The Origins of Ashkenazi Jewry

🏰 Today we begin a series on the formation of Ashkenaz, in the broad sense of northern Europe, covering the period from its beginnings, explored here, through the immediate post-Crusade period.

A page from the Esslingen Machzor (holiday prayer book), in this case a “winter” machzor for Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, decorated in characteristic (and exquisite) Ashkenazi style. JTS Ms. 9344.

In this issue:

• From Eretz Yisrael or Babylonia?

• Early Charters of Settlement

• Genetic Discoveries in Norwich and Erfurt

• Reads and Resources

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Having covered the origins of Sefardi Jewry, which stretch back to antiquity, we turn now to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry, which occurred somewhat later in the Middle Ages. Parts of this story are told in my posts on Rashi, Rashbam, Rabbenu Tam, Ri (and the Tosafists), the Or Zarua, and the Maharam of Rothenburg (these are all open-access as part of my first newsletter series on the great Rishonim). In this series, I’ll be filling in crucial parts of the history, including the emergence of the Rhineland communities, the First and Second Crusade violence and the unique chronicles it prompted, the pietistic movement of Chasidei Ashkenaz, and other important figures who I’ve not yet written about.

The term “Ashkenaz,” narrowly construed, refers to what is today Germany, principally western and southern Germany. This is the manner in which it is generally used in medieval texts. Broadly construed, in parallel to “Sefarad,” it covers a much larger cultural arena encompassing not only Germany but also Tzarfat, northern France, which was culturally (and sometimes politically) distinct from southern France (“Provence”); England, an offshoot of Tzarfati Jewry that immigrated following the Norman conquest; Bohemia and Moravia, usually referred to as “Canaan” following the model of lifting Biblical terminology for European territories; and later, Poland, Russia, and other areas of Eastern Europe. This is the manner in which “Ashkenazi” is generally used today, as juxtaposed to “Sefarad,” which in its narrower sense refers specifically to Spain and in a wider context includes the community of Spanish exiles—though the reclamation of Mizrachi Jewish identity has returned “Sefardi” to a smaller scope once again.

From Eretz Yisrael or Babylonia?

An ongoing debate among scholars disputes both the core facts of Ashkenazi origins and their interpretation. To a large degree, these debates are echoed in the equally thorny and related question of the origins of Yiddish—both occasionally veering into political territory. The agreed-upon facts include the establishment of true communities, as opposed to the settlement of individuals, c. 900; and an affinity between certain early Ashkenazi ritual practices and those of Eretz Yisrael (though this is given different significance, and is explained in different ways, by different scholars). This included the use of certain haftarot (the portion from the Prophets read after the Torah) on holidays, mourning practices for the fast of Tisha be-Av, and some differences in the central Amida prayer for various holidays.

Earlier consensus, still widely accepted though at times modified, proposes that the earliest substrate of Ashkenazi Jews originated in Byzantine South Italy, an amenable proposition in several ways: this cultural arena, being part of Byzantine lands, had been closely tied in antiquity with the Land of Israel when it too was under Byzantine control. This would explain Eretz-Yisraeli customs in Ashkenaz. In addition, the Rhine River, a major migration route, and the Rhineland Valley, the center of early Ashkenaz, lie north of Italy,¹ making a migration pattern through Italy plausible. Indeed, we see a number of early Ashkenazi figures with names that sound Greek, i.e. plausibly originating in Greek-speaking southern Italy (such as the Kalonymos family), or Italianate-Latinate (like R. Leon or Leontin, a teacher of Rabbenu Gershom Meor ha-Golah).

However, there are some problems with this theory. For one, it seemingly does not explain the dominance of the Babylonian Talmud in Ashkenaz and the scarcity of knowledge of the Yerushalmi (the Talmud of the Land of Israel) there. Another problem with this theory is, according to some, Ashkenazis’ notable command of Babylonian Aramaic. In addition, it has been argued, and contested, that early Ashkenazi rabbinical figures tended to reject Geonic positions and did not show the expected deference to their authority. They may have also followed a wider Talmudic curriculum than that of the two great academies of Babylonia, including the Orders of Zeraim and Kodashim and excluding only Avoda Zara, a problematic tractate for denizens of Christian lands. Notably, R. Dr. Haym Soloveitchik, an intellectual historian and expert in halachic history, has proposed a provocative theory that holds that these factors can be explained by the movement into Ashkenaz c. 950 of a group of scholars from a “third academy” of Babylonia. Dr. Robert Brody, a reigning expert on the Geonic period, has contested this interpretation and suggests instead that Babylonian influence over the academy of the Land of Israel can account better for the full picture that we have.

Early Charters of Settlement

Whereas Jews living in Islamic lands were largely present at the time of the Muslim conquests, or else were immigrants from within the empire, Jews admitted to Christian territories, especially those of northern Europe, were immigrants from outside, at first, mostly merchants. They were granted conditional charters of settlement by royal or Church officials. These documents, of which we possess a small but not insignificant number, reveal several key facts in relation to the establishment of Jewish life in the Latin West. First, they are, as mentioned, conditional: they stipulate terms of legal residence, as well as granting privileges. Inherently, such a charter may be revoked at any time, making Jewish life legally precarious; eventually, rights of settlement would be cancelled throughout Ashkenaz by local, then mass-scale, orders of expulsion.

We also see that charters conceptualize Jews as servants—and therefore also protectorates—of either the king or the bishop. Fitting outside the system of landed nobility and peasantry that marked medieval Christian society, a legal status for Jews had to be constructed. The protection of the king mitigated against both popular violence and burgher resentment from the growing merchant class, which competed with Jewish merchants. As the king’s legal property, a price could theoretically be exacted for harming a Jew, though in practice violence was pervasive in general and for Jews in particular. We see Church officials both protecting and persecuting Jews at different times.

The first charters of settlement in Ashkenaz were granted to individuals, sometimes along with their families. The earliest date from 822 and 827, both granted by the chancellery of Louis I “the Pious,” the son of Charlemagne, king of the Franks and putative Holy Roman Emperor. One is granted to one David and one Yosef, along with their spouses and families, and the other to Donatus, also known as Nathan, along with his nephew, Shmuel. The latter stipulates a high price of ten pounds of gold from one who would take the life of Donatus or Shmuel, an attempt to assure their physical security. Other early charters grant such rights as free (untaxed and unencumbered) passage, the right to establish a cemetery, and sometimes exemptions from certain customs or taxes.

Genetic Discoveries in Norwich and Erfurt

In 2022, two important studies were done by geneticists on remains found from medieval Ashkenaz, both published in the journal Cell (here and here). These studies confirmed that Ashkenazi Jews possess Middle Eastern ancestry and that a small founder population created the later-expansive Ashkenazi community, as earlier studies had shown. They also provided a wealth of further details about the origins of Ashkenazi Jewry. First, the “founder event” that produced the sadly distinctive set of rare genetic diseases unusually common in Ashkenazi Jews occurred earlier than the twelfth century—consistent with what we know from documentary and textual evidence about the first flourishing of Jewish settlement in northern Europe. The second article suggests that this founder event was “extreme,” i.e., marked by a particularly small founding population. In addition, modern Ashkenazi Jews are remarkably genetically similar to their medieval ancestors, showing little genetic variety since the late medieval period. “There has been almost no incorporation of genes from non-Jewish European populations over the last 600 years,” the researchers note (here).

Second, the Jews of Erfurt, a city that lies on the border between western and southeastern Germany,² show greater genetic variance than contemporary Ashkenazi Jews do, including a group with more Middle Eastern genetic markers and one with more European ones. The researchers suggest:

Western Jews lived in the Rhineland, where Ashkenazi Jews first settled. They may correspond to the Erfurt group with the greater Middle Eastern ancestry. Eastern Jews, from eastern Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, may correspond to the Erfurt group with the greater Eastern European ancestry.

Researchers Shai Carmi and David Reich, writing in The Conversation (linked below in Reads and Resources)

This likely reflects immigration into Erfurt of a disparate population; modern Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of this mixed population.

There is an eerie similarity in the historical stories told by the remains, one set from Norwich, England, dating to the twelfth century, and one set from Erfurt, Germany, dating to the fourteenth (the former set was discovered in 2004 and examined by earlier studies as well). Both the twelfth-century Norwich Jews and the fourteenth-century Erfurt Jews suffered from deadly, mass violence. The skeletons from Norwich were found inside a well, because they had been thrown there in a mass burial and/or because some were forced to jump to their deaths. The seventeen victims included men, women, and children; genetic testing revealed them to be Jews, including five members of the same family. The mid-twelfth century had seen the outbreak of the seminal medieval blood libel with its epicenter in Norwich, though there is no direct relation to the bodies in the Norwich well, which, rather, are “consistent with these individuals being part of a historically attested episode of antisemitic violence on 6 February 1190 CE,” according to the researchers (first link above). The bodies recovered in Erfurt during a building project were buried in a Jewish cemetery, their feet placed facing east, towards Jerusalem. They were evidently victims of a 1349 outbreak of anti-Jewish violence that decimated the Erfurt Jewish community. The year of 1348-49 was the year the Bubonic plague swept through Europe, prompting mass violence against Jews, including on charges of well poisoning, i.e., causing the plague.

Though dating from different centuries, both sets of remains reflect the persistent and strident anti-Jewish attitudes and violence prevalent in Ashkenaz and come from times of increased persecution. The historical record also shows resilience, in the case of Erfurt, where we know Jews returned relatively shortly after the violence and remained until their expulsion in the fifteenth century. Medieval Ashkenazi Jewish life was especially marked by precarity and persecution, but despite a small founder population and challenging circumstances, managed to grow and develop its own distinctive and rich culture, ultimately constituting half of world Jewry.

Reads and Resources

• A masterful overview of Ashkenazi culture is available in Ephraim Kanarfogel’s The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Wayne State University Press, 2012). (The Kindle version is affordable, happily.)

• This article on the blog of the journal Science focuses on the genetic study of the Erfurt remains, but also incorporates the Norwich remains. A popular write-up of Erfurt by the authors of the study is also available from The Conversation.

1. See a clear map here.

2. Scroll down to see a useful map here (also linked in Reads and Resources).