Contested Origins of Eastern European Jewry: Clues from History, Linguistics, and Onomastics. Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, vol. XXXIII, number 2 (Summer 2017), pp. 6-12. (original) (raw)
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Onomastic analysis of the origins of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe
There is abundant literature treating the origins of Jews in Slavic countries, in the region that is designated in Jewish medieval literature by the biblical term Canaan. 1 Unfortunately, due to the extreme paucity of documented sources, that literature is largely polemical. With a lack of direct historical proof, the authors often construct general theories derived from the analysis of particular aspects of Jewish life. The analysis of personal names used by Jews in the region in question represents one of the most powerful tools in this domain. It can corroborate or contradict various conjectures concerning the origins of Jews in different areas. The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of given names used by Jews in Slavic countries of Central Europe (West Canaan) and Eastern (East Canaan) before the 16th century. The data from the following centuries will be considered only in order to clarify some features for which the available sources from previous centuries are insufficient. Any discussion of South Slavic countries is purposely left out: the roots of the Jewish communities there are different from those discussed here and they are beyond the scope of the present article. Our discussion will be focused on the inventory of given names and their historical aspects. The conclusions about the origins of Jews in Slavic countries that can be made on the basis of the analysis of this inventory will be treated in detail.
Use of Onomastic, Linguistic, and Genealogical Data to Unravel Jewish History
Proceedings of the Symposium on Genealogy and the Sciences: December 17-18, 2018, Weizmann Institute of Sciences, Rehovot, Israel. New Haven, CT: Avotaynu Foundation Inc., pp. 14-24, 2020
By addressing such major aspects of migrations as their directions (that is, regions of origin and destination), time and the size of the demographic contribution in the destination area that we can really understand links between Jewish communities that are distant by geographic and/or chronological criteria. This article discusses major methodological aspects of the linguistic and onomastic approaches to the history of Jewish migrations. It also addresses the importance of genealogical data for history and onomastics.
Contributions to the History of Concepts, Vol. 7, Issue 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 1-27
The article aims both to present the great potential of the field of modern European Jewish history to those who deal with conceptual history in other contexts and to demonstrate the potential of the conceptual historical project to those who deal with Jewish history. The first part illuminates the transformation of the Jewish languages in Eastern Europe–Hebrew and Yiddish–from their complex place in traditional Jewish society to the modern and secular Jewish experience. It then presents a few concrete examples for this process during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second part deals with the adaptation of Central and Western European languages within the internal Jewish discourse in these parts of Europe and presents examples from Germany, France and Hungary.
The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish
Frontiers in genetics, 2017
Recently, the geographical origins of Ashkenazic Jews (AJs) and their native language Yiddish were investigated by applying the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) to a cohort of exclusively Yiddish-speaking and multilingual AJs. GPS localized most AJs along major ancient trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that resemble the word "Ashkenaz." These findings were compatible with the hypothesis of an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for AJs and a Slavic origin for Yiddish and at odds with the Rhineland hypothesis advocating a Levantine origin for AJs and German origins for Yiddish. We discuss how these findings advance three ongoing debates concerning (1) the historical meaning of the term "Ashkenaz;" (2) the genetic structure of AJs and their geographical origins as inferred from multiple studies employing both modern and ancient DNA and original ancient DNA analyses; and (3) the development of Yiddish. We provide additional vali...