origin, they would have no historical claim to Israel, nor would they be the subject of God's Biblical promise of Canaan to the Israelites, thus undermining both the historical/ethnic/national and theological basis of secular and religious Zionists, respectively. Despite recent genetic evidence to the contrary,[1] and a lack of any real mainstream scholarly support,[52] these beliefs are still popular among antisemites.[53][54] [edit]Notable Ashkenazim Main article: Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence Ashkenazi Jews have a noted history of achievement in western societies.[55] They have won a large number of the Nobel awards.[56][57] In those societies where they have been free to enter any profession, they have a record of high occupational achievement, entering professions and fields of commerce where higher education is required.[58] For example, during the 20th century in the United States, Ashkenazi Jews represented approximately 3% of the population, but won 27% of the US Nobel Prizes in science, and 25% of the ACM Turing Awards (the Nobel-equivalent in computer science).[59] Katya Gibel Mevorach also warns about the danger of seeking supposed inherited "genetic intelligence" in Jews as a group in her piece: "Not an Innocent Pursuit: The Politics of a 'Jewish' Genetic Signature." [edit]Genetics [edit]Genetic origins Main article: Genetic studies on Jews Efforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. Like most DNA studies of human migration patterns, the earliest studies focused on two segments of the human genome, the Y-chromosome (passed on only by males), and the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA, passed on only by females). Both segments are unaffected by recombination. Genome-wide association studies have also been employed to yield findings relevant to genetic origins. Genetic studies revealed that Ashkenazi Jews originated in Middle East during Bronze Age (between 2500 BC and 700 BC) spreading later to Europe.[60] [edit]Male lineages: Y-chromosomal DNA A study of haplotypes of the Y-chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al.[61] found that the Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews contained mutations that are also common among Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the general European population. This suggested that the male ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews could be traced mostly to the Middle East. The proportion of male genetic admixture in Ashkenazi Jews amounts to less than 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with "relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim," and a total admixture estimate "very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%." This supported the finding that "Diaspora Jews from

Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors." A 2001 study by Nebel et al. showed that both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish populations share the same overall paternal Near Eastern ancestries. In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent. The authors also report on Eu 19 (R1a) chromosomes, which are very frequent in Eastern Europeans (54%60%) at elevated frequency (12.7%) in Ashkenazi Jews. They hypothesized that the differences among Ashkenazim Jews could reflect low-level gene flow from surrounding European populations and/or genetic drift during isolation.[62] A later 2005 study by Nebel et al., found a similar level of 11.5% of male Ashkenazim belonging to R1a1a (M17+), the dominant Ychromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europeans.[63] [edit]Female lineages: Mitochondrial DNA Before 2006, geneticists largely attributed the genesis of most of the world's Jewish populations, including Ashkenazi Jews, to founding effects by males who migrated from the Middle East and "by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism." In line with this model of origin, David Goldstein, now of Duke University, reported in 2002 that, unlike male lineages, the female lineages in Ashkenazi Jewish communities "did not seem to be Middle Eastern", and that each community had its own genetic pattern and even that "in some cases the mitochondrial DNA was closely related to that of the host community." In his view this suggested "that Jewish men had arrived from the Middle East, taken wives from the host population and converted them to Judaism, after which there was no further intermarriage with non-Jews."[64] However, a 2006 study by Behar et al.,[1] based on high-resolution analysis of haplogroup K(mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Although Haplogroup K is common throughout western Eurasia, "the observed global pattern of distribution renders very unlikely the possibility that the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population: "..Both the extent and location of the maternal ancestral deme from which the Ashkenazi Jewry arose remain obscure. Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only four women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.."[1][64] In addition, Behar et al. have suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from ~150 women, most of those likely of Middle Eastern origin.[1] [edit]Genome-wide association and linkage studies In genetic epidemiology, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) is an examination of all or most of the genes (the genome) of different individuals of a particular species to see how much the genes vary from individual to individual. These techniques were originally designed for epidemiological uses, to identify genetic associations with observable traits.[65] A 2006 study by Seldin et al. used over five thousand autosomal SNPs to demonstrate European genetic substructure. The results showed "a consistent and reproducible distinction between northern and southern European population groups". Most northern, central, and eastern Europeans (Finns, Swedes, English, Irish, Germans, and Ukrainians) showed >90% in the northern population group, while most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards) showed >85% in the 'southern' group. Both Ashkenazi Jews as well as Sephardic Jews showed >85% membership in the "southern" group. Referring to the Jews clustering with southern

Europeans, the authors state the results were "consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups".[66] A 2007 study by Bauchet et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews were most closely clustered with Arabic North African populations when compared to Global population, and in the European structure analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east Mediterranean origins.[67][68] A 2010 study on Jewish ancestry by Atzmon-Ostrer et al. stated "Two major groups were identified by principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews. The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted largescale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry.", as both groups the Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews shared common ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago. The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome and shows that the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi and non Ashkenazi) share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships and that each of the Jewish groups in the study (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi) has its own genetic signature but is more closely related to the other Jewish groups than to their fellow non-Jewish countrymen. [69] Atzmon's team found that the SNP markers in genetic segments of 3 million DNA letters or longer were 10 times more likely to be identical among Jews than non-Jews. Results of the analysis also tally with biblical accounts of the fate of the Jews. The study also found that with respect to non-Jewish European groups, the population most closely related to Ashkenazi Jews are modern-day Italians. The study speculated that the genetic-similarity between Ashkenazi Jews and Italians may be due to intermarriage and conversions in the time of the Roman Empire. It was also found that any two Ashkenazi Jewish participants in the study shared about as much DNA as fourth or fifth cousins.[70][71] A 2010 study by Bray et al., using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis find that when assuming Druze and Palestinian Arabs populations to represent the reference to world Jewry ancestor genome, between 35 to 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome can possibly be of European origin, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome" with this reference point. Assuming this reference point the linkage disequilibrium in the Ashkenazi Jewish population was interpreted as "matches signs of interbreeding or 'admixture' between Middle Eastern and European populations".[72] On the Bray et al. tree, Ashkenazi Jews were found to be genetically more divergent population than Russians, Orcadians, French, Basques, Italians, Sardinians and Tuscans. The study also observed that Ashkenazim are more diverse than their Middle Eastern relatives, which was counterintuitive because Ashkenazim supposed to be a subset, not a superset, of their Assumed geographical source population. Bray et al. therefore postulate that these results reflect not the population antiquity but a history of mixing between genetically distinct populations in Europe. However, its possible that the relaxation of marriage prescription in the ancestors of Ashkenazim that drove their heterozygosity up, while the maintenance of the FBD rule in native middle Easterners have been keeping their heterozygosity values in check. Ashkenazim distinctiveness as found in Bray et al study, therefore, may come from their ethnic endogamy (ethnic inbreeding), which allowed them to mine their ancestral gene pool in the context of relative reproductive isolation from European neighbors, and not from clan endogamy (clan inbreeding). Consequently, their higher diversity compared to Middle Easterners stems from the latters marriage practices, not necessarily from the formers admixture with Europeans.[73] The genome wide genetic study carried out in 2010 by Behar et al. examined the genetic relationships among all major Jewish groups, including Ashkenazim, as well as the genetic relationship between these Jewish groups and non Jewish ethnic populations. The study found that contemporary Jews (excluding Indian and Ethiopian Jews) have a close genetic relationship with people from the Levant. The authors explained that "The most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common

genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant".[74] [edit]Medical genetics This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2010) Main article: Medical genetics of Jewish people There are many references to Ashkenazi Jews in the literature of medical and population genetics. Indeed, much awareness of "Ashkenazi Jews" as an ethnic group or category stems from the large number of genetic studies of disease, including many that are well reported in the media, that have been conducted among Jews. Jewish populations have been studied more thoroughly than most other human populations, for a variety of reasons: Geneticists are intrinsically interested in Jewish populations as a disproportionate percentage of genetics researchers are Jewish. Israel in particular has become an international center of such research. Jewish populations, and particularly the large Ashkenazi Jewish population, are ideal for such research studies, because they exhibit a high degree of endogamy, yet they are sizable. Jewish populations are overwhelmingly urban, and are concentrated near biomedical centers where such research has been carried out. Such research is especially easy to carry out in Israel, where cradleto-grave medical insurance is available, together with universal screening for genetic disease. Jewish communities are comparatively well informed about genetics research, and have been supportive of community efforts to study and prevent genetic diseases. Participation of Jewish scientists and support from the Jewish community alleviates ethical concerns that sometimes hinder such genetic studies in other ethnic groups. The result is a form of ascertainment bias. This has sometimes created an impression that Jews are more susceptible to genetic disease than other populations.[75] Healthcare professionals are often taught to consider those of Ashkenazi descent to be at increased risk for colon cancer.[76] A study by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine examines a particular genetic trait that increases the lifespan of the Ashkenazi population. The study focuses on telomerase, the enzyme responsible for maintaining telomeres at the ends of chromosomes during cell division.[77][78] Genetic counseling and genetic testing are recommended for couples where both partners are of Ashkenazi ancestry. Some organizations, most notably Dor Yeshorim, organize screening programs to prevent homozygosity for the genes that cause these diseases. E. L. Abel's book Jewish Genetic Disorders: A Layman's Guide (McFarland, 2008: ISBN 0-7864-4087-2) is a comprehensive reference text on the topic; also see the Chicago Center for Jewish Genetic Disorders[79] for more information. [edit]See also Sephardi Jews Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence History of the Jews in Germany Jews and Judaism in Europe Jewish ethnic divisions Oberlander Jews Nusach Ashkenaz Three hares List of Israeli Ashkenazi Jews [edit]Notes ^ a b c d e Behar, Doron M.; Ene Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Alessandro Achilli, Yarin Hadid, Shay Tzur, Luisa Pereira, Antonio Amorim, Llu's Quintana-Murci, Kari Majamaa, Corinna Herrnstadt, Neil

Howell, Oleg Balanovsky, Ildus Kutuev, Andrey Pshenichnov, David Gurwitz, Batsheva BonneTamir, Antonio Torroni, Richard Villems, and Karl Skorecki (March 2006). "The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event" (PDF). The American Journal of Human Genetics 78 (3): 48797.doi:10.1086/500307. PMC 1380291. PMID 16404693. Retrieved 21 June 2009. ^ John Hopkins Gazette, September 8, 1997. ^ a b Gabriel E. Feldman, Do Ashkenazi Jews have a Higher than expected Cancer Burden? PDF (650 KB) , Israel Medical Association Journal, Volume 3, 2001. ^ "Ashkenazi Jews", Hebrew University of Jerusalem website. Retrieved November 10, 2009. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10jews.html?_r=0 ^ http://www.ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/Nebel-HG-00-IPArabs.pdf ^ a b c http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Shen2004.pdf ^ a b http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000509003653.htm ^ Anne Hart; Anne Hart M a (30 April 2004). How To Interpret Family History And Ancestry Dna Test Results For Beginners: The Geography And History Of Your Relatives. iUniverse. pp. 51. ISBN 978-0-595-31684-7. Retrieved 6 November 2012. ^ Kraus. S, 1932, Hashemot 'ashkenaz usefarad, Tarbiz 3:423-435 ^ a b Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, Paul Kriwaczek, (London 2011), Chapter 3, footnote 9 ^ a b c d e f Elazar, Daniel J.. "Can Sephardic Judaism be Reconstructed?". Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Retrieved 24 May 2006. ^ Rosenthal, Rachel (2006). "What's in a name?". Kedma (Winter 2006). ^ Greenberg, Richard and Debra Nussbaum Cohen (2005). "Uncovering the Un-Movement" (PDF). ^ Donadio, Rachel (10 August 2001). "Any Old Shul Won't Do for the Young and Cool". Archived from the original on 7 October 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2006. ^ Wall, Irwin. (2002) "Remaking Jewish Identity in France", in Howard Wettstein,Diaspora's and Exiles. University of California Press, pages 164190. ^ "New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe", New York Times, 14 Jan 2006 ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/09/science/y-chromosome-bears-witness-to-story-of-the-jewishdiaspora.html ^ http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020143#pgen-0020143-g003 ^ W. D. Davies, Louis Finkelstein (1984). The Cambridge History of Judaism. Cambridge University Press. p. 1042.[dubious discuss] ^ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/germany.html ^ a b http://www.museenkoeln.de/archaeologische-zone/default.asp?s=4311 ^ Michael Toch, The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, Brill, 2012 p.67. ^ Neil G. Jacobs, Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2005 pp.2,13. ^ http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/3rd-century-amulet-sign-of-earliest-jewish-life-inaustria-1.241512 ^ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Hungary. ^ Michael Toch, The Economic History of European Jews, p.68. ^ 'Some sources have been plainly misinterpreted, others point to "virtual" Jews, yet others to single persons not resident in the region. Thus Tyournai, Paris, Nantes, Tours, and Bourges, all localities claimed to have housed communities, have no place in the list of Jewish habitation in their period. In central Gaul Poitiers should be struck from the list, BVordeaux is doubtful as to the presence of a community, and only Clermont is likely to have possessed one. Further important places, like Macon, Chalon sur Saone, Vienne, and Lyon, were to be inhabited by Jews only frfom the Carolingian period onwards. In the South we have a Jewish population in Auch, in Uzs with a question mark, and in

Arles, Narbonne and Marseilles. In the whgole of France altogether eight places stand scrutiny (including two questionable ones), while towns to the same number have been found to lack the Jewish presence formerly claimed on insufficient evidence. Continuity of settlement from Late Antiquity throughout the Early Middle Ages is evident only in the south, in Arles and Narbonne, possibly also in Masrseille. . .Between the mid-7th and the mid-8th century no sources mention Jews in Frankish lands, except for an epitaph from Narbonne and an inscription from Auch' Toch, The Economic History of European Jews, pp.68-9 ^ http://www.romanianjewish.org/en/mosteniri_ale_culturii_iudaice_03_13.html ^ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0010_0_09774.html ^ Schwartz, Seth (2001). Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE. Princeton University Press. pp. 103128. ISBN 0-691-11781-0. ^ Shaye J. D. Cohen (2001). The Beginnings of Jewishness. University of California Press. ISBN 0520-22693-3. ^ Botticini, M.; Eckstein, Z. (January 2003). "From Farmers to Merchants: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish Economic History". CEPR Discussion Papers (3718). ^ Joel Mokyr The Oxford Encyclopedia of economic history Oxford University Press 2010 P.204 ^ Guenter Stemberger, "The Formation of Rabbinic Judaism, 70-640 CE" in Neusner & Avery-Peck (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Judaism, Blackwell Publishing, 2000, p. 92. ^ "What Do a Bunch of Old Jews Know About Living Forever?by Jesse Green. New York Magazine. Published 6 Nov 2011[1] ^ Ben-Sasson, Hayim (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press.ISBN 0-67439730-4. ^ a b Schoenberg, Shira. "Ashkenazim". Jewish Virtual Library. Archived from the original on 27 April 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2006. ^ Feldman, Louis H. Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World : Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian. Ewing, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press, 1996. p 43. ^ (Polish) various authors; Szymon Datner (1983). Witold Tyloch. ed. Z dziejw ydw w Polsce. Warsaw: Interpress. p. 6. ISBN 83-223-2095-7. ^ Commentary on Deuteronomy 3:9; idem on Talmud tractate Sukkah 17a ^ Talmud, Hullin 93a ^ ib. p. 129 ^ Seder ha-Dorot", p. 252, 1878 ed. ^ Epstein, in "Monatsschrift," xlvii. 344; Jerusalem: Under the Arabs ^ "Estimated Number of Jews Killed in The Final Solution". Jewish Virtual Library.Archived from the original on 28 April 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2006. ^ Solomo Birnbaum, Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3. ^ Tallit: Jewish Prayer Shawl, Religion Facts. Retrieved 13 December 2008. ^ Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, UNC Press, ISBN 0-8078-4638-4, pp. 137142. ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan cults, esoteric nazism, and the politics of identity, NYU Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8147-3155-4, p. 237. ^ Paul F. Boller, Memoirs of an Obscure Professor and Other Essays, TCU Press, 1992, pp. 56. ^ "This theory is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where the Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics." Lewis, Bernard.Semites and Anti-Semites, W.W. Norton and Company, ISBN 0-393-31839-7, p. 48. ^ "Of course an anti-Zionist (as well as an anti-Semitic) point is being made here: The Palestinians have a greater political right to Palestine than the Jews do, as they, not the modern-day Jews, are the

true descendants of the land's Jewish inhabitants/owners."Morris, Benny. The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews, I.B.Tauris, 2003, ISBN 1-86064-989-0, p. 22. ^ "Arab anti-Semitism might have been expected to be free from the idea of racial odium, since Jews and Arabs are both regarded by race theory as Semites, but the odium is directed, not against the Semitic race, but against the Jews as a historical group. The main idea is that the Jews, racially, are a mongrel community, most of them being not Semites, but of Khazar and European origin." Yehoshafat Harkabi, "Contemporary Arab Anti-Semitism: its Causes and Roots", in Helen Fein, The Persisting Question: Sociological Perspectives and Social Contexts of Modern Antisemitism, Walter de Gruyter, 1987, ISBN 3-11-010170-X, p. 424. ^ Murray, Charles (April 2007). "Jewish Genius". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 23 December 2007. "Disproportionate Jewish accomplishment in the arts and sciences continues to this day." ^ Murray, Charles (April 2007). "Jewish Genius". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 23 December 2007. "In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the worlds population." ^ Pinker, Steven (17 June 2006). "THE LESSONS OF THE ASHKENAZIM:Groups and Genes". The New Republican. Archived from the original on 5 January 2008. Retrieved 23 December 2007. "Though never exceeding 3 percent of the American population, Jews account for 37 percent of the winners of the U.S. National Medal of Science, 25 percent of the American Nobel Prize winners in literature, 40 percent of the American Nobel Prize winners in science and economics, and so on." ^ Murray, Charles (April 2007). "Jewish Genius". Commentary Magazine. Retrieved 23 December 2007. "From 1870 to 1950, Jewish representation in literature was four times the number one would expect. In music, five times. In the visual arts, five times. In biology, eight times. In chemistry, six times. In physics, nine times. In mathematics, twelve times. In philosophy, fourteen times." ^ G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659693 (2006). ^ Molecular Photofitting: Predicting Ancestry and Phenotype Using DNA By Tony Nick Frudakis P:383 [2] ^ Hammer, M. F.; A. J. Redd, E. T. Wood, M. R. Bonner, H. Jarjanazi, T. Karafet, S. SantachiaraBenerecetti, A. Oppenheim, M. A. Jobling, T. Jenkins, H. Ostrer, and B. Bonn-Tamir (9 May 2000). "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (12): 6769. Bibcode 2000PNAS...97.6769H.doi:10.1073/pnas.100115997. PMC 18733. PMID 10801975. ^ Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Bernd Brinkmann, Partha P. Majumder, Marina Faerman, Ariella Oppenheim. "The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East", The American Journal of Human Genetics (2001), Volume 69, number 5. pp. 1095112 ^ Nebel A, Filon D, Faerman M, Soodyall H, Oppenheim A (March 2005). "Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews". Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 13(3): 388 91. doi:10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201319. PMID 15523495. ^ a b Wade, Nicholas (14 January 2006). "New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 23 May 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2006. ^ Pearson TA, Manolio TA (2008). "How to interpret a genome-wide association study". JAMA 299 (11): 133544. doi:10.1001/jama.299.11.1335.PMID 18349094. ^ Seldin, M. F.; Shigeta, R.; Villoslada, P.; et al. (September 2006). "European population substructure: clustering of northern and southern populations". PLoS Genet. 2 (9): e143. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0020143. PMC 1564423.PMID 17044734.

^ Rosenberg, Noah A.; et al. (2002). "Genetic structure of human populations". Science298 (5602): 23812385. Bibcode 2002Sci...298.2381R.doi:10.1126/science.1078311. PMID 12493913. ^ Bauchet, Marc; et al. (2007). "Measuring European Population Stratification with Microarray Genotype Data". American Journal of Human Genetics 80 (5): 948 956.doi:10.1086/513477. PMC 1852743. PMID 17436249. ^ Saey, Tina Hesman (3 June 2010). "Tracing Jewish roots". ScienceNews. ^ Atzmon, G.; Hao, L.; Pe'er, I.; Velez, C.; Pearlman, A.; Palamara, P. F.; Morrow, B.; Friedman, E. et al. (2010). "Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry". American Journal of Human Genetics 86 (6): 850859.doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015. PMC 3032072. PMID 20560205. ^ "Genes set Jews apart, study finds". Los Angeles Times. 3 June 2010. ^ Bray, Steven M.; Mulle, Jennifer G.; Dodd, Anne F.; Pulver, Ann E.; Wooding, Stephen; Warren, Stephen T. (2010). "Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population". PNAS 107 (37): 16222 16227. Bibcode2010PNAS..10716222B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1004381107. PMC 2941333.PMID 207983 49. ^ [3] ^ http://bhusers.upf.edu/dcomas/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Behar2010.pdf ^ Carmeli, Daphna Birenbaum (2004). "Prevalence of Jews as subjects in genetic research: Figures, explanation, and potential implications". American Journal of Medical Genetics 130a (1): 76 83. doi:10.1002/ajmg.a.20291. PMID 15368499. ^ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2009). The guide to clinical preventive services 2009. AHRQ Publication No. 09-IP006. ^ "Longenity Longevity Genes Project". Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Retrieved 13 November 2009. ^ Britt, Robert Roy (12 November 2009). "One Key Found for Living to 100".LiveScience.com. Retrieved 13 November 2009.[dead link] ^ "Chicago Center for Jewish Genetic Disorders". Retrieved 1 November 2010. [edit]References [edit]References for "Who is an Ashkenazi Jew?" Goldberg, Harvey E. (2001). The Life of Judaism. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-212673. Silberstein, Laurence (2000). Mapping Jewish Identities. New York University Press. ISBN 0-81479769-5. Wettstein, Howard (2002). Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22864-2. Wex, Michael (2005). Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-30741-1. [edit]Other references Beider, Alexander (2001): A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names: Their Origins, Structure, Pronunciations, and Migrations. Avotaynu. ISBN 1-886223-12-2. Biale, David (2002): Cultures of the Jews: A New History. Schoken Books. ISBN 0-8052-4131-0. Brook, Kevin Alan (2003): "The Origins of East European Jews" in Russian History/Histoire Russe vol. 30, nos. 12, pp. 122. Gross, N. (1975): Economic History of the Jews. Schocken Books, New York. Haumann, Heiko (2001): A History of East European Jews. Central European University Press. ISBN 963-9241-26-1. Kriwaczek, Paul (2005): Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. ISBN 1-4000-4087-6

Lewis, Bernard (1984): The Jews of Islam. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05419-3. Bukovec, Predrag: East and South-East European Jews in the 19th and 20th Centuries, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2010, retrieved: December 17, 2012. Vital, David (1999): A People Apart: A History of the Jews in Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821980-6. [edit]External links The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe Kaplan, Karen (18 April 2009). "Jewish legacy inscribed on genes?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 23 December 2009. Ashkenazi history at the Jewish Virtual Library "The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event" PDF (2.02 MB) "Ashkenazi Jewish mtDNA haplogroup distribution varies among distinct subpopulations: lessons of population substructure in a closed group" (European Journal of Human Genetics 2007) "Analysis of genetic variation in Ashkenazi Jews by high density SNP genotyping" Nusach Ashkenaz, and Discussion Forum Ashkenaz Heritage