Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 29, 2014

Ashkenaz is a term found in a number of contexts. It is found in the Hebrew Bible to refer to one of the descendants of Noah as well as to a reference to a kingdom of Ashkenaz. Other traditions have used the term to refer to various geographic areas as well as to names or genealogies of people. The association of the term by medieval Jewry with the geographical area centred on the Rhineland led to the Jewish culture that developed in that area to be called Ashkenazi, the only form that the term is still used today.

In the genealogies of the Hebrew Bible, Ashkenaz (Hebrew: ) was a descendant of Noah. He was the first son of Gomer and brother of Riphath and Togarmah (Genesis 10:3, 1Chronicles 1:6), with Gomer being the grandson of Noah through Japheth.

According to Jeremiah 51:27, a kingdom of Ashkenaz was called together with Ararat and Minni against Babylon, which reads:

The location of this kingdom, however, is not clear and a kingdom by that name is not mentioned again, nor is there any clear non-biblical reference to the kingdom.

Ashkenaz is often identified with the Scythians and Sarmatians, due in part to the use of the name "Ashkuz" (Saka) for the Scythians in Assyrian Akkadian inscriptions. It may also refer to the Phrygians, who according to Homer's Iliad settled around Lake Ascania. The Assyrian Gimirri and Hebrew Gomer have likewise been associated with the Cimmerians.

Isaac Asimov has proposed that biblical Ashkenaz () arose from Ashkz (), i.e. the Scythians, by an old copyist error writing (nun) in place of (vav).[citation needed]

According to the Encyclopaedia Biblica, "Ashkenaz must have been one of the migratory peoples which in the time of Esar-haddon, burst upon the northern provinces of Asia Minor, and upon Armenia. One branch of this great migration appears to have reached Lake Urumiyeh; for in the revolt which Esar-haddon chastised, the Mannai, who lived to the SW of that lake, sought the help of Ispakai 'of the land of Asguza,' a name (originally perhaps Asgunza) which the skepticism of Dillmann need not hinder us from identifying with Ashkenaz, and from considering as that of a horde from the north, of Indo-Germanic origin, which settled on the south of Lake Urumiyeh."

In rabbinic literature, the kingdom of Ashkenaz was first associated with the Scythian region, then later with the Slavic territories,[1] and, from the 11th century onwards, with northern Europe and Germany.[2] The region of Ashkenaz was centred on the Rhineland and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer), in what is now the westernmost part of Germany. Its geographic extent did not coincide with the German Christian principalities of the time, and it included northern France.

How the name of Ashkenaz came to be associated in the rabbinic literature with the Rhineland is a subject of speculation.[2]

In rabbinic literature from the 11th century, Ashkenaz was considered the ruler of a kingdom in the North and of the Northern and Germanic people.[citation needed] (See below.)

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Ashkenaz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Category: Ashkenazi
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