Jewish ethnic divisions: Difference between revisions

See related article Judaism by country.

Jewish sub-ethnic divisions refers to a number of distinct Jewish ethnic communities within the world's Jewish population.

By sheer numbers, the overwhelming majority of Jews fall into only a handful of communities, the largest of which are the Ashkenazim (historically meaning "German" in Medieval Hebrew), who migrated from Italy to southern Germany in the 7th-8th centuries, and spread to northern, central and eastern Europe, and the Sephardim (Hebrew for "Spanish"), who migrated to Iberia in the 8th-9th centuries, although scattered since 1492 throughout North Africa, south-eastern Europe and the Near and Middle East, and parts of the Americas. Together, these two groups comprise 90-95% of the Jewish people.

The designations "Ashkenazi" and "Sephardi" encompass cultural, religious, culinary, linguistic and other differences. Some scholars maintain that Ashkenazi Jews are inheritors of the religious traditions of the great Babylonian Jewish academies, and that Sephardi Jews are descendants of those who originally followed the Palestinian Jewish religious traditions.^{[citation needed]}

As long ago as Biblical times, cultural and linguistic differences between Jewish communities even within the area of Palestine are observed both within the Bible itself as well as from archeological remains. The full extent of these differences, however, is unknown at this time. Following the defeat of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Jewish people were dispersed throughout the Middle East, especially in Egypt, Yemen and Mesopotamia. By the height of the Roman Empire, Jewish communities could be found in nearly every notable settlement throughout the Empire, as well as scattered communities found in settlements beyond the Empire's borders in northern Europe and in Africa. In the east, Jewish communities could be found throughout Parthia and empires even further east into India, China and in eastern Europe and southwestern Asia, where as much as a third of the population of Khazaria is believed to have been Jewish at one time.

Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, and especially after the Moorish invasion of Iberia, communications between the communities in various parts of the former Empire became sporadic. With increasing persecution in "Ashkenaz", i.e., the areas that are now northern France and Germany, masses of Jews began to move further to the east, where they were welcomed by the king of Poland. At the same time, as a result of the freer communications within the Muslim world, the communities in Iberia were in more frequent communication with those in North Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile, communities further afield, in central and south Asia and central Africa, remained isolated and continued to develop their own unique traditions. Following the 1492 Expulsion from Spain, the Sephardim were dispersed to the Americas, the Netherlands, the Balkans, North Africa and in smaller numbers to other areas of the Middle East.

Although the Jewish population was severely reduced after the Arab invasions of the 7th century, Jews were always present in Palestine. Over the centuries following the Crusades, Jews from around the world have began returning in small numbers. Upon arrival, these Jews adopted the customs of the Mizraḥi and Sephardi communities into which they moved. With Baron von Rothschild's philanthropic land purchases and subsequent efforts to turn Palestine into a verdant Jewish homeland, and the subsequent rise of Zionism, a flood of Ashkenazi immigration brought the Jewish population of the region to several hundred thousand, the majority of whom were Ashkenazi by the time the State of Israel was proclaimed.

Following the declaration of the State, a flood of Jewish refugees entered Israel from the Arab world, most of whom were Sephardim and so-called "Arab-Jews" from the Maghreb, Yemenite Jews, Bukhorim, Persian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, and smaller communities, principally from Libya, Egypt and Turkey. More recently, other communities have also arrived including Ethiopian Jews and Indian Jews. Because of the relative homogeneity of Ashkenazic Jewry, especially by comparison to the diversity of the many smaller communities, over time in Israel, all Jews from Europe came to be called "Ashkenazi" in Israel, regardless of whether they were Ashkenazim, while Jews from Africa and Asia have come to be called "Sephardi", regardless of whether or not they are actually Sephardim.

Tensions between the two groups instigated shortly after the declaration of the state in 1947. Like many countries, the European-descended people were subject to social superiority. Unlike the non-Ashkenazi (viewed as primitive), these European-oriented Jews entered the country not only as refugees but also as voluntary immigrants, with better Western-standard education, and were more accustomed to the Western democratic living that was in the making. The country's first prime minister and president arrived from Poland and England, respectively. The student body of Israel's universities was overwhelmingly Ashkenazi. Sephardim (in its wider meaning) were often victim to discrimination, or were sometimes called schwartze (meaning "black" in Yiddish). An immigrant from Iraq recalls when he first arrived to Israel he was given a tent, while a friend of his from Germany was given an apartment. Another incident occurred when a young Ashkenazi girl nearly drowned in a lake in Ramath Gan and a teenaged Persian boy dove in and saved her. The boy did not receive any official recognition from the school or city, which perhaps he would have if he had been Ashkenazi, too.

Marriage between the two groups of Jews was initially uncommon, but in recent generations, the social discrimination has diminished due to extensive intermarriage and assimilation as a whole into a common Israeli identity.

Another community often written of are Mizraḥim. This is not an actual community, but rather a convenient "catch-all" for Jews from the Muslim world who are not Sephardim. For a more detailed discussion, see Mizrahi Jew.

Because of the independence of local communities, Jewish "ethnicities", even when they circumscribe differences in liturgy, language, cuisine and other cultural accoutrements, are more often a reflection of geographic and historical isolation from other communities. It is for this reason that communities are referred to by referencing the historical region in which the community cohered when discussing their practices, regardless of where those practices are found today. The Jewish communities of the modern world can all be found represented today in Israel, which is as much a melting pot as it is a salad bowl.

The smaller groups number in the hundreds to tens of thousands, with the Gruzim and Beta Israel being most numerous at somewhat over 100,000 each. Many members of these groups have now emigrated from their traditional homelands, largely to Israel. For example, only about 10 percent of the Gruzim remain in Georgia. A brief description of the extant communities is as follows, by the geographic regions with which they are associated:

• Ashkenazim are Jews who migrated north from Italy into Germany and France, and later into Eastern Europe. Ashkenazim comprise far-and-away the majority of Jews, with approximately 70 percent of the Jewish total. Among the Ashkenazim are a number of cultural groups, roughly:
  • Western (sometimes called Yekkes), stemming from northern France, from the Lowlands, historical Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Scandinavia.
  • Oberlander, Western Yiddish speaking Jews originating in the Oberland region of Hungary and the disctrict surrounding Bratislava in Slovakia.
  • Central (Galitzianers) from Hungary, southwestern Poland, western Ukraine and northern Serbia and Montenegro
  • Northeastern (see Litvak)
  • Southeastern, predominantly from Ukraine, Moldova and Romania
• Bené Roma or Italkim are the Jews of Italy.
• Chuts were Dutch Jews, observing an amalgam of Ashkenazi and Sephardi customs, living in London, although this community has almost completely been lost to history.
• Gruzim are Georgian-speaking Jews from Georgia in the Caucasus.
• Juhurim are mountain Jews mainly from Daghestan and Azerbaidjan in the eastern Caucasus.
• Krymchaks and Karaim are Turkic-speaking Jews of the Crimea and Eastern Europe. The Krymchaks practice rabbinical Judaism, while the Karaim are Karaites. Whether they are primarily the descendants of Israelite Jews who adopted Turkic language and culture, or the descendants of Turkic converts to Judaism, is still debated.
• Romaniotes are Greek-speaking Jews from the Balkans that lived there from the Hellenistic era until today.
• San Nicandro Jews - from Italy
• Sephardim are Jews whose ancestors lived in Spain or Portugal, where they lived for possibly as much as two millennia before being expelled in 1492 (see Alhambra decree); they subsequently migrated to North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, Latin America, the Netherlands, the Balkans, and other parts of Europe. During the 1950s and '60s most Jews from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia fled to either Israel (where they presently comprise approximately 50% of the Jewish population) or to France (where they have become the majority of a Jewish population that was traditionally Ashkenazi).
  • Spanish and Portuguese Jews Nação - West Europe Sephardi
    • Conversos Belmonte, Portugal and some parts of Brazil
  • Baleares Chueta
  • Maghreb Anusim
    • Amazonian Hebraicos - Moroccan jewish communities in Belém, Santarém, Manaus and many river villages in the Amazon basin.
  • Salonika Jews

• Bukharan Jews are Jews from Central Asia. They get their name from the Uzbek city of Bukhara, which once had a large community.
• Iraqi Jews are descendants of the Jews who have lived in Mesopotamia since the time of the Assyrian conquest of Canaan
• Kurdish Jews from Kurdistan, as distinct from the Persian Jews of central and eastern Persia
• Persian Jews from Iran (commonly called Parsim in Israel) have a 2,700 year old history.
• Yemenite Jews are Oriental Jews whose geographical and social isolation from the rest of the Jewish community allowed them to develop a liturgy and set of practices that are significantly distinct from other Oriental Jewish groups, and in fact comprise three distinctly different groups.
• Egyptian Jews are Jews who are descended from the great Jewish communities of Hellenistic Alexandria.
• Lebanese Jews

• Abayudaya of Uganda
• Beta Israel from Ethiopia, tens of thousands of whom were brought to Israel during Operation Solomon and Operation Moses
• The House of Israel, several hundred Sefwi tribesmen in Ghana
• The emergent Jewish community among the Igbo in Nigeria, perhaps as many as 30,000 strong
• Various other small African Jewish populations are also found, from the Lemba in Malawi, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe; the "prophetic" Jews from the vicinity of Rusape, Zimbabwe; as well as vestigial communities in São Tomé e Príncipe and Timbuktu, Mali.

• Bene Israel are the Jews of Mumbai, India, most of whom presently reside in Israel.
• Cochin Jews are also Indian Jews from southwestern India, most of whom also now reside in Israel. Included among these are the Paradesi Jews.
• Baghdadi Jews [1] Those Jews came from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Arab countries and settled in India in 18th Century.
• Bnei Menashe. A group of Jews living in Manipur and Mizoram in northeastern India, claiming descent from the dispersed Biblical Tribe of Menasseh.
• Bene Ephraim, the Telugu-speaking Jews of Kottareddipalem in Andhra Pradesh, India.
• Chinese Jews: most prominent were the Kaifeng Jews, an ancient Jewish community in China, descended from merchants living in China from at least the era of the Tang dynasty. Today functionally extinct, although several hundred descendants have recently begun to explore and reclaim their heritage.

• Iglesia israelita: Some sects of Indians in the southern region of Chile who consider themselves Jews. They observe certain Jewish laws and customs.
• Inca Jews from the Andes Mountains north of Lima, Perú
• Note that most American Jews are Ashkenazim, but there is a significant minority of Sephardi and Mizraḥi Jews.

• History of the Jews
• Lost Tribes of Israel