The Origin of Ashkenazi Jewry: The Controversy Unraveled 9783110236064, 9783110236057

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
List of Figures and Tables
I. The Controversy: Germany or Khazaria
The Germany Hypothesis
The Khazaria Hypothesis
Matters in Dispute
Method
II. The Khazars
Introduction
The Khazar Empire
Jewish Sources
Where Did the Jewish Religion Come From?
The Conversion of the Khazars
Revolt of the Kabars
Fall of the Empire
Emigration from Khazaria
The Khazars and the Polish-Lithuanian Jews
Conclusions
III. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (1): France, Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary
Introduction
France
Germany
Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia
Hungary
Conclusions
IV. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (2): The Caucasus, The Crimea, Poland, and Lithuania until 1500
Introduction
The Caucasus
Southern Russia
Poland
Poland and Southern Russia
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Russia
The History According to Weinryb
Conclusions
V. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (3): Poland, Lithuania, and Russia from 1500 to 1900: The Numerical Increase
Introduction
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1500-1772
The “Demographic miracle” of the Nineteenth Century
DellaPergola’s Growth Rates
New Approach to the Determination of the Number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500 (and Earlier)
Conclusions
VI. Yiddish
Introduction
The Rhineland Hypothesis
The Danube Hypothesis
The Bavarian-Czech Hypothesis
The Silesian Hypothesis
The Sorb Hypothesis
A New Situation
Conclusions
VII. Genetic Research (and Anthropology)
Introduction
Anthropological Studies
General Molecular Genetic Research
Studies with Y Chromosomes
Studies with Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
Hereditary “Ashkenazi” Diseases
Conclusions
VIII. The Revised Origin and Development of East European Jewry
Introduction
The Origin of East European Jewry
The Further Development of East European Jewry
Final Conclusions Concerning East European Jews
Epilogue
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Jits van Straten The Origin of Ashkenazi Jewry

Jits van Straten

The Origin of Ashkenazi Jewry The Controversy Unraveled

De Gruyter

This book was generously funded by the Eduard van Straten Fonds

ISBN 978-3-11-023605-7 e-ISBN 978-3-11-023606-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Straten, Jits van. The origin of Ashkenazi Jewry : the controversy unraveled / Jits van Straten. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-023605-7 1. Jews--Europe--History. 2. Jews--Europe, Eastern--History. 3. Ethnicity-Europe. 4. Khazars. 5. Jews--Origin. I. Title. GN547.S77 2011 940’.04924--dc22 2010048197 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. © 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Druck: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ∞ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents

Preface ......................................................................................................... ix List of Figures and Tables ............................................................................. xi 

I. The Controversy: Germany or Khazaria The Germany Hypothesis ................................................. The Khazaria Hypothesis ................................................. Matters in Dispute ......................................................... Method .......................................................................

1 2 3 4

II. The Khazars Introduction ................................................................. 5  The Khazar Empire ........................................................ 5  Jewish Sources .............................................................. 7  Where Did the Jewish Religion Come From? ........................ 9  The Conversion of the Khazars ........................................ 10  Revolt of the Kabars ...................................................... 15  Fall of the Empire ......................................................... 16  Emigration from Khazaria ............................................... 17  The Khazars and the Polish-Lithuanian Jews ....................... 18  Conclusions ................................................................ 21 

vi

Contents

III. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (1): France, Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary Introduction ................................................................ France ....................................................................... Germany .................................................................... Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia ......................................... Hungary ..................................................................... Conclusions ................................................................

23  24  36  54  59  63 

IV. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (2): The Caucasus, The Crimea, Poland, and Lithuania until 1500 Introduction ................................................................ The Caucasus .............................................................. Southern Russia ........................................................... Poland ....................................................................... Poland and Southern Russia ............................................ The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ............................... Russia ........................................................................ The History According to Weinryb ................................... Conclusions ................................................................

65  65  67  68  71  78  78  79  82 

V. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (3): Poland, Lithuania, and Russia from 1500 to 1900: The Numerical Increase Introduction ................................................................ 83  The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1500–1772 ............... 84  The “Demographic miracle” of the Nineteenth Century .......... 94  DellaPergola’s Growth Rates ........................................... 97  New Approach to the Determination of the Number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500 (and Earlier) .............................. 98  Conclusions .............................................................. 108 

Contents

vii

VI. Yiddish Introduction .............................................................. The Rhineland Hypothesis ............................................ The Danube Hypothesis ................................................ The Bavarian-Czech Hypothesis ..................................... The Silesian Hypothesis ............................................... The Sorb Hypothesis ................................................... A New Situation ......................................................... Conclusions ..............................................................

109  110  114  115  124  125  125  127 

VII. Genetic Research (and Anthropology) Introduction .............................................................. Anthropological Studies ............................................... General Molecular Genetic Research ............................... Studies with Y Chromosomes ........................................ Studies with Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) ....................... Hereditary “Ashkenazi” Diseases ................................... Conclusions ..............................................................

129  132  135  149  164  174  178 

VIII. The Revised Origin and Development of East European Jewry Introduction .............................................................. The Origin of East European Jewry ................................. The Further Development of East European Jewry .............. Final Conclusions Concerning East European Jews .............

181  183  186  193

Epilogue .................................................................. 197 Appendix .................................................................. 203  Bibliography ............................................................. 207  Index ........................................................................ 223

Preface Why does a microbiologist write a book about the history of Ashkenazi Jews? To answer this question, I first have to go back to the beginning of the 1960s. During that period, I lived in Israel, in a neighborhood with Moroccan immigrants. These people did not resemble the type of Jews I was familiar with in the Netherlands at all, physically or culturally. In addition, I met other types of Jews who made a rather exotic impression on me, like Yemenite and Indian Jews. I had no reference material for the former, and the latter were just Indians to me. Years later, back in the Netherlands for some 20 years after all kinds of wanderings, I started to think about the different types of Jews again, and I got the idea that something was wrong. I grew up with the notion that Jews had hardly married non-Jews, and that they had not bothered with converting non-Jews. If this was true, how could it be that after 2,000 years of diaspora, there were Jews who looked like Europeans, Moroccans, Indians, or Ethiopians, if they all originally originated from the the Land of Israel? To answer this question, it seemed a good idea to investigate the matter myself. Because I am of Ashkenazi origin, I decided to investigate the history of the Ashkenazi Jews first. Although Ashkenazi Jews consist mostly of East European Jews, I had to include Central and Western Europe in the investigation as well in order to get a good idea about their origin. I had two goals in mind: what I would find had to be biologically sound, and the results had to be the same from whatever discipline (history, demography, anthropology, linguistics, and genetics) I approached the problem. The kind of approach that is needed to unravel the origin of Ashkenazi Jewry is well put by Faber and King (1984): “No solution to the question of the origin of Ashkenazic Jewry will be reached without an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing the fields of archaeology, cultural anthropology, demography, genetics, history, genetics, and paleography.” It was impossible for me to study all these fields. Cultural anthropology and paleography will not be dealt with. I found the remaining fields already quite a job, because none of these fields is my own. However, when I see how

x

Preface

often it occurs that “experts” in those fields put forward diametrically opposite opinions, I feel somewhat at ease about this investigation after all. Furthermore, I discussed the various subjects with experts (who have no personal interest in them). Any mistakes that may occur, are obviously my own doing. One of the nice things about writing this book was that I came in contact with a number of very friendly people from different fields, at home and abroad. They provided me with new information and ideas. I would like to thank a small number of people. Bernard Bachrach drew my attention to the publications of the archaeologist Sven Schütte, whose publications provided a decisive answer to the question whether Jews lived in Germany continuously since antiquity. Bernard’s advice was also essential for the organization of the text. Eckhard Eggers was always available to help with questions about linguistic and historical aspects of the development of Yiddish. Dini Goldschmidt-Klein provided me with texts from Israeli libraries. Rolf Hoekstra and Piet Stam helped me with a number of aspects of genetics, including the statistics of population genetics. Marc Kiwitt filled me in on medieval Judeo-French. I am very thankful to Morgan Kousser, executive editor of Historical Methods, and the anonymous referees for the trust put in me, as a result of which I was able to publish a number of articles in that journal. Sven Schütte kept me continuously informed about new finds in the dig in Cologne, and he allowed me to report data he had not published himself yet. Harmen Snel, with whom I published two important articles, in addition provided me with new, interesting information about the Amsterdam Jews in the eighteenth century. Ad van der Woude was the first one to point out to me that the supposed increase from 30,000 Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500 to more than seven million in 1900 is impossible. I regret having to write that he passed away on 14 June 2008. I want to thank Hans Zeller for adapting a number of maps and pictures. The employees of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana of the University of Amsterdam were exceptionally helpful, and the same holds for the employees of the library Ets Haim - Livraria Montezinos in Amsterdam. Thanks to their help, I was able to spare myself quite a bit of traveling time. I would also like to thank my editor, Julia Brauch, for her suggestions concerning the text, and the pleasant cooperation. Steve Dodson, my copy editor, showed me what English should look like, which I appreciate. Finally, I want to thank my friend Dini Venema for her patience in listening constantly to my stories, for reading the manuscript several times, and for providing useful comments.

List of Figures and Tables Figures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Khazaria Remains of hypocaust heating system Roman, 4th century, oval basin Gothic key with wooden hanger from 1427 Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth Jewish population growth in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1500௅1650, according to Baron and Weinryb; population growth of the Netherlands, Poland, European Russia, France, and the British Isles; 1500௅1800 Poland (black) in 1629, 1816 and 1939 The Pale of Settlement in 1897 Indian Jews: the Rohekar family from Bombay Chinese Jews Ethiopian Jews Jewish lady from Ukraine

Tables 1. Ba‘aley batim killed by Khmelnytsky and the Swedish king according to Shmu’el ben Nathan 2. The percentage of brides of the main five religious populations in European Russia who married at the age of 20 years or younger during the period 1888௅1892 3 . Nineteenth century increases (NCI) and corresponding annual growth rates (AGR) of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Congress Poland, Germany and the Netherlands 4. Comparison of Jewish population estimates with matching annual growth rates and annual growth rates of the total population: Eastern Europe, 1170௅1880 5. Calculation of the number of Jews in Congress Poland in 1500 6. Jewish migration from Eastern Europe: 1820௅1900

xii

List of Figures and Tables

7. The Jewish population in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Eastern Europe: 1500௅1800 8. Calculation of the Jewish population in Germany in 1500 9. Blond hair and light eyes among Jews in different regions in Eastern Europe 10. The possible Jewish population sizes in Ukraine in 1648, the lowest and highest number of Jews killed and the corresponding percentages of the total Jewish population 11. Adults and proselytes in the burial books of Muiderberg and Zeeburg, 1671௅1810, and the percentages the proselytes constitute of the adults

I. The Controversy: Germany or Khazaria In Eastern and Western Europe, both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are found. The latter are the ones whose ancestors were expelled from the Iberian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century. They hardly play any role in my research, because the number that went to Eastern Europe is very small. Therefore, this book is about Ashkenazi Jews, and particularly those from Eastern Europe, who, before World War II, made up 90 percent or more of Ashkenazis. In this book, East European Jews are defined as those who, from long before 1500, lived in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia and their descendants. In the year 1900 their number totaled over seven million, of whom a great many already lived outside Europe. Essentially, there are two contradictory hypotheses that try to explain how this large number arose.

The Germany Hypothesis The first hypothesis, the prevailing one, which for the sake of convenience I will call the “Germany hypothesis,” states that the Jews originally came from the Land of Israel and initially went to Italy, France, and Germany. Afterwards, during the various pogroms that took place during the Middle Ages, mainly in Germany, they fled to Poland and Lithuania, and from there they spread over the rest of Eastern Europe. These Jews are supposed to have brought Yiddish, a language based on German, to Poland. As the number of Jews in Germany was relatively small in the Middle Ages, the supporters of this hypothesis assume that at the end of the Middle Ages, in 1500, the number of Jews in Poland and Lithuania must also have been small, between 10,000 and 55,000. An important implication of this assumption is that between 1500 and 1900, the Jewish population must have increased exceptionally fast in order to reach more than seven million in 1900. Supporters of this hypothesis are, for example, the historian B. Weinryb (The Jews of Poland: A Social Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100–1800, 1972), the linguist M. Weinreich (History of the Yiddish Language, 1980), the geneticist M. F. Hammer

2

I. The Controversy: Germany or Khazaria

(Proceedings of the Natlional Academy of. Sciences USA 97, 2000), and the demographer S. DellaPergola (Papers in Jewish Demography 1997, 2001). Weinryb (1972, 24–31) mentions the following arguments in favor of this hypothesis. According to him it appears from historical facts and source material that Jewish settlements were probably established in Poland only toward the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century. In Silesia, at the time part of Poland, Jewish gravestones were found dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Inscriptions (except for one) seem to resemble the ones in Germany. There are remnants of a synagogue in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) from the beginning of 1200 that show the same building pattern as the synagogues in Regensburg, Worms, Erfurt, and Speyer. The synagogue in Kazimierz (a district of Krakow), dating from the fourteenth century, resembles the synagogues in Prague and Worms. Ritual traditions of the Polish Jews from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries resemble those of the French, German, and Bohemian Jews. Weinryb also draws attention to the Jews who, due to the persecutions in the fifteenth century, fled to Poland from Germany, Austria, Silesia, and Bohemia.

The Khazaria Hypothesis I will call the second hypothesis the “Khazaria hypothesis.” It states that ancestors of the East European Jews did not originate in Germany but in Khazaria. Khazaria is named after the Khazars, the tribe that ruled the area. An unknown number of them converted to Judaism. During the ninth and tenth centuries, they had a mighty empire that was destroyed by Kievan Rus in the end. With the loss of the empire, the Jews from this area are supposed to have moved from there in the direction of Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania. There they finally grew into the populous East European Jewry. Yiddish is supposed to have developed by the first half of the twelfth century through contacts with German city dwellers in Poland, who spoke the form of German used by Eastern colonists. An important implication of this hypothesis is that before the year 1000 Jews were already living in Eastern Europe. Supporters of this hypothesis are the historian A.N. Polak (Khazaria 1943), the linguist H. Kutschera (Die Chasaren 1910), and the author A. Koestler (The Thirteenth Tribe). Kutschera (1910, 197) states that there were already numerous Jewish settlements in Kievan Rus in the eleventh century. Moreover, the Russian historian Karamzin emphatically mentions that during the reign of Vladimir I (980–1015) large numbers of Jews left Khazaria for Kievan Rus.

Matters in Dispute

3

“According to the most important researchers,” Jews were supposed to have migrated to Poland for the first time during the reign of Boleslaw I Chrobry (992–1025). This period coincides with the time when the empire of the Khazars was seriously weakened. In addition, he refers to the “authorities” Neumann and Karamzin, who are of the opinion that the Jews who resided in Poland and Russia during the Middle Ages were descendants of the Khazars (ibid., 201–202). Polak (1943, 255, 262) considers the simultaneous flourishing of Polish-Lithuanian Jewry and the large-scale emigration of the Khazar Jews to these countries, as well as the garb of the ultra-Orthodox Jews, the shtraymel (fur hat) and the kaftan (long coat), as evidence for the role the Khazar Jews played in the development of East European Jewry. As to Yiddish, he asserts that part of the Khazar Jews already spoke a German dialect in their own region, the Gothic language that until the fifteenth century was spoken in the Crimea (ibid., 256).

Matters in Dispute Weinryb (1972, 21–22) has no confidence in any hypothesis that relates to an origin in southern Russia: “Most of these theories, however, are no more than myths or speculation or wild guesses based on some vague or misunderstood references [...] The efforts by some historians and writers to find in certain Polish toponyms (place names) some indication of the former Khazar or Jewish-Khazar settlements were in vain. It has been proven that these names have nothing to do with Khazars or Khazar tribes. They all have other meanings in Polish.”

On the other hand, Kutschera (1910, 235) entertains great doubts about the Germany hypothesis. He does not understand how a small number of German Jews in Eastern Europe could have increased to a number ten times as large as that in Germany proper. Independent of the Khazar hypothesis, this demographic problem was also raised by the linguists Mieses (1924, 291) and King (1992, 431). DellaPergola (2001) defends the very fast growth of East European Jewry by referring to certain statistical tables that make such a fast growth theoretically possible. Summing up, there are four matters in dispute concerning the development of the large East European Jewish population in 1900, of which the first determines the remaining three: a. the origin within Europe, b. the direction of the migration, c. the numerical increase, and

4

I. The Controversy: Germany or Khazaria

d. the development of Yiddish into the lingua franca of the East European Jews.

Method For an unbiased researcher, it is difficult to decide which hypothesis is correct. None of those who agree with either of the two is able to provide unequivocal evidence. How then do we find out which is the right one? Are any of these hypotheses right? The first two matters in dispute come up in chapters II, III, and IV. First, the history of the Khazars will be discussed (chapter II), not to underline the importance of the hypothesis but because the Khazars also come up during the discussion of other countries. Next, I will deal with the history of the Jews in the potential “donor” countries and regions, France, Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary (chapter III). The earliest development of Polish-Lithuanian Jewry (up to 1500) will be the next topic (chapter IV), which will also include migrations from southern Russia. In this publication, southern Russia is the area between the Caspian Sea and Moldavia, or parts of it. During the discussion of the period 1500 to 1900 (chapter V), I will discuss at length the third matter of dispute, the numerical increase of the East European Jews. The last matter of dispute, the development of Yiddish as the vernacular of the East European Jews, will have to be integrated into the solution of the controversy (chapter VI). I must emphasize that the subjects being discussed will concentrate mostly on events that may be connected in some way to the abovementioned matters of dispute. This means that some events that are important from a general historic point of view will not be discussed. At the end of each chapter, it will be decided to what extent a conclusion may be drawn as to one or more of the four above-mentioned points. Two disciplines have not been mentioned as yet, because the results of studies in these fields were not brought up by the supporters of either hypothesis. They are anthropology and molecular genetics. The latter got into its stride only during the 1990s. The possible impact of the research in these two disciplines on the results presented in this study will be investigated (chapter VII). The development of East European Jewry will then be described on the basis of the results found (chapter VIII). Finally, in the epilogue, I look back on the investigation from a personal point of view, and I dedicate some space to The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand (chapter IX).

II. The Khazars Introduction The story about Khazars who converted to Judaism constitutes a controversial piece of the history of European Jewry. The opinions about the involvement of the Khazar Jews in the development of East European Jewry vary from: “the Jews who during the Middle Ages migrated to Poland and Russia and who settled there are to be considered the descendants of the Khazars” (Kutschera 1910, 202; from German) to “The Khazar hypothesis has a certain dramatic background and was propounded as a result of largescale falsifications in the nineteenth century” (Weinryb 1972, 21). The Frenchman Renan (1883) puts it more mildly. In his lecture about Judaism he says that the conversion of the Khazars was very important for the origin of the Jews who live along the Danube and in the south of Russia. In this chapter we will ascertain whether it is possible to evaluate the role the Khazars may have played in the development of East European Jewry. Since the Khazars also come up occasionally during the discussion of the history of the Jews outside Eastern Europe, I will discuss their contribution to the development of East European Jewry first.

The Khazar Empire The Khazars were nomadic tribes who lived between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, where they had a powerful empire between the seventh and the tenth century. The Khazar Empire will be denoted with the name Khazaria, because it appears as &D]DULD in De administrando imperio by the Byzantine emperor and historian Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, who lived from 913 to 959, and in the English translation the name Khazaria is used (Jenkins 1967, 64). In Byzantine sources, the name Khazars appears for the first time in 626, when the latter concluded an alliance with the Byzantines against the Persians (Vasiliev 1936, 76). The borders of the Khazar Empire (see Fig. 1, p. 6) are somewhat difficult to determine, as some places mentioned in the literature are unrecognizable, and the size of the empire often changed as a result of wars. Therefore, in Fig. 1 no borders are shown. In this period, the Magyars (the future

6

II. The Khazars

Hungarians) still lived along the Black Sea. In general, it can be said that the southern border consisted of the southern slopes of the Caucasus (Kutschera 1910, 82), while the northern border was roughly determined by a line through Voronezh (Russia) and Kharkiv (Ukraine) (ibid., 125). The eastern and western borders respectively consisted of the rivers Ural (ibid., 126) and Dnister (Moldova/Ukraine) (ibid., 82). The capital was probably located west of the Caspian Sea.

Figure 1. Khazaria (from The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage by Arthur Koestler, originally published by Hutchinson & Co. in 1976)

It is not known where the Khazars originated. They were possibly a mixed people consisting of Finns and Tatars who had come down from the Ural to the Caucasus and subjugated the Turkish tribes who lived there. Although the Khazars may have been of Finnish descent, for hundreds of years they had maintained close relations with their Turkish-Tatar subjects. It is from them that they borrowed their most important form of government and even the title of their dignitaries, Kagan (Koestler 1976, 24). The Khazars engaged in farming, winegrowing, fishing, and trade (Platonov 1964, 11). During the winter they lived in their cities; in spring they moved to the steppe, to their pastures, gardens, and fields. It seems that every district of Khazaria had its own king, who for his part was subject to the highest monarch, the Kagan. Ibn Haukal (quoted by Kutschera 1910, 122) writes about the city of Semender, which belonged to the Khazar Empire and was located between Itil and Derbend: “Their king was a Jew and related to the Khazars.” Other people related to the Khazars,

Jewish Sources

7

the Magyars and the Bulgars, had a similar form of government. As far as the Magyars are concerned, the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Jenkins 1967 179) writes: “These eight clans of the Turks do not obey their own particular princes, but have a joint agreement to fight together [...] wheresoever war breaks out. They have for their first chief the prince who comes by succession of Arpad’s family.” (Byzantine historians called the Magyars “Turks.”)

Jewish Sources Before continuing the history of the Khazars, it is important to indicate which sources from that time, or a little later, provide information about them. These sources are: 1. The book by Yehuda Halevi (1085–1141), Sefer ha-Kuzari (Book of the Khazar). This book is a philosophical discussion of the conversion of Bulan, the Khazar king who converted to Judaism. The book does not give any information about the Khazars as a tribe. 2. The letter by Joseph, king of the Khazars, to Hasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish physician of the Caliph of Cordoba (Spain). This letter, which is written in Hebrew, is a reply to a letter by ibn Shaprut to King Joseph, written between 954 and 961. There are two versions of the answer by King Joseph, the “Short Version” and the “Long Version.” The first to mention the Khazar correspondence was Rabbi (R.) Yehuda ben Barzilay from Barcelona in a responsum (Assaf, 1924). A responsum is an answer given by a rabbi of outstanding Talmudic knowledge to a question put to him by a local Jewish court that felt itself incompetent to solve the question. This responsum will be pursued in more detail on p. 13. Polak (1943, 17–23) also treats the Khazar correspondence, but he indicates that its dependability is a point of discussion. According to him, the letters were written at the end of the eleventh century by one person in order to make the Jews acquainted with the Khazars. Dunlop (1954, 125–170) deals extensively with the dependability of all these documents. About the exchange of letters between ibn Shaprut and King Joseph, he writes: “That the Khazar Correspondence is a forgery of the 16th century can scarcely be taken seriously in view of what has been said” (ibid., 131–132). As far as the letter by ibn Shaprut is concerned, Dunlop concludes: “Against the authenticity of the Letter of Hasday criticism has been unable to produce convincing proofs, so that provisionally it is to be accepted” (ibid., 143–144). He

8

II. The Khazars

also has well-founded arguments against Polak’s opinion that the correspondence is not a forgery but a work dating from the eleventh century. From a linguistic comparison of the Short Version and the Long Version, it becomes quite clear that different authors wrote the two versions (ibid., 151–153). Dunlop concludes that there are no decisive arguments against the factual content of the Long Version. As far as the subject of authenticity is concerned, Toynbee (1973, 435) limits himself to a note in which he mentions that there is some doubt about the authenticity of the Hebrew documents. Then he refers to Dunlop. Weinryb (1972, 21) has the following remark about the correspondence: “a well-founded surmise is that they are apocryphal or purely literary productions of the tenth century or later.” 3. A damaged letter in Hebrew, called the Cambridge Document or the Geniza letter, by an unknown subject of King Joseph to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople, was described for the first time by S. Schechter (1912–1913, 204–210). It will be referred to hereinafter as “the letter to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople.” For those readers who are not acquainted with the Hebrew word geniza, it refers to a storage room in which Jewish documents are deposited that may not be destroyed because they contain the name of God. Such a geniza is often a hidden room. The geniza we are dealing with here is the one belonging to the old synagogue of Fustat-Misr, just south of Cairo, and it is known as “the Geniza of Cairo.” The letter to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople was found in this geniza, and in 1896, together with a large part of the remaining Jewish documents, it was transferred by Schechter to the University Library of Cambridge. The letter was received by many with considerable skepticism, as it contains information that does not agree with the answer of King Joseph to Hasday ibn Shaprut. Zuckerman (1995) studied the letter to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople again and managed to elucidate the differences between it and the answer of King Joseph (see pp. 12௅14). 4. The Kievan Letter, discovered in 1962 in Cambridge by Norman Golb (Golb and Pritsak 1982, 3–59). This letter, also in Hebrew, was found in the Geniza of Cairo as well. The document doesn’t have a date, but it is assumed that it dates from the tenth century. The Kievan Letter was signed by eleven Khazar Jews and contains a request for the release of a certain Jacob ben Hanuka. The brother of this Jacob had borrowed money, after which he was murdered and his money was stolen. Since Jacob stood surety for the loan, the creditors had him imprisoned. After having been in jail for a year, the Kievan Jews redeemed

Where did the Jewish religion come from?

9

him from jail by paying 60 gold coins and signed a pledge against the future payment of another 40 coins. The purpose of the letter was to collect these 40 gold coins, which had to be paid by other Jewish communities (ibid., 6–8). No problems seem to appear concerning the authenticity of the Kievan Letter. However, there are problems concerning the interpretation of the background of the signatories. If the signatories were Khazars, which is assumed by Golb and Prisak (ibid., 32), the signatures cause controversy. First of all, there are two persons who sign with the descriptive title kohen (priest) and one with the descriptive title levi. Secondly, a number of onomatologists have doubts about the Khazar origin that is deduced from the first names of some of the signatories. Golb and Pritsak explain the use of the word kohen by assuming that the persons in question were shaman priests in Khazaria and that after converting to Judaism, they also called themselves priests, kohen (ibid., 27–28). Others disagree with this explanation because, according to rabbinic laws, a non-Jew could not become a priest or Levite. The persons in question would then be descendants of “original” priests and Levites who had married Turkish women. According to rabbinic law, priests are not allowed to marry converted women. In view of the low level of knowledge of Jewish laws among the Khazar Jews, they did not maintain this ban. As to the Levites, it will be shown that they could have descended from non-Jews (see pp. 151௅153). It is also not clear whether Jews bearing a name like Kagan are kohanim. This name may indeed be Russian for kohen, but it may also be viewed as a derivative of Kagan, the title of the Khazar ruler. Torpusman (Vikhnovich 1991) disagrees with the Khazar interpretation of three of the four first names and indicates that Gostata, Kufin, and Sawarta are actually East Slavic names. As far as Gostata is concerned, Beider (2001, 35) agrees with Torpusman. However, Torpusman is not necessarily right, since in the ninth century, the Slavic language was used along the northern coast of the Black Sea as a lingua franca (Vernadsky 1940–1941).

Where Did the Jewish Religion Come From? The Jewish religion might have come to the Khazars from two sides, from the Crimea and from the Caucasus. Marquart (1903, 301; from German) writes the following about the Crimea: “The existence of Jewish communities surrounded by numerous groups of converts has been confirmed from the first to the third century C.E., via inscriptions, for the

10

II. The Khazars

cities Pantikapaion (Kerch), Gorgippia (now Anapa at the northwestern end of the Caucasus), and Tanais, which belonged to the empire of the Bosporus [...] In the eighth century Phanagoria or 7DPDWDUFD (today’s Taman) appears as a main seat of the Jews [...] In the ninth century Phanagoria is simply mentioned as ‘Samkarts of the Jews.’”

As a result of persecutions, Jews repeatedly moved to different countries, especially from Islamic Central Asia, from Eastern Iran, and from Byzantium, to the territory of the Khazars. Similarly, many Jews moved to Khazaria because of persecutions in Byzantium in 723 under Leo the Isaurian (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1930, v. 5, 341). According to the Georgian chronicle (Jewish Encyclopedia 1902, v. 10, 518; Kutschera 1910, 149), some Jewish families had already moved to Iberia (Georgia), to Mtskeh (Mtsketa?), following the destruction of the Judean Kingdom in 587 B.C.E. by Nebuchadnezzar II, and settled there. Later on, during the time of the Khazars, there were already important Jewish settlements in Georgia and Armenia. The letter to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople starts with the flight of Jews, the spiritual ancestors of the Jewish Khazars, out of or through Armenia to Khazaria (Golb and Pritsak 1982, 102). The reason for fleeing was the persecutions by idolaters. Then the refugees married the inhabitants of the country. According to this letter, Judaism would have come to the Khazars through the Caucasus. This is not so strange when we realize that their capital was much closer to the Caucasus than to the Crimea. According to the legends of the Mountain Jews from the Caucasus, their ancestors, who were Jewish exiles, first intermarried with the Tats in Persia and then with the Khazars who lived on the west bank of the Caspian Sea (Weissenberg 1908).

The Conversion of the Khazars The Judaism of the Khazars starts with the conversion of King Bulan. There is disagreement as to the year his conversion took place. According to Golden (1983), there are no sources from that time that report the conversion. This may not be so remarkable in view of what Golden writes about the event: “the Tängri-Xan cult [...] a part of the Türk legacy among the Khazars [...] was not far removed from monotheism. The movement, then, to one of the monotheistic faiths of the Mediterranean world, the primary point of orientation of the Khazar state, was hardly a quantum jump.”

The conversion of the Khazars

11

The years to be considered are 620, 740, 786 to 809, and ca. 860. Since this last date is the most plausible one, I will only discuss how this date was arrived at. Marquart, Vernadsky, and Toynbee Marquart (1903, 11–12) is the first to put the conversion at the beginning of the second half of the ninth century. He is questioning the authenticity of the answer by King Joseph, and he suspects that the answer is of a later date than the work of Yehuda Halevi from 1140. According to the letter by the king, the conversion was preceded by a large raid, and in 730 the Khazars made a successful raid towards Azerbaijan. Possibly the author of the answer of King Joseph to ibn Shaprut was referring to this. It is plausible that Yehuda Halevi was also thinking about this raid when he wrote about the “400 years before his time.” Therefore, the year 740 should not be taken literally. In 737 the Kagan was forced to accept Islam in order to avoid a war. According to the answer by King Joseph, the conversion would thus have taken place around the same time that, according to Arabic sources, the Khazars were forced to convert to Islam. The author of the letter obviously must have alluded to the event in 730 and not the one in 737 (ibid., 13). However, there is something else that still has to be explained: how is the story about the conversion in the answer of King Joseph to be viewed in the light of the story about the conversion by the Slavic missionary Constantine (Cyrillos) as recounted in the Old Slavic Life of Constantine? It is known that Constantine himself recorded the story, but it was later published again, anonymously. From the phrasing of the Life of Constantine it can be understood that in those days the Khazars were still pagans. The one god they worshipped at that time was the TängriXan, who was the main God of the Huns and the Turks. The journey of the missionary Constantine took place between 851 and 863, which means that the conversion of the Khazars must have taken place after his journey. Marquart mentions some additional proof for his opinion that the conversion must have taken place at about the middle of the ninth century. He refers to the commentary on Matthew by Christian Druthmar, also written around the middle of the ninth century, in which, among other things, there is a report that the Khazars were circumcised and kept the Jewish laws and also that the Bulgars were converting daily to Christianity. Since the baptism of the Bulgarian Khan Boris probably took place in the year 864, Marquart concludes that the circumcision of the Khazars must have taken place between the journey of Constantine and 864.

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II. The Khazars

In his short article “The date of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism” (Vernadsky 1940–1941), Vernadsky shows that the earliest date, 620, cannot be taken seriously. Its source is unreliable, because neither the Short nor the Long Version is a copy of the original letter. The way the date was arrived at is artificial. Also, from a historic point of view, the date is highly unlikely because the Khazar Kaganate had not yet freed itself from the empire of the Western Turks. Vernadsky also refers to a report by Bishop Israel of Caucasian Albania, who writes that around 680, the Khazars were still pagans. The second date (740) is also historically untenable because, as mentioned earlier, in 737 the Kagan accepted Islam and shortly thereafter again reverted to paganism. Vernadsky considers it almost impossible that between these two dates he would have converted to Judaism. In addition, he refers to the Life of St. Abo, which says that around 782 the Kagan was still pagan. After analyzing Arabic and Byzantine sources, he comes to the plausible conclusion that the conversion must have taken place between 862 and 866. Toynbee (1973, 435) is of the opinion that the conversion of the Khazars was a long process. He does not think that the conversion could have started before 732, as this is the date of the marriage—and the simultaneous conversion to Christianity—of the Khazar princess Chichek (‘Flower’) to Constantine V, the son of the Byzantine emperor Leo III. His argument is that a Jewish princess could not have married a Christian Byzantine. He agrees with Marquart and Vernadsky that the conversion could only have been completed after the visit by the missionary Constantine to the court of the Kagan around 860/862. Zuckerman A recent study (Zuckerman 1995) shows that indeed the period between 862 and 866 probably is the correct one. Zuckerman came to this conclusion by comparing the contents of the letter to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople to the remaining Khazar correspondence. His analysis is interesting enough to reproduce here in some detail. The letter to the emissary was written round 949 and had something to do with his visit to the Byzantine capital. Zuckerman starts out with the remark that opinions about the letter vary. Some researchers deny that the author, as he indicates, was present at the events he describes; others (for example Schechter) conclude that if the author was present, he got the dates and persons mixed up; and, finally, there are those who consider the letter to be fake. Zuckerman is, for a number of reasons, of the opinion that the letter is authentic.

The conversion of the Khazars

13

The discussion about the three monotheistic faiths is central to the historic review of the letter. In addition to the Jewish data about the conversion, Zuckerman also holds the Byzantine view on the conversion, thanks to the personal report by Constantine, the already mentioned Life of Constantine. The date of the report is 30 January 861. According to Zuckerman, the discussion at the court of the Kagan must have taken place in the summer of the same year. This date is not new, and Zuckerman refers to the articles by Marquart and Vernadsky mentioned above. However, the ideas of the latter were generally rejected, because the year 740 seemed more in accordance with other data. It was also not contrary to the remark by al-Mas‘udi, which was considered reliable, that the king had already converted to Judaism during the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786– 809). The story about the conversion in the letter to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople appears to differ from that in the answer of King Joseph. In the answer by King Joseph it says that the Khazars adhered strictly to the Jewish laws, while further on it says that this was only the case during the reign of King Ovadia. This is very strange, and it looks as if we are dealing here with more than one author. Zuckerman is not the only one who has problems with this part of the story. Golden (1983) also states that one has to be careful with this Ovadia. Something is indeed wrong with the “follow-up” conversion during the reign of Ovadia. This appears from a responsum (see p. 7) by R. Yehuda ben Barzilay of Barcelona, written about 1100, that quotes extensively the answer of King Joseph to ibn Shaprut. From the responsum it becomes evident that the rabbi had a text that clearly differed from the text we know. The problem to be dealt with had to do with the custom of the Khazars of sacrificing animals (Assaf 1924), something that was forbidden by the rabbis following the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.). The question was whether the Khazars could thus be considered Jews. In order to answer the question positively, the rabbi extensively refers to the answer of King Joseph to ibn Shaprut. It appears that both versions of the answer by King Joseph were altered in such a way that nothing about animal sacrifices could be found anymore. Furthermore, the orthodoxy of the Khazars and the length of time that they had been Jews were exaggerated. The rabbi apparently had no knowledge of the religious reforms of King Ovadia. The authors of the Short and the Long Version lengthened the period that the Khazars were Jews by inserting kings into the list of ancestors of King Joseph. In the rabbi’s version, there are seven kings; in the Short and Long Versions there are respectively 12 and 13. A consequence is that according to the original answer by King Joseph and the letter to the emissary of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople, the conversion was a one-time act.

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II. The Khazars

Until the study by Zuckerman was published it was generally assumed that the conversion had gone through stages. The problem of the mix-up of the dates and persons was also solved by Zuckerman. Since this problem involves the war between Kievan Rus and the Byzantines, it will not be dealt with here because it is not important to the present subject. Assaf (1924) writes that R. Yehuda also mentions “another letter written by a Jew from Constantinople” which, according to Assaf, had been lost. Possibly he refers to the same letter to the emissary. R. Yehuda excuses himself in the responsum because he finds it necessary to write about things that seem like fiddle-faddle, and as a result, he kept his remarks about the letter short. Assaf points out that in our time we would be only too happy if he had given more details. Why Judaism, and how generally was it accepted? During the time of King Bulan, in Europe there was a tendency to convert to monotheistic religions. At first sight, Judaism does not seem a logical choice: the Jews had lost their homeland, and that was not exactly good propaganda for their God. According to Bury (1912, 406), the reason for the conversion to Judaism was a political one; identification with Christianity would have made King Bulan dependent on Byzantium, and identification with Islam would have made him subject to the Caliph of Baghdad. Since peoples who profess a religion not mentioned in the Koran must be suppressed, Bulan chose Judaism. Polak (1943, 142) and Toynbee (1973, 437) also give a political decision as the reason for the conversion to Judaism. Golden (1983) mentions the political advantages of the conversion to Judaism, but at the same time he indicates that a political reason is not mentioned anywhere. The Arabic historiographers, who discuss the conversion in general, show totally contradictory pictures, varying from only the upper class to all of the Khazars. According to Platonov (1964, 12), the Khan and his royal household professed the Jewish religion; while the common people were mainly Muslims, there were also Christians and pagans among them. The letter to the embassy of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople says that during the reign of King Benjamin (ca. 880–ca. 920), a small number of Alans professed the Jewish religion (Zuckerman 1995). The Alans are mentioned in the answer by King Joseph as one of the peoples tributary to him. At any rate, a Jewish population came into being, part of which were the Khazars. Their cultural features were mainly determined by the old Jewish community of the northern Caucasus and the Crimea. However, the empire of the

Revolt of the Kabars

15

Khazars remained a mixture of religions. According to Arabic authors, the highest court consisted of two Jews, two Muslims, two Christians, and one pagan (Toynbee 1973, 444). Vikhnovich (1991) indicates that in Khazaria, Judaism may have been professed by certain tribes. In that case, it is not strange that in Dagestan no traces of Judaism were found, but in the northeastern coastal area of the Black Sea they were. In total, it is quite possible that the Jews were a minority. Golden (1983) correctly argues that we are dealing with a multiethnic state that exerted authority over various nomadic and sedentary tribes. According to Marquart (1903) and Polak (1943, 143), the Khazars adopted the rabbinical form of Judaism, an opinion that is generally accepted. Moreover, everybody appears to agree that the royal family and the dignitaries of the clans and/or tribes who together formed the Khazars certainly converted to Judaism (Golden 1983).

Revolt of the Kabars Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Jenkins 1967, 175) reports that a tribe of Khazars, the Kabars, revolted and caused a civil war. This revolt is mentioned nowhere else, and it is unknown when it took place. It certainly must have been before 950, when Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote his book. It has been implied that the revolt was the result of the religious reforms by King Ovadia (Koestler 1976, 101). Relying on the analysis by Zuckerman (1991), Koestler is wrong. The revolt may just have been a quarrel between clans or tribes (Golden 1983). The Kabars lost, a number of them were killed, and the survivors fled to the Turks—that is, the Magyars. In the end, around 889, the Magyars were expelled from their settlements along the right bank of the Don by the Pechenegs, a nomadic tribe that lived in southern Russia. They had to flee westward to Pannonia, part of today’s Hungary, and shortly thereafter settled there (Macartney 1930, 82). After settling in Hungary they became known as Hungarians. The Kabars obviously had strongly influenced the Hungarians, because the latter also learned the language of the Kabars (Jenkins 1967, 175). That the Hungarians were indeed bilingual after they had absorbed the Kabars appears from the fact that in Hungarian there are more than 200 loan words from a Turkic language such as that supposedly spoken by the Khazars (Toynbee 1973, 427). It is possible that there were Jews among the Kabars (see also p. 60). Nothing more positive can be stated about a link between Kabars and Jews.

16

II. The Khazars

Fall of the Empire Actually, the relationship between Khazaria and Byzantium could be regarded as good. According to Byzantine and Russian historians, there was a continuous and considerable number of Khazars in Constantinople, with their own suburb. In addition, Khazars served in the Byzantine army, and there was a separate unit of Khazar troops that probably consisted of Christian Khazars (Kutschera 1910, 144–145). Around 833, Byzantine engineers arrived to build a fort on the Lower Don called Sarkel (said by the Byzantines to mean ‘white house’), later renamed by the Kievan Rus Bela Vezha (‘white tower’). It seems that in those days Khazaria and Byzantium had a common enemy: the Kievan Rus (Vasiliev 1936, 108–109). During the second half of the tenth century, the power of the Khazar Empire started to decline. The Pechenegs became stronger and stronger; Byzantium, recognizing this, began to focus its attention more and more on the Pechenegs. In 965, the Kievan Rus inflicted a heavy blow to the “Jewish Empire” of the Khazars when they took the cities of Taurida and Taman (near the Sea of Azov), and in 969 they conquered the regions east of the Sea of Azov, after which the Khazars were left with some regions in the Crimea (Jewish Encyclopedia 1903, v. 4, 6). In any case, after 969, Jews still lived in Khazaria. The Encyclopaedia Judaica (1930, v. 5, 348) reports that Vladimir I, before he converted to Christianity, spoke with Jews from Khazaria who tried to convert him to Judaism. Historians disagree on the survival of the Khazar Empire after 969, in whatever form. There are historians who think that the battle in 965 meant the end of the Khazar Empire (Toynbee 1973, 434). On the other hand, there are sources that show that 965 (or 969) was not the end of the Khazar Empire, such as Hebrew documents from the Geniza of Cairo and Persian poems from the twelfth century (Dunlop 1954, 254–257), but more importantly, Russian and Arabic sources to which I will refer further on. After attacks by the Kievan Rus, the Khazar Empire was shattered. The Khazars retreated to the steppe and the mountains of the Caucasus. The Khazars in the area of the Volga kept their independence until the invasion by the Tatars in 1223 (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1930, v. 5, 346). Vikhnovich (1991) indicates that the western part of Khazaria, especially in and around the Crimea, suffered much less from the Russian attack in 965 than is generally assumed. He also quotes an archaeologist from the Soviet Union (S. A. Pletnyova) who claims that “a certain part of the Khazar population, as well as the Khazars who had adopted Judaism, stayed there for some centuries.” According to Pletnyova, in the sixteenth

Emigration from Khazaria

17

century Italians still referred to the Crimea as Gazaria, which she considers as extra proof for her statement that the Khazars stayed in the Crimea much longer than 965. In 1016, the Kievan Rus together with the Byzantines conquered the remaining regions in the Crimea (Jewish Encyclopedia 1903, v. 4, 6). Vasiliev (1936, 134) gives further details about this attack. He quotes the Byzantine historian Cedrenus (eleventh/twelfth century) who reports that Emperor Basil II sent his fleet to Khazaria and that his commander conquered the country. According to Vasiliev, the fleet must have been sent to the Crimea because, as he writes: “Khazaria or Gazaria was the name given to the Crimea in the Middle Ages because of the former Khazar predominance there.” The aim of the expedition was to deal with the remaining Khazars, as they were hostile towards the imperial interests in the Crimea. According to Polak (1941), there is no evidence that the attack of 1016 yielded the attackers territorial gains, nor is there evidence that the attack on the Crimea took place. He refers to two battles, reported in the Russian Chronicle, in which Khazars were involved, in 1023 and in 1079 (ibid.), and to a battle in Azerbaijan in 1030/31 against a Kurdish general, mentioned in an Arabic source (Polak 1943, 199). As to the last source, the chronicler reports among other things that the Khazars looted the Muslim army. Apparently, in 1030 these Khazars were not yet Muslims. With respect to the battle just mentioned, it appears that in the Caucasus the Khazars were able to reorganize after the attacks by the Kievan Rus. In 1158 they even invaded Shirvan (on the Caspian Sea). These Khazars were the ancestors of, among others, the Mountain Jews (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1930, v. 5, 347). Total destruction of the last remnants of the Khazar Empire took place when the Tatars invaded Russia in 1223.

Emigration from Khazaria Brutskus (1929, 57) refers to the Polish-Jewish historian M. Gumplowicz, who is of the opinion that Jews migrated to Poland during the flourishing of the Khazar empire in the ninth and tenth centuries. The opinion of Gumplowicz is based on the existence of places with Khazar names. According to Brutskus, there is not enough evidence for this, and these names may also have come into being at the beginning of the twelfth century when, according to the Russian chronicle, part of the Khazars, forced by the Polovtsy, migrated to Kievan Rus. After the tenth century, an emigration towards Poland and Hungary started. Slowly the stream of emigrants became larger as the territory of

18

II. The Khazars

western Khazaria became smaller. The principalities of Chernigov, Pereyaslav (now Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky), and Kiev already had a KhazarJewish settlement before they were occupied by the Kievan Rus (Polak 1943, 219). In 1096, the principality of Tmutarakan, southwest of Sarkel, was occupied by the Polovtsy. Shortly thereafter, the Jews and the Khazars supposedly left the principality and the Crimea for Kievan Rus (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1930, v. 5, 347). The encyclopedia relies on a letter by a certain R. Nissim, found in the Geniza of Cairo and published by Kaufmann (1895; from German), that was supposed to show this: “Indeed, all communities [...] returned to God, even in the land of the Khazars. It is reported that seventeen communities moved to the wilderness of the tribes, but we do not know if they united with the tribes.” It is not clear to what extent the conclusion by the encyclopedia is correct. At one time, Western Khazars must have become reconciled with the Kievan Rus, as the latter employed at least one Khazar commander. The Russian Chronicle reports that in 1106, the Prince of Kiev sent the commander “Johanan ben Zekharyah the Khazar” out to fight the Kipchaks, and that he defeated them (Polak 1943, 220). Polak supposes that before the conquest by the Mongols, the Khazars did not migrate farther westward than the principality of Kiev, although at that time Jews already lived in Vladimir (in Volhynia). Sarkel, near the Don, was first occupied by the Pechenegs and later by the Polovtsy. In 1117 the Khazars left that area. They moved towards Kievan Rus and settled in Chernigov (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1930, v. 5, 347). However, according to Polak, a considerable Jewish settlement in Poland could only have come into being via the route Khazaria-Hungary. When Galicia (southern Poland) became a Russian principality, merchants had the option to pass through it because it was safer than in the southern principalities. The ties between Galicia and Hungary were excellent, as a result of which a good migration route was created (Polak 1943, 224). Around 1100, R. Abraham ibn Daud of Toledo mentions Jewish refugees from Khazaria who fled to Spain following the destruction of their country by the Russians and who, at his time, lived in Toledo (Assaf 1924).

The Khazars and the Polish-Lithuanian Jews According to Polak, the exodus from the Khazar steppe mainly decided the fate of Khazar Jewry and laid the foundations for Polish-Lithuanian Jewry (Polak 1943, 250). He bases this opinion on anthropological, linguistic, cultural and socioeconomic indications (ibid., 255–262) such as:

The Khazars and the Polish-Lithuanian Jews

19

1. The simultaneous flourishing of Polish-Lithuanian Jewry and the large emigration of Khazar Jews to these countries. 2. The similar economic and geographic organization of the rabbinic Jews and other non-Slavic immigrants from the area of Khazaria. 3. A large Jewish state that ceased to exist shortly before the beginning of the emigration created more favorable conditions for the growth of the Jewish population than the small and unsanitary districts in the Czech lands and Germany. Moreover, the number of potential emigrants in the East was much larger than in the West. 4. The dress of the ultra-Orthodox Jews, the shtraymel and the kaftan. Polak writes that the traditional dress of the Jewish man from Poland and Lithuania, the shtraymel with its round little cap that is surrounded at the bottom by fox, and the kaftan, the long coat that can have all kinds of colors and is made of velvet (or for the religious holidays of silk), look exactly like the traditional dress of the Cossacks and other nomads of the steppe. However, the common explanation of this dress is that it is an imitation of the dress of Polish noblemen. It is pretty farfetched to think that Jews would imitate the dress of the Polish nobility. Common citizens simply do not dress like noblemen. During the rule of the Mongols (after the Khazar Empire), this form of dress was quite popular among these noblemen. Polak wonders if the Polish noblemen would have agreed to such an imitation by Jews if they had not worn this dress from the beginning. It is a fact that since the flourishing of Jewish handiwork in Poland, more than 50 percent of the Jewish craftsmen were tailors, furriers, and hatters, in addition to which the fur trade was almost a Jewish monopoly. He then asks himself if it wouldn’t be reasonable to assume that this dress was the result of their expertise in the field of the dress of the Mongolian (and Turkish) nomads that was in style in those days. In the Islamic world the “Khazar fur” was considered among the best. Polak concludes that East European Jewry, and thus almost all of European Ashkenazi Jewry, descends from the Khazars. Criticism by Landau The publication of Khazaria probably did not make Polak very popular in Palestine in 1943. In a review by M. Landau (1944), who also published in the field of the Khazars, the book is praised for its contribution to our knowledge about the Khazars, but Landau also gave it considerable criticism. The most important points of criticism are:

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II. The Khazars

1. The sources, especially the non-Jewish sources, were not studied extensively enough. 2. It is doubtful whether the conversion was as widespread as is indicated. 3. There is no proof that Khazaria after the tenth century was still Jewish. 4. Although the Khazars were indeed the first Jewish immigrants in Poland-Lithuania, Landau is of the opinion that the conclusion that the largest part of the Polish-Lithuanian Jews is of Khazar descent is pushing things too far. Landau’s second argument is worth commenting on. The conversions apparently were not limited to dignitaries. The bodyguard of the Kagan consisted of 4,000 men, all Jewish (Kutschera 1910, 139). The contradictory reports of Arabic historians of the number of converted Khazars also lead one to suspect that the number of Jews in Khazaria may have been considerably more than the king and the ruling classes. But, even if Kutschera is right, the question remains how many of these Jews or their descendants ever went to Poland. As to the fourth argument, Dunlop (1973, 263) expresses himself in similar terms: “But to speak of the Jews of Eastern Europe as descendants of the Khazars seems to involve the Ashkenazim in general, i.e., by far the greater part of the Jewish people in the world today, and would be to go much beyond what our imperfect records allow.” Koestler The merit of Koestler’s book The Thirteenth Tribe is particularly that it made the German (Kutschera 1910) and the Hebrew (Polak 1943) literature about the Khazars accessible to the English-speaking public. What Koestler’s book boils down to is that the Ashkenazi Jews descend from the Khazars and consequently aren’t Semites. The theory of the dominating role of the Khazars in the origin of the East European Jews did not go down very well with many American Jews (mainly of East European origin). The American-Jewish reviews of The Thirteenth Tribe that I know of are very negative. Ankori In addition to the reviews mentioned above, Koestler’s book also comes up in the chapter “Origins and History of Ashkenazi Jewry (8th to 18th Century)” by Ankori (1979, 19–22). The subject is discussed in an unusual manner. Ankori starts by mentioning the Bavarian scholar Fallmerayer, who concluded that the Greeks in nineteenth-century Greece did not origi-

Conclusions

21

nate from the ancient Greeks. He goes on to say that 145 years later Koestler made a similar mistake about the Judaic purity of Ashkenazi Jewry. There is no connection either between the two authors or between their stories. Ankori does not give arguments why Koestler is wrong. In the next chapter, we will come across one of Ankori’s comments again when discussing the Jews in Germany.

Conclusions 1. Khazars (or a part of them) converted to Judaism only in the ninth century. 2. Khazar Jews possibly played a role in the origin of East European Jewry, but it remains unclear how important this role was. 3. As far as numbers are concerned, nothing is known about these Jews. 4. It is impossible to identify the Jewish or the non-Jewish descendants of the Khazars. 5. The studies discussed in this chapter lack the necessary information to make the Khazaria hypothesis plausible as the explanation of the origin of the East European Jews.

III. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (1): France, Germany, Bohemia, Moravia Silesia, and Hungary Introduction As mentioned before, the Polish and Russian Jews are the largest group within Ashkenazi Jewry. According to the common view, there were three crucial events in history for their development: the First Crusade in 1096, the plague that went through Europe in 1348/49, and especially the expulsions from the cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, mainly in Germany (Ankori 1979, 36). As we are interested in the origin of the Jews in the above-mentioned countries and regions and their migrations to Eastern Europe, I will mainly deal with these topics. To be able to decide whether migrations took place, we need reliable numerical data from the years when the pogroms took place. We will have to check this for each country and region. As the dispersion of the Ashkenazi Jews after 1600 does not provide anything else that would explain their origin, I stopped there. The word “region” in the title of this chapter was chosen because it is not always useful to discuss the development in each country, even though at first sight this may seem logical. For example, during the reign of Charlemagne France and Germany were one empire, and by the end of the eighteenth century large parts of Poland were annexed by Russia and Austria. Still, France and Germany will be treated separately, while, in view of the central role that Poland and Russia (Polish-Lithuanian Jewry) play in the development of Ashkenazi Jewry, these two countries will be seen as one region. Before I will start discussing the developments in the various regions, there is an important point that involves all regions that come up and that should be mentioned: the periods in which nothing is known about the presence of Jews. When Jews are not mentioned in documents, it does not mean that there weren’t any Jews present in that place, region, or country. It is known from genealogical research into the period before 1800 that in Amsterdam the man in the street who during his life did not attract any attention (not being a rich man, a scholar, or a criminal) cannot be traced

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anywhere except in civil registrations. If these had not been preserved, we would not have known anything about that person. Part of my family research may serve as an example. Thanks to genealogical research in the Amsterdam municipal archives (publications of the banns), I know that 52 out of my 64 ancestors around 1770 (six generations back) came from Amsterdam. Let us assume that these registrations had not taken place and that I had had to rely on notarial deeds as the sole source. In that case, I would only have known that one forefather lived in Amsterdam, as there is a notarial deed from that time which specifies how far he had to put his oven from the wall. He happened to make chinaware. As far as sources are concerned, the rest of the family did not exist, at least not in Amsterdam. Therefore, the fact that Jews are not mentioned in official sources can never give any assurance about whether or not they lived in a certain town or region. From early times onward, in countries where Jews lived like the remainder of the population, quite often nothing can be found about them in sources that have been preserved. This means that we have to be very careful about drawing conclusions about a Jewish presence when, for whatever reason, there are no documents, or there are none that mention Jews.

France Origin of the French Jews Jews may have lived in Provence in coastal towns already before the destruction of the second temple (70 C.E.), for example in Marseille, or Massilia as it was called in those days. With the arrival of the Romans, the Jews started to spread further over Gaul (France). Documents show that Jews lived in Gaul from the fourth century on. It is not clear where in Gaul the Jews came from. In view of the many conversions to Judaism during the first centuries C.E., it is quite possible that some were descendants of converts. This opinion can already be found in a talk given in Paris by Renan (1883; from French): “Most of the Jews in Gaul and Italy, for example, will probably be descendants of such conversions.” Bachrach (1977, 48) does not say that in so many words, but he does write that it is not for nothing that the canon rules that were intended to protect the Christians from the proselytizing efforts of the Jews were repeated so often during the church councils. He therefore suspects that in order to marry Jews, a large number of Christians converted to Judaism, something that could not be ignored by the Church. Several historians are

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of the opinion, without naming any sources, that most of the Jews in Merovingian Gaul were descendants of converts and that they did not descend from Jews who at any time fled from the Land of Israel (James 1982, 101; Benbassa 1999, 4). The Merovingian period (500–751) The anti-Jewish policy of Chlotar II and Dagobert I In general, the Merovingian kings treated the Jews well. This changed in 584, when Chlotar II became king of Neustria (western Gaul). He was on a path towards war with his uncle, Sigibert I, king of Austrasia (northern France and the Rhineland), and his wife queen Brunhild. In 613, Brunhild was tortured to death by order of Chlotar (James 1988, 181). Given that Brunhild was supported by the Jews, it is reasonable to assume that this was the reason Chlotar pursued an anti-Jewish policy, especially against those who had been in Brunhild’s government (Bachrach 1977, 60). The anti-Jewish policy was continued by his son Dagobert I (623–638). According to the Chronicle by Fredegar (1960, 53), in 629 the Byzantine emperor Heraclius sent a delegation to Dagobert with the request to baptize all Jews in his kingdom, a request that Dagobert immediately complied with. We are dealing here with forced baptism. The alternative was exile. Some remarks about this chronicle are in order (Manitius 1911, 224– 227). It was not written by one person, but by three. However, the chronicle is controversial as well; not every chronicler was impartial. The chronicle was continued by later writers in the eighth century, and in this process the original chronicle was sometimes changed. As to the request to Dagobert, it is questionable whether the request indeed originated from the emperor. Furthermore, it is not clear whether Dagobert really ordered the baptism of Jews. Finally, and more importantly, to what extent was the order carried out? Did the Jews leave France in 629? Opinions about this matter differ greatly. Some historians maintain that part of the order was certainly carried out. Either the Jews were baptized or they had to leave the country (Depping 1834, 42–43); Aronius 1902, 22, nr. 61). Schwarzfuchs (1966, 125; Schwarzfuchs 1980, 136 note 1) is the most rigorous. He is of the opinion that the Jews indeed left Gaul in 629 and that they only returned towards 800. His opinion is based on the fact that between 629 and 797 nothing was written about Jews. As mentioned before, the lack of information is no proof of either presence or absence of people. According to Schwarzfuchs, it can be deduced that Dagobert was

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successful in converting the Jews forcibly. Otherwise, they would not have chosen to be exiled. However, nothing is known about an expulsion. On the other hand, there are historians who consider the whole story nonsense (Anschel (1946, 17); Blumenkranz (1960, 100)). Bachrach (1977, 60–65) can imagine an anti-Jewish policy by Dagobert. After all, most Jews were supporters of Brunhild, and this way he could deal with a group that was hostile to him. He has doubts about the efficacy of the orders and the role of Emperor Heraclius in this matter, however. The role the Byzantine emperors played in influencing Merovingian policy toward the Jews is generally considered insignificant. This policy had no effect, and Bachrach concludes: “The Jews of Gaul like their coreligionists in Visigothic Spain, however, seem to have been too important and to have had too many influential friends and supporters to have been victimized successfully and in a sustained manner by barbarian monarchs who lacked the administrative resources sufficient to the task.” Is there any additional information that can spread some light on this controversy? It is known that in 630 Dagobert fought against the Wends, who in 632 were able to attack him again (James 1988, 105–106). These fights make one wonder to what extent Dagobert was able to fight the rebellion and at the same time effectuate the forced baptism of Jews, who were living all over the country. There is another factor that probably was of great importance for the effectiveness of Dagobert’s orders, the mutual relations between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. Blumenkranz (1960, 375–376, from French), who discusses the relations between Jews and Christians between 430 and 1096, writes in his conclusion, “Speaking the same language as they do, dressed the same way, practicing the same professions, they mix together in the same houses, just as they find themselves together under arms to defend their mutual native country. Nothing distinguishes them except religion [...] But even there the isolation is not that sharp, because often the Christians come to with the religious Jews to listen to the rabbi’s sermon, while the Jews like to attend mass, whose pageantry and order they appreciate.”

When we mention the conclusion by Blumenkranz as well as the proselytes, as such (or via mixed marriages), it doesn’t look as if Dagobert had much support for his policy among the people of Gaul. We are dealing here with the first potential pogrom against the Jews. However, it does not seem to have occurred, nor is there evidence that large groups of Jews left the country, let alone that they left for Eastern Europe.

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The Carolingian period (751–877) The Carolingian period was one of the best periods for the Jews. Most of the anti-Jewish measures from the time of the Merovingians, which hardly anybody obeyed anyhow, were reversed. There is a fascinating episode of the history of commerce that may be unknown to many readers. This is also associated with the presence of Jews in Poland in the ninth century. As the Frankish Empire plays an important role in this matter, this seems the appropriate place to record it. The Radhanites According to McCormick (2001, 688), a group of Jewish merchants constitutes the only important evidence of ninth-century trade in Western Europe that has been preserved. They were first mentioned by ibn Khordadbih (circa 825–circa 912). He bore the title of “director of posts and police” in the Arabic province Jibal, which earlier was called Media (a region in the northwestern part of today’s Iran). In 885–886 he wrote a book whose English title is The Book of the Roads and the Kingdoms, in which he speaks of Jewish merchants known under the name of Radhanites (Radhaniyya). The meaning of the word Radhanites is not clear. Marquart (1903), Rabinowitz (1948), and Roth (1966) prefer the explanation proposed by de Goeje in 1889 that Radhan comes from the Persian rah dƗn, ‘knowing the way.’ Other explanations are that the word was derived from the river Rhône (rather unlikely) or from a region in southern Iraq (Gil, 1974). Jacobi (1971) agrees that Radhaniyya indeed means ‘knowing the way.’ In those days, numerous Arabic administrative terms came from Persian, and Radhaniyya is not an economic but an administrative term. He first shows that the story about the street network is not a schedule to which the merchants adhered. Jacobi then recalls that one of the tasks of ibn Khordadbih was acquiring information. This means that he had to be well informed about the road system and the general relations inside and outside Islamic countries. So the assumption is that the Radhanites indeed knew the roads, and that first of all they constituted a group that was extremely able to furnish necessary information about the road system, and that economic aspects came in second place. Jacobi (1975) also shows that the opinion of Gil (1974) is not correct. He considers the interpretation of his earlier publication (Jacobi, 1971) by Gil, that the Radhanites were some kind of spies, ridiculous (lächerlich). When the information in the literature about the routes and the regions that had to be traversed was not sufficiently up to date, ibn Khordadbih needed new information.

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The book by ibn Khordadbih was translated into French by de Goeje (1889). Below follows (in English translation) the part that refers to the Radhanites: “Itinerary of the Jewish merchants, called ar-Râdhânyya. These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Romance languages [Greek and Latin], the Frankish language, Andalusian [Spanish], and Slavic. They travel from west to east and from east to west, one time by land, another time by sea. From the west they carry eunuchs, female and male slaves, silken cloth, beaver, marten and other furs, and swords. They ship out from the country Firanja (France) on the Mediterranean Sea and head for al-Farama [Pelusium]. There they load their wares on camels and travel by land to Kolzom [Suez], a distance of 25 parasangs [which took about five days]. They again embark at the eastern [Red] Sea and sail from Kulzum to al-Jar [the port of Medina] and to Jeddah [the port of Mecca]; then they go to Sind, Hind [India], and China. On the return trip from China they carry musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other products from eastern lands [...] Some sail to Constantinople in order to sell their goods to the Romans [Byzantines], others go to the palace of the king of the Franks to sell their wares.”

Ibn Khordadbih then describes two other routes and finishes with the fourth route, which is of interest for us: “Sometimes they take the route that passes on the other side of Rome and after crossing the countries of the Slavs, they arrive at Khamlij, the capital of the Khazars. They then embark at the Sea of Jurjan [Caspian Sea], arrive in Balkh [...] and from there to China.” The port of departure De Goeje translates Firanja as France. The unspecified port of departure is generally considered to be Marseilles (McCormick 2001, 691). Schwarzfuchs (1957, 11) assumes that Narbonne, in southeastern France, was the port of departure. He bases his idea on a text in which Charlemagne and his entourage, situated near Narbonne, wonder whether the ships they see at the horizon are Jewish, African, or British. According to Schwarzfuchs, it was not considered strange at all to see Jewish merchants sail the sea. However, the fact that ships containing Jewish merchants call in at a French port does not mean that that port is necessarily the port of departure of those merchants. Rabinowitz (1948, 9) translates Firanja as “the land of the Franks,” which leaves some more room, since the land of the Franks includes also Italy (ibid., 105). Gil (1974, 310) concludes that by Firanja Italy was meant; namely those parts which were governed by Frankish laws. McCormick (2001, 691) agrees with this view, and he supposes that Venice is the port mentioned. He gives four arguments to support this idea:

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1. It was located on the coast of the Frankish empire. 2. It was the most important port in the Christian West which traded with the Muslim world. 3. Its mint issued Frankish coins. 4. It was a major point of sale for slaves, who were caught in the Slavic territories northeast of Venice. According to McCormick, Jewish slave traders operating in Moravia outside the authority of the Frankish Empire offered their Slavic goods for sale in Venice. As proof he refers to the buying and selling of the disciples of Methodius by Jewish slave traders in 885. The merchants bought the disciples from the Frankish troops in or near Moravia and sold them in Venice to the emissary of the emperor in Constantinople (ibid., 766). The fourth route From the wording of the fourth route (as well as from the first), it can be concluded that we are dealing here with Jews from the West (Western Europe) who are trading with the Orient. In this respect, it is strange that Schipper (1907, 23) writes that of the Jews living in Western Europe (sic), only the Polish and Hungarian Jews were in close contact with the Khazars. According to McCormick (2001, 689), it says in the text that they first went from East to West, however, this is not important to us. Itil, the capital of the Khazars, consisted actually of two cities, one on the eastern and one on the western bank of the Volga. Khamlij is the eastern city of Itil (Marquart 1903, 18). As Khamlij is mentioned in the route, Marquart hints that also Jewish merchants from Spain (who spoke an Iberic version of Romance) came to the capital of the Khazars (ibid., 24). This might have contributed to the presence of Jews with Sephardic names in Eastern Europe. If, as mentioned before, around 1100 there were Jewish Khazars living in Toledo, it is quite possible that in earlier days Sephardic Jews had traveled to or lived in Khazaria. According to Roth (1966, 24), Byzantium is meant by “the route behind Rome.” In the Arabic text the word for Rome appears earlier and it is clear that Rome is meant here and not Byzantium (personal communication by Pieter Smoor, University of Amsterdam). Schipper (1907, 19) has the route go via Germany, something that, according to Heyd (1879, 140 note 2), was suggested by Reinaud. It appears that there are two manuscripts (de Goeje, 1889), one containing Rome, the other containing Armenia. It seems that Reinaud suggested changing the Arabic word for Armenia into the word for Germany, the latter being more convenient (the words look alike). Caro (1908) also speaks of Germany, while de Goeje, Rabinowitz,

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Jacobi (1971), and McCormick (2002) think that Rome is the correct translation. The fourth route is the only one in which the Radhanites chose the longest way to reach Islamic territory. The question is why. It would be more natural to take the familiar commercial route from Thüringen to Mainz and from there via Slavonia and the Balkans. However, the latter two regions were still unsafe and not attractive to the Radhanites. It probably was Khazaria with its great trade opportunities and Jewish inhabitants that made the route attractive (Rabinowitz 1948, 140). In the beginning, the fourth route was unknown to Hasdai ibn Shaprut (the Jewish physician of the Caliph of Cordoba), but his third attempt to send a letter to King Joseph of the Khazars succeeded, via this route. He was informed about the route by two Jewish members of the embassy from either King Boleslav I of Bohemia or the Slavic king Hunu that visited Cordoba. According to Schipper (1935, 31) the monarch of Poland is meant, but he does not say on what this assumption is based. Rabinowitz (1948, 142–143) cannot prove that, apart from the Radhanites and the two Jews of the embassy, during the ninth and tenth centuries, the aforementioned route was used by Jews. He does, however, provide some proof that the route was used by Jews during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For example, at the end of the twelfth century the Jewish traveler Petahiah of Ratisbon (Regensburg) traveled from Regensburg to Prague and from Prague to Khazaria. Somewhat later, a known Jewish scholar, Isaac ben Moses (author of Or zarua; see p. 72), traveled from Prague to Regensburg and from Regensburg to Paris. Rabinowitz considers it justified to state that there were regular routes between France and Prague and between Prague and Khazaria. The Radhanites lost their monopoly at the beginning of the tenth century. One of the reasons was the rise of the commercial cities of Bari and Venice. During the thirties of the tenth century, the Venetians were very interested in the economic developments north of the Alps. They launched an anti-Jewish campaign about which McCormick (2002, 796) remarks that it “looks suspiciously like an effort to vanquish powerful competitors by noncommercial means.” Back to France. When in 840 the empire started to disintegrate, the proJewish policy was continued, and renewed attempts by some bishops to reintroduce anti-Jewish measures came to nothing. Bachrach (1977, 130–131) summarizes the situation between 840 and 877 as follows: “The process of developing Carolingian Jewry law continued. This legislation tended toward treating Jews like the other peoples who lived under Carolingian rule, and this tendency was manifest in the elimination of the restrictive Jewry provisions of the Roman law.”

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By the end of the tenth century, Jews lived all over France. In this period, deeds of sale show that Jews still possessed mills. From the second and third church councils of Gerona, it appears that in 1068 and 1078 Jews still possessed estates in both southern France and northern Spain (Zuckerman 1970). The period 877–1400 The crusades The first pogrom in France took place during the crusades. The reason for this was an event that initially had nothing to do with Jews. At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II came up with the idea of freeing the holy grave of Christ from the hands of the infidels. This stirred up enormous enthusiasm among his contemporaries. In those days Muslims had control over the grave, and the decision of the Council obviously had nothing to do with the Jews. However, for the crusaders, brought up with the statement of the religious leaders that the forefathers of the Jews who lived among them had nailed Christ to the cross, it was a small step to first deal with the Jews—the enemies of Christ—in their own country. However, incitement to pogroms did not correspond with the tradition of the Curia, who acted accordingly. Therefore, the pope was not involved in the pogroms during the crusade of 1096. The legal authorities, the state and the church, certainly stood up for the ones who were threatened. The ones who had thought up the movement were unable to control their followers, and the result was that the whole affair ended in disaster. Quantitatively speaking, for the French Jews the disaster turned out better than expected. Caro (1908, v. 1, 206–207; from German) says the following: “The silence of the Hebrew sources and the vagueness of the other sources certainly proves that massacres did not take place in France itself to any considerable extent.” Graetz (1909, v. 6, 85) agrees with the foregoing statement. Only at Rouen, which in those days belonged to England, is it known that the crusaders drove the Jews into the church and that they were given the choice, with the sword on the chest, either to be baptized or to be killed. The Second Crusade took place in 1146. The initiative came from Pope Eugene III, who asked the king of France, the monarchs, and all believers for help to relieve the holy places that were threatened by the infidels (Caro 1908, v. 1, 220–221). To those who would join the crusade the prospect was held out of all kinds of privileges, like the exoneration of interest on debts. Jews were not mentioned in the papal decree, and the exoneration affected both Jews and non-Jews. The intervention of the pope in economic

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life had to lead to conflicts. When the Christians would not adhere to the decree, they could always be threatened with excommunication, but for the Jews there was no such means of control. According to a Hebrew statement by Ephraim bar Jacob, King Louis VII determined that anyone joining the crusade did not have to pay his debts to Jews. A large number of French Jews probably lost a fortune at that time; however, it did not result in terrible pogroms. The expulsions in the period 1181–1348 Under Philip August, Jews were confronted with a pogrom organized by the authorities for the first time (in 1181); Jews were expelled and fled to the surrounding provinces. In July 1198 they were allowed to return. There was a respite until 22 July 1306, when Philip the Fair had all Jews picked up. In August and September of the same year, all Jews left. The king was only interested in booty, as no physical violence was used against the expelled Jews (Caro 1920, v. 2, 90–91). Philip the Fair could not exert his powers in all of France, as a result of which Provence, Dauphiné, and Savoy were able to protect some of the expelled Jews. In addition, the county of Burgundy and Franche-Comté were safe areas. Finally, the Jews could also go to the southwest, to the north side of the Pyrenees, to the properties of the House of Aragon, and to the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne. Caro continues: “Under no circumstances did the emigrants have to leave the French-speaking region in order to find at least temporary accommodation; probably not very many went to Germany or Spain. Most people remained near the border to await further developments in the lost native country.” According to Kutschera (1910, 234) the Jews from the northern regions probably fled to the eastern provinces, where they received protection from some barons. Many may have fled to Germany and so laid the foundation for the many Jews who lived in Alsace. According to Mieses (1924, 273), those Jews who were expelled by Philip the Fair did not go to Germany but to Provence, to Rousillon where the king of Aragon held sway, to Mallorca and even to Palestine. The expulsion from France not only took effect in the crown properties, but also in those regions where barons were in charge. On 29 June 1312 Philip allowed Jews to return. In the royal decree of 28 July 1315 in which he proclaimed the recall of Jews, it says that everywhere among the people the demand became stronger to tolerate the Jews again in the country as had been the case before and still was in other places (Caro 1920, v.2, 99). In 1320 problems arose again, and before Christmas of 1322 all Jews had to leave France. In this case Jews were able to return

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relatively quickly, and again there were regions in France where they could go. Still, their situation kept on deteriorating between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century. Leprosy caused new problems. The Jews were blamed, but it is not clear what happened to them. 1348/49 (the plague) This was not the end of the tunnel yet; in 1348 the plague, or Black Death, broke out in southern France and the bordering Spanish provinces. From the south of France the rumor spread that the Jews had poisoned (or wanted to poison) wells, and again the Jews bore the brunt of popular fury, while their own numbers were also decreased strongly by the disease. Especially in Savoy, Jews were tortured and as a result admitted having poisoned wells (Graetz 1909, v. 6, 335; Dubnow 1927, v. 5, 301). Guerchberg (1948; translated from French) investigated the accusations brought against the Jews. As to the poisonings, she quotes a certain von Megenberg, who wrote the following: “I do not know whether some Jews did or did not do it (i.e. whether they poisoned the wells), but if they did, it certainly would have helped [...] But what I know for sure is that in Vienna there were so many (Jews) as in no single German city that I know, and that they died (of the plague) in such a large number that they had to enlarge their cemetery. If they had provoked it themselves, it would have been an absurdity on their part.”

Next, she mentions that Pope Clement VI also stated this last argument in favor of the Jews in his bull of 26 September 1348, and from a practical point of view it was very persuasive. She concludes the article with the following sentences: “the wrong opinion about the relative and even total invulnerability of the Jews during the epidemics of the Black Death became so strongly embedded in people’s heads during the fifteenth century, that at the end of this period it was accepted [...] not only by the Christian defenders of the Jews, but also by the Jewish chroniclers [...] And what is especially to be regretted, from the point of view of the science of history is that this erroneous version continues to appear in many historical writings, even in our time.”

I quote this on purpose, because among many people, the idea still existed, about 600 years later, that Jews in the Middle Ages suffered much less from epidemics than non-Jews. The expulsion of 1394 In 1394 the Jews were expelled again. According to Ankori (1979, 36), as a result of this and other expulsions Europe became judenrein. As to France, this is not correct: “it is good to remember that there was never a

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‘final’ expulsion from the territory that comprises today’s France; the Jews kept on living in Provence, Savoy, Dauphiné, etc. during the decades that followed the expulsions” (Kohn (2004, 13; translated from French). However, there were also some Jews who went to Germany, and from there via Austria to Hungary (see also p. 62). The social relations between Jews and non-Jews I mention this subject because the social relations between Jews and nonJews certainly influenced the possibility of a total expulsion. Rabinowitz (1938) deals with these relations in the period from 1100 until 1400. What makes his work interesting is that it is based on rabbinic literature (responsa; see p. 7). He established two facts (ibid., 23): (a) “apart from the purely religious life, there was an almost complete assimilation of the life of the Jewish community to that of the general community. In their language, their names, their dress, they were indistinguishable from non-Jews, and as a result, until the double pressure of Church and State weighed down upon them to degrade and isolate them, they lived on the best of terms and on the friendliest social footing with their non-Jewish neighbours.” (b) “different conditions of life, the effect of environment and the economic needs of existence, caused a considerable and marked adaptation of the Talmudic code to harmonise with them.” There are all kinds of responsa about issues that clearly indicate what social relationships were like (ibid. 130–133). They sometimes deal with situations that were forbidden according to one or another church council. For example, Jews employed Christian servants to do things that were forbidden for Jews to do on the Sabbath, and they also employed them as nurses and cooks. Not only did the Third Council of the Lateran of 1179 forbid Jews to employ Christian servants, it was also questioned in Jewish quarters (responsa) whether this was allowed according to Jewish law. There were also responsa about Jews who had Christians build their homes on the Sabbath. According to Rabinowitz, one has to look at the relationships between Jews and non-Jewish neighbors with whom they had daily contact in order to obtain a really good idea about the social relationships between the two groups. For example, a Jewish woman went to the nearest town for the High Holidays and left her keys with her non-Jewish neighbor. This caused a discussion about the question whether her wine could still be consumed by Jews. Just a short explanation for the reader who is not familiar with the Jewish law: it is possible that the neighbor went into the house and touched an open bottle of wine. In that case, a Jew is not allowed to drink that wine.

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Also, the employment of non-Jews to assist in treading the grapes to obtain a better relationship with the neighbors did not go down well. From the moment the juice comes out of the grape, a non-Jew is not allowed to touch it anymore. With regard to the latter, Rabbi Tam even threatened anyone who would continue this custom with excommunication. As the most important evidence of the close social relationships between the two groups, Rabinowitz points to the fact that the Jews spoke French (ibid., 238–239). This also follows from the responsa. There are questions about the use of French in prayers and about the reading of the first part of the haggadah (story about the exodus from Egypt that is being read at Passover seders) in French, so that children and women could understand it as well. The responsa show that in those days the relations between Jews and non-Jews were good, which agrees with Kohn’s remark that there was never a “final” expulsion. The sixteenth century Southern France and Savoy Until the end of the fifteenth century, things were going relatively well for the Jews in Provence. In 1501, however, they were finally expelled. They found refuge in the southeast of France in Avignon and Comtat-Venaissin, which were under the authority of the pope; in the principality of Orange; and in Nice. The Jews who settled in these regions bore mainly geographic surnames of French origin. It was an exception when these Jews bore surnames from beyond the border (Blumenkranz 1972, 194). As of 1593, in the cities of Avignon, Carpentras, Vavaillon, and Isle-sur-la-Sorgue there were special quarters for Jews, called “carrières.” From the beginning of the sixteenth century, there were no Jews left in Savoy and, with few exceptions, they did not return until 1789. Lorraine and Alsace In Lorraine, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, there were hardly any Jews. Blumenkranz (1972, 79) mentions that in this time of expulsions, Poland was the safest refuge for Jews. However, he knows of only one Jew, a certain Uri son of Abraham, a Jew from Saint-Avold, who settled in Poland. Yet in 1630 some Jews seem to have settled in villages belonging to the diocese of Metz during the Thirty Years War. When the French troops entered Metz in 1552, Jews entered the city as well. From the lists of names of 1637, it appears that many Jews with names of German cities lived in Metz (ibid., 81).

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Judging from the massacres and expulsions, which almost always took place in cities, it appears that in the late Middle Ages in Alsace, Jews mainly lived in the cities (ibid., 138). In the fifteenth century many cities like Molsheim, Sélestat, Obernai, Colmar, and Mulhouse expelled Jews. In the sixteenth century, previously more tolerant cities like Ribeauvillé, Landau, and Guebwiller followed suit. It is not true that Jews were killed everywhere; life was simply made impossible for them by discriminatory legislation. Blumenkranz says the following about their fate (from French): “The Jews who had been gotten rid of in such a manner settled in the neighboring villages; many emigrated to seigniories where legislation was more tolerant, to regions along the Rhine, to northern Lorraine, or to the diocese of Basel” (ibid., 139). Toch (1997) is of the same opinion; he also concludes that from the middle of the fifteenth century the Jews in Alsace lived in villages. The expulsions were not always final and varied from place to place. For example, in Colmar the Jews were expelled in 1349, between 1369 and 1388 they were readmitted again, and in 1477 and 1510 they were expelled again, with the result that no Jews lived there until some time in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, in Bergheim the Jews were also expelled in 1349, but following their return in 1375, they were able to stay until the eighteenth century. Summing up, there are no numerical or other data that show that many Jews had left France for Eastern Europe, or even for Germany.

Germany Origin of the German Jews It is not clear where the German Jews originated from. The oldest Jewish settlement in Germany is connected with the Romans. According to a chronicle, the earliest Jews in the Rhineland would have been descendants of Roman soldiers who, during the destruction of the Second Temple, were garrisoned in Palestine (Graetz 1909, v. 5, 59). The Romans supposedly chose some beautiful women from among the Jewish captives, took these to their encampments along the Rhine and the Main, and used them to satisfy their desires. Then these mothers brought up their children according to Jewish law, as the fathers did not care about the children. These halfbreeds, as Graetz calls them, were supposedly the founders of the Jewish communities between Worms and Mainz. As long as it is not clear what chronicle we are talking about, there isn’t much credit we can give to this story. A practical note can also be attached: how could the mothers give

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their children a Jewish education when there were no religious facilities and when they probably could neither read nor write? Feist (1925, 127) does not even mention this story. Probably Graetz himself did not attach too much value to this chronicle as he continues his story: “It is certain that there was a Jewish community in the Roman colony of the city of Cologne long before Christianity came into power via Constantine” (Graetz, 1909, v. 5, 59; from German). Evidently, he considered the Jews situated in Cologne isolated from the Jews who were mentioned as living in Germany from about the year 800, and who, according to him, came from France. He keeps us guessing about what happened to this community. It is indeed an established fact that the earliest known Jewish community in Germany was in the Roman city of Cologne, at the beginning of the fourth century. On 11 December of the year 321, the emperor Constantine ordered representatives of the Jewish community to become members of the curia, the Roman city council (Aronius 1902, nr. 2; Asaria 1959, 35– 36). The text of the decree reads (from Latin): “The same [emperor Constantine] to the town councilors of Cologne. We admit to all classes that Jews are appointed to the town council. However, in order that at least something remains for them from the former practice as solace, we allow that in each case two or three will be exempt from such appointments through a lasting privilege.”

As it happens, 11 December 321 is also the date on which the emperor Constantine obtained control over the western part of the Empire (Lindner 1983, 87). It is obvious that this decree had been given considerable thought at an earlier date. The office involved heavy obligations, and in the year 331 he specified that those who were in the service of the synagogue were exempt. After all, the latter were already involved in work for the (Jewish) community. Baltrusch (2002, 3) indicates that the decree of Constantine is therefore not a friendly gesture towards the Jews of Cologne but to the remaining citizens of the town; after all, they were relieved by the decree. As members of the curia in those days were well-to-do landowners, it may be assumed that this also held true for Jews (Schipper 1907, 11; Kober 1931, 12). Kober is therefore of the opinion that Jews must have lived in Cologne for a long time, possibly also later. Rosenthal (1927, 2) writes, without reservations, that there were landowners among Jews because of their participation in the curia. Nothing can be found about individual Jews in those days. It is quite possible that Jewish landowners arrived in Cologne as soldiers of the Roman army, who, after they had been dismissed from the army, had obtained a piece of land.

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The period 331–800: a continuous or discontinuous Jewish presence? What makes the history of the Jews in Cologne so intriguing is the observation that we only know something about them because of the two aforementioned decrees by Emperor Constantine, while there certainly must have been a well-functioning Jewish community—a community that, as far as written sources are concerned, in 321 appeared just like that out of nothingness and that again disappeared into nothingness. It is thus not surprising that one group of historians thinks that the Jews of Cologne disappeared, while another group is of the opinion that they may have stayed. Caro (1908, v.1, 159) suspects that Jews lived in the Roman cities in the Germanic province continuously, similarly to those in Gaul (France). He therefore finds that just as the old Jewish communities in Arles and Narbonne did not have to disappear before new (later) ones could arise, the same is true of Cologne, Mainz, and Worms. There is a better indication that Jews had little reason to leave the country after Roman rule had ceased. The general idea is that the transition from Roman to Germanic rule was rather violent and that with the arrival of the Franks the Jews left Germany (Weinreich 1980, 329–330). Dopsch (1923, v. 1, 159; from German) writes that in Mainz, at the beginning of the twentieth century, tombstones were found from the Roman and early Christian periods. On the oldest tombstones, only Roman or Celto-Roman names can be found. Next, there are Roman and Germanic names, and finally, only Frankish ones. The infiltration of the Germanic elements and the replacement of the old Roman community by a Frankish-German one are clear. He then writes: “However, at the same time we see how in the fourth and fifth, just as in the sixth and seventh centuries, the Roman customs and language continue to be used; Romans and Germans lived peacefully beside each other united in Christianity.” Also for other places Dopsch shows that this transition must have passed relatively peacefully (ibid., 161–164). Similar opinions can be found from Planitz (1954, 33) and Ennen (1972, 27–28). In this respect, the remark by Stobbe (1866, 3) that the legal position of the Jews in the German states remained the same as the one they enjoyed in the Roman empire is also important. Thus, the transition from Roman to Germanic rule passed gradually. Under such circumstances, there must have been little reason for Jews to leave the country. Yet Caro, like the other historians, thinks that the reliable history of the German Jews only starts in the tenth century, at the time the authority passes from the Frankish to the German Empire. Ankori (1979) tries to prove that the Jews did not live in Cologne continuously. While discussing Koestler’s book The Thirteenth Tribe, he compared Koestler’s story with that of Fallmerayer. In this case he refers to a

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factual story about Portuguese Jews who in 1654 arrived in New Amsterdam (New York). However, these Jews were not the ancestors of the later great American Jewry. According to Ankori, the just-mentioned discontinuity in the United States is totally comparable to the situation of the Jews in Germany during the time of the Carolingians. He writes, “the life and structure of Ashkenazi Jewry was a total departure from the European Jewish experience of Roman and early post-Roman days.” Further on we will see that again his assumption is not correct. A balanced remark about the possible continuity of the Jewish community in Cologne can be found in the work on German Jewry by Breuer and Graetz (1998, 19; from German). They write: “Although the sources [...] do not mention these settlements [Cologne and Trier] in the following centuries, their continuity cannot be excluded.” The indistinctness about the continuity of the Jewish presence in Cologne bothered me a great deal, and in the end I contacted Bernard Bachrach to ask for his advice in this matter. He advised me to read the publications by Schütte (director of the archaeological zone of Cologne), as he had recently published new archaeological data about the city of Cologne (Schütte, 1998; Gechter and Schütte, 2000). A Carolingian synagogue Based on archaeological finds and other sources, Gechter en Schütte (2000, 113–114) concluded that: 1. Long before 321 there was already a Jewish community in Cologne. It appears from the decrees of the emperor Constantine in 321 (for Cologne) and 331 (not only for Cologne) that in those days this community had important power and influence. Baltrusch (2002, 4; from German) also holds this opinion: “With this [decree] it is undoubtedly proven that at the beginning of the fourth century the city of Cologne had a Jewish community, and furthermore that this community must have been prominent. What is more, we are not dealing with the ’birth hour’ of the Jewish communities in Cologne and in the Rhineland; rather, one of these communities for the first time enters history as an already developed one.” 2. Under the earliest proven synagogue of approximately 800 (Carolingian synagogue), there is an older building that in its shape can only be compared to the synagogue in Khirbet El-Samara (north of the town of Nablus on the west-bank of the Jordan River), which dates from the fourth century. This antique building existed into the last decades of the eighth century and was damaged by the second big earthquake of the first millennium (780–790). The Carolingian synagogue is standing

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straight on top of the foundations of the older one without debris layers or dirt layers in between. The newer building is somewhat smaller. The forecourt, the washbasin, and essential parts of the earlier building remained in use. The authors assume, with the necessary caution, that the underlying building was a synagogue as well. This opinion was shared by the late Hannelore Künzl, an expert in the field of Jewish architecture (personal communication by Sven Schütte). Gechter and Schütte are of the opinion that neither the few things that are known about the history of the Jews in Cologne after 321, nor the building order, nor the economic and political relations disagree with their conclusions.

Figure 2. Remains of hypocaust heating system (first half of the fourth century) with Carolingian repair as part of the synagogue (thanks are due to the Archaeological Zone of Cologne).

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According to Berger (2005, 135, cat. nr. M.20), the pierced Judea Capta coins found near Cologne may indicate a Jewish presence in the region already in the second half of the first century. These coins were worn as pendants. Recent excavations (started in October 2007 under supervision of Schütte) revealed a number of important finds, one being the remains of a hypocaust (hot-air) heating system (see Fig. 2, p. 40). The find shows the use of the area with time. First, there was an older Roman building dating from the first century C.E. During the early fourth century the building was altered, and a new stucture with underfloor heating was constructed. The system rested on thin pillars made of bricks, and was covered by a top floor. Between the two floors the hot air circulated. During the earthquake around 780/790, the system collapsed. Immediately after the earthquake the building was repaired, the space above the collapsed heating system was filled up (top of the measuring rod), and a new Carolingian floor was built.In addition, the western part was reduced. The whole building complex was reduced from three “naves” to a central building in the exact measurements of the central nave. In addition, the western part was slightly reduced. The basin in the center (see Fig. 3, p. 43) remained in use between the fourth and the fourteenth century with several repairs through all building phases. Furthermore, the entrance was moved from the east to the north side (personal communication by Schütte). Here we have the first clear-cut evidence for the destruction of the preCarolingian synagogue, the Carolingian repair, and thus for continuity. Dating the construction of the Carolingian synagogue is very important because a number of modern Jewish historians maintain that between the fourth and the eleventh centuries no Jews were living in Cologne. Phase I of the construction of the Carolingian synagogue may have started between 790 and 800. Gechter and Schütte advance the following indications to make their point: 1. The building rests directly on the last Roman floors of (Roman) cement and makes use of the Roman walls or parts of of them. 2. From the content of the dig and of what was thrown out, it became clear that the block of buildings existed well into the Carolingian period. 3. From newly struck coins found in situ it appears that the second phase of the construction must have been carried out around 800 to 830, at the latest. The recent excavations also showed that there is no visible rupture between the use of the late-antique part and the use of the first phase of the new synagogue. That is why construction of the first Carolingian phase must have taken place between the nineties of the eighth century and the begin-

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ning of the ninth century. The pottery finds and the recent thermoluminescence dates (see below) form the absolute proof for fixing the period. The authors also have proof for determining the end of the second construction phase, as a result of which the total period runs from 780/before 830 up to about 881. The Carolingian synagogue was in use up to 881. With the invasion of the Vikings in that year, the synagogue was heavily damaged (ibid., 117). The archives of the city were also destroyed (ibid., 118). The rebuilt synagogue was changed again in the mid-tenth century, and was in existence until the end of the eleventh century. Written sources confirm that in 1096 the synagogue was partly destroyed during the pillage by the crusaders. The aforementioned new excavations show that the destruction was heavier than thought at first (ibid., 120), albeit no demolition layers were found and the walls were left reasonably intact (personal communication by Schütte). Until 1424 there was a synagogue on the same spot, but further details are not important for this book. The almemar Towards the end of the ninth century, the archaeological finds show a destruction layer in the neighborhood of the synagogue. The small remnants of the Carolingian almemar (elevation in the synagogue on which the scroll of the law was read) were disturbed by a much larger almemar of the thirteenth century and by a cellar underneath. The almemar seems to have been taken down forcefully in 1349; people thought that there were possibly valuable objects in the storage room under it (ibid., 119). In modern Hebrew the word bima is used in stead of almemar, a mediaeval Hebrew word derived from Arabic al-minbar, which means ‘the pulpit’ (Klein 1987, 31). Surprisingly, minbar, originally ‘an elevated seat,’ is a loanword from Ethiopian. The mikve Near the synagogue of a city there also has to be a mikve (a ritual bath). During the years, the mikve, situated less than two meters from the synagogue, underwent the necessary changes. Gechter and Schütte (ibid., 135– 136) were able to establish that before the end of the eighth century there was already a mikve, parts of which have been preserved up to the present. The lowest part of the mikve, as can be seen today, is the original part dating from the Carolingian period. It is situated about 17 meters underground and reaches the groundwater table of the Rhine. Pottery from the late ninth century shows a renovating phase leading to great building activity; on the east side, the entrance with descending staircase was built anew. Like the synagogue, the mikve was heavily damaged by the earthquake in ca.

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780/790 (Hinzen and Schütte 2003) and again during the first crusade in 1096. After this, the mikve was repaired. It is possible that before the Carolingian period, there was an older mikve from the time of the antique synagogue. The town hall was located in the middle of the Jewish quarters. It developed from the residence of the praepositus negotiatorum (royal supervisor of the merchants), which developed from the destroyed praetorium (headquarters of the governor of the province of Lower Germany). The surrounding fiscal ground (ground that belonged to the government) was given to a special group, protected by the king, in this case consisting of Jews and merchants. This custom started already before 800 after the destruction of the palace (the former praetorium) by the earthquake. A Roman basin During the recent excavations a Roman oval basin (Fig. 3) from the fourth century was discovered that belonged to the pre-Carolingian synagogue phase. Thermoluminescence data showed that it dated from as far back as ca. 305 C.E. The basin collected rainwater and was in use during the Carolingian period and afterwards, until the fourteenth century. This was proven by thick layers of sinter on the outside of the basin. It may also have had a ritual purpose. A preliminary report on the new finds will appear in 2011.

Figure 3. Roman, fourth century, oval basin.

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The conclusion that between the fourth and the eleventh century Jews remained in Cologne may seem trivial, but it has consequences that reach further than the mere physical presence of Jews in the city. The continuous presence is of great importance for the so-called Rhineland hypothesis, according to which the Yiddish language originated from western Germany. In the chapter on Yiddish I will therefore return to this matter. Trier Trier is another German city where Jews were probably living in very early times. The early presence of Jews was investigated by Altmann (1932, 16– 20), who notes that in the fourth century, the Church Fathers still complained about the great efficacy of Jewish propaganda. An example is Church Father Athanasius, who in both Gaul and Trier opposed this conversion zeal fervently. It was confirmed in writing that in those days Jews were living in Cologne, and that there were Christians in Trier. Altmann considers this as a very strong indication that in those days, there must have also been Jews in Trier. He makes a similar deduction from the decree enacted in Trier in 368 by emperor Valentinian I that synagogues would be exempted from billeting by soldiers. (In that year, Trier was confronted with a large military force that had returned from a campaign of the emperor against the Alemanns.) Finally, Altmann finds archaeological evidence for a Jewish presence in Trier at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century. Jewish weights found in Trier conclusively show that Jews were already present in Trier before the Late Roman period (Berger 2005, 59). It is not known what happened to this Jewish community. Other Jewish settlements Around 965 the merchant and traveler Ibrahim ibn Yaqub reported that there was a saltworks on the river Saale (Thüringian Saale) that had Jewish owners (de Goeje 1880). Around 965 or in 973 (Jacob 1927, 4) ibn Yaqub wrote a travel report about his trip to the Slavic countries and Germany. The original report was lost, but in 1880 de Goeje published a Dutch translation of ibn Yaqub’s report as it was transmitted by al-Bekri, a SpanishArabic author from the second half of the eleventh century. Ibn Yaqub was a respectable man who acted as an intermediary for Christians and Muslims in the trade of precious goods, in all probability mostly slaves (Bondy-Dworsky 1906, 2, note 3). From a deed from 1090 it appears that Jews themselves also still kept slaves (Aronius 1902, nr. 170, 71), who were used to work the land and the vineyards. According to de Goeje (1880) and Rabinowitz (1945; 1948, 186) ibn Yaqub was a Spanish Jew, but according to Bondy and Dworsky (1906, 2, note 3) and Jacob (1927, 6) he came from

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North Africa, as he was familiar with the customs of the Berbers. This is not sufficient to conclude that the man came from North Africa. On the one hand, Berbers are, as it were, neighbors of Spain, so the fact that ibn Yaqub knew their customs does not mean that much, certainly not if he was a merchant. On the other hand, it is a fact that before the Islamization of the Berbers, quite a large number of them converted to Judaism (Feist 1925, 99). Ibn Yaqub had probably come to Germany for commercial reasons, and his report was an official document that was meant for the Spanish king (de Goeje, 1880). Written sources show that from the tenth century there were also Jewish communities in the cities of Mainz, Worms, and Speyer. From these cities along the Rhine the Jews spread to other parts of Germany. Beider (2001, 174) indicates that in the thirteenth century Jews regularly went from the Rhineland to Bohemia. He bases this on the finding of a French first name in Bohemia. The assumption seems to me somewhat exaggerated, based only on one name and taking into account the French influence in Bohemia (Jakobson and Halle, 1964). Up to the end of the thirteenth century hardly any Jews lived in the cities along the North Sea and the Baltic or in the northern border regions. From this, Stobbe (1866, 8) concludes that Jews probably came to Germany from Italy and France. On the other hand, the Hanseatic League opposed the Jews, as a result of which they could not engage in financial matters. He considers this a possible explanation for their minimal presence in the north. The First Crusade (1096) up to the plague (1348) Until the crusades, bishops and imperial officials appear to have treated Jews in the same way they did the rest of the citizens (ibid.). In 1096 pogroms started as a result of fanatic crusaders. It is not clear how many Jews were killed; suggested numbers vary from about 2,000 to 12,000. According to Aronius (1902, nr. 176, 81–82) the figure of 12,000 is highly exaggerated; he believes the total was 4,000 at the most. There are (Jewish) historians who think that the First Crusade strongly influenced the development of Polish Jewry, due to the flight of the German Jews to Poland. I will furnish a number of opinions on this subject in chronological order. Aronius, who dedicates as many as 16 pages to the crusade of 1096, does not say a word about Jews fleeing to Poland. Only once does he speak of fleeing Jews, namely from Mainz to Speyer, and those Jews later returned (Aronius 1902, nrs. 176–202, 83–93).

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According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the first extensive Jewish immigration from Western Europe took place during the First Crusade in 1098 [sic] (Jewish Encyclopedia 1905, v. 10, 563). Feist (1925) does not mention anything about a possible movement of Jews towards Poland in 1096. S. Dubnow (1926, 427–428; from German), the famous Jewish historian, writes in Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes: “The First Crusade, which carried the Christian masses to the Asian Orient, simultaneously drove away the Jewish masses to Eastern Europe.” However, on the next page he writes, “We have no more detailed information about the course of the emigration, so important an emigration for Jewish history, but through notes from a number of rabbis and travelers from that period we know that Jewish merchants quite often took the road to Slavic countries like Poland and Russia.” This is obviously something different from a mass migration! I do not quote the English edition of Dubnow because a typographical error has reversed the author’s meaning. Mark (1957, 190) mentions that during the First Crusade a mass migration of German Jews took place towards Poland, without presenting any evidence for such a migration. However, he also suggests that some of them may have gone back to Germany. He also adds that in 1096 a large number of Jewish refugees arrived in Poland from Bohemia and Moravia. For this statement he gives no evidence either. According to Vetulani (1962), during the crusade of 1096 a mass migration began from Germany, especially from the Rhineland, to Poland. Herzog (1965, 237) relates that during the ninth century, Jews from the west were trading with the east via Poland along established trade routes. He continues: “Early settlements at points along these routes may be assumed, though in all likelihood it was relatively meager until the latter part of the 11th century when the Crusades began to uproot the Jewish communities in Germany. Refugees fled to Poland and Lithuania in steadily increasing numbers for several centuries thereafter.” Prawer (1972), who briefly describes the atrocities committed during the crusades of 1096 and 1146, does not say a word about Jews fleeing towards Poland. Finally, Toch (1997) concludes that after 1096 Jews returned to the places where they had been persecuted before. Which of them are right? Migrations to Poland or Lithuania in Germania Judaica Clarity with regard to this controversy can be found in Germania Judaica, the most scientifically arranged reference work about the Jews in Germany that is presently available. So far, three volumes have been published, each

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volume covering a certain period. In every volume the history of the Jews is discussed by place of residence in the German-speaking region. Everything is well referenced. The crusades are covered in Germania Judaica I (Elbogen et al. 1934), in which there is no mention of Jews fleeing to Poland. In cases where something is known about the destination of the fleeing Jews, it appears that they remained in the vicinity. For example, during the First Crusade, the Jews of Bonn fled to Altenahr or to Eller. During the Second Crusade, Jews living around Nuremberg fled to the city. Already before the crusaders came to Worms in 1096, a large part of the Jews had fled to the palace of the bishop. Therefore, the initial impetus for the large East European Jewry cannot be the result of mass migrations during the crusades from Germany in general and from the Rhineland in particular. Caro (1908, 228; from German) quotes a Hebrew source after the first atrocities by the crusaders: “[The Jews] were very much afraid and headed for the mountains and fortresses and there looked for protection, each one by a Christian known to him, with the request, when he had a tower or fortress, to take them on in the rock fortress and to hide them there, until the riot had passed.” In this way many Jews were saved. According to the same Hebrew source, Jews also went to non-noble castellans with whom they had done business. The next two crusades were not so disastrous for the Jews. Caro (ibid., 230) also quotes a Hebrew source that refers to the Second Crusade: “on 14 July 1147 ‘all communities had returned to the desired residence and again lived in their towns and houses as before.’” In the mid-thirteenth century Jews were faced with accusations of desecration of the host. This accusation was uttered in Germany for the first time in 1243 in Belitz near Berlin (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1972, v. 2, 981–982). The idea was that by damaging the host, Jesus would be crucified again, as it were. In Paris in 1290 a Jewish couple supposedly had stabbed a piece of host (Jewish Encyclopedia 1904, v. 6, 482). The “crime” was discovered because blood came out of the host and the bleeding could not be stopped. In addition, at the end of the thirteenth century Jews were faced with the libel of ritual murders. The result of the ensuing persecutions was, among other things, that at the beginning of the fourteenth century Jews were forced to move to new places of residence. According to Toch (1997), small groups of scholars went to Palestine, and by the end of the fourteenth century larger groups went towards northern Italy.

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The plague The most serious accusation came in 1348; Jews supposedly had poisoned the wells and caused the notorious Black Death which went though Europe that year. As mentioned before, this epidemic first spread from southern France to the bordering Spanish provinces and from there to the rest of Europe. What happened to the Jews in Germany because of this accusation? With regard to the plague as well, the opinions of the historians are divided as to the flight of the German Jews to Poland. Graetz (1909) does not mention Poland at all in connection with this pogrom. Relying on statements of historians of those days, Kutschera (1910, 235) mentions that there were hardly any Jews left in Germany. However, he does not consider the survivors to have made an essential contribution to Polish Jewry. A study among Frankfurt Jews showed that in 1920 there were more than 30 Jewish families who could trace their family tree to Frankfurt back to before 1400, while the family tree of six families even went back to Frankfurt to before 1350 (Dietz 1907, 344). Littmann (1928; from German) studied the circumstances under which German cities allowed Jews to settle again after the plague. In the introduction of her article, Poland is mentioned nowhere as a possible refuge. She writes: “There is evidence available in the study that the Jews were very quickly accepted again by the German cities, despite the immense bitterness reflected in the catastrophe of 1348.” Jews who fled went to the countryside, where they sometimes found protection. She advances the general conclusion that already during the first decade following the plague, cities allowed Jews to settle again. Often, these were the same Jews who had been living there before. The first city mentioned is Augsburg, where Jews were allowed to settle again on 22 December 1348, while in November there still had been bloodbaths. Dubnow (1969, v. 5, 263) comes with a somewhat different story, that many refugees and exiles started a new life in Austria, Bohemia, and the bordering provinces of Poland. However, he also states that Jews returned; between 1350 and 1370 small groups of Jews returned to Augsburg, Nuremberg, Cologne, Strasbourg, and other cities. This returning obviously continued, because at the beginning of 1400 there were almost as many Jews in Germany as just before the plague (Toch 1997). If Toch is right, it is impossible that many German Jews remained in Poland. Most historians, however (Feist 1925, 131; Mahler 1946, 25; Mark 1957, 240; Vetulani 1962), as well as some linguists (Herzog 1979, 51; Shmeruk 1981, 15), are of the opinion that many Jews fled to Poland and remained there. None of the above-mentioned authors provides a source

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that shows that Jews indeed fled to Poland. Again we may ask ourselves which ones are right. Migrations to Poland or Lithuania in Germania Judaica In this case we will have to turn to Germania Judaica II (Avneri 1967; from German) to solve the difference of opinion concerning the extent of migration of German Jews to Poland during the plague. Volume II treats the period between 1238 and the middle of the fourteenth century. The next to last sentence of the introduction reads as follows: “Survivors found refuge in Neumark and Poland; after a while, others were again taken in by the cities that had murdered Jews, under essentially worse circumstances than before the plague” (ibid., xxxix). I divided the places in Germany that appear in Germania Judaica II and of which it is certain that there were Jews living into three categories: 1. places where it is stated that no pogrom took place as a result of the plague (12 places), 2. places where Jews were killed and/or expelled (350 places), and 3. places without information about the plague or places for which it is not clear what happened during the plague (360 places). In addition, if known, it was recorded where the survivors ended up. Contrary to what Avneri writes in the introduction, nothing shows that during the plague Jews fled from Germany to Poland. Furthermore, when anything is known at all, it appears that the Jews mainly fled or moved somewhere else in Germany—sometimes to another German-speaking region, but Poland isn’t mentioned anywhere (except in the introduction!). An additional reason to assume that Jews did not go to Poland is the fact that within a relatively short time, in more than a third of the affected places, Jews returned. Where did these Jews come from? Back from Poland? In that case, they certainly did not contribute to the formation of Polish Jewry. Mahler’s remark that the expansion of the Jewish settlements in Poland during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was mainly due to immigration from Germany does not seem to be correct. The same can be said about the ideas of Weinryb (1972, 27–29) concerning the immigration of German Jews to Poland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Expulsions of the Jews from the German cities Mahler (1946, 26–27) writes that the persecutions of Jews in Germany reached its height in the fifteenth century; at the beginning of the century Jews were expelled from the Rhineland, around the middle from southern

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Germany, and towards the end they were expelled from the remaining German cities, Austria, Silesia, Bohemia, and Hungary. And, according to Mahler, all these Jews went to Poland-Lithuania, as the Polish economy had an urgent need for merchants and craftsmen, in this case the expelled Jews. Mark (1957, 241) expresses himself in similar terms. Weinryb (1972, 29–30) writes about the fifteenth-century migration to Poland: “Probably no more than twenty-five to fifty thousand Jews lived in the whole of Germany by the middle of the fifteenth century. But sizable groups of Jews were apparently streaming into Poland from Austria and Bohemia, as well as from Germany.” He then refers to more than 20 cities and regions, which undeniably suggests that the Jewish immigration took place from these cities and regions. In addition, he remarks that the evidence is almost exclusively indirect. He refers to a number of documents in which permission is granted to a small number of German Jews to go and live in Poland. In addition, more and more people appear with, among other things, German place names as surnames. According to Israel (1985, 6), the real mass migration from Western and Central Europe started only in the second half of the fifteenth century. He does not give any evidence for this statement. Toch (1994, 647) writes about the Late Middle Ages: “Disregarding the manyfold myths on the origin of Polish Jewry, we can safely assume that its establishment was in the main a product of the late medieval migration, internal and external, of German Jews.” In a later publication he mentions that during the expulsions, Jews left the bigger cities and settled in villages (Toch 1997). Jews had sometimes already moved to smaller places near the big cities even before they were expelled, a kind of preemptive migration that led to a situation that was characteristic for the sixteenth century: Jews lived in places close by, but in the daytime they carried on their trade in the city, for which they could not get a residence permit. Therefore, as of the fifteenth century, life in the country became more and more characteristic for German Jews. Breuer and Graetz (1998, v 1, 57) also speak of a stream of emigrants to Lithuania and Poland during the fifteenth century, again without evidence, but they do add that the most important change had to do with the migration within Germany. In view of my experience with migrations in literature so far, it seemed sensible to me, in the case of the expulsions from the cities as well, to verify any migrations to Poland or Lithuania in Germania Judaica. Migrations to Poland or Lithuania in Germania Judaica Initially it seemed adequate to me to check the places that Weinryb mentions. In the end, I chose a broader approach. I therefore used Germania

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Judaica III, which covers the period 1350–1519 (Maimon 1987). The first part contains all places from A through L. The book contains the places where Jews lived between 1350 and 1519, mainly in Germany, and it also tells us what happened to these Jews. I arranged the places (except for the Dutch and Belgian ones) into the following categories: 1. places from where Jews were expelled, with destination if possible, 2. places from where Jews explicitly were not expelled, 3. places where nothing is known about an expulsion, or where nothing is said about an expulsion, 4. places of which it is unclear that there were Jews living during the fifteenth century. It appears that Jews were expelled from only about half the number of places where they lived during that time. Next, it became clear that when Jews were expelled from a German place and it is known where they went to, they mainly went to other German places. Sometimes a couple of Jews are involved, sometimes a considerable number. Some examples: Between 1438 and 1440 Jews were expelled from Augsburg. They went to Bamberg, Frankfurt am Main, Mainz, Nördlingen, Rothenburg/Tauber, and Ulm. In 1453 Jews were expelled from Erfurt. They ended up in Hochheim and Daberstadt, two villages near Erfurt. Between, 1471 and 1476 Jews were expelled from Heilbronn. Most of the expelled went to smaller neighboring places, especially Neckarsulm and Sontheim, and to Massenbach and other places. Also, in each case one went to Speyer, later to Nördlingen, Schweinfurt, Ulm, and Worms. A last example is Cologne, 1423/24. Quite a few left for Deutz (on the other side of the river!); many went to Siegburg, Mühlheim am Rhein, Frankfurt am Main, Speyer, and, it seems, also to Salzburg. Later we find one Jew in Poland with a name that refers to Cologne; in 1521 Abraham ben Yehiel (from Cologne) died in Lemberg (Lviv), where German was spoken. Cologne is not given merely as an example, because it is the only German place where in Germania Judaica Poland is mentioned as well. In the town hall of Cologne a nicely decorated Gothic key was kept for centuries. It is connected to a wooden hanger by way of a leather strap. On one side of the hanger, dated 1427, three years after the expulsion, there is a Hebrew inscription saying that it belongs to the Schaff family (see cover); on the other side there is an inscription in German saying “up der burger huis,” meaning in the town hall (see Fig. 4, p. 52). The key could not have been confiscated during the expulsion, because the date is too late. Furthermore, when the Schaff family possessed a box in the town hall in 1427,

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they must have been living in the neighborhood (they indeed lived in Deutz). What use would a Hebrew inscription have in 1427, if there weren’t any Jews living there? This means that after the expulsion, people who were able to read Hebrew, that is, Jews, still had ties with the city of Cologne. One might go one step further and conclude that even after the expulsion this Jewish family was of considerable importance for Cologne, otherwise it would not have had this box in the town hall.

Figure 4. Gothic key with wooden hanger from 1427 (courtesy of the Archeological Zone of Cologne).

The other three or four times that Poland is mentioned are in connection with mainly Silesian (today Polish) places. On p. 58, where the expulsions from Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia are discussed, the city of Breslau (now Wroclaw) is mentioned as an example. For safety’s sake I checked the places that Weinryb mentions in the second part of the alphabet (Germania Judaica III, part 2; Maimon et al. 1995). Again, the same pattern appeared. While discussing Nuremberg, Rabbi David Sprinz is mentioned, who at an advanced age left for Poland. Next, Maimon et al. write about Nuremberg that most of the expelled in 1499, 10 families consisting of about 60 persons, left for small Frankish places outside Nuremberg. It seems that of the others, also some ended up in Turkey and the Slavic East; the term “Slavic East” is not explained. Finally, in a remark about the expulsion from Salzburg in 1499, Maimon et al. write in note 81 that migration destinations like Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, suspected by a certain Altmann, are not mentioned in any source. Although I did not think it necessary to check part two of volume III completely, I did so after all for my article in The Mankind Quarterly (van Straten 2004), but I did not find migrations from Germany to Poland. It thus appears that the opinion of Mahler (1946) and the suggestions of Weinryb (1972) have no solid basis. There is no evidence for “groups of Jews streaming into Poland” from Germany in the fifteenth century. An

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important point against my argument could be the fact that I did not check Polish records. The discussion about this subject has been carried on since the beginning of the twentieth century. One may therefore assume that if Polish historians like Mahler, Schipper, and Weinryb were unable to show mass migrations in Polish sources, they simply do not exist. From genealogy it is known that names of places as surnames do not necessarily indicate the origin of their bearers. This finding is emphasized in the preface of Germania Judaica volume III: “One tends to deduce one’s real origin from one’s place name. Wrongly so. After all, bearers of place names often came evidently from other places to their place of residence than their place name [indicates]” (Maimon 1987, viii; from German). The proofs of immigration are in each case available for only a few persons, and on that one can hardly base a predominantly German origin. One could even conclude the opposite: thet fact that these few German Jews are mentioned indicates that it was something special. The latter also agrees with the data from Germania Judaica. As it becomes clear that all the stories about mass migrations of German Jews to Poland have no basis, one may wonder how it is possible that so many, mainly East European, Jewish historians write about these mass migrations as if they are a fact, while no one is able to provide any evidence. The answer to the question became clear to me when I read what Ankori (1979) had to say about this subject: “Expulsion followed expulsion: from England in 1290, from France in 1306 and twice again until it was made final in 1394, and in the 15th century from individual cities and provinces from Germany [...] The better-known expulsion from Spain in 1492 [...] merely completed the picture. By the end of the Middle Ages and in early modern times, Western Europe was judenrein (cleared of Jews).”

And to complete the thought, he continues: “Thus, half a millennium or so after his original arrival on the Carolingian scene, the Ashkenazi Jew was on the road again. This time the direction of the movement was eastbound, to Central and Eastern Europe.” The basic idea, and thus the basic mistake, is the lumping together of all expulsions. The expulsions from England and Spain were the only two where the Jews had no choice but to leave the country. Neither France nor Germany at any one point became judenrein! And, if we take judenrein literally, even the Iberian peninsula was not judenrein at the end of the Middle Ages. It is known that Jews kept on living in Belmonte, Portugal, up to our days. Summing up, there are no numerical or other data that show that many Jews left Germany for Eastern Europe during the three big pogroms.

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Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia Origin of the Jews The choice to combine Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia was made because Bondy and Dworsky discuss them together. In their introduction, they write: “In the beginning, Jews in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia lived as merchants and tradesmen; they had settled as farmers among the people [...] they lived in complete harmony with the other inhabitants” (BondyDworsky 1906, ix; from German). As far as Jews are concerned, the most important is Bohemia, especially its capital Prague. According to Germania Judaica (Elbogen et al. 1934, 270), the Jewish community of Prague is one of the oldest Jewish settlements of the German Empire in the Middle Ages, and it came into being independently of Western Jews. Bondy and Dworsky (1906, 1–2) cite W. Tomek who wrote about the history of the city of Prague, and it appears that nothing is known about the immigration of Jews to Prague, Bohemia, and the bordering countries. Beider (2001, 172–174) concludes from onomastic investigations that during the Middle Ages there was no relation between the German and the Czech Jews. It is not known where the Czech Jews (Bohemia and Moravia) originally came from. The names found do not point toward a certain region. The period 900௅1400 The Raffelstettener Zoll- und Schiffahrtsurkunde The earliest reliable information about Jews in Moravia, in this case the activity of Jewish merchants, can be found in the Raffelstettener Zoll- und Schiffahrtsurkunde, the customs and shipping regulations of Raffelstetten (now Asten, Austria) from ca. 905 (Bondy and Dworsky 1906, 1; from German): “However, if someone wants to go to a market of the Moravians, he will have to pay a whole denar [denarius], according to the trade evaluation current at the time, to travel freely to it; when returning, no legitimate merchant may be forced to pay. The Jews and all other merchants, from wherever they may have come, both from this country or from other countries (as from Bohemia or Moravia), must pay proper duties for slaves and other goods, as was always the custom during the days of the early kings.”

Bondy and Dworsky use this section to show that already in ancient times Jews lived in Bohemia and Moravia. Elbogen et al. (1934, 40, note 23) rightly disagree. The Jewish merchants may have come to Bohemia and

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Moravia to pick up slaves and to take them along, and they did not necessarily have to live there. They also do not find it necessary to interpret “other countries” as Bohemia and Moravia, which were added later. As the customs regulations only indicated anew to whom the proceeds of the toll from the time of Louis the German and his successors should be paid, it may be assumed that the rules concerning the Jews also originated from those days. Ganshof (1966) is of the opinion that, judging by the limitations of human memory, regulations may have been drawn up somewhere between 865 and 870. The presence of Jews in this region could then be demonstrated at least from before 870. The travel report of Ibrahim ibn Yaqub For a second time, in ibn Yaqub’s travel report Jews are mentioned in this region at the end of the tenth century. The part of the travel report that is interesting to us goes as follows (de Goeje 1880; from Dutch): “The city of Prague is built of stone and limestone and is the largest trade center in the Slavic countries. Russians and Slavs from the city of Krakow visit there with their merchandise, and Muslims, Jews, and Turks come from the Turkish territory with goods and Byzantine mithkâls (probably silver coins) and in return take from them slaves and beaver skins and other furs.”

Two clarifications of the text are in order. During these days, ibn Yaqub and Arabic historians use the word “Russians” to denote Scandinavians (Vikings). Originally, they were Scandinavians. By “Turks,” Hungarians are meant. We saw this way of writing already with the Byzantine historians (who called the Magyars “Turks”). The first comment that de Goeje makes in this little piece of text is that in those days Prague held an important position in commercial trade (something new to him). In view of the part played by Jews, it looks quite probable to him that in very early times there may have been a Jewish colony in Prague. The legend that Jews have lived in Prague since the destruction of Jerusalem pushes the matter a bit too far, according to de Goeje. Another point that de Goeje mentions is that the people who buy slaves came from Hungary; in fact, they were not only Jews, but Muslims as well. According to Schipper (1907, 24), direct traffic with the Orient stopped at the beginning of the tenth century, and merchants from Amalfi, Bari, and Venice replaced these Jews as merchants. This agrees with the observation by Rabinowitz (1948, 186–190) that at the time of ibn Yaqub the Radhanites were not active anymore and the monopoly of Jews had disappeared. The first time it becomes clear that a considerable number of Jews were living in Prague is in 1098 when Cosmas speaks about “the elders of the Jews” (Bretholz 1955, 167). Cosmas also mentions Vyšehrad (now part

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of Prague) being a Jewish settlement at the end of the eleventh century. Nevertheless, Elbogen et al. (1934, 270) think that the Jewish settlement in Prague is older than those of Magdeburg and Merseburg in Germany (second half of the tenth century), because Jewish immigrants probably arrived in the latter two places, at least part of them, via the Vltava and the Elbe, and thus via Prague. Therefore, they are of the opinion that already at the time of ibn Yaqub, Jews were living in Prague. Mark (1957, 121) is of the opinion that a Jewish settlement in Bohemia or Moravia may have existed already at the end of the seventh century. He does not give any proof for his statement. The crusade of 1096 and the story by Cosmas of Prague in 1098 The first and only proven persecution during this period of time is the one of 1096, during the First Crusade. The crusaders forced the Jews to be baptized and they killed those who refused (Aronius 1902, nr. 202, 93). Jews fleeing to Poland are not mentioned. On the other hand, the report from 1098 by the chronicler Cosmas of Prague is often used as proof that Jews fled or migrated from Bohemia to Poland. This is an interesting story, not so much because of its content but because of the way it has been interpreted. It only involves one sentence, of which I will first give the Latin text (Bretholz 1955, 166), followed by the translation. Next, I will give a description of what happened, according to various historians. “Delatum est duci Bracizlao, quod quidam ex Iudeuis lapsi fuga, nonnulli furtim divitias suas substraherent partim in Poloniam, partim in Pannoniam [...]” “It was reported to duke Bracizlaus that a number of Jews had fled, [and that] others secretly whisked away their valuables partly to Poland and partly to Hungary [...]”

Grünhagen (1876, v. 1, 18; from German) writes: “Because of the oppression in Bohemia, the Jews with all their riches fled to Poland and Hungary, something Bretislav tried to prevent.” Aronius (1902, nr. 206, 95; from German): “Some of the Jews in Bohemia, forcibly baptized in 1096 and again apostate, fled and secretly tried to take their valuables to Poland or Hungary.” Bondy en Dworsky (1906, 6; from German) report the incident as follows: “In the year 1098 it was reported to duke Bretislaw that several Jews had fled and that others had secretly taken their valuables partly to Poland, partly to Hungary.” Graetz (1909, v. 6, 94; from German) also mentions the Cosmas story: “They therefore scraped their goods and chattels together to send them

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ahead, to secure them, and then to flee themselves, some to Poland, some to Pannonia (Austria and Hungary).” In 1930, the well-known Polish-Jewish historian Ignaz Schipper published a book on the economic history of the Jews, Yidishe geshikhte. In the chapter about the development of the Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe he writes: “As to western immigration, this can be proven for the first time at the end of the eleventh century. The Czech chronicler Cosmas tells us that in Bohemia, in 1098, pogroms took place because some converts [to Christianity] returned to Judaism, and that as a result of the persecutions, masses of Jews emigrated, some to Poland, others to Hungary” (Schipper 1930, v. 2, 90; from Yiddish).

Mahler (1946, 21; from Hebrew), who does not mention Cosmas by name, writes: “From the end of the eleventh century onward we have direct reports of a Jewish presence in Poland. From 1098 we have such a report: part of the Jews from Bohemia, who during the First Crusade in 1096 were forced to convert, fled from the country and took their valuables to Poland and Hungary.”

Mark (1957, 194; from Yiddish) also does not mention Cosmas by name, but according to the year, 1098, he must be referring to the same story. He writes: “Within two years after the crusade disaster the Czech Jews were hit by a second disaster. In 1098, the Czech king Bzshetislav robbed the whole Jewish community in this country and grabbed their whole fortune, their gold, silver and jewels. That incident certainly enforced the feeling of the Czech Jews that they should emigrate, especially to Poland.”

Finally, there is the popular Encyclopedia of Jewish History (1986, 80): “According to the reports of Cosmas of Prague, Jews moved from Bohemia into Poland following Crusader raids.” The translation by Bondy and Dworsky is the only one which informs the reader correctly about what Cosmas wrote. Grünhagen and Aronius don’t say anything about Jews settling in Poland or about a western immigration, about which nothing is suggested by Cosmas either. Mahler’s description of the event is almost correct (the forced conversion is not mentioned here, but that is not important). However, his remark about a direct report from 1098 involving a Jewish presence in Poland does not agree with what Cosmas writes. Relying on the statement by Cosmas, Mahler states that he clearly affirms that the pogroms in Germany and Bohemia during the First Crusade caused an emigration wave towards Poland. Elaborating on this, he concludes that from that time on almost all the Jews who emigrated to Poland came from Germany and Bohemia. In view of the incorrect interpretation of Cosmas’s remark, it is questionable

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to what extent the ideas of Mahler about Germany and Bohemia are correct. Remarks are put in the chronicler’s mouth that he did not make at all. And what are we talking about? Given the original text, we are dealing with an indefinite number of Jews who fled and did not emigrate. We do not know where to. Then there are some who tried to take their riches partly to Poland or Hungary. Did these people really arrive in Poland or Hungary? And if so, did they stay there? On the aforementioned interpretations is based the first western immigration of Jews from Bohemia into Poland. Since the last part of the sentence obviously has to do with rich Jews, it does not look very probable that we are dealing here with a large group. One may also wonder what the connection is between Bohemia and Western Jews. After the fire in the synagogue in 1142 and the pogrom in 1146 in Bohemia, which especially affected the capital, there were no further important happenings worth mentioning in the period under discussion (Elbogen et al. 1934, 30). The period 1400௅1600 In 1426, the Jews had to leave Iglau (Moravia). “Whoever could, fled to Bohemia, where there was greater freedom of religion” (Bondy-Dworsky 1906, v. 1, 101; from German). Some also fled to other villages in Moravia, such as Puklitz, Pullitz, Brtnice, and Trzeszte (Maimon 1987, v. 1, 580). Either they returned, or not all had to leave, because in 1506 they had to leave Iglau again (ibid., 207). In 1453 the Jews were expelled from Breslau in Silesia (Brilling 1960, 10). They moved to other places in Silesia or to Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland. In 1454, the Jews were expelled from Olmütz (Moravia), leaving all their belongings (ibid., 141). In 1504, the Jews had to leave Pilsen (Bohemia) (ibid., 205). It does not say where the Jews of both places went to. On 16 April 1542, the Jews left Prague: “The greatest number of them moved to Poland” (ibid., 341, 343; from Czech, with thanks to Eckhard Eggers). However, gradually they returned again (ibid., 355). In 1560, Jews who were expelled from Bohemia were robbed and killed in Silesia (ibid., 453). The Austrian emperor Ferdinand I demanded of the Polish emperor that the culprits be arrested and punished. It is thus certain that Jews from Bohemia and Moravia left for Silesia. However, quantitatively nothing is known about it.

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In 1563, the Jews had to leave the Silesian places Ober-Glogau and Oppeln (ibid., 488–489); in 1564, Budweis (Moravia); and in 1565, Silesian Prausnitz (ibid., 493, 498). Again, it is not known where these Jews went. All in all, it is not likely that we are dealing here with thousands of people. Summing up, due to evictions we see that Jews sometimes moved within the three mentioned regions. Sometimes they left for Poland (by Poland is meant a region other than Silesia). In this case, too, there are no numerical data or data that indicate large numbers of people.

Hungary Origin of the Hungarian Jews Patai (The Jews of Hungary) is the first historian to extensively treat the history of the Hungarian Jews. He starts with the history of the Jews in Pannonia. This is the region west of the Danube in today’s Hungary that from the year 8 B.C.E. was occupied by the Romans. The following is based on this work, unless stated otherwise (ibid., 21–25). From archaeological finds, it has become conclusively clear that already in the second or third century C.E., Jews were living in Pannonia. In those days, this region was part of the Roman Empire. The inscriptions found show that enough Jews lived there that they could form communities and that they owned synagogues. According to the inscriptions, they were strongly influenced by the Romans. Patai suspects that some Jews arrived with the Roman legions or shortly after their conquest of the country, at the beginning of the first century C.E. In the year 175, a rebellion against Rome broke out in the Syrian and Judean provinces. After the rebellion had been crushed, the emperor decided to transfer part of the Syrian troops to Pannonia to prevent a repeat. Among these Syrian troops were Jewish soldiers. The Romans kept on replenishing these troops with soldiers from the homeland. Thanks to these replenishments, Patai was able to explain the inscriptions from the second half of the third century that were related to Jewish soldiers of the Syrian troops who had been born in Syria. Without mentioning the source of his historical evidence, he writes that around the year 230, organized groups of Jews came to Pannonia from places like Antioch, Tarsus, and the cities of Cappadocia. In that period, the Persians put pressure on the eastern part of the Roman Empire, and the Jews in the aforementioned cities were suffering a great deal due to this situation. Pannonia was a logical destination, as

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the Jews knew that they could live there freely. Later on in the third century, more Jews arrived from the Hellenized regions of the Roman Empire. This immigration continued until the middle of the fourth century. Patai then refers to remarks by writers and historians from that time: “that the Jews were not different from the others among whom they lived, in either custom or costume, language, manner of writing, or names. It was especially difficult to differentiate between them and the Syrians.” As to the Jews, the period between the Roman presence and the arrival of the Magyars (later called Hungarians) in 896 in the Carpathian Basin is shrouded in mystery. After that, there are some indirect indications of a possible Jewish presence (ibid., 27–28). The period 800–1050 Jewish Khazars? According to Patai, with the arrival of the Magyars, some Jewish Khazars (Kabars) also came along. He bases the presence of Jewish Khazars on a rare find, a Khazar ring with Jewish characters dug up at Pécs. The obvious question is, does finding such a Khazar ring point to the presence of Khazar Jews? One can think of reasons, like a present or a purchase, by which the ring could have ended up in Hungary without the presence of a single Jewish Khazar. If Jewish Khazars indeed came along with the Magyars, it is not known whether intermarriage took place between them and the Jews whose forefathers originally arrived with the Romans. However, there are archaeological finds that do indicate a Jewish presence at the time of the Kabars. In 1972, archaeological research was started near ýelarevo in today’s Serbia, where a nomadic cemetery was discovered with 263 graves from the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century (Scheiber 1983, 55–56). In these graves more than 80 Roman bricks were found with Jewish symbols, such as the menorah (seven-armed candelabrum) and the etrog (fruit of a citrus tree used in the morning prayer during the Feast of Tabernacles). The deceased seemed to have been of Mongolian descent and were members of a Khazar tribe that moved to the west together with the Magyars (Vikhnovich 1991). In this respect it is intriguing that Weissenberg (1896) mentions that at his time the Mongolian type occurred quite frequently among Hungarian Jews. If the deceased were Jews with Mongolian features, it is not clear whether they were Khazars or Kabars. The first written proof that later on Jews were living in Hungary comes from a Croatian delegation that arrived in Cordoba in 953 to visit the aforementioned Hasdai ibn Shaprut. In this delegation were two Jews, who

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promised ibn Shaprut that they would send his letter to King Joseph of the Khazars via the Jews in the country of the Hungrins (Hungarians). These Jews would then make sure that the letter would reach the king via Russia and Bulgaria. According to Patai, the remarks by the two Croatian Jews show not only that in the mid-tenth century Jews were living in Hungary, but also that they maintained trade relations with Croatia and Russia. He then concludes that these kinds of trade relations do not develop overnight and that Jews probably had lived in the country for a number of decades (Patai 1996, 29). Proof that in the first half of the eleventh century Jews were living in Hungary can be found in a rabbinic verdict from around 1050 mentioned in a book from the thirteenth century, Shiboley haleket (The spikes of the gleaning; Tsidkia ben Avraham Harofe 1886, 47 paragraph 60). The verdict deals with two Jewish brothers who were returning from Russia with a wagon packed with merchandise, and who, on their way to Regensburg, before the Sabbath started, had a breakdown outside a town on the Danube in Hungary. Although the name of the country in the Hebrew text is Hagar, this is generally accepted to be Hungary. A wheel of the wagon had broken, and the brothers decided to first repair the wagon and then to go into the town. As a result, they desecrated the Sabbath. When they entered the town, the local Jews were just leaving the synagogue. The brothers were not greeted, nor were they allowed to visit the synagogue the next morning. In the end, they were punished for desecrating the Sabbath. According to Patai, the town in question was Esztergom (ibid., 31), but in the Hebrew text the name of the town is not mentioned. The period 1050௅1490 From the first six centuries after the Magyars entered Hungary, no Jewish literary work has been preserved. This means that there are hardly any Jewish documents from that period that might tell us something about the history of the Jews (ibid., 35). Fortunately for the Hungarian Jews, in 1096 King Kálmán defeated the crusaders (ibid., 41–42). According to Patai, this led to an influx of Jewish refugees from countries north and west of Hungary, where the crusaders had annihilated entire Jewish communities. He does not give any sources on which this influx is based. Graetz (1909, v. 7, 349) refers to Löw, who states that the sources he checked don’t mention that during the plague (1348/49) Jews fled to Poland, but they do confirm that they fled to Austria and Bohemia.

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In 1360, King Lajos I (reigned 1343–1382) expelled the Jews from Hungary because they did not want to convert to Catholicism. According to the chronicler János Túróczi, they moved to Austria and Bohemia. According to Patai, Jews from the northern and northeastern districts of Hungary went to Poland. In 1364 Jews were allowed to return (Patai 1996, 56– 58). From the time of king Sigismund (reigned 1395–1435), it appeared to have become a custom of the Hungarian kings to mishandle the Jews of other countries while providing security for their own Jewish subjects. Jews had to pay enormous taxes, but they did not have to fear for their lives (ibid., 72). For example, in 1420, King Albert, as duke of Austria, burned 300 Viennese Jews to death because of the alleged murder of three Christian children. When the Jews of Enns (Austria) were accused of desecrating the host, he sentenced all the Jews of the city to the stake. On this occasion, Albert expelled all Jews from Austria. At the same time, in Hungary, the same Albert behaved in a decent way towards the Hungarian Jews (ibid., 75–76). From a travelogue written at the beginning of the fifteenth century by Bertrandon de la Broquière (1892) it appears that even Jews from France settled in Hungary. Bertrandon de la Broquière had made a journey to Palestine and on his way back he had met these Jews. As the book was written in fifteenth-century French, I will first give the original text as an illustration: “Il y a en ceste ville [Buda] beaucop de Juifz qui parlent tresbon françoys, et en y a de ceulx qui furent chaciés hors du royaulme de France,” or “In this town there are many Jews who speak very good French, and among them are some who were thrown out of the Kingdom of France” (Broquière 1892, 235). When the Jews were expelled from France in 1394, a number of them moved to Germany. They were treated so badly there that many thought it a better idea to move on to Austria. Due to the pogrom in Austria in 1420, some of them finally moved to Hungary (Patai 1996, 72). King László V (reigned 1453–1458), behaved the same way. During his reign and with his knowledge, the sermons of the Franciscan priest Johannes von Capestrano caused a great deal of violence against Jews in Poland, Breslau, Bavaria, Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia. When the priest wanted to continue his anti-Jewish sermons in Hungary, the king made it clear that he was not allowed to do so (ibid., 81). King Matthias Corvinus (reigned 1458–1490) also behaved totally differently towards the Jews outside of Hungary as compared to those in Hungary. It is not clear what was the cause for this ambiguous behavior, which lasted for some 100 years (ibid., 84).

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Between 1500 and 1600, nothing is known about significant migrations of Jews from Hungary to Poland. Summing up, there are no data which point to large-scale migrations of Hungarian Jews to Poland.

Conclusions 1. Jews lived in southern France before the start of the Common Era. 2. The repeated bans on marrying Jews promulgated by the various church councils during the time of the Merovingians and Carolingians indicate that a large part of the French Jews are descendants of Frenchmen who converted to Judaism. 3. There was no final expulsion of Jews from France. 4. Jews were living in Cologne continuously from before 321 C.E. up to 1424. This has important implications for the historical evidence of Weinreich’s assertion that Yiddish originated from Lorraine. 5. The data in Germania Judaica clearly indicate that during the pogroms in the Middle Ages there were no mass migrations of German Jews to Poland and Lithuania. It is notable that, in general, people tried to stay in their own country or region. If Jews fled abroad, they often returned after some time. 6. Nothing is known about mass migrations of Jews from Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, or Hungary to Poland and Lithuania. 7. There is no evidence that any of the above-mentioned countries or regions played a significant role in the numerical development of East European Jewry.

IV. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (2): The Caucasus, The Crimea, Poland, and Lithuania until 1500 Introduction As mentioned in chapter III, the history of the Jews in Poland, Lithuania, and Russia will be discussed together. As a result, we are dealing with one large area. In the last chapter we saw that there are no known large migrations from Germany and other regions to these countries. In this chapter it will be shown that far before the year 1000, Jews were already living in the area being discussed. Their earliest appearance, however, is in southern Russia, and more precisely in the Caucasus and the Crimea.

The Caucasus The period 587 B.C.E. until 690 C.E. The first mention of Jews in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine dates from far back and concerns the Caucasus and the Crimea (Jewish Encyclopedia 1902, v. 10, 518). According to Armenian and Georgian historians, after the destruction of the first temple in 587 B.C.E., King Nebuchadnezzar II deported Jewish captives to Armenia and the Caucasus. After the destruction of the second temple in 70 C.E., more Jewish exiles from the Land of Israel came to Georgia. Towards the end of the fourth century, 10,000 to 30,000 Jews lived in Armenian cities. These Jews suffered badly when the Persians invaded Armenia (360 to 370); the cities were destroyed, and many of the Jews were led into captivity. Since it is unknown to what extent the number of Jews present in the Armenian cities in the fourth century is correct, and since we also don’t know how many remained, it is impossible to use these numbers. The Crimea A second region in which Jews were clearly present, though somewhat later, is the Crimea. It has been shown that Jews lived in the Crimea, and

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also along the shore of the Black Sea, from the beginning of the first century C.E. We should not expect too much of the religious level of the Jews in the region during this period (Baron 1957, v. 3, 208). Shortly after the beginning of the Common Era, the Jews had assimilated to a large extent, as indicated by five inscriptions on marble plates, found there (Harkavy 1867, 77–97), the dates of four of which are known. One was found near Olbia (the former Miletopolos) and dates back to the last century B.C.E., or a little later; one was found near Anophia (Anapa?) (on the southeast coast of the Black Sea) and one near Kerch (where in earlier times Pantikapaion or Bosporus was located), both dating to the first century C.E., from the years 41 and 81; then one was found near Anophia from the period between 175 to 210; and finally, one of unknown date was found near Kerch. All inscriptions are in Greek (the region belonged to the Byzantine Empire) and deal with the liberation of male and female slaves through a vow. This seems to have been the custom among the Jews of the region. Because one of the inscriptions dates back to before the year 70, Harkavy concluded that these Jews could not have come to the area as exiles after the destruction of the Second Temple (in 70). The use of a liberation deed (shtar shihrur in Hebrew) already appears in the Talmud, but it was never associated with religion. Among the Black Sea Jews, however, such a deed had a clearly religious character; every inscription contained the Greek words for “according to the vow,” the marble plates were kept in their houses of prayer, the whole community was involved in the acts, and the freed men and women committed themselves to dedicate themselves to a life of work for houses of prayer. These kinds of practices normally did not occur among Jews, but they did among the Greeks. Harkavy is of the opinion that the taking on of religious customs indicates that the Jews must have lived there for centuries and that they were completely Hellenized. Therefore, culturally speaking, it would not be unexpected that people married outside the religious community. If we may believe Marquart (1903), the Jewish community of the Crimea had certainly been able to maintain itself, including groups of converts, during the first two centuries C.E. Next, some four to five hundred years later, Jewish refugees who arrived from or via Armenia married non-Jewish Khazars (see p. 10). From the second half of the ninth century they were joined by Khazars, who converted to Judaism. We already saw that it is not known what percentage of the Khazars converted to Judaism, and it is also unknown how many people of the subject tribes converted to Judaism. As mentioned before, part of the Alans converted to Judaism. It is quite possible that other tribes also contributed their mite to Black Sea Jewry via admixture. From history it is known that a tribe adapts itself to its leader’s religion. When Clovis

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converted to Catholicism, the Franks became Catholics. Therefore, it is quite possible that a reasonable number of Khazars converted to Judaism when their king did. According to Russian historians, in the Middle Ages Jews in Russia were descendants of Khazars. This conclusion does not help us much, because there aren’t any known details, and again, no numbers are given. The fact that modern Jewish historians do not take these Russian historians seriously (for whatever reason) does not mean that the latter are wrong. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia (1905, v. 10, 518) Jews from the Crimea moved in an eastern and northern direction, and under their influence the Khazars adopted Judaism. It is questionable whether this is true. According to the letter to the envoy of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople, Jews from Armenia were the ones who taught the Khazars Judaism.

Southern Russia The period 690–1000 The sixteenth-century Jewish chronicler Josef Hakohen Harofe mentions in his book Emek habakha (Valley of tears) that around 690 the Arabs invaded Persia, as a result of which large numbers of Persian Jews moved to Rusia, Ashkenaz, and Shwaytsia, where they met many Jews. In the German translation of Emek habakha by M. Wiener (1858, 6), the last two countries are translated as Germany and Switzerland. The question is whether Ashkenaz stands for Germany. It is also possible that Jewish refugees went to Khazaria. In those days it was also called Ashkenaz (see pp. 181௅183). Switzerland is not the most obvious destiny either, although in those days, Germany and Switzerland were both part of the Merovingian Empire, which treated the Jews relatively well. As to the history of the Jews in Russia and Poland after 690, first I would like to refer to the work of Berl Mark (1908–1966). Before I pursue his work, I would like to point out that his quotation of sources is very poor. He hardly states where he obtains his information, if at all. There are two reasons that nevertheless, I refer to his work: a bad quotation of sources does not a priori mean that what he writes is wrong, and his conclusions concerning the period between 690 and the beginning of the thirteenth century are possibly right in view of my calculation of the number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500 (see pp. 103–106). Mark uses the geographic term raysn and he explains that by this is meant East Galicia, Volhynia, Podolia, and also all of the Ukraine and Belarussia. When referring to his work I will use “Russia” instead of raysn.

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Based on Harofe, Mark (1957, 121) concludes that possibly from the end of the seventh century, Jewish settlements were already situated in Old “Russia” and maybe also in Poland, Bohemia, and Moravia. In the eighth century there were certainly Jewish settlements in the Slavic countries. These Jews may have come from the east as well as from the west. In the beginning, Jews mainly came from the Babylonian and Byzantine areas. Afterwards, they were joined by Jews from Khazaria. As far as the latter are concerned, we are dealing with Jews who lived in Khazaria but originally came from somewhere else, as well as with Khazars who had been converted to Judaism. The Jewish inhabitants of Khazaria propagated Judaism among the bordering tribes, including the Slavs. Although it is not founded on evidence, this last remark by Mark is plausible in view of the large number of blond East European Jews. During the prime of the Khazar Empire, a number of Old “Russian” principalities were subjected to its rule. There were also tight trade relations between Khazaria and Old “Russia.” The consequence of all this was that Khazars and Jewish Khazars settled in these areas of southern “Russia” (Mark 1957, 131–132). For economic and political reasons, the Khazar Empire primed an emigration of Jews to Old “Russia.” For the same reasons, Khazar Jews were involved in converting the inhabitants of the region to Judaism (ibid., 134). Between the ninth and the tenth century, Russian cities experienced an important development, in which Jews played an important role as well. The number of Jews from Khazaria increased following the battle in 965 between the Kievan Rus and the Khazars. In this way, the colonies of the Jewish Khazars in Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, and Kiev came into being (ibid., 132).

Poland Jewish settlements before the year 1000? It appears from the Raffelstettener Zoll- und Schiffahrtsurkunde (Ganshof 1966) and the account by Ibrahim ibn Yaqub (De Goeje 1810) that in the ninth century the presence of Jews in Poland was a fact. At least slave merchants were involved, though the two sources do not say that they also lived there. They possibly came from Germany (Aronius 1902; nr. 169, 71), from Bohemia or France (Mahler 1946, 21), or from Italy (McCormick 2001, 691). According to Jacobi (1975), it may be deduced from the description of the Arabic geographic literature of the duration of a trip from South Arabia to China and back that one merchant did not travel the whole route from Western Europe to China. There were clearly defined

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sections, for example from Prague to Western Europe and from Eastern Europe to Islamic territory. A Radhanite (see p. 27) who spoke a Slavic language in all probability came from a region where this language was spoken. If we may assume that speaking a Slavic language meant more than knowing enough Slavic words to buy merchandise, one may assume that these Slavic-speaking merchants of the ninth and tenth centuries indeed lived in Slavic countries. Harkavy (1867, 31) also indicates that the Slavic-speaking merchants from the ninth and tenth centuries lived in Slavic countries. Certainly, there is no compelling reason to exclude this. Despite the aforementioned arguments, the settlement of Jews in Poland is controversial. Some historians think that Jews lived in Poland already before the year 1000, and others are of the opinion that Jews can only be shown to live in Poland from the middle of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth century. The controversy about the earliest Jewish inhabitants of Poland has to do with the origin of these Jews and their numerical contribution to modern Polish Jewry. The earlier (from 1000 and earlier) Jews lived in Poland, the greater the chance that these Jews are partly descendants of Khazars or Slavs. For a number of Jewish historians this is unacceptable and they accept historical data about Jews starting from the thirteenth century. The two versions of historiography make an unbiased assessment of the first Jewish presence in Poland rather difficult. The Jewish historians Mahler and Mark can be considered as representatives of the theory of an early Jewish presence in Poland, the Jewish historian Weinryb as an opponent. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1905, v. 10, 563) quotes the Polish historian Maciejowski, who is of the opinion that if the Jews did not already live in Poland in the eighth century, they certainly did in the ninth. Unfortunately, it does not say on what his opinion is based. Moreover, the encyclopedia writes that it is safe to assume that the first Jewish Polish colonists came from southern Russia. Kutschera (1910, 199–200), who refers to “the most experienced researchers,” indicates that, as mentioned in chapter I, during the reign of Boleslaw I Chrobry Jews came to Poland for the first time. This is the period when the Khazar Empire was beginning to lose power. He mentions that there are also historians who are of the opinion that the Jewish immigration only started in 1079, from Bohemia. The possible western countries of origin of the Polish Jews, Bohemia in 1079 and Germany in 1096 at the time of the First Crusade, are rejected by him. He maintains that in those days there were not enough Jews in the eastern part of Germany or in Bohemia to be able to send such large quantities of Jews to Poland. However, he does not mention whether these “experienced researchers” used reliable

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sources to base their assumption on to show that Jews had come to Poland so early and actually lived there. Mahler and Mark According to Mahler (1946, 18–21), the problem is that only in the second half of the twelfth century are Jews mentioned as citizens in Poland, while there is only indirect proof that indicates that Jews had lived there at least two hundred years earlier. According to him, up to the eleventh century, the following can be stated with certainty: 1. In those days Jews lived in the vicinity of Poland, that is, in southern Russia (Ukraine). 2. Jews from Western Europe traveled to Poland or passed through it in connection with their trade. With the destruction of the Khazar state in the second half of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century by Kievan Rus, according to Mahler, Jewish refugees fled to this kingdom. Therefore, he finds it plausible that the spread of these Jews did not stop in Kievan Rus but also involved Poland. He cannot imagine that in a period during which Jews lived in countries around Poland, in Russia in the east and in Germany in the west, and during which Jews came to Poland for trading, they would not have lived there. However, Mahler is not the first one to suggest that the first Jewish inhabitants may have come from different directions. Litman (1984, 85) reports that already in 1807, the historian Czacki supposed that Jews came to Poland from two directions; from Bohemia and from Russia, meaning Kievan Rus. Mark (1957, 164–175) refers to older Polish historians who indicate that possibly in the eighth century, but certainly in the ninth and tenth centuries, Jews already lived in Poland. He states that almost all Jewish researchers agree that the Jewish settlement was the result of two immigration waves, one of Jews from Khazaria, Babylon/Persia, and Byzantium and one, from the west, of Frankish and Spanish Jews. Some researchers are of the opinion that, especially in the tenth century, Jews from Khazaria played an important role in the colonization of southern Poland, namely via Old “Russia.” Migration may also have taken place via Hungary. Jewish merchants from the west traversed southern Poland via the big trade routes between Bavaria/Bohemia and “Russia”/Hungary, especially along the line Krakow–Przemysl. There was also a section of the main route that went via Lublin, as was shown by old Asian and Arabic-Spanish coins from the ninth and tenth centuries found in Lublin. In the tenth century, Polish rulers stimulated the colonization of places along the trade routes, and this makes it understandable that Jewish settlement in Poland started exactly there,

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near Krakow, Sandomierz, Lublin, and Przemysl. Therefore, the backbone of the Jewish settlement in Poland consisted of the settlements in southern Poland. Despite the fact that there aren’t any direct records of Jews who lived in Poland before the end of the eleventh century, Mahler is also of the opinion that they must have lived there. The literature Mahler mentions is Polish, non-Jewish literature. Baron (1957, v. 3, 214) correctly observes that up to the beginning of the second millennium, large parts of Russia and its western neighbors did not leave anything in writing. The only thing that can therefore be said is that for centuries Jews may have lived in these regions before their presence came to light in more or less reliable documents. To make the situation even more complicated, in the mid-thirteenth century the oldest Polish archives were lost (Brutskus 1929, 57).

Poland and Southern Russia The period 1000 to 1096 (the First Crusade) Thanks to Jewish literature in the beginning of the second millennium, we gain further insight into the presence of Jews in Poland (and Russia). In Jewish literature, Jewish merchants from the eleventh and twelfth centuries are often mentioned as going to Russia by caravan. Normally, either these trade routes started in Regensburg and continued by land via Prague and Krakow or they started in a harbor and continued via the Danube to Hungary and from there to the northeast via Galicia. On page 61 a rabbinical verdict from the middle of the eleventh century was mentioned concerning two Regensburg Jews who had returned from Russia via Hungary. At the end of the twelfth century, the Jewish traveler Petahya of Ratisbon (Regensburg) traveled on his own from Regensburg along the important trade route via Prague and Kiev to Crimea and Mesopotamia. We know that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was an important Jewish community in Kiev. In view of the lively trade relations between Regensburg, Prague, and Kiev, Brutskus finds it plausible that in those days Jewish settlements arose along the route in southern Poland as well. Before the end of the twelfth century, there is no evidence for this in non-Jewish literature. The story of the two little brothers In order to get a better insight into what happened in this early period, Brutskus (1929) decided to go through the rabbinic literature (responsa)

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from Germany. And indeed, he found a clear indication of the situation during that period. One of the books he went through for this purpose was the already mentioned Or zaru‘a (Light is sown), a halachic (ritual) work that reflects quite well all kinds of daily occurrences that were brought up in those days. The author, Isaac ben Moses, is usually named Isaac Or Zarua after his book (written around 1240). At the beginning of this work there is an extract of an earlier book written by R. Yehuda Hakohen, entitled Sefer hadinim (book of the laws), which has been lost. This R. Yehuda Hakohen, who lived in Mainz from 1028 to 1070, took over the rabbinic function of the famous Bible and Talmud commentator R. Gershom ben Yehuda (ca. 960–1028). He was asked a question that came from a Polish town called Primut. The question is preceded by an introductory story that is being told by someone who experienced the same event. I will now reproduce the relevant part of it literally, because of the information it contains. “There were two brothers during the pogroms in Poland. We were carried off in captivity from the town of Primut. And those two were captured also. After they had been taken out of the town they were left on the field. When I also had been carried off we saw them tied up in the field, where they were crying and sighing. We saw a kena‘an [Hebrew word for Slav] whom I recognized and I asked him to help us and also the two children. And when Heaven has pity on us and frees us from captivity, I will thank and reward him. And so he did. A wonder happened to me, I became free and I went to the house of the Slav to ask about the children. He answered me, “one is dead and the second one is standing in front of you.” I took him home with me. After some time we heard that non-Jews took a Jewish child [the one believed dead] to Prague for sale and someone said that he was captured in the town of Primut. He ended up with a Greek Jew. Another freed man, who had come from the Greek Slav country, told that he had seen the child in Constantinople.”

The boy who had stayed in Primut got married, but died after a month without having children. According to Jewish law, the widow had to marry a brother of her dead husband. The above-mentioned story was told by one of the mourners after the boy had died. The question, how to handle a case like this (with the brother being sold), finally reached R. Yehuda Hakohen in Mainz. Brutskus explains that because of the medieval manuscript, it is difficult to see the difference between the Hebrew letters tet (t) and shin (sh), since they only differ from each other by a small mark. Zinberg (1975, v. 6, 13–14) also concluded, albeit in another context, that, in medieval manuscripts, these two letters are hardly distinguishable. This means that the name of the town can also be Primush. It appears from the story that Primush or Pshemishl (today’s Przemysl) was attacked and the inhabitants were carried off into captivity. Among the prisoners were older people and

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children. This means that Jews were permanent inhabitants of the town. It is unthinkable that children were taken along by traveling salesmen. For a better understanding of the story, it is necessary to know a little bit more about the history of the town of Przemysl in the eleventh century. It was only for a short time, from 1015 to 1031, that the town belonged to Poland. After this it became Russian again until 1079. According to the Russian Chronicle, in 1031 the region was attacked by Yaroslav the Wise and prisoners were also taken. Brutskus is of the opinion that the story of the two brothers can only be related to this attack. From the above it can be concluded that already at the beginning of the eleventh century Przemysl had an established Jewish community. In addition, it appears that the Jews maintained good contacts with Prague. Brutskus does not know when this community had started or where it originated. He suggests as possibilities Kiev, Prague, and even Hungary, where Jews were present already in the tenth century (as was indicated by the Croation delegation to ibn Shapruth, see p. 60). According to Brutskus, the existence of the Jewish community in Przemysl is clear evidence that already very early, Jews must have settled all along the great trade route from the Khazarian capital of Itil in the east near the Caspian Sea and the Jewish town of Samkarts via Kiev, Przemysl, Krakow, and Prague towards Regensburg and Mainz in the west. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Przemysl was an important junction both on the route to Poland and Russia and on the route to Hungary. Brutskus refers to a Russian chronicle of 1125 which states that Przemysl was an important place for loading goods. Brutskus thinks that there is even more reason to assume that there was also a Jewish community in the capital, Krakow during the same period. In the beginning of the eleventh century a bet din (Jewish religious court) indeed convened regularly in Krakow (Ta-Shma 1988). Thus, Brutskus’s assumption that at the beginning of the eleventh century there was a Jewish community in Krakow in addition to the one in Przemysl is confirmed. The evidence of Mark Mark (1957, 122; from Yiddish) quotes another famous Jewish Bible and Talmud commentator, Rashi (acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitshaki, 1040– 1105) from Troyes, who in Pardes comments on liturgical poems and who writes the following: “it is not the custom to say so in the diaspora [...] on the other hand, one does say it so in the diaspora of Spain, kena‘an, all the Roman countries, and all of Germany.” Mark draws two conclusions from this quote, of which I will mention only the first, as the second one follows from it: “Already in the eleventh century, there were Jewish settlements in kena‘an—i.e. in the Slavic countries—that were so important, that they [...]

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are bracketed together with the great Jewish settlements of Spain and Byzantium.” He deduces from this that such an important settlement cannot have arisen overnight, and that it must have existed already before the eleventh century. However, it is very questionable whether Rashi meant the Slavic countries when he speaks of kena‘an, especially when he mentions kena‘an in one and the same breath with Germany and Spain. As we will see further on, Rashi and other known Jewish scholars use Old Czech words in their Hebrew commentaries, which are preceded by the words bi-leshon kena‘an, ‘in the language of Canaan.’ This means that kena‘an actually refers to Bohemia and Moravia, and this is also much more logical in view of the higher level of Jewish knowledge in that region and the lack of it in Poland and Russia in those days. It is possible that southern Poland was also considered to be kena‘an, as we just saw in the story of the two brothers. This is not improbable, because Old Czech and Old Polish hardly differed (personal communication by Eckhard Eggers). On the other hand, a letter from the Geniza of Cairo (see p. 123) mentions a man who came from Russia and spoke the language of kena‘an. Since the letter dates from the eleventh century or earlier, it may be the case that originally all the Slavic languages were called kena‘an, while later the name was used specifically for Old Czech. It is therefore not clear how strong Mark’s evidence is. Princess Judith Towards the end of the eleventh century there appeared a story about Princess Judith, mother of Boleslaw III, who in 1085 was said to have ransomed Christian slaves and servants from Jews (Aronius 1902; nr. 169, 71). In view of the Jewish involvement in the slave trade, this is not an improbable story, and sometimes it is also used to prove that Jews already lived in Poland in 1085. This story is not proof that in those days Jews lived in Poland; as we saw before (see p. 68) the slave traders may have come from Germany, Bohemia, France, or Italy and may have been in Poland just for trade. However, in view of the story about the Jews in Przemysl, the possibility that the above-mentioned merchants themselves lived in Poland now appears realistic. Weinryb (1972, 19), who rejects the idea of a Polish-Jewish history before the middle of the twelfth century, comments, “This and similar stories are hardly authentic.”

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The First Crusade (1096) up to the Plague (1348) The early crusaders did not visit Poland or Lithuania, and, as was shown in the foregoing chapter, nothing is known about any large-scale migrations of Western Jews to these parts either. During the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century, the princes of Kiev, Chernigov, and Yaroslavl stimulated settlement by Jews to enhance economic development (Mark 1957, 133). Other sources also mention that Jews lived in Kiev in those days (Karamzin 1820, v. 2, 122; Jewish Encyclopedia 1905, v. 10, 518). They had their own quarters, called “the Jewish town.” The burning of Jewish homes in Kiev in 1113 was not so much a typical anti-Jewish action as the result of a general insurrection and of the financial ties that some Jews had with the hated prince (Mark 1957, 137). R. Eliezer ben Isaac from Prague, who lived in the second half of the twelfth century, writes in a letter to R. Yehuda Hehasid that in most Jewish communities in Poland, Russia, and Hungary, there are no people who know the Bible (Me’ir from Rothenburg 1860, chapter 112). This letter not only shows that in those days Jews already lived in Poland and Russia, but also that their Jewish knowledge did not amount to much. As we will see later, this is an important observation. 1223 (invasion by the Mongols) In the first half of the thirteenth century, the Mongols and Tatars invaded Russia. This was a miserable time for both Jews and non-Jews. The Jews had good ties with their non-Jewish surroundings, and there were Jewish soldiers in the army. In the principality of Chernigov, they were active in the fight against the Mongols, and they also fought in the army of the prince of Halich-Volhynia against the Mongols (Mark 1957, 139). Kutschera (1910, 198) mentions that this prince, according to Russian and Polish chronicles, invited Germans, Armenians, and Jews after the Mongols had left, in order to bring his depleted population back to an acceptable level. He believes that mentioning Armenians and Jews together in connection with the invitation to come and live in Poland is a clear indication as to the origin of these Jews (ibid., 200). He may be right, but the order of Armenians and Jews is too shaky a basis for such a conclusion. Kutschera is of the opinion that one may rightly assume that when Russian Jews are mentioned in the Middle Ages, they must be Khazar Jews. Relying on Neumann and Karamzin, he therefore thinks that in the middle of the thirteenth century, after the incursions of the Mongols, it was almost exclusively Khazar Jews who fled to Poland and the (then still Russian) principality of Galicia (ibid., 201–202). However, even if they were Kha-

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zar Jews it does not mean that only descendants of converted Khazars were involved. The invasion by the Mongols is one of the reasons given for the disappearance of the great East European Jewish population that existed in those days. The theory of this disappearance is concocted to have the present East European Jews descend from the Jews who fled from Germany. Mark (1957, 141) is of the opinion that the Mongol invasions severed the ties between the earlier Jewish population of Old “Russia” and the present East European Jews. He assumes that most of the Jews left for the West, and that the others mainly converted to Christianity or Islam. According to him, between the thirteenth and the second half of the fifteenth century there weren’t any Jewish settlements in Old “Russia,” and the new settlements in Ukraine therefore had little in common with the first ones. Weinryb (1972, 27) is also of this opinion. To what extent do the opinions of Mark and Weinryb agree with other data from the literature? In 1321, Kiev, Volhynia, and Podolia were conquered by Lithuania, and local Jews received the same rights as Jews in Lithuania (Jewish Encyclopedia 1905, v. 10, 518). The fact that in 1321 these Jews obtained the same rights as their coreligionists in Lithuania clearly shows that they did not leave the Ukraine following the incursions by the Mongols. In 1482 Crimean Tatars again attacked Kiev, and Rabbi Moses of Kiev lost all his fortune and his children were taken away as captives to the Crimea. After having paid a ransom for his children, he returned to Kiev (Zinberg 1975, v. 6, 14–15). The Jewish Encyclopedia mentions that Jews suffered as much from the Mongols as did the rest of the population and that after the incursions they returned to their homes (ibid., 563–564). Birnbaum (1973) also does not have much of a problem with the attitude of the Mongols toward the Jews: “while the Mongols were generally oppressive militarily and politically, their administration was fairly tolerant in religious matters.” Finally, Menache (1996) points to the fact that the Mongols did not give the Jews special treatment, either in a negative or a positive sense. As to the latter, reports in the literature that there were troops of the Jewish religion in the Mongol army, and that Genghis Khan gave the Jews of Samarkand and Bukhara good treatment, may be seen as rumors spread by the Mongols. Menache then writes: “they [the rumors] may have indicated the invaders’ manipulative policy of spreading confusion and fear among the local populations met in their path westward.” The aforementioned arguments indicate that the opinions of Mark and Weinryb, for which there is no proof, do not agree with reality.

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The Caucasus In 1254, Guillaume de Rubruquis found a large Jewish community in the eastern part of the Caucasus (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1930, v. 5, 346). A lot of intermarrying probably took place in the Caucasus. For example, the Ossetes keep to the Jewish custom of levirate marriage (in which the brother of a husband who died without issue marries the widow). Many of their villages have Hebrew names, and to a large extent the marriage and funeral ceremonies resemble those of the Jews. The same goes for the Chechens. Jews from the Caucasus do not look like European Jews, they look like the peoples in the midst of whom they live (Jewish Encyclopedia 1902, v. 3, 628). It is not clear what became of all these Jews in southern Russia. In any case, there is no compelling reason to assume that they simply vanished. 1348/49 (the plague) to the expulsion of Jews from German cities With the spread of the plague to Poland (1349), Jews were also confronted with massacres. According to Kutschera (1910, 235–237; from German), the persecutions were not nearly as serious as they were in Germany, and they also lasted for a shorter time. As the Jews in Poland were already very numerous in those days and the number of victims was not so high, this persecution did not cause such deep wounds. He finds it implausible that during this period German Jews substantially contributed to the development of the Jewish population in Poland. He writes the following: “Thus we see that the Jews in Germany proper could not thrive and never could form numerous and populous settlements. How then, under such circumstances, would they have been able, by emigration to Poland, to lay the foundation for such a dense population center that it exceeds today’s population living in Germany tenfold?”

He adds that that at the time their migration from Germany is said to have taken place, officially and legally they already had settled in Poland. In the foregoing chapter we saw that Jews indeed did not go to Poland. During the Ostkolonisation (from the end of the twelfth to the fifteenth century), Jews certainly may have moved from Germany to Poland. However, there are no quantitative data.

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The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth The period 1385–1500 In 1385 the union of Poland and Lithuania came about, the resulting state being called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Because of wars, its borders changed every now and then (see Fig. 5, p. 79). The entire commonwealth, with large parts of Belarus and Ukraine, encompassed no less than one million square kilometers, and it contained the largest part of the area in which the Jewish community of Eastern Europe would be concentrated later on. In chapter III it was shown that up to 1500, there is no evidence of substantial numbers of Jews leaving Germany for Poland and Lithuania. This means that for the remaining development of East European Jewry, we have to turn to the Jews who were already present in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before 1500. In the next chapter we will see if this is possible.

Russia 1471 (Jews in the Grand Duchy of Moscow) Chronicles show that in 1471 Jews lived in Russia, that is, in the Grand Duchy of Moscow (Jewish Encyclopedia 1905, v. 10, 519). However, it is not known where these Jews came from. In those days there was an active Judaizing sect in the region. The aforementioned Jews may have been members of the sect or they may have come from elsewhere. It is quite plausible, though, that the members of the sect remained Christians (Birnbaum 1973). As we shall see later on (chapter VIII), Jews of the Grand Duchy hardly played a role in the forming of East European Jewry. The following will mainly deal with those Jews in the area of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The history according to Weinryb

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Figure 5. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Courtesy of the Library of Congress Country Study).

The History According to Weinryb According to Weinryb (1972, 24), all data that relate to the period before the middle of the thirteenth century are legends. From his way of writing about history it becomes clear that he does not take kindly to an origin of Polish Jewry unless it is situated in the west, despite the fact that he frequently indicates that he is also not sure about his own statements. Let us take a look at some of his arguments against an early Jewish presence in

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Poland. We already saw his comments on the story of Princess Judith. Here will follow some more. Prince Mieszko and the molesting of Jews The Polish chronicler Vincent Kadlubek, bishop of Krakow, relates that at the end of the twelfth century, Prince Mieszko imposed a penalty for molesting Jews. A logical conclusion from such a statement would be that in those days there were Jews in Poland who were molested every now and then. No, says Weinryb: “this statement may be the result of the chronicler’s bias against Prince Mieszko, whom he may have intended to defile as a defender of Jews” (ibid., 23). I wonder if this explanation is based on factual evidence. Benjamin of Tudela Another argument against an early Jewish presence in Poland is, according to Weinryb, the fact that Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveler from the twelfth century, does not mention Jews in Poland in his travel book. Since Benjamin of Tudela did not visit Poland, it is not clear on what evidence Weinryb based this conclusion, unless it must be concluded that if Benjamin of Tudela did not visit a place, there were also not any Jews living there either. In addition, not everybody is so content with the reliability of Benjamin of Tudela. In his description of the Jews of Kurdistan, Breuer (1948, 18; from Hebrew) gives his opinion on the travel book in general: “This book contains data that Benjamin obtained from other people concerning Jewish communities that he did not visit himself [...] The book by Benjamin of Tudela lacks precision.” Another example of the unreliability of the book is the tall story about the lawless character of the Druzes (Adler 1907, 18). The Encyclopedia Judaica (1974, v. 13, 874–875) reports: “Regrettably, different manuscript [sic] of his travelogue quote figures with considerable variants.” Bohemia and Germany are nearby According to Weinryb (1972, 27), Jews only arrived during the second half of the thirteenth century from Bohemia and Germany-Austria, as these were relatively close by. This argument is not very convincing, considering that both Polish and Armenian chronicles indicate that during the thirteenth

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and fourteenth centuries, immigrants arrived continuously in Poland from faraway Armenia (Kutschera 1910, 200). If non-Jewish immigrants came from Armenia, Jews could also have come from Khazaria, which is closer. The possibility of Jewish immigration from Kiev is disposed of by Weinryb (1972, 27) with the remark that in the twelfth century Jews might have lived in Kiev, but apparently they disappeared after the incursions of the Mongols in the second half of the thirteenth century. The Jewish presence in Kiev was already discussed on p. 76. Polish and German synagogues look alike Weinryb views the increase in the Jewish population in Poland beginning in the thirteenth century as the counterpart of the German colonization (immigration). To indicate a German origin of the East European Jews in the thirteenth century, he refers to the remnants of a synagogue in Breslau that looked very similar to the synagogues of Regensburg, Worms, Erfurt, and Speyer. Furthermore, he states that the ritual tradition of the Polish Jews resembles the French-German-Bohemian Jewish tradition (ibid., 28– 29). The arguments Weinryb puts forward are rather weak. The similarity of the synagogue may just as well indicate that there were contacts between the Jews of Breslau and those in Germany. Also, the builder of the synagogue in Breslau may have had information about the synagogues in Germany, or may even have taken a look at synagogues in Germany, before he started to build the one in Breslau. The Carolingian synagogue in Cologne shows certain similarities with the synagogue of Toledo (Spain), and the cathedral also shows Spanish influences. Does this mean that Jews and Christians of Cologne originated from Toledo? Polish and German Jewish rituals look alike Linking a ritual tradition to the origin of people is not something new: “That the Chinese Jews came from Persia cannot be doubted, for all directions as to the recital of their prayers are given in Persian” (Neubauer 1896). But is this the most obvious explanation? May these have been the original directions? Furthermore, Persian was not used only in Persia but was the lingua franca of most of Central Asia at this time. We are dealing with Chinese here. Do we also say for example, that Catholic Congolese in the former Belgian Congo originated from Belgium (or another Catholic

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part of Europe) because they are Catholics? I can hardly imagine that the missionaries wrote their directions in the local language(s). In view of the dominating contribution during earlier centuries of German and Bohemian rabbis to Polish Jewry, the ritual tradition is not necessarily evidence of a substantial German-Jewish immigration either. Weinreich (1956) actually comes up with a somewhat similar explanation when discussing the rituals and prayers in Lorraine: “So many details of ritual and prayer in Loter [Lorraine], and later in Ashkenaz, suggest Jewish-Italian origin that ... the assumption of purely literary importation becomes most improbable.” He then mentions that R. Kalonymos, during the reign of Charlemagne, came from Italy to Mainz. He continues: “In conjunction with the hard facts about the transmission of rituals and prayers, the Kalonymos legend ... must be interpreted as evidence that immigration from northcentral Italy into Loter did take place and that it was of sufficient proportions [my italics] to impress itself on the people’s minds.”

Those sufficient proportions are not really necessary. The presence of a great authority like Kalonymos is essentially enough to bring about changes in rituals and prayers. In addition, nothing is known about a migration of some proportions from Italy, and the move of one or more rabbis is no proof of a sizeable migration.

Conclusions 1. The literature shows that already before the Common Era, Jews lived in the Caucasus and in the Crimea. There is no compelling reason to assume that these Jews disappeared. 2. The Jews who had been living along the Black Sea since the first century C.E. must have increased considerably until the conversion of the Khazars. 3. In view of the low level of knowledge of the Jewish religion, it is likely that these Jews intermarried with the local population. 4. During the following centuries, Jews from southern Russia, including those from Khazaria, were able to spread into more northerly regions. 5. The early Jewish settlements in southeastern Poland (Przemysl, Krakow) indicate an inflow of Jews from Ukraine. 6. The Jewish population did not suffer more after a Mongol invasion than the non-Jewish population did. There is no evidence for the assumption that the Mongols destroyed the then existing Jewish communities.

V. The Development of Ashkenazi Jewry by Region (3): Poland, Lithuania, and Russia from 1500 to 1900: The Numerical Increase The Development of Jewry by Region (3) “Thus we see that the Jews in Germany proper could not thrive and never could form numerous and populous settlements. How then, under such circumstances, would they have been able, by emigration to Poland, to lay the foundation for such a dense population center, which exceeds today’s population living in Germany tenfold?” Hugo Kutschera (1910, 235–236)

Introduction In chapter III we saw that the views about the massive migrations of German Jews during the Middle Ages—the second matter in dispute (see p. 3)—do not hold. From the last chapter, it appears that there is no reason to assume that the descendants of Jews who, at the beginning of the Common Era, lived in southern Russia disappeared. This chapter takes us to the third matter in dispute, the numerical increase of the East European Jewish population from 1500. The sizes of this population between 1500 and 1900, as mentioned in the literature, are crucial for a good evaluation of its origin and of its numerical development, not only between 1500 and 1900 but also earlier. The smaller the Jewish population was in those days, the greater the possibility that it still may have come from Germany, as no sizeable immigrations from Germany occurred (van Straten 2004). Therefore, it seemed useful to me to evaluate the numbers and the resulting annual growth rates mentioned in the literature first, in order to decide what the implications are. For the comparison of the annual growth rate of a Jewish population with that of the accompanying total population, I used two publications that do not differ much between them: Atlas of

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World Population History by McEvedy and Jones from 1978 and The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective by Maddison from 2001 (the latter was recommended to me by J. Oeppen of the University of Cambridge).

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1500–1772 The number of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1500–1650 Two historians played a decisive role concerning the estimates of the number of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the first 150 years of the period under discussion. The later estimates are mainly based on the census in the Commonwealth in 1764. According to Baron (1957, v. 16, 4 and 207), in 1500 and 1650 there were 30,000 and 450,000 Jews in the Commonwealth, respectively. Weinryb (1972, 32 and 197) assumes 10,000 to 15,000 and 200,000 Jews, respectively. The consequences of these estimates are population increases between 1500 and 1650 by a factor of 15 (Baron) and 13 to 20 (Weinryb). The resulting annual average compound growth rates (hereinafter referred to as annual growth rates) vary from 1.7 to 2.0 percent. The only way to check whether these annual growth rates are realistic is by comparing them with those of the inhabitants (or total populations) of other European countries. Such a comparison can be illustrated best in a graph. In Fig. 6 (see p. 85) the estimates by Baron and Weinryb at 1500, 1600, and 1650 are plotted together with the total population increases of the Netherlands (van der Woude 1980) and those of Poland, European Russia, France, and the British Isles (McEvedy and Jones as quoted by Dupâquier in Dupâquier 1997, 251) between 1500 and 1800. The populations in the year 1500 are all set at 100. The first thing in Fig. 6 that catches the eye is that the growth rates of the Jewish population according to both Baron and Weinryb deviate very strongly from those of the total population in the various regions. A second point that attracts the attention is that the number of inhabitants in each of the five regions increased with almost the same growth rate. An important point that needs to be mentioned is that Jews were subject to the same environmental conditions (for example, famine, diseases, wars) as non-Jews. When we limit ourselves to the situation in Poland between 1500 and 1700, it appears that the annual growth rates in the periods 1500–1600 and 1600–1700 were 0.22 and 0.18 percent respectively (Maddison 2001, 232). The aforementioned Jewish annual growth rates of 1.7 to 2.0 percent for the same period then become very implausible, unless one can put forward sound reasons. Weinryb does add immigration to this statement, but since

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no mass migrations from the West took place, including immigration should not make much of a difference.

1600 1400 1200 Jewish population (Baron) Jewish population (Weinryb) the Netherlands Poland European Russia France British Isles

1000 800 600 400 200 0 1450

1500

1550

1600

1650

1700

1750

1800

1850

Date

Figure 6. Jewish population growth in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1500– 1650, according to Baron and Weinryb; population growth of the Netherlands, Poland, European Russia, France, and the British Isles, 1500–1800 (1500=100; van Straten 2007b).

The Cossack uprising in 1648 In 1648, the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky broke out. I would like to go more deeply into it, because this event also shows how some modern historians deal with numbers. I am alluding mainly to an article by Stampfer (1989), entitled “What Actually Happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648?” There are two reports about this event by contemporary authors, Tit hayaveyn (The slimy clay; title taken from Psalm 40:3) by Shmuel Feibesh ben Nathan Feydel from Vienna, possibly published for the first time in 1650 (Vinograd 1993, 270, entry 1290; published in Venice), and Yeveyn metsula (The bottomless mire; title taken from Psalm 69:3) by Nathan Nute ben Moshe Hanover, published in 1653. Ben Nathan describes how the Cossacks went from place to place and how many people they killed (Nathan Feydel [1892], 9–19). This is actually not much more than a list of casualties. He also provides the number of

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casualties during the campaign of the Swedish king against the Polish king, shortly after 1648. At the end of this report he states that a total of 600,070 ba‘aley batim (Hebrew for householders) were killed. This event is also mentioned briefly by the contemporary author Menasseh ben Israel (1651), who only reports the total number killed and the number of Jews left, without telling us how he obtained these numbers. In his pamphlet To his Highnesse the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, Menasseh ben Israel writes (ibid., 7): “But yet a greater number of Jews are found in the Kingdome of Poland, Prussia and Lethuania [...] There is in this place such infinite number of Jews; that although the Cosaques in the late warres have killed of them above one hundred and fourescore thousand [180,000]; yet it is sustained that they are yet at this day as innumerable as those were that came out of Egypt.”

Hanover’s report is more of a story of what happened. He mentions fewer places, but describes the situation in more detail. His report adds up to more than 235,000 casualties, of which 110,000 were poor people (Hanover 1653, [9], [15]). The above-mentioned high numbers are usually considered unreliable. Relying on the chronicler Shabbatai ha-Kohen, Mahler (1946, 225) sticks to 100,000 dead. Weinryb (1973, 194) is of the opinion that the abovementioned figures are all gross exaggerations, “and those in Tit ha-Yeveyn [Yeveyn is Yiddish equivalent for Hebrew Yaveyn] are patently absurd.” In addition, he writes that the “670,000 (or 600,070?)” includes women and children. However, it does not say so. As to Yeveyn metsula, Weinryb distinguishes the number of people killed, over 80,000, from the number who died in epidemics, 41,000 or 141,000 (ibid). Together, the number of casualties add up to 121,000 or 221,000. Weinryb considers 40,000 to 50,000 killed a “reasonable estimate” out of a Jewish population of 160,000 to 250,000 (ibid., 197). The most recent estimate is provided by Stampfer. As to the number of dead according to ben Nathan and Hanover, he refers to Weinryb, who mentioned 670,000 and 80,000, respectively. In order to calculate what he considers to be the real number of dead, he first determined the size of the Jewish community in the Ukraine before the uprising. To this end he used counts of houses in which Jews lived and the number of seats in the synagogues, arriving at 40,000 persons. For the size of the Jewish community after the uprising, he used the annual growth rates of the Jewish community in Eastern Europe between 1650 and 1900, as suggested by DellaPergola (2001, 22), in combination with the size of the Jewish population in the Ukraine in 1764 (Mahler 1946, 234). This yielded 45,000 persons in 1650. In order to justify the small difference between the two estimates before and after the revolt (in view of the ca. 18,000 casualties), Stampfer as-

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sumed that not all Jews in the region in 1764 were descendants of the survivors. Via all kinds of estimates, he comes to the conclusion that in the Ukraine there must have been between 6,000 and 14,000 killed (Stampfer 2003, note 5), although in the Conclusions section he writes that the number of casualties must have been less than 18,000–20,000. The variation between the different estimates is clearly too large to be plausible. Therefore, I decided to study the reports by ben Nathan and Hanover myself (van Straten 2009). Verification of ben Nathan’s numbers Let us go through the report by ben Nathan first. Ba‘aley batim are not just householders, they are the members of the Jewish community, men who had enough money to pay the membership fee. In Amsterdam the term ba‘aley batim was also used this way. As they are only men, the total number of casualties must have been even higher than 600,070. Such a number of Jews killed is simply impossible, as it implies a Jewish population of between two and three million. Therefore, I decided to take down what had happened to the Jews at each location first. In addition to ba‘aley batim, ben Nathan sometimes also mentions the number of people killed. It appeared that in some places all Jews were killed, but in others less defined numbers were killed, like “almost all,” “a few,” “part of,” and, “almost all and many converted.” The last three categories are useless, but fortunately they amount to less than 3,000 people. The numbers of ba‘aley batim killed according to the categories “all killed”, and “almost all killed” are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Ba‘aley batim killed by Khmelnytsky and the Swedish king according to Shmuel ben Nathan’s categories “all killed” and “almost all killed” (van Straten 2009).

Khmelnytsky Swedish king Total

Sum of casualties in places where all were killed 24,210 5,190 29,400

Sum of casualties in places where almost all were killed 52,272 2,980 55,252

Even if all 52,272 ba‘aley batim were killed, we still don’t get anywhere close to 600,000. If we take for “almost all” 75 to 100 percent, we arrive at a number of ba‘aley batim killed by Khmelnytsky between 63,000 (24,210 + 39,204) and 76,000 (24,210 + 52,272). It looks as if the printer of Tit hayaveyn erred by a factor of 10. It is really amazing that none of the histo-

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rians who dealt with this subject went to the trouble of taking a look at the numbers at any time. But more questions remain. Why doesn’t he include women? Were they actually killed? He mentions women only twice: about 6,000 people were killed and only some women remained (Nathan Feydel [1892], 9), and 20,000 people were killed, including women and children (ibid., 14). Why does he only mention members? Didn’t he have any information about the poor, or were they looked down on to such an extent that they were not worth bothering with? Is it possible that, because of the horrible situation, ben Nathan had decided to deviate from the rule and use the term ba‘aley batim for all married men, irrespective of their status? Without having an answer to these questions it is impossible to obtain a precise assessment of the number of casualties. In addition to the ba‘aley batim, ben Nathan mentions 70,000 unspecified persons killed. This would bring the total number of people reported killed by Khmelnytsky somewhere between 133,000 and 146,000. This range also includes Jews killed outside the Ukraine. Omitting the number killed in Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania, this would give a rough assessment of the Jews killed in Ukraine of 100,000 to 115,000. Verification of Hanover’s numbers of dead Hanover (1653, [10]) mentions fewer places where Jews were killed and only 300 ba‘aley batim, but he does add 130,000 dead without further description. Together with another 110,000 poor people killed (ibid., 9, 15), he arrives at 240,000 dead. For the most part, women were left alive, as were many children. For the Ukraine this means 195,000 dead. Now it appears that the highest estimate does not come from ben Nathan but from Hanover, whose story is described in Abyss of Despair (the English translation of Yeveyn metsula) as being “by far the most popular and authentic” (Hanover 1950, 7). The reason for the popularity of this book is probably the way Hanover tells the story, not only with all kinds of gory details but also with some romanticized touches whose truth is questionable, but it seems to appeal to people. The number of Jews killed in Ukraine according to ben Nathan and Hanover then becomes 100,000 to 115,000 and 195,000 respectively. The more than 180,000 dead mentioned by ben Menasse agree quite well with the number of dead provided by Hanover.

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The number of casualties according to Stampfer Since the aforementioned numbers are at least ten times as high as those of Stampfer, the question is, how realistic are the numbers he reports? To answer this question, we have to find out how sound his arguments are. At this point, I can only discuss the house counts and the places in the synagogues. Counting houses is not a reliable way of estimating the size of the Jewish population. First, it is not known whether all houses where Jews lived were counted. Second, were there houses in which both Jews and non-Jews lived? And, if so, how were they counted? Third, can one determine accurately how many people lived in one house? This procedure is based on too many assumptions that cannot be proven. Stampfer appears to have some information on the number of seats in the synagogues in the Ukraine. Then he decides that the number of seats in the synagogue is somewhat proportional to the number of Jews in the community, but this is not correct (taking his remark into account about the seats for women and nonresidents). If anything, one might think that the number of seats is proportional to the number of ba‘aley batim. After all, they were the ones who could pay for a seat. But even this is not so simple, because the ba‘aley batim may have had more than one seat (e.g., for their wives and children). Furthermore, the number of seats does not indicate anything about the number of poor people, who Stampfer puts in back of the synagogue, and the number of poor people normally outweighs the number of well-to-do and rich people by far. So the number of seats in a synagogue is not proportional to the total number of Jews in that community. For example, in Amsterdam in 1800 there were altogether 1,700 seats for men and 800 seats for women in the four Ashkenazi synagogues (van Agt 1974, 26, 64, 66, 70). At the same time, the Ashkenazi Jewish population in Amsterdam was about 20,000. So far, we can conclude that Stampfer’s methods do not suffice for a reliable estimate of the size of the Jewish population. In chapter VIII, I will return to this issue, and we will see whether my conclusion is correct after the data by Mahler and DellaPergola are included in the discussion. Proceeding a little further in time, between 1675 and 1764, the Jewish population increased from 190,000 to 750,000 according to Mahler (1946, 230–233), a fourfold increase in 89 years, which means an annual growth rate of 1.5 percent. It will be clear that this increase is not plausible either, since the non-Jewish population had an annual growth rate of about 0.5 percent during the same period (see Table 4, p. 98).

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How careful one should be with data about the size of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century appears from a remark by Gelber (1919; from German): “The statistical data we find in sources differ greatly from each other, and they are also mostly wrong.” For the period 1772–1785, for example, the following estimates of the Jewish population of Poland can be found: 600,000 (1772), 225,000 (1784), 1,000,000 (1785 and 1791), and even 2 to 3 million (no date). The variation of these numbers clearly indicates how unreliable data from this period are. Gelber also quotes Tadeusz Czacki (the treasurer [Schatzkommissar]), who estimated the number of Jews in 1772 in Poland at 900,000. Assuming that Poland had already lost part of its territory, it would still have two-thirds of its Jewry (Stampfer 1989). This would mean that in Eastern Europe in total, there were 1.4 million Jews in 1772. As we will see further on, this number does not deviate drastically from the number of Jews I calculated for the year 1764. Reasons for the faster growth of the Jewish population We saw that Mahler, Baron, and Weinryb assume a very fast population growth. This also holds for the historian Polonsky, whom I have not yet mentioned. Despite the fact that the suggested growth rates of the Jewish population between 1500 and 1800 deviate so much from what occurred during that period, and thus cannot be considered realistic, I would like to discuss the most important reasons put forward in the literature to explain the faster annual growth rates of the Jewish population. I will also indicate how convincing these reasons are. Mahler Of course Mahler also realized that according to his figures the growth rate of Jews was much faster than that of the Catholic city dwellers. He gives the following reasons: the well-developed family life, the religious way of living, and especially the custom of a low age at first marriage. The well-developed family life and the religious way of living, without additional data as proof, are not useful criteria. Low age at first marriage is a consideration also mentioned by Baron (1976, v. 16, 200). Mahler refers to unnamed Polish authors who claim that in the seventeenth century Jewish girls quite often married at the age of 12. The story of the Polish authors does not sound very reliable. In Poland an almost complete birth, marriage, and death registration of Jews started only in 1826 (Berelowitch and Gieysztor 1997, 565). Besides, it is also unclear where the Jewish authors obtained their information on this subject, as the

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age of the bride (or the bridegroom) is never mentioned in a Jewish marriage deed. Although Lowenstein (1994) also thinks that Jewish women in Poland married at a young age, he mentions that the problem with all these stories about the marriages at a very young age is that “they are hardly ever accompanied by evidence about how widespread such patterns were.” He then continues, “It is altogether possible that early marriage [...] was not engaged in by the Jewish masses who were unable to support very young married couples.” Taking into account that in Russia until 1830 the minimum age at first marriage for boys and girls was 15 and 13 respectively, and after 1830 became 18 and 16 (Berelowitch et al. 1998, 490), it is highly questionable whether Jewish girls really married at an earlier age than non-Jewish girls. Must we then assume that a large part of the Jewish girls married already at the age of twelve, and also had children that early? It seems to me that, as long as no thorough study of this subject has been carried out which would show this to be the case, we are dealing here with unfounded assumptions in order to be able to explain the high growth rates. We may, then, think that these growth rates did not even occur. Table 2. The percentage of brides of the five main religious populations in European Russia, who married at the age of 20 or younger during the period 1888–1892 (Rabinowitsch-Margolin 1909). Religion Orthodox Catholics Protestants Jews Mohammedans

Percentage 58.5 33.8 26.4 36.0 55.0

There is another reason to have some doubt about the large differences in age at first marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish brides, although the information refers to the end of the nineteenth century. RabinowitschMargolin (1909) studied Jewish marriages in European Russia between 1867 and 1902. She compared the percentages of brides and grooms of three age groups—20 and younger, 21 to 50, and 51 and older—of the main religious populations in Russia during three five-year periods. As the number of Jewish brides under 20 declined with time, only the the data for 1888–1892 will be shown (Table 2). At first glance, Table 2 shows that among the Orthodox, the largest population in Russia, more girls under 20 married than among Jews. However, since the sizes of the various populations differ greatly, and since there are no data on the absolute sizes of each population, the significance of the differences cannot be determined. Tentatively one could conclude that these data show that Jewish brides do not show a lower age at first

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marriage than most (i.e. the Orthodox) of the brides. Therefore, it remains questionable whether Jewish brides in Eastern Europe married at a much younger age than non-Jewish brides. Baron Baron (1976, v. 16, 199–200) suggests that there were few older unmarried people and that the life expectation of Jews was generally higher than that of non-Jews. Few older unmarried people. It is unknown on what data he based this; I was unable to find anything about it in Mahler. Higher life expectation. Baron writes that “among the Polish, Lithuanian, and Rus villagers the life expectancy of a new-born child was at best 26 years, and very likely closer to the 20 years and 10 months computed as the average for the area of Beauvais in France at that time.” In the accompanying note 39 he writes: “All references here to the life expectancy of Jews and non-Jews are extremely tentative.” As to the life expectancy of Jews, from a table with life expectancies of different Russian nationalities in 1897 (Berelowitch et al. 1998, 497), it appears that the Latvians, both men and women, lived the longest, 43.1 and 46.9 years respectively; the Russians lived the shortest time, 27.5 and 29.8 years respectively; and the Jews are in the middle of the table with 36.6 and 41.4 years for men and women respectively. The above-mentioned life expectancies of Jewish men and women in Russia were challenged by Bloch (1980, 77). By adjusting infant and child mortality he increased the life expectancies of the Jewish men and women to 44.8 and 46 years respectively. In Russia, however, there were no reliable data on infant and child mortality in those days, and ages are normally not mentioned in Jewish burial books. In addition, Bloch does not comment on the reliability of the life expectancies of the other nationalities. As long as this is also unknown, it is difficult to decide whether Bloch is right when he puts Jews in the same position as Latvians. Although the data discussed so far are from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, i.e., from well before 1897, I have no reason to assume that the relative life expectancies were any different 100 or 200 years before the end of the nineteenth century. In addition, I do not know to what extent life expectancy influenced population increase. Did the Latvians increase faster than the remaining nationalities? Polonsky Polonsky (1993, 4–5) mentions extra reasons for a faster Jewish population growth: ritual washing that led to a higher degree of hygiene, the religiously imposed celibacy among Christians (also mentioned by Baron 1976, v. 16, 201), and the fact that the Jews did not perform military service.

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Ritual washing. Ritual washing is often given as a reason for better hygiene and thus fewer diseases. There are two kinds of ritual washing: washing one’s hands before a meal that includes bread, and the ritual bath. Washing one’s hands before eating bread sounds like a good hygienic practice, that is, if one has a modern water supply system. However, it does not really help much to prevent the spread of bacterial diseases when the washing is done with water contaminated with pathogenic bacteria, as much of the water in cities was (see also van Poppel 1992). The ritual bath takes place in the mikve (plural mikva’ot), a ritual bath that was first introduced in ancient Israel during the second half of the second century B.C.E. (Reich 1988). A mikve is built according to certain specifications. It is kind of inside pool, built like a cellar; it also has stairs, one can stand in it, and it should contain at least 454 liters of water. In this way it contains enough water to entirely cover the body of a human being of average size. The water has to reach the mikve in a natural way, for example by rain or by gravity. As the water in a mikve is stagnant, it becomes a problem to maintain enough religiously pure water in a country, like Israel, having a long dry season. To solve this problem, the following system was used (Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East 1997, v. 4, 430–431). At the beginning of the rainy season, two mikva’ot, connected by a pipe with a plug, were filled with rainwater. One of them was used for purifying oneself, the other one was only used as a reservoir of pure water (the “treasury”). When the water in the mikve became dirty through frequent use, it was replaced by clean drawn water, i.e., water gathered by direct human intervention. In order to make the clean drawn water “pure,” a certain amount of pure water from the treasury was added to the mikve by opening the plug. A similar system is used today. The foregoing description shows that the purity of water in a mikve has nothing to do with hygiene. Before the introduction of today’s clean tap water, the drawn water could have been contaminated with all kinds of pathogens. Although Reich carried out his study in Israel, from a hygienic point of view there is no reason to assume that the situation was different in Europe. For example, in 1812, by order of Napoleon, the mikve in Mainz was closed because of the bad hygienic conditions (personal communication by R. Reich, Department of Archaeology, University of Haifa). Therefore, it is highly questionable whether these kinds of ritual baths influenced the population growth in a significantly positive way. Celibacy. Hajnal (1965, 118) discusses the work of Russell about percentages of married women from English poll tax returns of 1377. He concludes that it would make no appreciable difference in the percentage of married women if nuns were included. When the influence of religiously imposed celibacy among Christians on the percentage of married women is

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not clear-cut, Polonsky and Baron certainly should have shown some evidence to prove this point. Jews did not perform military service. This point is also questionable as a reason for faster growth. There must have been Jewish soldiers, after all, as their presence is mentioned twice by Hanover (1653, [9], [18]) when he described the pogroms against Jews during the Cossack uprising in 1648. Baron (1976, v. 16, 200) discards the absence of Jewish soldiers as an argument, since the armies of the Polish kings consisted mostly of foreign mercenaries.

The “Demographic miracle” of the Nineteenth Century In his book A History of the Jewish People, Ben-Sasson (1976, 790) writes: “The nineteenth century was a period of rapid increase in population in all European countries, but the numerical growth of the European Jewish communities far exceeded the average [...] The Jewish rate of increase was twice as fast as that of the non-Jewish population, and several scholars have spoken of the “demographic miracle” of the Jewish people in the nineteenth century [...] The main cause of Jewish natural increase was not fertility [...] rather, there was a drop in infant and adult mortality among Jews as a result of devoted care of the sick.”

Recently it was shown that the difference between the Jewish and nonJewish infant mortality rate was not as great as indicated in the literature (Snel and van Straten 2006) and, as a result, the influence of Jewish infant mortality on the annual growth rate of the Jewish population has probably been overestimated (van Straten and Snel 2006). Van Straten and Snel also showed that, during the nineteenth century, the Jewish populations of Congress Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands increased faster than their non-Jewish counterparts, but nowhere close to twice as fast (Table 3, see p. 95; see appendix for calculations). The “demographic miracle” can thus be relegated to the realm of fiction, for both Eastern and Western Europe. Ben-Sasson’s reasons for the faster growth of the Jewish population Nevertheless, I would still like to discuss the causes Ben-Sasson puts forward to explain the miracle. The main one is a drop in infant and adult mortality among Jews as a result of devoted care of the sick. Generally, low infant and child mortality is given as the main one. In addition, he mentions the following causes: better care for babies and young children,

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a higher life expectancy, more stable families, fewer illegitimate children, fewer venereal diseases, and the higher status of woman in the family, all in comparison with non-Jewish families. Table 3. Nineteenth-century increases (NCI) and corresponding annual growth rates (AGR) of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Congress Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands (van Straten and Snel 2006). Congress Poland Jews Non-Jews NCI AGR NCI AGR (×) (%) (×) (%) 3.5 1.26 2.5 0.91

Germany Jews Non-Jews NCI AGR NCI AGR (×) (%) (×) (%) 4.2 1.44 3.2 1.16

The Netherlands Jews Non-Jews NCI AGR NCI AGR (×) (%) (×) (%) 3.6 1.29 2.7 1.01

Note. Germany does not include the Polish provinces or the Habsburg lands.

Reduced infant mortality. In recent articles (Snel and van Straten 2006; van Straten and Snel 2006) it was shown that infant mortality among Jews was indeed significantly lower, but this phenomenon was not sufficient to cause a population growth twice as fast as among non-Jews. Furthermore, the authors showed that starting from a Hebrew registration (before there was a thorough central registration system), the level of Jewish infant mortality was underestimated. This had to do with the exact interpretation of the Hebrew word nefel (plural nefalim) that is used in Hebrew burial books, and that literally means stillborn. The word is not only used for a fetus that spontaneously aborts from 12 weeks after conception, but also for an infant that lived for 30 days or less. As Jewish demographers were not aware of these 30 days, it was not known that Jewish infant mortality was underestimated. Better care for babies and young children. I am not aware of any comparative study supporting this assertion. A higher life expectancy. Ben-Sasson supports the higher life expectancy of Jews in the nineteenth century with an example from Frankfurt, without giving a reference. Kracauer (1904, 412–413; from German) describes the sanitary situation in the Jewish quarters, the Judengasse, between 1733 and 1796. After mentioning that there was hardly any light and fresh air in the ghetto, he continues: “in addition, the circumstances defy all laws of hygiene [...] The drains were mostly open [...] The flush was totally inadequate [...] during the hot summer the amount of water was so small that it was hardly sufficient to flush down the feces, as a result of which the stench was hardly bearable during this season.”

The state of health in the Judengasse was very bad; “nowhere were the inhabitants more tormented by haemorrhoids than in the Judengasse, and scabies, ulcers, and fistulas have moved in for good.” Living conditions in the Judengasse do not exactly call for a higher life expectancy.

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During the nineteenth century, the situation in the Judengasse improved, certainly after the disappearance of the ghetto at the beginning of the century. However, up to the twentieth century the death rate among Jews was still higher than among non-Jews. In addition, during the nineteenth century, the Jewish community of Frankfurt remained at about 10 percent of the total population (Hanauer 1908, 675). It is therefore not clear what the basis is for Ben-Sasson’s statement. More stable families. Again we have a cause that isn’t based on a comparative study. Fewer illegitimate children. I fail to grasp the connection between fewer illegitimate children and a higher annual growth rate. At a census, the number of people in an area is counted. Whether they came into the world legitimately or not is irrelevant. Fewer venereal diseases. It is not clear on what the lesser occurrence of venereal diseases is based. In Amsterdam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were also Jewish prostitutes. It therefore remains to be seen whether there is a significant difference between the number of cases of venereal diseases among Jews and non-Jews during that time. Higher status of the woman in the family. As far as the high position of the woman within the family is concerned, this is another doubtful argument. Theoretically it may be true, but practically? To begin with, in Amsterdam, in the Hebrew burial books, more than 90 percent of the deceased women were registered as “the wife of ... died.” She obviously was so “important” that her name was not or hardly worth mentioning. Furthermore, according to Jewish law a woman does not inherit from her parents when there are brothers. What to think about the laws pertaining to divorce whereby, still today, a woman cannot get divorced unless her husband agrees? An important point is that Ben-Sasson does not show the numerical data of the non-Jewish or total populations on which his “demographic miracle” is based. The data of the total populations in Table 3 are the only relatively reliable data available. It looks as if the “demographic miracle” is based on an assessment by Ben-Sasson, covered neither by numbers nor by convincing reasons. Ben-Sasson had to explain the increase of a small Polish-Jewish population at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or even earlier, into a large Polish-Jewish population in 1939. The size of the Jewish population in 1800 and earlier that he used could only be correct if the Jewish population had grown much faster, twice as fast to be exact, as the non-Jewish one. In view of the unreliability of the Polish registration system, it is not so strange that he came to this conclusion. However, it is remarkable that Ben-Sasson does not refer, for example, to the publications in the Zeit-

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schrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden, or to the work by von Bergmann (1883), Silbergleit (1930), or Toury (1977), in which data that are relevant to this subject show something quite different than what he writes. Had he used the above-mentioned literature for the discussion of this subject, he certainly would have had to reach a different conclusion. DellaPergola’s Growth Rates Some more recent data concerning the development of the number of East European Jews through the ages are from DellaPergola’s chapter, “Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History,” in Papers in Jewish Demography 1997 (DellaPergola 2001, 22; columns 2 and 3 in Table 4). The annual growth rates of the total populations of the countries in Table 4 (see p. 98) do not appear in DellaPergola’s chapter. A comparison of both sets of growth rates makes the suggested Jewish growth rates highly questionable. Their implausibility becomes even more evident when the increases of the Jewish and total population between 1170 and 1765 are compared. The Jewish population increased 130 times (910,000/7,000), while the total population of Eastern Europe increased 4.6 times (51,600,000/11,100,000). As mentioned before, there is no evidence of Jewish mass migration from Germany. In the first instance, the different Jewish growth rates are the result of the initial size of the Jewish population in 1170, namely 7,000 souls. How reliable is this number? It appears to be an estimate by DellaPergola (2001, 18), not based on numerical evidence. Also, the resulting population sizes in 1490 and 1650 have no factual basis. Particularly remarkable is the beginning of the chapter in which DellaPergola quotes some numbers from the Old Testament, “fewer than 70 Jewish males—sons and grandsons of Jacob—who migrated to Egypt [...] over 600,000 Jewish male adults who left Egypt 430 years later” (ibid., 13). Further on he continues: “what we have demonstrated, through ancient textual evidence, are three relevant and fundamental principles that will affect all the ensuing demographic experience of the Jews” (ibid., 13– 14; my italics). In general, numerical data from the Bible cannot be used as scientific evidence. The same may be said in this case, because these numbers imply that in 430 years, the Jewish male population increased more than 8,500 times, an annual increase of 2.1 percent. Taking into account that the annual growth rate of the German population rocketed from 0.4 percent in the eighteenth century to 1.4 percent in the nineteenth century due to its better living conditions, a growth rate of 2.1 percent thousands of years ago among slaves does not seem very likely.

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Table 4. Comparison of Jewish population estimates with matching annual growth rates and annual growth rates of the total population: Eastern Europe, 1170–1880 (van Straten 2007b). Year 1170

No. of Jews 7,000

1490

50,000

1650

250,000

1765

910,000

1825

2,272,000

1880

5,727,000

Annual growth rate (%) Jews Total population 0.6

0.21

1.0

0.22

1.1

0.45

1.5

0.64

1.7

0.91

Source. For Jews, DellaPergola (2001, 22); for total population until 1825, Maddison (2001, 232); for total population from 1826 to 1880, McEvedy and Jones (1978, 85, 93, 97). Note. Eastern Europe includes Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania.

All things considered, it can be stated that the numerical development of East European Jewry suggested by DellaPergola can hardly have taken place. Another approach to determine the size of the Jewish population in Poland in 1500 seemed appropriate.

New Approach to the Determination of the Number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500 (and Earlier) The new approach boils down to determining the number of Jews in 1500, starting with their number in the nineteenth century. This means that we have to retroject later data (from the nineteenth century) to estimate the sizes of the Jewish population in earlier centuries. For this purpose, a number of requirements have to be met: 1. a reliable number of Jews in the nineteenth century must be used, 2. a reliable growth rate of the Jewish population in the nineteenth century must be used, 3. the annual growth rates of the total population for the nineteenth century and earlier must be known, and 4. the annual growth rates of the Jewish population to be used must be realistic in relation to those of the total population.

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As can be seen in table 3 (see p. 95), a number of relatively reliable annual Jewish growth rates are known for the nineteenth century. Because population sizes in the literature are estimates, the growth rates from this table that will be used further on are rounded off to one decimal only. Two decimals would imply an accuracy that is not there. Before 1800 the situation was more complicated. There isn’t a known annual growth rate of a Jewish population. Only the annual growth rates of total populations are known. We also know that the annual growth rates after 1800 were higher than before 1800 (better food, medical developments, the industrial revolution). As nothing is known about the annual growth rates of the Jewish population before 1800, two growth rates will be applied, one equal to that of the total population and one higher. When we limit ourselves to Congress Poland, the higher growth rate is based on the ratio between the Jewish and the total annual growth rate as it occurred there after 1800 (1.3 and 1.1 percent). This way one does not have to use growth rates that are unlikely to ever have occurred in those days. The following example should clarify the procedure. Say we want to know the number of Jews in 1750 by way of the higher annual growth rate. It is known that between 1750 and 1800, the total population of Poland increased 1.2 times. Calculation of the Jewish population in 1750 then goes as follows. During the nineteenth century, in 50 years, the Jewish population of Congress Poland would have increased 1.01350 = 1.9 times, while the total population would have increased 1.01150 = 1.7 times. Now, for the period 1750–1800 we can write: increase Jewish population (1750–1800) : 1.2 = 1.9 : 1.7 Thus, the Jewish population increased 1.9 × 1.2/1.7 = 1.3 times. The number of Jews in 1800 divided by 1.3 then gives the size of the Jewish population in 1750. This method can be applied to any period before 1800, as long as the growth rates of the total population are known. Calculation of the number of Jews in Congress Poland in 1500 In order to test this new approach, I decided to start with Congress Poland and to use the earliest census in the nineteenth century that is generally considered reliable. This is the census of 1897 in Russia, which Congress Poland formed part of (for example Bloch 1980, 69; Ettinger 1994, 257). According to this census, 1.32 million Jews lived in Congress Poland in 1897 (Jewish Encyclopedia 1905, v. 10, 530). This number does not include the Jews of Galicia (annexed by Austria) or those of the five Polish provinces annexed by Germany. Furthermore, many Jews had emigrated,

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and these Jews plus their progeny are also needed to calculate how many Jews there were in 1500. Therefore, only a crude calculation of the number of Jews in Congress Poland in 1500 is shown in Table 5. Table 5. Calculation of the number of Jews in Congress Poland in 1500 (van Straten 2007b). 1900 1897 1816 Annual growth rate (%) 1800 Increase 1500–1800 (×) 1500

Total population 10,000,000a 9,700,000b 4,000,000a 1.1 3,348,738b 2.3f

Jewish population 1,320,000c 1.3d 377,143e 4.2g 90,000

Note. Here Congress Poland refers to the region, not the political entity (which did not come into existence until 1816). a. Based on McEvedy and Jones (1978, 77). b. Calculated with annual growth rate of 1.1. c. Based on Jewish Encyclopedia (1905, v. 10, 530). d. Based on van Straten and Snel (2006). e. Calculated with annual growth rate of 1.3. f. Based on present-day Poland (McEvedy and Jones 1978, 77) g. Calculation of the factor 4.2: 1.013300 × 2.3/1,1011300 = 4.2.

According to the calculations in Table 5, in 1500, 90,000 Jews lived in the area of Congress Poland. Although this number is too low, for the reasons mentioned above, it is already much higher than the numbers suggested by Baron, Weinryb, and DellaPergola for the whole area of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth. In 1897, Congress Poland took up 127,000 km2. Therefore, the 90,000 Jews in 1500 belong to only a fraction of the one million km2 of “Poland” (i.e., of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) before the partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795. To give an idea of the changes in territory in time, three maps of Poland are shown, one of 1629 representing the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, one of 1816 representing Congress Poland, and one of 1939 of Versailles Poland (see Fig. 7, p. 101).

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Defining the area under consideration

Figure 7. Poland (black) in 1629, 1816, and 1939 (based on WHKMLA Histor-

ical Atlas, Poland Page, http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/eceurope/haxpoland.html, printed with consent of the author, Alexander Ganse).

In the introduction of this chapter I have already mentioned that the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth did not remain a political entity. What was left of the territory of Poland after the partition of 1793 was split up again at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and became Congress Poland (Fig. 7). This makes it very difficult to compare the sizes of the Jewish populations in Poland at different periods. It is also not clear how many Jews compared to non-Jews were involved each time Poland lost part of its territory. Because I start the calculations in the nineteenth century, I will try to use an area that agrees as much as possible with that of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth. During the partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, most Polish territory was annexed by Russia. When we realize that Russia during this period also included Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, the area to deal with becomes Poland and European Russia. The most logical continuation is to start from a reliable number of Jews in this area (from now on, Eastern Europe) and to calculate back to 1500.

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Figure 8. The Pale of Settlement in 1897 with the 10 Polish provinces of Congress Poland (with thanks to Jorge Spunberg)

Before entering into numbers, it is helpful to show where in Eastern Europe most of the Jews lived first. This region is called the Pale of Settlement (Fig. 8). The word pale is derived from the Latin word palus (‘pole’), which means an area with a different administrative and judicial system. In this case an area is meant where Jews were allowed to settle. In Russia the term “Pale of Settlement” came into fashion following the partitions of Poland, when together with the Polish territories large numbers of Jews passed under the dominance of Russia. During the nineteenth century the Pale included Lithuania, the ten provinces of Congress Poland annexed by the Russians, Belarus, most of Ukraine, the Crimea, and Bessarabia (New Encyclopaedia Britannica 1993, v. 9, 76). In 1905, almost 94 percent of Russian Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement

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Numbers and growth rates to start from It also holds true for Eastern Europe that the only reliable census is the one of 1897. It would be ideal if we also knew how many Jews were in all of Eastern Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then we could calculate in a precise manner the annual growth rate of the Jewish population in the nineteenth century, which could be used as a starting point for the growth rate(s) before 1800. However, we are not that lucky. This means that we will have to deduce the growth rate of East European Jewry in the nineteenth century from the growth rates of Jewish populations in regions or countries, preferably in Eastern Europe, for which data about numbers at two points in time are known. By comparing the growth rates found with those of the corresponding non-Jewish populations, we also find out how much faster the Jewish population increased relative to the non-Jewish ones. As mentioned before, such a comparison, as far as Eastern Europe is concerned, could only be made for Posen, the originally Polish province of Poznan. Van Straten and Snel (2006) deduced the nineteenth-century increase of the Jewish population in Congress Poland from the increase of the Jewish population in Posen. The more eastern provinces of Congress Poland were economically worse off than the province of Posen. Also Jews were worse off in the eastern provinces than in Posen (von Bergmann 1883, 147). It is therefore not plausible that the aforementioned Jewish annual growth rate, 1.3, would have to be higher when applied to the nineteenth-century increase of the Jewish population in Congress Poland, or in the rest of Eastern Europe, where the situation of the Jews was pretty bad as well. Before 1800, two annual growth rates will be used again, one equal to that of the total population and one higher, calculated as in the example on p. 99. The calculation The number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1800 Thus, we start out from the census of 1897. It appears that, rounded to the nearest 10,000, 3,560,000 Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, 1,320,000 in the 10 annexed Polish provinces, and 210,000 in the European Russian territories outside the Pale (Jewish Encyclopedia 1905, v. 10, 529–530). In total, there were 5.1 million Jews. To this should be added the 800,000 Jews of Galicia (in 1897 under Austrian rule, but formerly Polish), which brings the total to 5.9 million. In addition, the Jewish populations of five German provinces (formerly Polish), East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomera-

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nia, Posen, and Silesia, should be added. Since the data of these provinces are for the year 1900, the number of East European Jews from the census in 1897 will be extrapolated to the number in 1900 first. The 5.9 million Jews of 1897 may have increased to 6.13 million in 1900 (increase calculated with the annual growth rate of 1.3 percent). Now the 126,000 Jews of the five originally Polish provinces are added, which makes 6.25 million Jews. To complete the calculation, we also have to know the number of the Jews who left Eastern Europe and their final number at the end of the nineteenth century. Before 1900, 89 percent of the Jews who left Europe went to the United States (Lestschinsky 1960, 1554). This percentage will be used in the following calculations. Table 6. Jewish migration from Eastern Europe: 1820–1900 (van Straten 2007b).

1820௅1870 1871௅1880 1881௅1890 1891௅1900 1820௅1900

No. of immigrants to the U.S. 30,000 70,000 200,000 400,000 700,000

Total no. of immigrantsa 33,708 78,652 224,719 449,438 786,517

Factorb

Final number

2.03 1.38 1.21 1.07

68,427 108,540 271,910 480,899 929,776

Source. Lestschinsky (1960, 1561–62). a. Because 89 percent emigrated to the United States, the total number of Jewish emigrants is obtained by dividing the number of Jewish emigrants to the U.S. by 0.89. b. Calculation of the factor for the period 1820–1870: Because the number of people who left is unknown, the average period of time is used, 55 years (1845–1900). An annual growth rate of 1.3 percent determined for the Jewish population of Congress Poland during the nineteenth century (van Straten and Snel 2006) is considered representative for the growth of East European Jewry during the same period, which yields a factor of 2.03 (1.01355).

The number of Jews who left Eastern Europe between 1820 and 1900 was at least 700,000 to 750,000 (ibid., 1561). Since Hungary and Rumania are also considered to be part of Eastern Europe by Lestschinsky, only the lower estimate will be used. The calculations in Table 6 show that the final number of Jewish emigrants who left Eastern Europe was approximately 930,000. Adding the 930,000 emigrants to the 6.25 million yields some 7.18 million East European Jews in 1900. This number agrees with the 7 million to 7.5 million Jews mentioned by Stampfer (1989). It is lower than the 8.51 million cited by DellaPergola, but he also included the Jewish populations of Bohemia, Hungary, and Romania, which makes comparison difficult. An annual growth rate of 1.3 means that during the nineteenth century, the Jewish population increased 3.5 times (1.013100). Dividing by 3.5 yields 2.05 million Jews in 1800.

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The number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500 Before 1800 there aren’t any reliable data about the increase of the Jewish population. Between 1650 and 1772 there are data about the increase of the total population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (McEvedy and Jones 1978, 77). Because of losses and gains of territory (plus population), I calculated the population increases for the periods 1500–1600 (1.2×), 1600–1650 (1.1×) and 1650–1772 (1.5×). As for the Jewish population, two growth rates will again be applied. The results of the calculations, in rounded figures, are shown in Table 7 (see p. 106), together with the estimates by Mahler, Baron, Weinryb, and DellaPergola. Calculation of the number of Jews in 1764 will be shown as an example. In 1764, the first census took place in which the Jews of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth were counted. Between 1650 and 1772, the total population of the Commonwealth increased 1.6 times, from 7.5 million to 12 million. In 1764, the total population must have amounted to 11.8 million people (7.5×1.004114). In 1800, the Commonwealth did not exist anymore. By using the same annual growth rate for those last 28 years, it is possible to estimate the number of people inhabiting this area in 1800, namely 13.6 million. Thus, between 1764 and 1800, the total population of the Commonwealth would have increased 1.2 times. With equal growth rates, in 1764, the number of Jews in the Commonwealth was 1,708,676 million (2,050,411/1.2). The factor for the faster growth, calculated the same way as for Congress Poland, is 1.3 (1.01336 × 1.2/1.01136), which means a Jewish population of 1,577,239 million (2,050,411/1.3). Thus, in 1764, there must have been between 1.6 and 1.7 million Jews in Eastern Europe. According to Table 7, in 1500 between 460,000 and 860,000 Jews lived in Eastern Europe (the Commonwealth). However, there is still a catch. In 1648, in the Ukraine, the Cossack uprising led by Khmelnytsky cost the lives of many Jews, as they sided with the Poles. This means that the numbers before 1648 may be too low when one starts the calculation in the nineteenth century. However, I will apply no correction, and I will return to the numbers of casualties and the decision not to apply a correction in chapter VIII. The exactness of the numbers just calculated obviously becomes less the further we go back in time. Livi-Bacci (1999, 191) assumes that there is a margin of 20 percent when dealing with numbers in 1500. However, the numbers calculated for 1500 deviate so much from those in the literature that 20 percent more or less is of no importance, really.

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Table 7. The Jewish population in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Eastern Europe: 1500–1800 (van Straten 2007b). Year 1800 1764 1700 1675 1650 1600 1500

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Mahler Baron Weinryb 750,000

Eastern Europe DellaPergolaa Van Stratenb 2,050,000 1,580,000–1,710,000 1,050,000–1,310,000

190,000 450,000 150,000 30,000

200,000

250,000

15,000

55,000

830,000–1,140,000 690,000–1,040,000 460,000–860,000

a. Numbers include the Jews of Bohemia, Hungary and Romania. b. Based on the census of 1897 (Jewish Encyclopedia 1905), the calculated nineteenthcentury growth rate of the Jewish population of Congress Poland (van Straten and Snel 2006), and the general population growth rate in Eastern Europe between 1500 and 1800 (McEvedy and Jones 1978, 75, 79).

The Number of Jews in Germany in 1500 To check the validity of the calculation of the number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500, it would be helpful if this could be tested by the calculation of the number of Jews in 1500 in another region or country. The only estimate I am aware of is the size of the Jewish population in Germany, and only for the beginning of the fifteenth century. According to Weinryb (1972, 32), in the first half of the fifteenth century, between 25,000 and 50,000 Jews were living in Germany. Table 8 shows how the number of Jews in 1500 in Germany was determined. Also in this case two annual growth rates were used: a high one, based on the nineteenth-century annual growth rate of 1.4 of the German Jews (van Straten and Snel 2006), and a low one of 0.22 (Maddison 2001, 34) that agrees with the increase of the German population between 1500 and 1800. Table 8. Calculation of the Jewish population in Germany in 1500 (van Straten 2007b) Number of Jews in 1800 Divided by Number of Jews in 1500

Slow growth 138,600a 3.3b 42,000d

Fast growth 138,600a 1.8c 77,000d

Note. Here, Germany does not include the former Polish provinces East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen, and Silesia. a. Van Straten and Snel (2006). b. 1.014300 ×1.8/1.012300 = 64.8 × 1.8/35.8 = 3.3. c. 1.002300 = 1.8. d. Rounded figures.

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When we take into account a 20 percent margin (Livi-Bacci 1999, 191), in 1500 there must have been between 25,000 and 86,000 Jews. This number agrees fairly well with the estimate by Weinryb. The Number of Jews in Eastern Europe before 1500 What about the number of Jews in Eastern Europe before 1500? The further we go back in time, the more inaccurate the estimate becomes. Between 1400 (actually 1385) and 1500 we are still dealing with the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth. During this period, its population had an annual growth rate of about 0.2 percent (McEvedy and Jones 1978, 77), and it therefore increased 1.2 times. For the Jewish population, this means that in 1400, with the same annual growth rate, it consisted of 720,000 people. When we use the higher annual growth rate, then between 1400 and 1500, the Jewish population increased 1.5 times (1.013100×1.2/1.011100), and we arrive at 310,000 persons in 1400. Before 1400 it becomes rather awkward to determine the annual growth rate of the population in the whole area. I will start from the data for Poland and European Russia. According to McEvedy and Jones (1978, 75, 79) and Maddison (2001, 232), between 1000 and 1500, the annual growth rate of the total population of Poland and European Russia was 0.2 percent. Starting from 0.2 percent, between 1000 and 1400, the total population increased 2.2௅fold. Again, with the same annual growth rate, this amounts to 330,000 Jews. With the higher growth rate, the number becomes 65,000 (1.013400×2.2/1.011400). According to Livi-Bacci (1999, 191), we have to reckon with deviations of 50 percent, when dealing with these estimates. This means that in the year 1000, the Jewish population ranged from anywhere between 32,000 and 490,000. The annual growth rate between 1000 and 1900 must have been between 0.3 and 0.6 percent. Going back to the beginning of the Common Era, we arrive at an average increase of the total population of Poland and European Russia during the first millennium of 0.08 percent (Maddison 2001, 232; McEvedy and Jones 1978, 77, 79). In other words, in the year 1000, the population was 2.12 times as large as at the beginning of the Common Era. Using this general increase as the smallest increase of the Jewish population, at the beginning of the Common Era there would have been 160,000 Jews in Eastern Europe. Using the higher annual growth rate again, there would have been only 4,000 Jews in Eastern Europe at that time. When we apply again a deviation of 50 percent (it may also be higher), then the number of Jews at the beginning of the Common Era lies somewhere between 2,000 and 230,000. Especially the upper limit may not sound very plausible, and we will see in chapter VIII how to deal with this number. Apart from the number of Jews in Eastern Europe, perhaps unlikely for this time, the ex-

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actness of any number for the beginning of the Common Era is a big question mark anyway. Since the calculations are based on data by Maddison and McEvedy and Jones for Eastern Europe, the estimate of the number of Jews during this period is as reliable or unreliable as their data.

Conclusions 1. The numbers of Jews in the Middle Ages in the Jewish literature are fictitious. This is evident from the resulting growth rates, which are, during certain centuries, three to four times as high as those of the total population. 2. The sizes of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe in 1500 mentioned in the Jewish literature are based only on the small number of Jews that lived in Germany during the Middle Ages. 3. The numbers of Jews in Eastern Europe before 1900 calculated in this chapter are based on realistic growth rates. The resulting range in 1500, 460,000–860,000, is of such dimension that East European Jewry cannot have originated from Germany. 4. The size of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe in 1500 calculated in this chapter is the coup de grâce for the Germany hypothesis.

VI. Yiddish Introduction The Yiddish language is divided into Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish. Western Yiddish was spoken by Jews in the German-speaking region, including the Netherlands (until about 1800), but now it is an almost dead language. It is of no importance for the origin of East European Jewry. Eastern Yiddish is the language of the Jews of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine who were not completely assimilated. In place of the term Eastern Yiddish, the term Yiddish will be used, because this is the only kind of Yiddish discussed in this chapter. The language consists of different components, German, Hebrew, Slavic, and Romance, of which German is the main one. Nevertheless, Yiddish is written in Hebrew characters. Yiddish must have originated among a group of German-speaking Jews, because according to structure it is a Germanic language. Therefore, almost all linguists and historians have been convinced that Yiddish must have originated from today’s Germany and that it reached Eastern Europe by way of substantial migrations of German Jews to Poland (van Raad and Voorwinden 1973, 57–58; Weinreich 1980, 431, 449; Keller 1986, 336; Stedje 1999, 106). Next, the Slavic component entered into Yiddish by contact with Slavic-speaking peoples (Weinreich 1980, 351). The origin of Yiddish is indissolubly connected with the migration patterns of Jews in Europe. This is the reason why a chapter is devoted to the origin of Yiddish. However, there are different, contradictory opinions about both the origin of Yiddish and the migration patterns. Now to these, it must be added that in chapter III it was shown that no large migrations of German Jews to Poland took place, and that according to the preceding chapter, so many Jews already lived in Eastern Europe between 1000 and 1500 that they could not have originated from Germany. How then is it possible that East European Jews spoke Yiddish? To answer this question we will have to find out whether there is a hypothesis about the origin of Yiddish that can provide a good explanation for the fact that East European Jews spoke Yiddish. By the end of the twentieth century there were five hypotheses to explain the origin of Yiddish: the Rhineland, the Danube, the Silesian, the Sorb, and the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis. The last one is the most recent, and dates from 1998. Every hypothesis

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will be treated in varying detail, to ascertain whether it can provide an explanation for the dissemination of Yiddish in Eastern Europe that agrees with the results obtained in the foregoing chapters.

The Rhineland Hypothesis According to Weinreich (1980, 1), Yiddish originated from a region along the river Rhine between Cologne and Speyer with its western border being a line that runs along Trier and Metz. The Jews called this region loter. He is also of the opinion that the Jews arrived in Cologne with the Romans. However, these Jews had nothing to do with the origin of Yiddish; he continues, “Hence, from the point of view of Yiddish, this early appearance of Jewish life in the Rhineland must be characterized as a prehistorical phenomenon” (ibid., 2). In the chapter “The Historical-Geographic Determinants: Loter, the Cradle of Yiddish,” Weinreich elaborates further on this subject. He wonders whether Jews left the Rhineland with the appearance of the barbarians. He argues that they did, giving two pieces of evidence to prove his point. The first is the fact that during the time of the Visigoths and the Merovingians (between 418 and 751), Jews were not mentioned in the Rhineland, but only in Gaul. The second is linguistic. During the tenth century, Jews used the name rinus in their Hebrew literature for the river Rhine. As the ending -us is Latin and the name of the river in Old High German and Middle High German is rîn, the form rinus can only have been brought along to loter via Jews who spoke Roman Loez (JudeoLatin). Loez is the old Yiddish name for Jewish variants of medieval languages. (The word Loez is the Yiddish equivalent of the Hebrew la‘az, meaning a foreign language; this word is also used as an acronym la‘”az, and then it is an abbreviation of leshon ‘am zar, meaning ‘language of a foreign people.’) Finally, he says: “It is necessary to conclude that when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the Jews of the Rhine-Moselle area withdrew to Gaul.” This conclusion is based on two assumptions: that with the appearance of the Germans, Jews disappeared from loter, and that rinus is a mixed form. According to Weinreich, when Jews subsequently returned to loter, they brought along this kind of “ready-made” geographic name. In summary: Jews in Cologne spoke Roman Loez (Judeo-Latin); this they took along to northern France; Roman Loez changed into western Loez or Jewish Old French (the Old French of northern France); and after some 500 years they returned to Germany, but now speaking Judeo-French (ibid., 329–330). According to the exponents of the Rhineland hypothesis, the Romance component thus comes mainly from Judeo-French and to

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some extent from Judeo-Latin and was unequivocally shown to be present before 1500 (for example, Timm 1987, 361). Evaluation of the Rhineland hypothesis The Rhineland hypothesis states that Yiddish ended up in Eastern Europe together with German Jews who fled from Germany during the pogroms. As we saw in chapter III, no massive migrations occurred, and therefore it seems out of the question that Yiddish originated this way. In addition, arguments can be advanced that show that the assumptions on which Weinreich bases his hypothesis are wrong. The absence of information The first piece of evidence, the lack of mention of Jews, does not mean that they were not there. In chapter III it was pointed out that people are mentioned only when there is something particular to say about them. We only know something about the Jews of Cologne because of the decrees by Emperor Constantine in 321 and 331. If Constantine had never promulgated these decrees, we would never have known that at such an early time there was a Jewish community in Cologne. An important reason that nothing is known about Jews in the Rhineland has to do with the person who supplied most of the information about Jews in those days, Gregory of Tours (ca. 540–594), author of History of the Franks. While discussing the historical sources in his book about the Franks, James (1988, 16) writes that Gregory mainly dealt with the doings of the Frankish kings. Contrary to earlier authors, James thinks that Gregory was a biased author: “We can certainly try to correct his judgments by his own narrative; but we cannot correct his facts, for usually we have no other source of information [...] he was a collector of reports, of hearsay and rumour, whose truth he may not always have tried to untangle” (ibid., 17).

Probably more important in this case is a later remark by James: “And although Gregory is well-informed about affairs in his part of Gaul, he knows very little about the lands beyond the Alps, Pyrenees, Rhine or the Channel” (ibid., 92). In addition, around 500 C.E., the Franks in the Rhineland probably already had their own kingdom and they felt different from the other Franks. Therefore, it is not surprising that with Gregory, who limited himself largely to the Franks in Gaul, nothing can be found about Jews in the Rhineland. There is, however, a more important reason, probably the reason, that no written sources about Jews in Cologne can be found concerning the period between the fourth and the tenth century. This has nothing to do

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with whether or not Jews were present. As mentioned in chapter III, in 881 the Cologne archives were destroyed by the Vikings. Therefore, it is actually out of the question that in Cologne written sources from the period were saved. The departure of the Jews Based on a number of archaeological excavations, Fuks (1965, 5, note 1) came to the conclusion that Jews kept on living in the Rhineland and that they slowly changed their Romance language into a German one, just as the other inhabitants did. It should be clear, however, that Cologne was bilingual because of the Ubians, a Germanic tribe that the Romans in 38 B.C.E. had transferred from the right bank of the Rhine to Cologne. In a later publication, Fuks (1987, 25) writes: “The undisturbed continuity of Jewish life in the area may also explain the complete absence of Jewish written sources in the period until the eleventh century. Silence in history and linguistics may [...] account for well-being as well as for the opposite [...] Written evidence is extremely scarce, partly due to the fact that Latin was the only written language in those days. The various spoken languages had not yet reached the state of writing.”

The archaeological findings of Gechter and Schütte (see pp. 39–43) finally take the edge off Weinreich’s first proof and thus also make his second point very questionable. The inaccuracy of the proofs of Weinreich is important, as it unsettles the basis of his argumentation for loter as the cradle of Yiddish. According to Weinreich, Jews from the Roman period had nothing to do with the development of Yiddish. Therefore, it was necessary that Jews left Cologne so that there could not have been a continuity as far as a Jewish presence in the Rhineland was concerned. The linguistic evidence Weinreich’s second argument had to do with the word rinus. He views this word as half German, half Latin. This may be the case the way he transcribes it into rinus, but is the transcription into rinus really necessary? And if Jews used a word resembling Latin, is it necessary that they brought it along from somewhere else? Weinreich obviously is of the opinion that the descendants of the Jews who left Cologne for France did not know Latin anymore. To begin with, the way Weinreich transcribes the Jewish word into rinus does not have to be correct, because the letter yod, the i of rinus, can also be an e (Darmesteter 1872). Moreover, in this case the e is even the most natural letter to be used. We then obtain the word renus, and that is the Latin name (Rhenus) of the river. Jews would then, like the other Germans, have used the Latin name of the river in their writings. That Jews indeed used the Hebrew letter yod for an e appears from the following

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example; 10 out of 28 Jewish representations of the name Regensburg have a letter yod for the first e, while the name is being pronounced as Regensburg and not Rigensburg. The word renus is the more plausible, because Jews in Cologne also spoke Latin originally. Therefore, the use of the Latin name did not need to come from abroad at all, and this is actually a much simpler explanation than the more complicated one that Weinreich uses. Add to this the fact that Jews did not have to leave Cologne at all, and little remains of his “evidence.” The opinion of some well-known medieval rabbis that the German Jews did not originate from France (Davis 2002, note 42) does not agree with Weinreich’s hypothesis either. The Romance component As to the possible French origin of Romance words and Ashkenazi Jews, it should be mentioned first of all that we are only talking about a small number of words, including some proper nouns. King (1990, 50) refers to an analogous situation in German: “German has as many loanwords from Celtic as Yiddish has from Romance if no more [...] yet it is linguistically unprofitable to speak of a ‘Celtic component’ in German because Celtic had no structural impact on German.”

Therefore, the same may be said about the Romance words in Yiddish (see also Eggers 1998, 62–63). Because the Jews had stayed in Germany constantly since the Roman period, an explanation of the Romance words based on this continuation is more plausible. German Jews, like other Roman citizens, switched from Latin to German. In Yiddish this can be seen in words like orn (‘to pray,’ from Latin orare), or bentshn (‘to bless,’ from Latin benedicere). Kleiber (1974, 18; from German) studied Germanization in the Rhineland, and he writes: “The Germanization of these large areas, probably totally completed only during the twelfth century, originally stemmed from Cologne and Mainz, later from Trier and Koblenz.” This means that long after the Franks had taken over the region, a Romance dialect was still spoken (as well). For the Jews this bilingualism must have had an extra dimension, as they maintained close contacts with their coreligionists across the border who spoke Old French. It must not have been very difficult for them to undergo the same development from Latin to Old French as the Jews who lived in Gaul itself. (That the Jews in northern France spoke standard Old French instead of a separate Jewish dialect was clearly shown by Kiwitt 2003.) With this explanation, a migration of French Jews to Germany is not necessary. The Germanization of the Latin words is also easier to explain in this way. Considering that during the tenth and eleventh centuries, Germany harbored the most important Talmud schools in Western Europe, such as those in Worms and Mainz where not only German rabbis studied

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but also French ones, like Rashi, and where even young men from Kiev came to study (Elbogen et al. 1934, xxxvii), it is not surprising that these Germanized Romance words also spread outside of Germany.

The Danube Hypothesis As the name shows, this hypothesis poses that Yiddish originated from the area of the river Danube whose center was the town of Regensburg, in the southeastern part of Germany. In this region Bavarian was spoken. The Danube hypothesis was developed independently by Faber and King (1984) and by Katz (1985, 85–103; 1991). It is based on both historical and linguistic arguments. The idea that Yiddish originated from the Bavarianspeaking area had been proposed already earlier by Mieses (1924, 269), who did not give this idea a name. He indicates that it is mainly the Bavarian dialect that occurs in Yiddish, while no words from the Rhineland can be found. Apart from the linguistic argument, he also has demographic objections (ibid., 291; from German): “Must all of Ashkenazi Jewry from Central and Eastern Europe have originated from the small western corner? Just numerically, how could that be possible?” King agrees with this objection. He dedicated a strong chapter to this subject, in which he concludes (1992, 431), “Demographically it is not possible to account for the enormous growth of Ashkenazic Jewry in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe from Western European sources alone.” As we saw in the last chapter, both are right. According to the Danube hypothesis, Jews did not come from the Rhineland or the southwestern part of Germany but from the Balkans or northern Italy. As an additional possibility, the route Thessalonica–Hungary–Prague is mentioned. According to this hypothesis, Jews in southeastern Germany were not involved in the settlement of Jews in the Rhineland. Rhineland Jews did not speak Yiddish either. Later on, mixing took place with Jews from southeastern Germany who spoke Yiddish. This mixing could have been the result of Jews from the Rhineland fleeing to the southeast during the persecutions starting in the thirteenth century, or Jews from Bavaria going to the Rhineland. Yiddish would then have superseded the original language of the Jews in the Rhineland. Because Yiddish did not exist yet in the tenth century when the Jews of Regensburg are mentioned for the first time, these Jews must have spoken Bavarian, the vernacular. This was necessary to communicate with fellow citizens and to make a living via crafts or trade (Eggers 1998, 449). An important argument to the advantage of the Danube hypothesis is that Yiddish does contain components from Bavarian, but not from the Rhineland

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dialect. However, as we will see below, in this case as well, the exact area of origin cannot be determined, because the hypothesis only deals with the state of Bavaria (ibid., 65). I will therefore not discuss the matter any further.

The Bavarian-Czech Hypothesis In 1998, Eggers published a modification of the Danube hypothesis that was so far-reaching in its methodology, its extensive treatment of the Slavic words, and its treatment of the spread of Yiddish that it actually resulted in a new hypothesis, the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis. Up to 1998, written texts that appeared relatively late were used for the study of the origin of Yiddish. Before the fifteenth century there aren’t any texts at all that point to Yiddish in Poland and Lithuania, and what we find in the fifteenth century is so little and so unclear as to its Yiddish character that it does not add anything to our knowledge about the vernacular in those days (Shmeruk 1981, 16–17). The first book that was consciously written in Yiddish dates from only 1790 (ibid., 13), and the first book of the Bible in vernacular Yiddish (and not in word-for-word translation, the so-called calque variant) was only published in 1813 (Fishman 1991, 43– 44). The older texts kept very closely to the principles of German. Eggers (2001) quotes a Polish text by Shmeruk in which he advances two causes for the above: the Bible had to be translated word for word into the second language, and regional Yiddish words that were not common were omitted. Therefore, Shmeruk concludes that the language that is found in the older Jewish sources does not represent everyday speech from that time. According to Eggers (2001), these and other factors are the reason older Yiddish texts contributed little to the study of the origin of Yiddish. He further maintains that Yiddish originated from the twelfth to thirteenth century, when there were not yet written sources in Yiddish (Eggers 1998, 228). The result of all this is that for solving the question of where Yiddish originated, one is committed to a system of analysis that works without written texts. There is such a system, and it is called linguistic reconstruction. Linguistic reconstruction This is the system that is being used for the investigation of Indo-European languages. This is the first time the approach has been used for Yiddish. A prerequisite for the use of the system is that the investigator knows the

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relevant languages well, in this case German, Yiddish, Slavic, and to some extent Romance. In addition to linguistic reconstruction, in the case of Yiddish, extralinguistic arguments should also be used. For the investigation of Yiddish, this means that other aspects can be used than for the investigation of, e.g., Germanic languages as a whole. Although Yiddish may be classified as an Indo-European language, there is a difference concerning liguistic reconstruction. For the reconstruction of IndoEuropean, all languages that belong to that group have to be taken into account, which means a wide range of languages. For the reconstruction of Germanic all Germanic languages are necessary, but for the reconstruction of Yiddish—as a language which came into being in the Middle Ages—only a small group of languages are used, i.e., (Middle High) German with some German dialects of that time, the Slavic languages in the contact areas, and to a certain degree Hebrew. In the case of Yiddish, cultural and geographic data may be used as well because—as is not the case for Indo-European—these data can be related to certain groups of speakers.

Thus, the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis is based on a re-evaluation of the Slavic words in Yiddish, historical knowledge of the Jews in Central Europe, the history of the German language, and the relationships between the German dialects. In this context, Eggers uses the fact that, as a rule, when Jews arrived in a new region, they adopted the colloquial language and changed it by adding Hebrew elements (ibid., 448). He is of the opinion that the Hebrew component was already present in Yiddish from the beginning, even if quantitatively to a much smaller extent than German (ibid., 452). In short, the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis amounts to the following. Jews who originally came from the Balkans and Italy settled in the Bavarian-speaking region. Bavarian was not only spoken in the districts around Regensburg but also in Bohemia and Moravia where, of course, Czech was spoken as well. They thereby gave up their Judeo-Romance and switched to Bavarian, from which Yiddish evolved. Next, the Yiddish-speaking Jews moved toward Poland and Lithuania. The latter plays a crucial role in the determination of the region where Yiddish began. It happens that Lithuanian Yiddish is the oldest attested form of Yiddish, and it is the only one that contains only Bavarian elements in the German component. In 1215, as a result of the Fourth Council of the Lateran with its antiJewish regulations, the situation of the Jews started to deteriorate, especially in the Duchy of Mazovia (in which Warsaw is located). This duchy is situated in the northeast of Poland and thus forms the region between Lithuania and the rest of Poland. At one point, it became impossible for Jews to transverse Mazovia towards Lithuania. Jews coming from the west could reach Lithuania only via the Duchy of Pomerelia, which is further north, thus bypassing the Duchy of Mazovia. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Jews were expelled from Mazovia. In 1466 Pomerelia was incorpo-

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rated into Poland, and German immigrants could not travel to Lithuania directly by land anymore (ibid., 199). In essence, Lithuanian Jews were cut off from the remaining Jews in Poland and Germany. The German component That the Jews could speak Bavarian can be deduced from the fact that the oldest form of Yiddish, Lithuanian Yiddish, contains Bavarian components that do not appear in Polish Yiddish. For example, the original long a (as in Magdeburg) in Bavarian became an o in Lithuanian Yiddish and a u (as in English good) in Polish and Ukrainian Yiddish. In this development, the a first became an o and then a u. Thus Lithuanian Yiddish is closer to the original form in the Bavarian dialect. In Bavarian a long a is also pronounced as o. This suggests that the Bavarian features must have reached Lithuania before the Lithuanian Jews became isolated from the Polish Jews and that they therefore must be very old. The unrounding of vowels It must be emphasized that the above-mentioned argument must also agree with other linguistic features. One of them, that can be found in every Yiddish dialect, is the unrounding of vowels (ü became i and ö became e). Unrounding in Germany took place in different periods. If the unrounding found in Lithuanian Yiddish originally came from Bavarian, it is important to know when the unrounding in Bavaria had taken place (ibid., 227). It is generally assumed that this happened in the thirteenth century, although some examples are from the twelfth century. If we may rely on deeds, it happened during the first half of the thirteenth century for Middle Bavarian and during the second half of the century for Northern and Southern Bavarian. In East Middle German, unrounding did not take place until the fourteenth century. The early point of time for Middle Bavarian is an additional indication that Yiddish originated from the region where Middle Bavarian was spoken. As there were isolated areas in Bohemia and Moravia where Bavarian was spoken and unrounding there took place around 1200, Eggers considers this a further confirmation of his hypothesis that Yiddish originated between the twelfth and the thirteenth century and that it is based on the Bavarian dialect (ibid., 227). Because of its old Bavarian features, Lithuanian Yiddish has been decisive for the conclusion that the Northern and Middle Bavarian linguistic area in particular formed the area of origin of Yiddish.

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The Old Czech (Slavic) component In view of the early unrounding and the Bavarian elements, Bohemia is the first to be considered as the region where Yiddish started, since already in early times there had been Jewish scholars in Bohemia (Prague was an important Jewish center), and both Bavarian German and Old Czech were spoken there. Because of the numerous Jewish settlements in the rest of Bohemia and Moravia, it becomes clear why the Slavic elements in Yiddish come from Old Czech (ibid., 82). The Old Czech elements primarily pertain to the vocabulary of Yiddish, and to a lesser extent to the grammar. This means that we are dealing with loan words from the colloquial language and that therefore Yiddish did not develop from a Slavic language as Wexler suggests in the Sorb hypothesis (see below). Already in the eleventh century, the German rabbi Gershom ben Yehuda used Old Czech words in his Hebrew commentaries. As mentioned on p. 74, Old Czech and Old Polish hardly differed. Sadly enough, we do not know how many Jews lived in Bohemia (or in southern Poland) in those days. However, from the fact that Gershom ben Yehuda and other Jewish scholars used Old Czech words, which were also understandable for Polish Jews, the conclusion appears to be justified that these rabbis must have had a considerable number of students from Bohemia and Poland. When there were many students from these regions, one may expect that there was also quite a large Jewish population that spoke or in any case understood Old Czech and/or Old Polish. This means that the Old Czech words may have entered Yiddish (or the German that was spoken) at an early time, because in the early period a relatively large part of the Jews obviously spoke Czech. As it happens, Jews already lived in Bohemia before the tenth century. The descendants of these Jews must have taken the Czech words along to their new settlements. Eggers then reached the logical conclusion that Yiddish must have originated from the Bavarian-speaking region. The Hebrew component In the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis, very little mention is made of the Hebrew component. Eggers is of the opinion that Jewish religious education played an important role in the origin of Yiddish. On the one hand, through the use of Hebrew words for typically Jewish things (for example, seyfer from Hebrew, for Jewish books, and bichel from German, for non-Jewish books); on the other hand, through the use of the Hebrew script (ibid.,

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386). Further on we will see that Jewish religious education was also a driving force behind the dissemination of Yiddish in Eastern Europe. Evaluation of the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis Origin and Judeo-Romance Like the Danube hypothesis, the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis assumes that Jews in Bohemia and Moravia originated from Italy and the Balkans (to explain the Romance words), and that they, via the Bavarian-speaking region and knowing Yiddish, left for Eastern Europe. With the increase of this Jewish population, Yiddish was supposedly disseminated in Eastern Europe. This opinion cannot be reconciled with the large Jewish population already present in Eastern Europe long before 1500. Besides, nothing is known about large Jewish migrations from the Balkans and northern Italy toward Eastern Europe. However, for this hypothesis, it is not essential to postulate such migrations, because another origin of the Romance words is possible without affecting the essence of the hypothesis. The important Talmud schools in the Rhineland and in northern France can of course serve as a source for the few Romance words that are found in Yiddish. Regions of settlement In the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis, Lithuania plays a key role. The questions are: where did these Jews come from, and along which route did they arrive in Lithuania? It is remarkable that the earliest known Jewish settlements were located along the Vistula (ibid., 193). This river, an important international trade route, flows from the southeast to the northwest of Poland. Next, Eggers assumes that settlements were founded from the northwest toward the southeast. As evidence for this course of events, he mentions that in 1413 Czersk, in the northwest, and in 1414 Warsaw, in the east, were mentioned as places where Jews lived. With this route, he indicates that they mainly migrated from Bohemia to Lithuania, although a possible role is also granted to southern Russia (ibid., 195). Although, Czersk and Warsaw are located in Poland, I would like to go into this matter briefly, because the migration from the West assumed on the basis of these towns also pertains to Lithuania. Mentioning the presence of Jews in a certain year only shows that in that year there was something to report about these Jews, or that from then on certain matters concerning Jews were registered. They may have lived there for a hundred years or more. From the next example it becomes clear that I have some doubts about the conclusion by Eggers. Herzog (1965, 240) shows on a map how the dates recorded for Jewish settlements on or near the Vistula increase from the

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southeast to the northwest: 1413, 1414, 1422, 1449, 1446. That is why one cannot conclude from these kinds of data that we are dealing here with a migration from the West, or that the settlements took place from northwest to southeast, or the other way around. The geography of the river means that Jews in these settlements, in addition to coming from Bohemia via Krakow (on the Vistula), may also have come from the Ukraine (southern Russia) via Przemysl, but first via the San, a tributary of the Vistula. It is therefore not inconceivable that Lithuanian Jews originated from Bohemia and southern Russia. As mentioned on p. 54, Bohemian Jews probably do not originate in Western Europe. This means that those Jews who left Bohemia for Lithuania may at an earlier stage have arrived from southern Russia, whether or not via Hungary. Yiddish-speaking immigrants? According to the hypothesis, the first settlements of Jews in Lithuania would have consisted mainly of Yiddish-speaking Jews who had arrived there from the West. And yet, this assumption should be commented on as well. There is no evidence that the first Jewish immigrants in Lithuania spoke Yiddish or that they came from the West. Jewish settlements in Lithuania existed already two to three centuries before all of the known Jewish settlements in Mazovia (ibid., 242). The oldest known Jewish community in Mazovia is that of Plock, dating from 1237 (Neues Lexikon des Judentums 1992, 367). If we go back in time two centuries, this means, according to Herzog (ibid.), that already at the beginning of the eleventh century, Jews lived in Lithuania. Is it possible that those Jews spoke Yiddish at that early a date? According to the hypothesis, Yiddish could only have started around 1200 for no other reason than that during that time unrounding of vowels took place in Bavarian. Because Jews lived in Lithuania already before that time, these Jews certainly cannot have been Yiddish-speaking immigrants. Immigrants who arrived in Lithuania after 1200, assuming that they came from Bohemia or southeastern Germany, obviously may have been speaking Yiddish. For lack of massive migrations, their number can never have been very large. The Old Czech (Slavic) component By enlarging the area where Yiddish originated according to the Danube hypothesis—the area around Regensburg in southeastern Germany—with Bohemia and Moravia, Eggers was able to develop his hypothesis. There is a convincing piece of information which indicates that Old Czech probably was incorporated at the earliest stages of Yiddish: the oc-

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currence of Old Czech words in the rabbinical Hebrew literature. The aforementioned rabbis Gershom ben Yehuda and Rashi used Czech words in their Hebrew commentaries. Lewicki (1956) names the twelfth-century rabbi Abraham ben Azriel from Bohemia-Moravia, who used some 40 Old Czech words in his book Arugat habosem (Bed of spices), a book about liturgical poems. As the Old Czech words date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, Lewicki considers them valuable material for the history of the Czech language as well. The twelfth-century French Tosafist (someone who wrote additions to Rashi’s commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud) Josef Kara also used Slavic words in his commentaries. Geiger (1847, 29; from German) writes: “Like Rashi, he also uses the translation into a living language to explain more clearly what words mean; to him French is the most current colloquial language as well, which is normally denoted as La‘az, but strangely enough also Slavic, ‘the language of Canaan,’ is used by him as it is by Rashi and other men from these regions, which leads to the conclusion that there was an early lively contact of French and German Jews with other countries, especially with Bohemia.”

Tykocinsky (1911), in his article about Isaac Or Zarua (see p. 72), clearly showed that in the Middle Ages, the Hebrew word kena‘an meant Bohemia. Isaac Or Zarua used 51 Czech words in his commentary on the Talmud. Jakobson and Halle (1964) also conclude that by kena‘an, Bohemia is meant. The early appearance of Czech words in Jewish literature is a strong argument in favor of the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis. It may look somewhat strange that Jews would use the Hebrew word for Canaan, kena‘an, for Bohemia. To the best of my knowledge, Benjamin of Tudela was the first one to provide this reason: “And from there on is the country Bohemia [...] and the Jews who live there call it Canaan because the inhabitants of that country sell their sons and daughters to all the nations” (Adler 1907, 72; from Hebrew, with Hebrew pagination). As the biblical Canaanites were slaves to the Israelites, so were medieval Czechs to other countries. The Hebrew component To the Jews in Bohemia, the Hebrew component of Yiddish was not the limiting factor for the development of this language. This was the unrounding of the vowels that started around 1200, because in Bohemia Jewish knowledge was present far before this time. As mentioned a number of times, during the early stages, say around the year 1200, the East European Jews hardly possessed any knowledge of the Jewish religion. That this was the case is clearly shown by the fact that all 17 rabbis who are mentioned with respect to the responsa before 1096 come from Western Europe and especially from western Germany and France (Agus 1965, v. 1, 32–52).

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Zinberg (1975, v. 6, 6) describes the situation in Kiev in the twelfth/thirteenth century: “But the number of Talmudists in the region of the Dnieper was quite limited, and their literary work was of very slight value. In this connection, one must take account of the very low cultural level of the environment.” Consequently, the knowledge of Hebrew among the East European Jews was also limited. Lack of knowledge of Jewish laws is nothing special. People could convert to Judaism with a minimum of knowledge of Jewish customs (or with none at all). Therefore, the development of Yiddish could only start from the moment these Jews came into contact with enough Hebrew, or, to put it differently, from the moment teachers and/or rabbis arrived to pass knowledge of the Jewish religion on to the Jewish population. This seems altogether logical; from what other source would people have obtained Hebrew? Hebrew was not spoken any more in those days, but Hebrew words were used during Jewish religious education. Therefore, as mentioned before, Eggers is of the opinion that Hebrew words were already present in Yiddish at an early stage. Some teachers may also have been East European Jews—certainly during the early phase of the Yiddish language—who had received their training at a Talmud school in Bohemia or Germany. After some time, teachers were all trained in Eastern Europe. According to Timm (1987, 372–373), before 1500 the number of Hebrew words in written Yiddish was very limited. On the other hand, she mentions that the number of Hebrew words in the spoken language may have been appreciable before 1400. During the thirteenth century, there were probably enough teachers and/or rabbis to pass on the religion. Their influence on Yiddish can probably also be deduced from the fact that Hebrew words describe not only things that have to do with religion, but also those that have to do with morality. Bearing in mind all three components of Yiddish, the development of Yiddish in Lithuania may thus have started with the arrival, some time during the thirteenth century, of teachers and/or rabbis who spoke Yiddish with unrounded Bavarian vowels. There may have been some from western Germany, but they must have formed a minority. Otherwise it is strange that Lithuanian Yiddish only contains Bavarian components. Since Lithuania had its own language, and since the form of German used by Eastern colonists was not spoken there, Bavarian was the only kind of German in Lithuanian Yiddish, and in isolation from Germany, this continued to be the situation (ibid., 203). The early presence of Jews in Lithuania and the unrounded Bavarian component in Lithuanian Yiddish make it impossible that those Jews who lived in Lithuania at the beginning of the eleventh century or earlier spoke Yiddish.

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The situation outside Lithuania For Jews who went to Poland in early times, the situation was different. They arrived in a region where Old Polish was spoken. From the story of the two little brothers from Przemysl (see p. 72), it appears that Jews were living in southern Poland long before Yiddish was a language. The man who tells the story spoke Slavic with his fellow townsman. There is nothing that would indicate that in those days, Jews in Eastern Europe spoke something different from the vernacular. As to Russia, an interesting Hebrew letter was found in the Geniza of Cairo, dating probably from before the eleventh century (Mann 1969, v. II, 192). In this letter a Jew is mentioned who spoke neither Hebrew, nor Greek, nor Arabic. He spoke only the language of his native country, Russian (sfat kena‘an ‘the language of Canaan’). One might think that this was mentioned as a curiosity, but it appears from the letter that assistance was requested to enable the man to continue his voyage from Thessalonica to Jerusalem safely, as he spoke no Greek or Arabic. His knowledge of only Russian was therefore a practical problem. There is also an earlier example. Arno, who was archbishop of Salzburg between 798 and 821, had a Jewish acquaintance, a physician, who spoke a Slavic language (Zeumer 1882, 448, nr. 38). The German component It will be obvious that for Polish Jews as well, the development of the Yiddish language could start only when enough knowledge of Hebrew was obtained. Teachers and/or rabbis speaking “Bavarian” Yiddish also came to Poland. However, from 1370 the form of German used by Eastern colonists became the language of the towns, and that is where most of the Jews lived. Because of the pressure of the vernacular, the Bavarian components were unable to persist, and Polish Yiddish became a different dialect from Lithuanian Yiddish. The further the development of Yiddish went ahead, the more the use of Yiddish by Jews increased and the more it underwent its own development apart from German. We should also not forget that in the eastern region where the form of German used by Eastern colonists was spoken, German was eventually replaced by a Slavic language. Jews obviously kept on speaking Yiddish among themselves and therefore became isolated linguistically. It is quite understandable that they kept on speaking Yiddish, which provided a feeling of belonging to the group, of solidarity. Birnbaum (1997, 17–18; from German) writes: “The Hebrew and Aramaic element is connected with the religion [and] thus proves that the groups that use it have the Jewish religion as their basis. In other words, the group binding factor with the Jewish people is Judaism.” By the time we arrive at the year 1500, Yiddish had been able to develop for a number of centuries,

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and also the different Yiddish dialects, like Polish and Ukrainian, could have come into being.

The Silesian Hypothesis During the 1980s, Blosen published two articles (1986 and 1988) that referred to a third region where Yiddish may have originated. He is of the opinion that a substantial emigration of German Jews—to be sure, not to Silesia but to Poland—only started following the plague. He finds it strange that Jews did not immediately adopt the language of their host country, instead developing their own language, Yiddish. If there had been a mass migration, Blosen argues, the dominating element in East Yiddish would have had a western German stamp and the clearly Silesian quality of East Yiddish would be impossible to explain. He comes up with the following hypothesis. Jews, who mostly settled in the towns, encountered German colonial townsmen there, who spoke a Silesian-based dialect to which they adjusted. Next, Blosen explains how this must have happened. Between 1200 and 1400 Polish kings invited German immigrants to Poland to build towns. Examples of these towns are Plock, Gniezno, Poznan, and Krakow. He cites a publication by Mitzka from which it it appears that the language spoken by the upper classes of the colonial population was Silesian. The Silesian dialect spread from Upper Silesia to Galicia and from Lower Silesia to Posen. The extent of the area with German towns may become apparent from the fact that around the year 1400 these towns were located in an area that on its eastern side was bound by a line through Vilnius (Lithuania)–Hrodna (Belarus)–Brest (Belarus)–Lviv (the Ukraine)– Kamianets-Podilskyi (the Ukraine). In view of the fact that Krakow at the beginning of the eleventh century had a bet din, a religious court, that was functioning regularly (TaShma 1988), Jews must have lived in Silesia in those days. In that case, it goes without saying that Jews who lived there at the end of the twelfth century spoke the dialect of their surroundings and that in that case Yiddish must also have been derived from the Silesian dialect to some extent. With the immigration of groups of Jews from southern Russia (during the disintegration of the Khazar Empire and the incursions of the Mongols) and from Bohemia/Moravia, it is self-evident that these immigrants switched to the form of German used by Eastern colonists. The hypothesis by Blosen, the Silesian hypothesis, can be considered as describing the further development of Yiddish in Poland, and thereby forms a continuation of the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis.

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The Sorb Hypothesis The author of the Sorb hypothesis is Paul Wexler (1991), who maintains that Yiddish is a Slavic language that originated from the land of the Sorbs. According to him, the East European Jews are mainly descendants from Sorbs, and to a lesser extent from Khazars. Linguists consider the hypothesis as inferior. For example, in his review of Eggers’s book, King (1998) writes: “If Eggers had accomplished nothing else in his book, the world of Yiddish linguistics would thank him for disposing so authoritatively of the crypto-Sorbian theory of Yiddish.” One of the important arguments against it is the fact that the Slavic words are not Sorbian but Old Czech, as was mentioned above. The number of Jews in 1500 in Eastern Europe, calculated in this book, does not make the Sorb hypothesis plausible either.

A New Situation It will be clear that, as to the mechanism of dissemination of Yiddish, a new situation has arisen that does not agree with any of the hypotheses. Yiddish did not enter Eastern Europe via mass migrations but via teachers and/or rabbis. How is it possible that a relatively small number of people were able to make the large East European Jewish population switch from a Slavic language to Yiddish? The answer is given by the factor of time, which is always an awkward factor. This also becomes evident when discussing the development of animal species that took millions of years before the present form was reached. The minute we bring to bear the factor of time, many phenomena become understandable. We obviously are not dealing here with such enormous periods, but in four to five hundred years a lot can happen, certainly when a language is involved. The dissemination of a religion together with a language by a small number of people is not a unique phenomenon, limited to the Jewish religion and Yiddish. A similar development can be seen, for example, in Belgian Congo, where the Christian religion and French were taught at primary schools by missionaries. A slow process The switchover from a Slavic language to Yiddish was actually a rather slow process. There are three examples that indicate that this was indeed the case.

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At the beginning of 1600, rabbi Me’ir Kats Ashkenazi (1697, 21Vo) of Mogilev (today’s Mahilëu in Belarus) complained in a responsum about two spellings of the town Brest-Litovsk in a get (bill of divorcement; from Hebrew): “that this custom spread, that the majority of our coreligionists, who live in our midst, speaks Russian.” Whether we are really dealing here with Russian or another Slavic language is not clear; the point is that they did not speak Yiddish. It appears from a responsum from the year 1605 that a Jew in Podolia in Ukraine testified in Russian (Sirkes 1697, 60). Next it says, according to Harkavy (1867, 35; from Hebrew), “and we translated it into the holy language.” The holy language is Hebrew. Weinreich (1980, 87), on the other hand, writes, “and we translated it [in the community minutes] into the language of Ashkenaz.” The language of Ashkenaz is Yiddish. In the edition of 1697, the testimony was translated into Yiddish. Me’ir Ashkenazi was also asked another question, about a man in Vilnius who had married a woman with a Russian formulation instead of a Hebrew one. Weinreich (ibid.) then comes up with an ambiguous statement about these three examples: “The three facts speak for themselves. In LithuaniaBelarussia-Ukraine Yiddish was spoken in the seventeenth century.” Does he mean that there were people who spoke Yiddish? That obviously was the case. Rabbis certainly spoke Yiddish, which appears from the three examples. Or does he mean that almost everybody spoke Yiddish in the countries mentioned? That of course is not true in view of the complaints by the rabbi(s). Add to this that his own addition “in the community minutes” has a very suggestive effect, namely that the text was meant for the community (which would have spoken Yiddish) instead of the rabbis. Around 1650 there were still districts and provinces in Russia where the Jews only spoke Russian (Harkavy 1867, 2). This is not so amazing, considering that in 1650 there were between 830,000 and 1.14 million Jews in Eastern Europe, and the dissemination of Yiddish was dependent on Jewish religious education. Sticking to Russia, but somewhat later, we see that R. Isaac Ber Levinsohn (1901, 33–34 note 2; from Hebrew), who lived from 1788 to 1860, was also of the opinion that Russian Jews, in the first instance, spoke Russian: “and our elderly told us that the Jews, a number of generations before us, only spoke the language of this Russia in these districts [Volhynia, Podolia, Kiev, and the other districts], and that the Yiddish that we now speak had not been disseminated among all the Jews who lived in these districts, and they also told me, on behalf of [...] (Czacki) [...] that some hundreds of years ago, the Jews in these districts said their prayers in Polish and not in the holy language as they are used to do nowadays, and this as proof that their language was Polish or Russian [...] and

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therefore I suspected [...] that the first Jews who came to live here did not come from Germany as some thought, but from those who had been living for a good 1,000 years along the Volga.”

This tradition accords well with the letter mentioned on p. 123 wherein a Jewish traveler was mentioned who spoke only Russian. The ancestors of the many Jews who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, did not yet speak Yiddish would have undergone a rather strange development if Yiddish had spread along with the growing Jewish community. They arrive speaking Yiddish, next their children switch to Slavic, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century their descendants have to learn Yiddish again. This does not sound like a logical story. Shmeruk (1981, 17–18; from Hebrew) calls it disconcerting that until the end of the fifteenth century, hardly anything can be found about Yiddish in Poland and Lithuania, particularly because in the fifteenth century there are already so many Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe. His explanation is remarkable: “The few Jewish sources, including sources on Yiddish and its literature up to the end of the fifteenth century, may be explained from the many disasters that hit the Jews of Poland and Lithuania. As a result of fires, epidemics, expulsions, and oppressions, their own testimonies of their lives were destroyed. Probably the Ashkenazi immigrants and their descendants were able to save what they had brought along from their countries of origin, including the various kinds of literature in their vernacular.”

It seems to me too accidental that from the immigrants all kinds of literary testimonies about their vernacular were saved, but nothing was saved from the people who lived there already. A simpler explanation is that before the end of the fifteenth century, Yiddish had spread in Eastern Europe to such a small extent that hardly anything can be found about Yiddish from that period.

Conclusions 1. All previous hypotheses about the origin of Yiddish start out from the established opinion that ancestors of the East European Jews, who in the end all would speak Yiddish, migrated en masse from Germany, Italy, or the Balkans. 2. The large number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500, as well as the lack of evidence about mass migrations from Western Europe to Eastern Europe, make the assumption that Yiddish was disseminated in Eastern Europe as a result of mass migrations untenable.

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3. The hypothesis that Bohemia, Moravia, and southeast Germany were the regions where Yiddish originated (i.e., the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis) best fits the results found in my studies. 4. The assumption that rabbis and teachers taught the East European Jews the Yiddish language is in agreement with the important role the Bavarian-Czech hypothesis assigns to Jewish religious education. 5. Originally, the vernacular of the East European Jews was a Slavic language, as can be deduced from responsa from the beginning of the seventeenth century. The transition to Yiddish was a slow one. 6. It is plausible that in Poland a Yiddish dialect was spoken that was based on Silesian. 7. The reason that in Belarus and Ukraine different Yiddish dialects developed may well be that in these countries Yiddish was taught to Jews who spoke the Slavic variants specific to these countries.

VII. Genetic Research (and Anthropology) The Development of Jewry by Region (3) Good demographic research is crucial for the correct collection and interpretation of DNA material Chapter V above

Introduction Long before genetic research had reached the stage at which it was possible to collect reliable data about different types of peoples, there were already views about “the Jews” as a race. I do not intend to enter into these at length, but it shows little biological understanding to expect that a group of people that originates in the Middle East, develops a certain religion, and passes it on to its descendants should form a separate race. It is even questionable whether there are races within Homo sapiens. Nevertheless, it is not surprising that such a view originated in Europe. At first sight, European Jews have a rather homogenous physiognomy, with dark hair and brown eyes, and they originated from the Middle East, so they were taken to be a separate race. It did not seem to be a problem that similar looks were frequently seen in southern parts of Europe. Actually, it is strange that people thought that Jews looked different from other dark-haired Europeans. After all, during the Middle Ages, Jews had to wear special distinguishing marks so that they could be told apart from the rest of the population! The first one to come up with such a rule was Pope Innocent III, in the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215. He decreed that throughout the Christian world, all Jews and Jewesses had to distinguish themselves from others by their clothing (qualitate habitus publice ab aliis populis distinguantur) in order to prevent admixture (Stobbe 1866, 173). This means that European Jews could otherwise hardly be distinguished from other dark-haired Europeans. I pointed this out earlier, as it certainly indicates a European genetic background. I can hardly imagine that in the Netherlands, Turks and Moroccans would have to wear certain marks to be distinguished from autochthonous Dutchmen.

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The idea of a race could also be accepted because Europeans, with the exception of a few individuals, as we shall see further on, were unaware of the looks of non-European Jews. For instance, Indian Jews look like Indians (Fig. 9). Benjamin of Tudela writes (Adler 1907, 59, Hebrew pagination; from Hebrew), “and all the people of that country [India] are black and the Jews are black as well.” Furthermore, Chinese Jews look like Chinese (see Fig. 10, p. 131), and Ethiopian Jews look like Ethiopians (see Fig. 11, p. 131). These groups of Jews make the idea of a Jewish race altogether absurd. I won’t waste any more words on the subject of Jews being a race. For those who are interested, there are the books The Jews (Fishberg 1911) and The Myth of the Jewish Race (Patai and Patai Wing 1975) that refute racial theories.

Figure 9. Indian Jews: the family of Benjamin Aharon Rohekar, Bombay 1954

(with thanks to Annie Rohekar and Rachel Aharon-Shriki).

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Figure 10. Chinese Jews during the Kaifeng conference in 1919. On the left are the men, on the right the women; the women have bound feet (source: White, W.C., Chinese Jews, 2nd edn, Toronto 1966; with permission of the University of Toronto Press).

Figure 11. Ethiopian Jews (source: Rosen 1907, 428).

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In this chapter, I will first devote some attention to anthropological studies. Anthropology, of course, isn’t genetics. However, anthropological studies have some common ground with genetics, and that is why I will briefly discuss the subject. Next, the field of molecular genetics will be dealt with, and at the end of the chapter there will be a few words about the hereditary “Ashkenazi” disease Tay-Sachs and about Parkinson’s disease.

Anthropological Studies In view of the early Jewish presence in southern Russia (see pp. 65–68), studies carried out by S. Weissenberg from Elisabethgrad (now Kirovohrad) are very interesting. In 1896, he published the results of an anthropometric investigation into Russian Jews (Weissenberg 1896; in German). Anthropometry is a discipline whereby features like height, cranial index (ratio between cranial length and cranial width), hair color, form of the nose, and color of the eyes are measured. At the beginning of the article, Weissenberg asks three questions: 1. Did Jews stay pure (as a people)? 2. Where do blond Jews in Europe and black Jews in India and Ethiopia come from? 3. Where does the diversity of types come from? In addition, he notices that it is a myth that Jews should be recognizable at first sight. It is notable that other investigators who had seen African and Asian Jews were concerned with the same kind of questions that Weissenberg asked himself. The anthropologist Karl Vogt (1863, 238–239; from German), who travelled outside of Europe, writes: “Indeed, mainly in the north, in Russia and Poland, Germany and Bohemia one finds a Jewish tribe [...] that shows much likeness to some Slavic tribes mainly from the north. On the other hand, in the Orient and in the vicinity of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as from there towards Portugal and Holland, we find a Semitic tribe [...] as we encounter it especially in Rembrandt’s portraits. Finally, we see in Africa along the Red Sea a Jewish nation, that despises business, that engages in agriculture and crafts, and that, as it seems, can in no way be distinguished from the other inhabitants of the country.”

Vogt reports all this, since in his time, there apparently were people who thought that these different types were proof of a relationship between climate and type. As to Abyssinian (Ethiopian) Jews, Vogt follows the opinion of a Jewish investigator, a certain Dr. Ascher, who maintains that they are converted Abyssinians. As far as the remaining Jews are con-

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cerned, Vogt puts forward the opinion of Jewish scholars that the two other types of Jews are already very old indeed. The results of the reasearch carried out by Weissenberg (1896) will be described briefly. It is a pity that he does not mention where the Jews whose physical features he measured came from. He found seven different major types: a coarse Jewish type, a fine Jewish type, a Slavic type, a South European type, a North European type, a general Caucasian type, and a Mongolian or Tatar type. As far as the coarse Jewish type is concerned, Weissenberg mentions that this is the type that most frequently occurs in comics and least frequently among the investigated Jews. The Tatar type occurs not only in southern Russia but also quite often among Hungarian Jews. Weissenberg makes the following remark: “According to the present [1896] scientific state of anthropology, variety of types within a people can only be ascribed to admixture.” The explanation for the types that are geographically determined is therefore that admixture took place with other peoples. Weissenberg concludes from his research that one type attracts attention, dominates the others, and from an anthropological point of view makes all of East European Jewry look like a more or less homogeneous mass. He calls this “average type” the south Russian type; in other words, a European type. As mentioned on p. 4, “southern Russia” refers to an area that extended from the Caspian Sea as far as Moldavia. Both Feist (1925, 135, 138) and Weissenberg think that the change from the Semitic to the European type is due to admixture of Jews during their wanderings through the Caucasus and the south Russian steppes. In later periods, admixture was reinforced by the conversion of part of the Khazars, and later still by incursions of Tatar tribes. As the aforementioned measurements were not tested statistically, for the simple reason that this was not yet possible, one has to be careful interpreting the results, although it does not mean that the conclusions by Weissenberg are a priori wrong. However, with the progress of science, the anthropometric methods just mentioned are considered out of date. A good example is the cranial index. If one refers to a single feature like the cranial index, it is quite possible that two populations of different descent appear to be more or less identical. Another important objection to these kinds of features is that there is no garantee that they are totally controlled by heredity; variations may also be the result of a short-lived reaction to changing environmental conditions (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994, 17). Fishberg (1907a,b) studied blond and light-eyed East European Jews. Part of these results are shown in Table 9 on p. 134. These Jews have distinct Slavic features, as a result of which they cannot be told from the nonJewish inhabitants of Eastern Europe (see Fig. 12, p.134).

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He also mentions Jews with Tatar features. Feist (1925, 138) points out that one finds 18.5 percent fair types among East European Jews, which hardly occurs among Jews from the Caucasus. He gives only one explanation, admixture of East European Jews with Slavs. Light hair and light eyes obviously are not features that originate from the Middle East. Table 9. Blond hair and light eyes among Jews in different regions in Eastern Europe (Fishberg 1907a; Little Russia is Ukraine). Origin

Southern Russia Little Russia Galicia Poland

Number

Men Light hair

100

Number

% 13.0

Light eyes % 3.3

1088

17.7

53.7

1248 503

20.0 7.2

47.9 43.9

Women Light hair %

Light eyes %

873

13.7

38.4

122 181

19.7 7.7

43.4 43.1

Figure 12. Jewish lady from Ukraine. (I apologize for not being able to locate and contact the author of this picture, which I downloaded from the internet)

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With the development of molecular genetics, with the ability to analyze DNA accurately, and with the computerized approach to population genetics, new possibilities have been created to investigate the origin of the different groups of Jews.

General Molecular Genetic Research Here, a few general remarks about molecular genetic research are in order. When one works with DNA in order to show relationships, it does not mean that one is working with the total DNA from a cell. This kind of work involves certain pieces of DNA whose chemical composition (base sequence) is known. These pieces are called (DNA) markers. The choice of the marker is very important as it has to be preferably selectively neutral, which means that it is not subject to selection pressure. With this kind of research, in addition to DNA, proteins may also be used as the composition of the protein is determined by the composition of DNA. When investigating relationships between peoples, test subjects are used. It is essential that a test subject be representative of his or her group. In addition, it must be clear whether test subjects belong to different groups. For example, an investigator once used the DNA of a number of test subjects in the Netherlands in order to investigate the origin of the Dutch (personal communication by Rolf Hoekstra, Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University and Research Centre). It would appear from the investigation that the Dutch are genetically related to the Danes. However, the Dutch do not originate from Denmark. What had happened? The test subjects happened to come from the province of Friesland, and Frisians originate from Denmark. Therefore, had the test subjects come from all over the Netherlands, the results would have been totally different. This example shows how careful one has to be with these kinds of studies. Also, the number of test subjects is very important; the smaller the number, the less reliable are the results. This is why, considering the following investigations where we are often dealing with relationships between different groups of Jews and non-Jews, the choice of the test subjects and their number are an overriding influence on the conclusions that will be drawn in the end. To indicate that the three questions Weissenberg asked himself in 1896 (see p. 132) are still current 100 years later, first I would like to quote from an article by U. Ritte (1993) of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which will not be discussed further here: “The Hebrew nation that had lived in the Land of Israel until about 2,000 years ago is believed to be the origin of all Jews. The genetic similarities that Jewish com-

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munities should thus show seem to contradict the large phenotypic differences [differences in observable characteristics] that exist among them, and this problem is the basis of many arguments.”

During the 1980s, DNA research concerning the relationships between different groups of Jews—in which the Ashkenazi Jews, as the largest group, play a prominent role—slowly got going. The research concentrated on three questions: 1. Are the different groups of Jews related? 2. Do these groups originate from the Middle East? 3. To what extent did admixture take place with the non-Jewish environment? I will not limit myself in this chapter to the Ashkenazi Jews, because the genetic studies were often extended to other Jewish groups as well, and it is interesting to see to what extent the different groups are interrelated. It would lead too far afield to review all the investigation, and in any event the various investigations show a lack of agreement about the genetic relationships of Jews. For a review of investigations carried out before 1997, the reader is referred to the PhD thesis of Zoossmann-Diskin (University of Tel Aviv, 1997) in which these investigations were critically reviewed; I will discuss his thesis here because in it the relationships between the different Jewish groups were investigated with a new molecular technique. PhD thesis of Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin Up to 2010, the thesis of Zoossmann-Diskin had not become generally known. How then did I get to know about it? In 1997, I contacted the aforementioned Uzi Ritte in connection with a similar investigation (I wanted to know why a certain control had not been taken into account). In addition to answering my question, he informed me that he had not continued with this kind of research, because the subject was politically and socially touchy, and he advised me to contact either Zoossmann-Diskin or his advisor. I contacted them, and this is how I obtained the thesis. New molecular technique This is not the place to go into the methodology Zoossmann-Diskin used, but an exception has to be made for one detail, because at one point his work differs materially from earlier research in this field. This has to do with the kind of proteins he used. Until he started his research, proteins related to the blood group system (immune system) were used for investi-

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gations into genetic differences between animals (and thus also between people). Through a number of publications from the eighties, ZoossmannDiskin understood that blood group proteins give unreliable results when used to determine genetic differences within a species. Blood group proteins are subject to natural selection, which does not have to be the same in each region. He therefore switched to the so-called electrophoretic proteins, for which this is less of an issue. The results thus obtained agreed much more with the accepted ethnic and geographic differences between different populations than the proteins of the blood group system used up till then. His work is a breakthrough in the field of the origin of the different groups of Jews. He not only used these proteins (and DNA) to compare different Jewish populations with each other, but whenever possible, he also used the corresponding non-Jewish populations in his research, including Palestinians. In order to determine the frequencies with which certain pieces of DNA occur (genotypic frequencies), Zoossmann-Diskin used genetic material of Jews from Eastern Europe, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Turkey, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Ethiopia. East European Jews were defined as those whose ancestors came from the area between the Oder and the Dniepr and their descendants in the bordering regions, that is, Russia, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova (formerly the northern part of Rumania) and Ukraine. Crucial mistakes made until 1997 In addition to other technical improvements relative to earlier research, Zoossmann-Diskin also mentions two crucial mistakes involving the kind of calculations used in earlier work. 1. In earlier publications the genetic makeup of the Jewish parental population was calculated by averaging the genetic makeup of a number of modern Jewish populations, for example from Iran, Iraq, and the area where the Kurds live. According to Zoossmann-Diskin this is impossible, because the origin of the modern Jewish populations is not known. Ideally, one should have a registration of descent, showing the descent of the original Jews. With these people, DNA research should be carried out. By simply assuming that these Jewish populations were descendants of the parental population, essential evidence was being omitted. 2. The percentage of admixture was determined by simply averaging the genetic makeup of a number of European populations (Germans, Poles, and Russians) and comparing this with the genetic makeup of a Jewish European population. This procedure is not correct either. By averag-

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ing the genetic makeup of these populations, a genetic makeup is created of a notional population. Furthermore, it is a bit simplistic to approach the problem this way, since in every country where Jews were, admixture took place, and this was independent of what happened in another country. For example, Jews who ended up in Germany and mixed with the local population may have stayed there permanently. In this case, their progeny never had anything to do with any Polish or Russian genetic admixture. Genetic distances A large part of the study was devoted to the determination of genetic distances between the different populations. Through this method, genetic markers from different Jewish populations are compared. The smaller the relationship, the more differences in DNA may have arisen. Such differences are called distances. The most elaborate result Zoossmann-Diskin obtained was a comparison of genetic distances between 75 Caucasian (white) populations, based on 9 markers (ibid., Table 20). The genetic distance analyses showed that East European Jews were closest to the inhabitants of Thrace, the region shared by Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. Bulgarian Jews came next, followed by 36 non-Jewish populations, and only then the second Jewish population, the Iranian Jews. Other results (ibid., Tables 21–23) showed a large Italian component in the gene pool (total variety of genes in a population) of the East European Jews. From all these results it appears that genetically the different Jewish communities do not have much in common. Often, they appear to be more related to the population in the midst of which they live (when its genetic material was available). The question is where this lack of similarity between the different Jewish groups comes from. Zoossmann-Diskin indicates that there are two possibilities to explain the results, without “foreign” genes or via the presence of “foreign” genes. Random genetic drift The explanation without “foreign” genes is based on the assumption that originally there was one Jewish population from which small groups voluntarily or forcibly left for other countries. The original population had a specific gene pool, and the genetic differences between the different groups of Jews must have come about during the 2,000 years of dispersion through a genetic mechanism that is often called “random genetic drift.” This mechanism works as follows. A few individuals within the parental population possess gene (feature) A. A few people from the total population go to another country, and after a certain time it appears that their

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descendants possess gene A. Since no other genes entered the population from outside, gene A must have (accidentally) been present in those few people. Next the gene spread among the descendants of the little group until it became “fixed,” which means that every member of the population possessed the gene. The question now to be asked is, how long does it take before a gene becomes fixed? The most important factor for this to happen is the size of the original population, the few people that left the country. There is a simple formula in genetics through which can be calculated how many generations it takes, on average, before a gene becomes fixed (supposing that it does): time (in years) = 4 × the initial number × the duration of one generation (in years) If the small group consisted of, say, 50 people and if we take the duration of a generation to be 25 years, this means that it will take 4 × 50 × 25 = 5,000 years before everybody carries the gene. Since the Jews were carried off by Romans around 70 C.E., it will be clear that there has not been enough time for this mechanism to operate. Besides, it is unknown whether the Jews carried off to the different places consisted of very small groups. For example, the Yemenite Jews were so numerous that they had their own kingdom before the arrival of Islam (Ben-Zeev 1931, 41). However, there is a much more important reason why random genetic drift cannot be the cause of the diversity between the various Jewish populations of today. When dealing with random genetic drift, accidental, undirected drifts are involved. Well then, it would be very accidental if, as a result of a chance process, Indian Jews genetically resembled Indians, Ethiopian Jews resembled Ethiopians, and European Jews showed genetic similarity with Europeans. Zoossmann-Diskin et al. (2002 write): “Random genetic drift, as its name implies, has no specific direction.” Thus, the total gene pool of people who go to region X cannot change in such a way that it starts to significantly resemble the gene pool of the autochthons of region X. It is also impossible that genetic adaptation played a role in this, as some investigators maintain; people don’t just change types. The descendants of the Dutch who went to South Africa 500 years ago did not slowly change into dark-colored Africans. It remains to explain the “foreign” genes. Zoossmann-Diskin argues that considering his data, it is not possible to distinguish between the possibility that all genes of a population are “foreign” or that a small part of the genes comes from the original Jews from the Land of Israel. There are two possibilities (Zoossmann-Diskin 1997, 72): rapes, and intermarriages and conversions.

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Rapes by Cossacks We should be aware that we are dealing here with a single inflow of “foreign” genes (for each rape). In this connection one normally thinks about the Cossack uprising in the Ukraine in 1648. According to the scribes, many Jewish women were raped. The number of rapes necessary to change a population of Jews with Middle Eastern phenotype (phenotype is the sum of all observable characteristics of an organism) into a population having a European phenotype would have to be so large that this is not a real option, not to mention that raped women were often murdered (ibid.). Although Zoossmann-Diskin already indicated in his thesis that rapes are not an option, I decided to check the known numbers, to see whether it was really impossible to obtain so many blond Jews through rapes. During a maximum of four days out of 28, a woman can become pregnant, a chance of 14.3 percent. Nowadays, the chance of getting pregnant during a fertile period is 10–20 percent. This was probably higher in earlier times. Let us assume a percentage of 25 percent. This means that in those days a woman’s chance of getting pregnant after being raped, was 14.3/4 = 3.6 percent. As mentioned before, Feist puts the fraction of blond East European Jews at 18.5 percent. With 7.18 million East European Jews in 1900 (van Straten 2006), the number of blond Jews at that year would have been 1,328,300. Using the high (0.82) and the low (0.74) annual growth rates calculated from Table 7 (see p. 106) between 1650 and 1900, the number of blond Jewish children in 1650 would have been between 172,000 (1,328,300/1.0082250) and 210,000 (1,328,300/1.0074250). In order to obtain this range of blond children, between 4.8 (172,000/0.036) and 5.8 (210,000/0.036) million Jewish women must have been raped. Not included in this calculation are the following facts: not all Cossacks were blond, not all women raped were fertile, and not all women raped were left alive. Assuming only 10 percent Jews were blond in 1900, the number of raped women would still have been between 2.6 and 3.2 million. If, in addition, the chance of getting pregnant is increased to an improbable 50 percent (instead of 25), the number of rapes would still have been between 1.3 (93,208/0.0715) and 1.5 million (113,669/0.0715). Certainly rapes did take place, but it is clear that they cannot have been the main cause for such a high percentage of Jews being blond. Incidentally, it is interesting that the story about the rapes is always put forward when blond Jews are mentioned. It is obviously assumed that brown hair and eyes are characteristics of a Middle Eastern phenotype!

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Intermarriages and conversions As far as the final result is concerned, it does not make much difference whether we are dealing with intermarriages or with conversions (or even with rapes). Also, it is often not clear whether conversion to Judaism is due to religious conviction or to contract a marriage. There are quite a few things to report from the literature about intermarriages and conversions. I will discuss them in chronological order. Conversions up to the time of the Merovingians Already in early times, during the second century B.C.E., conversion to Judaism was considered a religious obligation, certainly when inhabitants of the Jewish state were involved. Even forced conversions took place; the Maccabean kings forced the Edomites and other tribes to convert to Judaism (Feldman 1993, 324–326; Samet 1993, 332). Feist (1925, 17–19) mentions that during the second century B.C.E., there was already a Jewish colony in Rome, and there was much propaganda for the Jewish religion. The Roman government did not agree with this, and therefore in 139 B.C.E. decided to throw Jews, together with Chaldean astrologists, out of the country. This expulsion was not very effective, because more and more Jews came from the East, propaganda continuously increased the number of converts, and more and more Roman citizens started to live according to Jewish law. However, Jews from the Jewish state came to Rome as well, though not always on a voluntary basis. Also, when Pompey transferred Jewish slaves to Italy in 63 B.C.E., the Jewish population of Rome increased sharply. In higher circles, conversions also occurred. For example, Fulvia, the wife of the senator Saturnius, converted to Judaism. She made so much propaganda for Judaism that Emperor Tiberius decided that all Jews and converts had to leave Rome. Under Claudius, life for Jews became bearable again. He did not allow Roman Jews to make propaganda for their religion among the non-Jewish citizens of the city. The latter shows that Jewish propaganda was obviously successful. In order to show that making converts was also successful in other parts of the Roman Empire, Feist quotes from chapter 2 of Acts of the Apostles: “from all regions of Asia Minor, from Mesopotamia, Media, from Arabia, Egypt, from Lybia and Crete, at Pentecost the converts hurried to Jerusalem.” During the decline of pagan religions, Jewish propaganda was effective, and it explains the ever increasing inflow of pagan elements into the Jewish community. Only this inflow can explain the large Jewish communities in, for example, Syria and Egypt. According to Josephus (1923, 285), around the beginning of the Common Era, most pagan women in Damas-

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cus were of the Jewish religion. Another example, from the time of Tiberius and Claudius, is the conversion of king Izates, his mother Helena, and the heir to the throne in a vassal state along the shores of the Tigris (Feist 1925, 19). Christians also converted to Judaism. Feldman (1993, 289–341) confirms the large number of Jews in the Roman Empire due to conversions. The Israeli historian Moshe Samet (1993) discusses the conversions to Judaism during the first centuries C.E. He bases his article on both Jewish sources (mainly Bible and Talmud) and non-Jewish sources (Greek and Roman authors). From his study it appears that a large number of conversions took place during the period mentioned, after which the number of conversions declined sharply. The mainly Jewish sources show that there was a positive attitude towards the converts, although their position was never totally equal to that of persons who were Jewish by birth. It is important to know that conversions, certainly during the first century, were somewhat informal. This is shown by the fact that neither circumcision nor the ritual bath was a necessary condition. People could become Jewish without any knowledge of Judaism; it was enough that one wanted to serve the God of the Jews. Whoever denied the idols was called a Jew. The formalization only started after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.) and, according to Samet, was clearly influenced by Christianity. Until then, someone could convert to Judaism by starting to live according to Jewish religion, without any ceremony. Those who converted to Christianity did not have to change much of their lifestyle, and this is why in Christianity great importance was attached to a transition ceremony, baptism. The opinion of Ben-Ze’ev (1931, 79; from Hebrew) that “the Jews, in all periods in the land of the forefathers and in the diaspora, did not make an effort to spread their faith as the Christian or even Muslim missionaries did during different periods” is therefore clearly wrong. The Church had great problems with the conversion of Christians to Judaism. In 312, Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the state religion, and in 325, during the Council of Nicaea, a canon was promulgated that made conversion to Judaism punishable (Feist 1925, 22). Conversions during the Merovingian period As to the period of the Merovingians, our information comes to a large extent from the Lex Salica (Frankish code, written during the reign of Clovis, king of the Franks) and from the various church councils. It follows from a study by Braude (1940, 18–25) that during the first five centuries C.E., Jews were actively converting non-Jews. In this connection, Bachrach (1977, 45–46) points out that it is quite possible that the laws pertain-

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ing to conversion to Judaism served as protection against the proselytizing zeal of the Jews. He continues, “Those most vulnerable were slaves belonging to Jews. Thus it was decreed that Jews who bought Christian slaves were to give them up and have the purchase price returned. A Jew who was caught trying to convert a Christian or an exChristian slave to Judaism was to lose the slave and to be punished capitally [...] Jewish proselytizing efforts extended to free men and women as well as slaves, and laws were enacted to thwart this activity. Thus it was decreed that a Christian and a Jew who married were considered to be adulterers and were subject to the punishment stipulated for that crime [...] Free Christians who became Jews, however, were to suffer intestacy.”

During the first two decades following the death of Clovis, there were six councils, but they provide no information about Jews. Only in 533, at the Council of Orléans, in canon nineteen (of 21) was something said about intermarriage between Jews and Christians (ibid., 47–48). The bishops declared that a mixed marriage had to be annulled; otherwise the Christian partner would be excommunicated. This would be dangerous for the partner because he or she would be forbidden to have any further contact with other Christians, and thus would lose the necessary protection from their family. The fact that this canon was promulgated clearly indicates that many Christians married Jews after all, and thereby converted to Judaism, despite the ban. Therefore, it is strange that bishops did not announce more severe measures to counter the problem. Bachrach then wonders, “were these bishops who met at royal command less than eager to advocate detailed and decisive action against the Jews because the latter enjoyed royal favor?” In 534 a council was held at Clermont. In canon six, canon nineteen of Orléans was reaffirmed, and among other things, it was asked whether King Theuderic had failed to support an earlier law against marriages between Christians and Jews. Obviously, the council was of no concern to Theuderic, because he also ignored secular laws (canon nine) pertaining to Jews. In 538 a council convened again in Orléans, this time ordered by Childebert I. Once more, intermarriage was condemned. All of this shows that Jews and non-Jews maintained close and friendly relationships during the reign of the sons of Clovis. The Church did not consider this a favorable situation. Intermarriages and conversions continued to be a problem, and therefore had to be condemned repeatedly by the Church. Bachrach (ibid., 52) wrote, “It would seem that although Clovis’s successors were willing to have the bishops enact canons to protect Christians from the zeal of Jewish missionary activity, they were not prepared to see their Jewish subjects deprived of the labor [i. e. slaves] to work their estates.”

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Not until the Council of Mâcon in 583 were Jews the subject of ecclesiastical legislation again. The reason for the legislation was that “the Jews in Merovingian Gaul had grown in power and prestige and that neither secular nor ecclesiastical laws restricting their activities had been enforced” (ibid., 54). This means that during none of the councils in the foregoing 40 years had Jews been the subject of ecclesiastical legislation. In the 30௅year period following the promulgation of the canons in Mâcon, none of the 12 councils acted on the Jewish question. This does not mean that the last Merovigians enforced the canons. There are two letters from Pope Gregory I (590–604) to Queen Brunhild and her grandsons, kings Theuderic II and Theudebert II, in which they are requested to suppress Jewish slave owners and slave traders. These letters make it clear that the queen and her grandsons hadn’t undertaken any action to prevent Jews from owning and selling Christian slaves, and that they also did not enforce laws that forbade converting slaves to Judaism (ibid., 58). Canon nine of the Council of Châlons-sur-Sâone shows that in the middle of the seventh century, Jews still owned Christian slaves and converted them to Judaism. Conversions during the Carolingian period Roth (1966, 18, 390: Additional note A) is also of the opinion that during the Middle Ages conversions to Judaism took place. With the increasing religiosity of the Christians and the increasing power of the Church, fewer and fewer conversions probably took place. He therefore assumes that from the ninth to the twelfth century, conversions became fewer and fewer, although they always took place. However, there is no reason to assume that already during the first three-quarters of the ninth century fewer conversions occurred. Louis the Pious (814–840) annulled all limitations of Roman law used in the Carolingian Empire concerning the purchase, possession, use, and sale of slaves. During his reign, Jews could convert their pagan slaves to Judaism without governmental interference. The emperor even decreed that a slave of a Jew was only allowed to be baptized when his or her owner agreed (Bachrach 1977, 86–87). The situation of the Jews after Louis the Pious is well reflected by Amulo (841), archbishop of Lyon (ibid., 110). He complains that Christians preferred to listen to the sermons of the Jewish preachers rather than to those of their own preachers, that Christians and Jews maintained close ties, and that they feasted together. He also complained about the great many Christians who rested on the Sabbath and worked on Sunday, and about the large number of Christians who worked for Jews. It is clear that under such circumstances, intermarriages must have been a common phenomenon. But, more concretely, in 846, Charles the Bald (840–877) com-

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pletely rejected an anti-Jewish program for a church council. His brother, Louis the German (840–876), pursued a pro-Jewish policy as well (ibid., 123). We may therefore assume that until the end of the ninth century, the Church could not really influence these conversions to Judaism. Conversions after the Carolingian period Roth (1966, 390) also mentions that among the victims of the First Crusade in 1096 were a number of converts, who were mentioned by name. As the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe was not as strong as in the West, Roth thinks that the number of converts in Eastern Europe was probably higher than in Western Europe. He therefore supposes that a considerable fraction of the increase of the Jewish population in the Middle Ages is due to conversions. As already mentioned before, it remains unclear whether these conversions were due to religious convictions or to marriages to be contracted. Concerning the period between 950 and 1250, Goitein (1971, 310– 311) writes, “At an early stage of my Geniza studies, when I was surprised and impressed by the frequency of conversion to Judaism testified by documentary evidence, I promised the publication of a special study on the subject.” It becomes quite clear from the cited literature that both in and outside Europe, time and again non-Jews converted to Judaism. Slaves formed an important source of converts. I have referred already a number of times to the problems the Church had with slaves who were kept by Jews and converted to Judaism. According to Jewish law, slaves had to be dealt with in a decent manner and set free after a certain period. Kahn (1920) is of the opinion that many thousands took this route to put an end to all the misery of slavery and to achieve a dignified existence. He mentions, for example, that in 600 the Visigothic King Reccared in Spain promulgated severe laws against conversion of slaves to Judaism. Jews were deprived of the privilege to convert Christian slaves and to circumcise them. It should be clear that conversions to Judaism, whether or not through marriages, are convincing reasons for the presence of “foreign” genes in every way. The view of Fraikor (1977) that “Throughout their early history, the Ashkenazim were an extremely religious, cohesive, endogamous group who were extremely selective in choosing marriage partners according to the Biblical, Talmudic, and rabbinical precepts”

is not consistent with the historical data mentioned above. Similar opinions are quite common, however. For example, Motulsky (1980, 355) remarks that “Conversion of non-Jews to Judaism occurred occasionally over the

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relevant 19 centuries [...] but probably was not a common event in the general population.” Genetic relationship with Italians The first conclusion from Zoossmann-Diskin’s thesis was that Jews genetically mostly resemble the people in whose midst they live. The second important conclusion was the small genetic distance between various Italian populations and the East European Jews when 16 markers were used. When he used 18 markers, the East European Jews appeared to be more related to Bavaria. However, he has some doubts about this, because the sample was very small. For the great genetic resemblance between Italians and East European Jews, two explanations are possible: 1. A small number of Italians who had converted to Judaism went to Eastern Europe at a time when there were still very few, if any, Jews living there (during the first millennium). Thus their genetic material would have spread rather fast among the few Jews living there, or among the ones who arrived after them, thereby forming a large component of the DNA of the East European Jewish community. 2. If the migration took place at a later time, and the resemblance is the result of migration, much larger groups of Italian Jews must have been involved. It appears from the sale of the disciples of Methodius in 885 in Venice (see p. 29) that there were early contacts between Italy and Eastern Europe via Jewish slave traders. As far as this is concerned, the first possibility could be plausible. The second possibility is very improbable; nothing is known about large groups of Jews who moved from Italy to Eastern Europe. However, neither possibility is plausible. According to the calculation carried out in chapter V, in the year 1000 between 32,000 and 490,000 Jews lived in the area that would later comprise the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This makes a large Italian component in East European Jewry virtually impossible. Still, there has to be an explanation for this component. Starting from a small number of slave merchants, or even a couple of hundred, in the ninth century, it is impossible to obtain 32,000 to 490,000 persons in the year 1000 with a large Italian component in their DNA, or even half or a quarter of these numbers. As a result, a number of questions crossed my mind. First of all, about Italian genes. I assume that the calculations of the genetic distances are correct and that there is a relationship between East

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European Jews and places or regions in Italy. The implication of genetic similarity with Italians is that conversions must have taken place in Italy. This is not a problem, because it is known that Romans converted to Judaism. How do we go from here? Logically, the present Italians in the places studied would have to be descendants of the Romans. This last conclusion is disputable. Already before the Romans became masters of Italy, the Etruscans came to Tuscany and Umbria, and Greeks came to the south of Italy. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in Italy, the country was invaded by a number of peoples: in 452 the Huns, in 455 the Vandals, and afterwards the Longobards, an East Germanic people who had occupied the north of Italy. Had today’s inhabitants of Tuscany, Lazio, Campana and Lombardy lived there since Roman times, or are we dealing with people from elsewhere? And if the latter is the case, with what are we then comparing the DNA of the East European Jews? For example, blond Italians are descendants of Germanic tribes who moved into northern Italy. Genetically, current Italy is a hodgepodge, and maybe it is just for this reason that there are so many genetic similarities. As there are no representative DNA samples of the ancient Romans, it would be very difficult to show a connection between them and East European Jews. If East European Jews did not originate from a small group of Italian Jews, and in view of the apparently large number of Jews in Eastern Europe in the year 1000 or 1500, we are confronted with two problems: first, there is no DNA of the old Romans (and from which ones?), and second, even if it had been there, it would hardly be possible to recover it due to the large dilution. What remains, is the relationship between East European Jews and some of the present Italians, or, to put it differently, with some European inhabitants of Italy. The experiment with students from a college in New York As secondary evidence for the Italian contribution to the genetic makeup of the East European Jews, Zoossmann-Diskin refers to part of a study from 1926 described by Herskovits (1960, 1506). During the first week of lectures at a college in New York, freshmen, who did not yet know each other, were asked to state where their fellow students came from. Forty percent of the Italians were designated as Ashkenazi Jews, and 40 percent of the Jews were assumed to be Italians. The results were never published, and according to the initiator of the study, in many cases a “Jewish appearance” would also be an “Italian appearance.” He finds this rather plausible because southern Italians, like stereotypical Jews, originated from the Mediterranean. This study raises a number of issues. First, it is unknown how well freshmen at a college in New York are able to differentiate between an Italian and a Jew. Not everyone is interested in the physical appearance

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of someone else. Dark hair and brown eyes: the student will probably indicate Jewish or Italian. When an autochthonous Dutchman has dark hair and brown eyes, it is not clear either whether the person in question is Jewish. Second, in view of the heterogenic origin of “the Italians” it is not surprising that there are also Jews who resemble Italians. Third, it is actually impossible that if toward the end of the first millennium a small number of “Italians” went to Eastern Europe, the descendants, who during the next 1,000 years married just about everybody in Eastern Europe, as a group would still look like Italians. Jewish students in the study were actually compared with southern Italians! What about all the blond Jews? Fourth, Jews, and most of the Italians, probably are the largest European groups in New York containing many people with dark hair and brown eyes. If Weissenberg is right that East European Jews, as a group, resemble southern Russians, then, southern Russians superficially resemble southern Italians probably to such an extent that the students were unable to differentiate between Jews and Italians. It seems to me that this study is not an improvement of the evidence for the Italian contribution to East European Jewry. Khazars Zoossmann-Diskin notes that the theory that states that East European Jewry descends from Khazars can neither be rejected nor accepted on the basis of his studies, as genetic data from that part of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are extremely scarce. As to the Khazars, there is one more thing I would like to discuss. Especially in the United States, the notion has taken root that red-haired East European Jews, especially the Ukrainian ones, are descendants of the Khazars. Arab historiographers from this period are quoted who mention this hair color. Brook (1999, 10–12) devotes considerable space to this subject. He also refers to Baron (1975, v. 3, 204), who seems to suggest that the “red Jews” were Khazars. Let us take a closer look at Baron’s text: “Popular imagination found here a particularly fertile field. Just as the biblically minded Slavonic epics speak of ‘Jews’ rather than Khazars, so did western Jews long after spin romantic tales around those ‘red Jews’, so styled perhaps because of the slight Mongolian pigmentation of many Khazars.” It is rather questionable whether Baron really suggests that they are descendants of Khazars.

Red hair is associated with a gene that codes for the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R), and approximates to an autosomal recessive trait (Rees 2003). “Autosomal” means that the gene is located on a “regular” chromosome,

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not on a sex chromosome (X or Y chromosome). “Recessive” means that the trait is only expressed when the dominant form of the chromosome (allele) is not present. Red hair is the result of alleles with diminished function of the MC1R. Every autosomal chromosome comes in pairs. The normally functioning alleles are designated with a capital R, the diminishedfunction ones with a small r. When both alleles are functioning normally, both have the dominant form, and we can call such a person RR (no red hair). There are two more possibilities, Rr (still a dominant allele present) and rr (no dominant allele present). Only the last will have red hair. There are a large number of different alleles, but only a handful (which one could call r’s) account for most cases of red hair. How do these data relate to the assumption that the red-haired East European Jews are descendants of Khazars? First, it is unknown what fraction of the Khazars really had red hair. Second, it is unknown which red-haired non-Jewish East Europeans descend from Khazars. Third, nothing is known about the diversity of MC1R among Khazars, or about their alleles with a diminished function. Finally, nothing is known about the situation of MC1R among red-haired East European Jews either. A solid underpinning of the assumption that red-haired East European Jews descend from Khazars should come from a striking similarity of allele frequencies at the MC1R locus among the Khazars and their descendants. However, this knowledge is completely lacking, and therefore the assumed ancestry of red-haired East European Jews lacks a sound scientific basis. Returning to Zoossmann-Diskin’s thesis, the conclusion may be drawn that it is a molecular genetic confirmation of the position that the different groups of Jews, like Indian, Ethiopian, and European, are genetically speaking mainly Indians, Ethiopians, and Europeans respectively, who at some time converted to Judaism. Now I would like to move on to some studies which were published shortly before or after Zoossmann-Diskin’s thesis.

Studies with Y Chromosomes Y chromosomes are the sex chromosomes only men have. They are haploid and cannot recombine. Haploid is derived from the Greek haploos, which means singular. Thus, men have only one Y chromosome, unlike the other chromosomes, the autosomal chromosomes, of which both men and women have two. In genetic studies only specific segments, not the whole chromosome, are used. Combinations of genetic markers in those segments

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are called haplotypes. When Y chromosomes are divided into groups according to different haplotypes, these groups are called haplogroups. Since Y chromosomes accumulate mutations over generations, they can be used to study the divergence of populations and to link these populations to haplogroups. Jewish priests (kohanim) A specific group of Jews that has been studied by geneticists consists of Jewish priests. Because the priesthood is determined by patrilineal descent and converts cannot become priests, this is an interesting group. The study under discussion was reported by Skorecki et al. in “Y chromosomes of Jewish priests” (Nature, 2 January 1997). In this study, DNA samples were collected from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews from Israel, North America, and Great Britain. The Sephardic Jews came from North Africa and the Middle East. By direct questioning, it was decided whether a subject was a kohen (priest) or an Israelite (lay Jew). The frequency of six different haplotypes was determined. By applying the statistical chi square (F2) test, the authors were able to distinguish the kohanim from the lay population. One of the haplotypes could be identified as being the modal haplotype of the Jewish priesthood, hereinafter called the Cohen modal haplotype. Zoossmann-Diskin discusses the letter both in his thesis and in an article in HOMO, journal of comparative human biology (Zoossmann-Diskin, 2000), in which he also takes a closer look at two related articles. One of these discusses a South African tribe, the Lembas, who have the same haplotype in their Y chromosome as the Jewish priests (Thomas et al. 2000). From Zoossmann-Diskin’s article it appears that there are a number of flaws in the aforementioned articles. The criticism contains a number of points, of which here only the least technical ones will be mentioned: 1. The populations studied are defined wrongly, the term “Sephardic Jews” being used for North African Jews. Sephardic Jews are Jews whose ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492. Zoossmann-Diskin suspects that the authors use the term “Sephardic” as it is used in Israel by religious politicians, a terminology that has nothing to do with science. 2. Skorecki et al. used the chi square test to differentiate between laymen and kohanim. As North African Jews are an aggregate population (composed of genetically different populations)—Bonné-Tamir, Ashbel, and Bar-Shani (1978) showed that Moroccan Jews differ signifi-

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cantly, genetically, from Libyan and Tunisian Jews—conclusions from the chi square test are not justified. Further on, I will return to the use of aggregate populations. 3. The proposal to consider the Cohen modal haplotype as characteristic for the old Hebrew population is not supported by data from other populations. This haplotype is the most common among Iraqi Kurds, southern and central Italians, and Hungarians. In addition, it also occurs among the Lembas. This may look strange, because the composition of the haplotype is based on a unique event (for example, a mutation). However, it is not known when this unique event took place. When this was very long ago, this haplotype cannot be used for determining relationships between groups that only arose during the last 2,000 years. I was unable to find any reference made to the above-mentioned article by Zoossmann-Diskin (2000) in later publications. Again, the reader is withheld scientific literature which, I would think, is necessary to know. When the Cohen modal haplotype occurs among so many different people, might it not be a rather common haplotype that also occurs among other populations, not checked as yet? Anyhow, this study of the Jewish priests contains an inconsistency. If, for the sake of convenience, we assume that the story in the Bible about the descent of Jacob is correct, we see the following: Jacob had 12 sons, who, of course, all had the same Y-chromosome. Of one of these sons we have the following descent: Levi–Kohath–Amram–Moses and Aaron. Both Moses and Aaron, forefather of the priests, therefore had the same Y chromosome as Jacob, and thus the same as the remaining sons of Jacob and their male progeny. Why then would today’s priests have a different— and the same—Y chromosome from all other Jews, unless laymen are, to a large extent, descendants of converts? The Levites For the reader who is not acquainted with this group, a short explanation. According to the Bible, Levi, the third son of Jacob, had more descendants besides Aaron, and these formed the tribe of the Levites. The task of the Levites is to serve the priests. As is the case with the priests, being a Levite is determined by patrilineal descent; moreover, a convert cannot become a Levite. Behar et al. (2003) sampled Levites from nine Ashkenazi communities: Austria-Hungary, Belarus, France, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Russia. They split Levites into two groups, a western

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(France, the Netherlands, and Germany) and an eastern (the others). They found no significant differences in haplotype or haplotype frequencies. They indicated that because of the low number of persons per group, only large differences in frequency could be statistically significant. They did make a surprising find. Just over 50 percent of the Ashkenazi Levites belong to haplogroup R1a1, a haplogroup of European origin, that occurs frequently among Belarussians and Sorbs. This haplotype could not be found among Sephardic Levites (Sephardic used in the wrong sense). The authors assume that the rule that a non-Jew cannot become Levite through conversion was not always kept very well in earlier days. Starting from one single non-Jewish forefather with a high social status and thus having many descendants, about 100 grandchildren, his haplotype spread through drift among the remaining Levites. They also calculated when this haplotype entered the Jewish community. Depending on the calculation model, this happened 663 or 1,000 years ago. The corresponding confidence intervals were 0 to 2,425 and 0 to 3,672 years, respectively. By making a number of assumptions, among which were a population growth of 17.5 percent per generation during the last 1,000 years, and a percentage of Levites of 4 percent, they were able to reduce the confidence intervals to 244 to 1,570 and 375 to 2,248 years, respectively. A European descent of part of the Ashkenazi Levites is interesting, because this is the first time since the work of Zoossmann-Diskin that a significant European contribution has been shown. From a phenotypic point of view it is actually a logical finding, despite the religious problem. It remains to be seen, though, to what extent the occurrence of 100 grandchildren so long ago may be considered realistic. The sampling Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with their sampling. An important and hardly solvable problem is the verification of the information provided by the subjects about their forefathers. From my experience with genealogy I know that the knowledge of one’s ancestors, prior to genealogical investigations, normally does not extend further back than the grandparents, or in a few cases the great-grandparents. Information concerning personal facts from earlier periods, such as place of birth or religious aspects, should be considered with the utmost caution, and cannot be taken as true without a thorough investigation into the family history of the interviewees. Nevertheless, this kind of information is used in the studies that are being discussed here. I will come back to this issue when discussing the Roman Jews.

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A related problem applies to the Dutch and German Levites, and possibly to the East European ones as well. Not everyone who says that he is a Levite is one. This has to do with the use of the name Levie (in the Netherlands). The name is not only used for a Levite, but also for Leib, the sobriquet of Yehuda the Hebrew name for Judah. This makes the test still less reliable, because of the small number of test subjects (5, 10, and 6 for the Dutch, German, and French Levites, respectively). The makeup of the non-Jewish persons in the sampling also leaves something to be desired. Semino et al. (2000) showed that haplotype R1a1 occurs at very high frequencies among Poles (56.4%), Hungarians (60%), and Ukranians (54%), and at lower frequencies in many more populations. Among Belarussians a frequency of 39% was observed (Rosser et al. 2000). Behar et al. report frequencies of 63% among Sorbs and 51% among Belarussians. Behar et al. are the first to report the occurence of this haplotype among Sorbs. Why Sorbs, of all people? Because of the geographic location close to the places where the ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews originated? The East European Jews did not originate from that part of Germany. With regard to the Sorbs, only toward the end of the thirteenth century there is information about a Jewish presence in Bautzen, and in 1305, Jews lived in Görlitz as well. As we saw in the foregoing chapter, Wexler (1991) is of the opinion that East European Jews are mainly descendants from the Sorbs. By introducing the Sorbs, Behar et al. possibly try to make a non-Jewish contribution to Ashkenazi Levites somewhat less awkward. Why didn’t they mention the other East European populations with a high frequency of R1a1? In this case, the Ukranians in particular are interesting, in view of the early presence of Jews in southern Russia. In addition, in 1897 more than two million Jews lived in Ukraine! The small number of Jewish test persons, the effect of which is worsened by the uncertainty of the status of Levite as well as the somewhat peculiar choice of the non-Jewish test persons, make it difficult to estimate the most important conclusion, the East European origin of the haplotype with 50 percent of the Levites, at its true value. The relationship obviously is there. The only question is, to whom does it apply? As it now appears that possibly 50 percent of the Levites have a European haplotype, one may wonder whether the assumption that 4 percent of the Jews are Levites still holds. Another problem is the reduction of the confidence interval. A growth rate of 17.5 percent per generation during the last 1,000 years, on which the reduction is also based, is simply not possible, as was shown in chapter V. Moreover, it is also not so clear any longer whether Levites indeed form 4 percent of the Jews. The reduced confidence intervals thus become highly dubious.

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Irrespective of the criticism mentioned above, there is also a problem with the DNA of Levites. Levi is the forefather of both the Levites and the priests. Why then, again assuming that the Bible is right, suggest a different haplotype for the Levites and the priests (or the Israelites)? The Middle Eastern origin of the Jews On 6 June 2000 an article appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that discussed the origin of Jewish men from the Middle East (Hammer et al. 2000). The authors sampled 115 Ashkenazi Jews, 44 Roman Jews, 45 North African Jews, 32 Near Eastern Jews, 50 Kurdish Jews, 30 Yemenite Jews, and 20 Ethiopian Jews. As far as the European non-Jewish populations are concerned, they sampled 31 Russians, 44 British, 33 Germans, 40 Austrians, 81 Italians, 23 Spanish, and 85 Greeks. In addition, five Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were sampled and three North African ones (including Ethiopians!); the remaining populations are not important for this discussion. They determined the Y chromosome haplotype frequencies in all populations studied. To determine the Y chromosome haplotype frequencies of the presumed Jewish parental population, the haplotype frequencies of the North African, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Kurdish samples were averaged. To obtain the Y chromosome haplotype frequencies of the parental European population, the haplotype frequencies of the German, Austrian, and Russian samples were averaged. The essence of the article consists of three conclusions: 1. the haplotype frequencies of the different Jewish populations agree with those in non-Jewish populations from the Middle East, 2. the haplotype frequencies in most of the Jewish populations studied did not differ significantly from each other, and 3. most of the Jewish communities remained relatively isolated. Unlike Zoossmann-Diskin, the authors did not use autosomal DNA. Because their conclusions are flatly opposed to those of Zoossmann-Diskin, it would be interesting to know why the use of two types of DNA led to different results. Therefore, the question is: is the difference due at all to the type of DNA used? Hammer et al. do not enter into this problem. In their bibliography, the PhD thesis of Zoossmann-Diskin is not mentioned, which is strange. It certainly cannot be said that the authors were unfamiliar with this thesis, since the last author of the article was Zoossmann-Diskin’s advisor. I can only explain the hushing up of the thesis by assuming that

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Hammer et al. made calculations that, according to Zoossmann-Diskin, are not correct. These calculations were indeed carried out (as the reader probably noticed already): 1. The genetic makeup of a Jewish parental population was calculated by averaging the genetic makeup of four modern Jewish populations whose origin has not been settled. In this case aggregate populations and the chi square test were also used (see pp. 150-151). 2. The percentage admixture of the Ashkenazi Jews was calculated by pooling the populations of Russians, Germans, and Austrians, which, as mentioned earlier, yields a fictitious population. It therefore looks as if Hammer et al. were unable to provide adequate arguments to refute the objections by Zoossmann-Diskin. The parental population Let us take a look at the modern Jewish populations used to determine the genetic makeup of the presumed parental population first. North African Jews As the reader may recall, in the discussion of the letter to Nature about the Jewish priests it was pointed out that North African Jews did not form a single but an aggregate population (Zoossmann-Diskin 1997, 79). In the article in PNAS we are essentially dealing with only two groups of Jews, 25 Moroccans and 15 Libyans, the remaining (five, of which three are undefined) being essentially unimportant. These two groups are thus not related. The Moroccan Jews actually form an interesting group. In the literature, the conversion of Berber tribes is repeatedly mentioned (for example, Ibn Khaldun, quoted by Hirschberg 1963, 317–318; Feist 1925, 99). Hirschberg (1963) studied this phenomenon extensively. He arrived at the conclusion that no large groups of Berbers converted to Judaism. At the end of his article he makes the following remark: “The decisive fact disproving the assimilation of large Berber groups is the complete lack of any penetration of Berber languages into Jewish literature.” However, in 1970 a description of an old Berber version of the Passover haggadah was published (the story, haggadah, of the exodus from Egypt, which is read on the first evening of Passover). This haggadah is written in the Berber language, but with Hebrew letters (Galand-Pernet and Zafrani 1970). This refutes Hirschberg’s “decisive” fact. According to Corcos (1976, 300), in the sixteenth century, the Jewish community in Morocco consisted of three groups, the most important of which was formed by those who were born there. The majority of this

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group consisted of Berbers, who only spoke a Berber language, and of “Arabic” Jews, who may originally have come from Arabia. Gershoni-Baruch et al. (1994) showed that a mutation that causes a certain kind of albinism among Israeli patients of Moroccan origin occurred among 83 percent of these Jews. The mutation was not found among the (few) Libyan, Tunisian, and Ashkenazi Jews they studied. However, the mutation was found among patients from, among others, the Canary Islands (Oetting et al. 1993). It is known that already in early times, Berbers lived on the Canary Islands (Pinto et al. 1994). However, the remark by Zoossmann-Diskin (1997, 79) that “This mutation is presumably a Berber mutation, since the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands were of Berber origin” cannot be substantiated as long as this mutation is not shown to occur among Berbers. On the other hand, the phenotypic similarity of many Moroccan Jews and Berbers does point towards a genetic relationship. A possible genetic relationship with Moroccan Berbers certainly does not point in the direction of a Jewish parental population. Libyan Jews were genetically located between the Moroccan and Middle Eastern Jews (Zoossmann-Diskin 1997, Tables 16–19). It is not clear whether the genetic situation of the Libyan Jews is responsible for the relationship, calculated by Hammer et al., of the North African Jews with the Middle Eastern Jews and the non-Jewish Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese. In 2001, Rosenberg et al. showed that Libyan Jews differed genetically from Moroccan Jews. The genetic contribution of Berbers to this group should first be studied as well before it can be assumed from the calculations by Hammer et al. that Libyan Jews form part of the Jewish parental population. Although we are dealing here with Jewish North Africans, the composition of the non-Jewish North Africans also deserves attention. This group is represented by other nationalities than the Jewish group. To find Egyptians as well as Tunisians in this group is one thing, but to also place Ethiopians in the group of North Africans makes the composition of the North Africans very implausible indeed. Ethiopia is located on the coast of East Africa and lies at 10o north latitude (the same as Nigeria!). Near Eastern Jews Here we are dealing with an aggregate population of Iraqis and Iranians. These Jews indeed originate from the Middle East, and they are related to non-Jews in the region (Zoossmann-Diskin 1997, 76). This explains why the Middle Eastern Jews, according to the calculations of the authors, form one group, as it were, with the non-Jewish Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese. However, we are dealing here with a case of admixture, and as long

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as the origin of these Jews has not been determined, Middle Eastern Jews cannot be assumed to descend from a single Jewish parental population. Kurdish Jews Kurdish Jews are also an indigenous Near Eastern population, related to the non-Jews of the region (Zoossmann-Diskin 1997, 76). Yemenite Jews Yemenite Jews also form one of the modern populations used to determine the genetic background of the parental population. I will come back to this group when discussing the studies in which mitochondrial DNA is used. The use of “invalid”—that is, aggregate—populations (North African and Middle Eastern Jews) probably led to the result obtained. If one wants to calculate the genetic composition of the parental population from a number (six in this case) of modern populations, it is essential that the variance between these modern populations is not significant. If it is, then there is nothing to compare, because in that case it is not plausible that they all descended from the same parental population. However, the differences between Moroccan and Libyan and between Iraqi and Iranian Jewish populations are so big that the differences between the “main” Jewish populations (North African, Middle Eastern, Kurdish, and Yemenite) are not significant anymore. If, instead of the “invalid” populations, genetic material of the subpopulations had been used, these modern Jewish populations probably would have differed so much that it is questionable whether the authors would have reached the contested conclusion. Phenotype and admixture A subject that is not discussed in the article is the phenotype of the various groups of Jews. The bigger the percentage of admixture with the surrounding populations, the bigger the difference in phenotype between the Jewish populations. Therefore, it is important to include this subject in the discussion of the article. However, Hammer et al. do not discuss it. They calculated the extent of admixture with, among others, the Ashkenazim, and arrived at 23 percent. How realistic is this estimate compared to the phenotype of the Ashkenazi Jews? I again limit myself to the largest group, the East European Jews. We are dealing with a European phenotype (with two subtypes, blond and dark-haired). How much admixture is needed to obtain more than seven milllion Jews with a European phenotype (leaving aside the Tatar types), starting from a Middle Eastern phenotype at the beginning of the Common Era?

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Maybe this question does not come to mind immediately, because phenotypic differences between, especially, dark-haired, Europeans and people from the Middle East do not seem particularly large. An interesting, and at the same time disturbing, aspect of this subject is the question: why do the aforementioned geneticists accept that Indian and Ethiopian Jews are descendants of converts, while European Jews are not, or hardly, considered to be descendants of converts? Why do we consider Ethiopian Jews exotic? Should Ethiopian Jews be compared with European Jews? No, we should compare both the Ethiopian Jews and European Jews to a Middle Eastern population, for example Palestinians or Iraqis. It appears clear that both kinds of Jews are different from the latter. The phenotypic differences from the European Jews are still so great that a Palestinian or an Iraqi will see at a glance whether he is dealing with a European Jew (or non-Jew) or with another Palestinian or Iraqi. In the case of Indian or Ethiopian Jews, the matter is even clearer. If the authors suggest that admixture in these groups amounted to only 23 percent, this would not be considered plausible. From my own experience, I know that the phenotypic differences between other groups of Jews are also substantial. When I lived in Israel, I immediately saw whether I was dealing with an Ashkenazi, a Moroccan, or a Yemenite Jew. And I am not even talking about the blond Ashkenazi types. By taking the Ashkenzi Jews as a starting point, the idea is created that admixture only took place among other Jewish groups. Why else do they look so different from us? The transition from one phenotype to another is nothing special. For the sake of clarity, let me take a domestic example, the Dutch, who married women from the Dutch Indies (now Indonesia) when they were a Dutch colony. Children of these couples have a phenotype between those of the parents. However, we see that when these children in turn marry autochthonous Dutch men or women, their grandchildren will have more of a Dutch phenotype and less of an Indonesian phenotype. If this process continues, the Indonesian phenotype will disappear altogether. As admixture took place mainly between the beginning of the Common Era and 1400, and in view of the religious situation, especially before the year 1000, the European phenotype of the East European Jews in 1900 had probably come about before 1500. Independent of how many Jews from the Middle East ever went to Eastern Europe, admixture must have been extensive, something that is especially striking with blond Jews, of whom it is difficult to assume, as mentioned before, that they originate from the Middle East. This makes it dubious whether an admixture of 23 percent was able to have caused this. Thus, let us have a somewhat more detailed look at the way the authors came to the conclusion that only a low level of admixture with non-Jewish

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populations took place, because this constitutes an essential part of their article. The question which should be asked next is: did Hammer et al. determine admixture with the right Jewish and non-Jewish populations (apart from the question whether the creation of fictitious populations is correct)? Ashkenazi Jews We are immediately confronted with an uncertainty. What is the composition of the Ashkenazi Jews in their studies? Are there also West European Jews among them, and if so, how many? The authors do not say anything about this. Already in chapter IV it appeared that no large numbers of German, French, and Italian Jews moved to Eastern Europe (and the same holds true for Austrian Jews). This means that they, through admixture with the local population, have a different genetic makeup from East European Jews. By lumping together the Ashkenazi Jews, a fictitious population is created as well. Because East European Jews constitute more than 90 percent of the Ashkenazim, I take it that we are dealing mainly with East European Jews. How then do we explain the results of Hammer et al.? As mentioned before, Ashkenazi Jews were compared to non-Jewish Russians, Austrians, and Germans. If admixture took place, it must have happened mainly before 1400. Where did East European Jews live during this period? It was mainly in the area of today’s Ukraine, and to a much lesser extent in the area of today’s Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania. However, non-Jewish inhabitants from these countries are not mentioned in the article. That is rather strange if one seriously wants to determine the extent of admixture. The Russians, Austrians, and Germans thus hardly play a role in the admixture of the East European Jews. As to the Russians, this requires some explanation. Russians are the inhabitants of what in earlier times was called the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the area north of Ukraine and east of Belarus and Lithuania. Until relatively recently, Jews were barred from the Grand Duchy. According to the phenotype of East European Jews, the percentage of admixture should have been much closer to 100 percent. The reason 23 percent was found may have to do with the presence of some among the Russians who originated from one of the four relevant countries, or with the presence of some German Jews. This cannot be deduced from the article, however. Those nationalities which are mentioned in the article almost guarantee that, in view of the phenotypic reality, little admixture will be found. It is, therefore, quite logical that after certain calculations, which make it possible to determine and plot the average genetic distance between populations, hardly any genetic affinity was found between the Ashkenazi Jews and the non-Jewish Russians, Austrians, and Germans. The

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authors also included Englishmen, Spaniards, Italians, and Greeks into their calculations, with the same result. The omission of DNA of non-Jews from Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania provides us with the second and probably most important reason why the low percentage of admixture of 23 percent is not correct. It is, therefore, probably not so much a question of averaging or not averaging genetic material, as a result of which Hammer et al. were unable to show a high admixture, as that they simply used the wrong populations. The questions which should be answered are the following. What is the extent of admixture when DNA of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the four relevant countries is used? And would it make a difference if West European and East European Jews were treated as different groups? From the samples used, it is not possible to determine if, and to what extent, admixture between Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews occurred. The questions just asked, evoked by the article of Hammer et al., were partly answered by the results of another, more recent, study whereby the Ashkenazi Jews were split into ten groups: three West European, including French, German, and Dutch Jews, and seven East European, including Austrian-Hungarian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, and Ukrainian Jews (Behar et al. 2004a). The non-Jewish populations studied were Frenchmen, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, and Russians. In each group the frequency of the different haplotypes was determined. Dutch Jews appeared to differ from the others because of a high level of admixture. The haplogroup that was the most frequent among them (26.1 percent) was also the haplogroup occurring most frequently among the non-Jewish West Europeans. Because of the high percentage of admixture among the Dutch Jews, the determination of the level of admixture was repeated by the exclusion of the Dutch Jews. It appeared that “Although not statistically significant, there was a higher level of admixture in Eastern versus Western Ashkenazi Jewish populations.” Behar et al. attribute the high level of admixture that Dutch Jews to the longstanding religious tolerance in the Netherlands. Well, yes and no. The Dutch were tolerant in allowing Jews to live among them, but when conversions were involved, not much of the tolerance was left, especially not as far as the Protestant (or Catholic) ministers were concerned. There is clear-cut evidence, albeit in a much later period, that conversions occurred continuously. Table 10 (see p. 161) shows the number of proselytes who were buried at the two Jewish cemeteries of Amsterdam, Muiderberg and Zeeburg between 1671 and 1810.

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Table 10. Adults and proselytes in the burial books of Muiderberg (better-off) and Zeeburg (poor) from 1671 to 1810, and the percentages the proselytes constitute of the adults, per ten-year periods (Begraafregister van de joodse begraafplaats op Muiderberg). Period

Total number

1671–1680 1681–1690 1691–1700 1701–1710 1711–1720 1721–1730 1731–1740 1741–1750 1751–1760 1761–1770 1771–1780 1781–1790 1791–1800 1801–1810

182 232 378 404 397 386 400 422 537 720 975 1,026 1,132 1,095

Muiderberg Proselytes 5 0 5 5 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 2

% 2.7 0 1.3 1.2 0.8 0 0 0 0 0.1 0 0 0.1 0.2

Total number

159 412 635 726 772 1,219 1,684 1,743 1,780 1,642

Zeeburg Proselytes

%

0 3 3 5 6 11 18 16 16 17

0 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.1 0.9 0.9 1.0

If we compare the two cemeteries, it appears that admixture mostly took place among poor people. At Muiderberg, only 22 proselytes were buried in 140 years, while at Zeeburg 95 proselytes were buried in 96 years. Therefore, conversions seem to be socially related. During the period 1671–1715, before Zeeburg came into use, there are 18 proselytes. Between 1715 and 1770, no proselytes were buried at Muiderberg. It is plausible that the 18 proselytes from the earlier period were also all, or almost all, poor people. Among the poor the inflow of proselytes was rather constant, including both men and women (not shown in the table), and about 20 percent of them died unmarried. It is remarkable that so many were unmarried, because one may assume that conversions normally have something to do with marriage. It is possible that these unmarried persons had not contracted a legal marriage. Therefore, it is also possible that they had children. Because of the relatively constant percentage of converts per ten years at Zeeburg, I assume that the inflow was also relatively constant. Roughly a quarter of the proselytes were women. During the rule of the Visigoths, heavy penalties were imposed on Christians who married Jews and converted to Judaism. Nevertheless, admixture occurred to such an extent that kings had to warn people time and again. When we look at the same period, before the year 1000, in Eastern

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Europe, there was religious tolerance as well. By leaving out non-Jews from Belarus and from Ukraine, where in those days many Jews lived, but by including non-Jewish Russians (see my remark about the Russians above), the question seems justified whether we are not dealing here with an underestimate of admixture in Eastern Europe, certainly in view of the phenotypic similarities between East European Jews and non-Jews. It would be interesting to see if the level of admixture of Dutch Jews remains relatively high if non-Jewish Belarussians and Ukranians are included in the analysis. The above-mentioned examples show that Ostrer’s remark (2001) “Entry into the community was possible through religious conversion, but was probably a rare event” does not agree with reality. It should be clear that conversions to Judaism, whether or not through marriages, are a plausible reason for the inflow of “foreign” genes into the Jewish population in Europe. Through mixed marriages, a Jewish partner may also be the product of a mixed marriage, or of a marriage in which both partners were converts. Ethiopian Jews Hammer et al. discuss the genetic background of the Ethiopian Jews, and conclude that, as far as relationship is concerned, the Ethiopian Jews fell by the wayside, being more related to non-Jewish Ethiopians and other (sic) North Africans, namely Egyptians and Tunisians. At the beginning of the 1990s it was already shown, among others by Bonné-Tamir (Hakim et al. 1990), that Ethiopian Jews are the descendants of Ethiopians who once converted to Judaism. Since they have such an obvious phenotypic similarity, it would be difficult to maintain that they are not converted Ethiopians. Hammer et al., of course, also realized that the phenotypic differences between the Ethiopian Jews and the inhabitants of the Middle East (and themselves) were so great that they could not be ignored. However, their remark that the Ethiopian Jews “were placed close to the non-Jewish Ethiopians” is too cryptic. Why not simply state that they are converted Ethiopians (as we will see further on)? A big problem about the analyses that deal with admixture is the number of non-Jewish subjects per country. For example, Hammer et al. sampled 31 Russians, 81 Italians, and 85 Greeks. It is only logical that the number of subjects should be related to some extent to the size of the population. What we see here is the opposite; Russia has more than 100 million inhabitants, Italy 57 million, and Greece 11 million inhabitants. Besides, how is it possible to determine admixture, which in addition mostly took place more than 1,000 years ago, with only 31 Russians? How did they reckon with

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the heterogeneity of the population in the afore-mentioned countries? How were these Russians, Italians, and Greeks selected? The same questions obviously also hold for these other nationalities (in addition to the question of how important they were for admixture). Without answers to these questions, the relevance of these kinds of admixture analyses is very doubtful. The confidence intervals may say something about a comparison of the different groups of test subjects. They do not say anything about admixture between the total populations, and this is what matters. The Roman Jews, a separate group? Because I did not understand why Roman Jews form a separate group I took a look at the source of the assumption, an article by Oddoux et al. (1999). In their study they use DNA that is specific for certain hereditary diseases in order to determine the origin of the mutations and to find connections between Roman, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Iraqi Jews. The latter two are not important for us. Oddoux et al. used DNA of Jews of pure Roman ancestry for their studies, ancestry being determined by the statement that all four of their grandparents were born in Rome. They concluded from their studies that the ancient Roman Jewish community may have been the progenitors of the Ashkenazim, and that the temporary Roman Jewish community may have had Ashkenazi ancestors. Some mutations were found among both the Ashkenazim and the Roman Jews, others only among the Ashkenazi Jews, like those of Tay-Sachs. I pointed out earlier that most of the time, information provided about ancestors is not reliable, and I will show this with the example of my own family. All four of my grandparents were born in Amsterdam, and I am therefore “of pure Amsterdam origin”. When we go back just one generation further, my great-grandfather van Straten already drops out. He came from the Betuwe, a region between the rivers Rhine and Waal. Because almost all scientists who study hereditary Jewish diseases among Ashkenazim do not mention the country of origin, and thus consider the Ashkenazim as one genetic group, they pass over possible genetic differences between West and East European Ashkenazim. This may lead to premature conclusions. For example, the pieces of DNA mentioned in this article that can be used to demonstrate Tay-Sachs disease do not occur among those non-Jews and the Roman Jews studied, whereas they do occur among the Ashkenazi Jews. According to the authors, this points to a difference between Roman and Ashkenazi Jews. The article does not disclose that Tay-Sachs, as we shall see further on in the chapter, occurs in higher

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frequencies only among Central and East European Jews. Furthermore, the authors find it surprising “that the highly prevalent nonclassical CAH mutaion is not found in the Roman Jewish population ... The allele frequency of this mutation has been observed to be 17.3% among Ashkenazi Jews. These observations suggest that this allele may have arisen following the migration of Jews out of Italy and into northern Europe.”

Here we have a nice example of a conclusion based on the accepted, but wrong, hypothesis that a considerable number of Italian Jews moved to Eastern Europe. Their observations don’t suggest this at all. Again, we can see how dangerous it is to lump all Ashkenazi Jews together, as it is quite posible that because of this, Roman Jews may be counted among West European Ashkenazim. It would be interesting to see what a differentiation between, at least, West and East European Jews would yield in this case. Therefore, it is not certain at all that we should separate Roman Jews from “the Ashkenazim.”

Studies with Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Introduction In plants and animals, energy is being supplied by special cell organels, called mitochondria. Initially they were free-living bacteria that became incorporated in cells of higher organisms. Mitochondria kept their own, bacterial, DNA, the so-called mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. In humans, mtDNA is inherited by the mother only. This property is used to determine relationships via the maternal line. Through a mutation in the mtDNA it is possible to determine whether admixture in the female line occurred. For example, non-Jewish women in a certain region have mutation X in their mtDNA that occurs only there. If a woman from this region marries a Jewish man, all descendants of this couple will have mutation X in their mtDNA. Daughters will pass this mtDNA containing X on to their progeny, and so on. In this way we can show, many generations later, that the founding mother, by way of mutation X, came from the region in question. On the basis of mtDNA, people may be divided into groups, so-called haplogroups (derived from the haploid genome). Thus North Europeans belong to haplogroups H, T, U, V, and X; South Europeans to haplogroups J and K; inhabitants of the Middle East to J and N; and Africans to haplogroup L. These groups are divided further into subgroups. Currently, it is

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possible to put together a “genealogical tree” of mtDNA that shows the relationship between the different haplogroups. Ashkenazi Jews A bottleneck When a disaster takes place as a result of which only few individuals of a population remain, or when a few individuals from a large population move to some other place, we speak of a genetic bottleneck. When a population passes through such a bottleneck, the genetic composition generally changes drastically (Stearns and Hoekstra 2000, 65). Behar et al. (2004b) used mtDNA to find out whether a genetic bottleneck may have occurred in the early history of the Ashkenazi Jews. They studied the variation in the composition of hypervariable segment 1 (HVS1) of the mtDNA among Ashkenazi Jews and among non-Jews from Europe and the Near East. Within the Ashkenazi Jews there appeared to be remarkable differences that divided them into three subgroups: a West European group consisting of Jews from France, Germany, and the Netherlands; an East European group with Jews from Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine; and an in-between group with Jews from Austria-Hungary and Lithuania. The results were such that they showed a bottleneck for West European Jews only. Another method, which also provides information about the recent demographic history of a population, uses pairwise differences in the building blocks (nucleotides) of mtDNA, the so-called mismatch distributions. Through this method, it is determined, among all possible pairs of individuals of a population, in how many places there is a nucleotide difference in a certain piece of mtDNA (a “mismatch”). The frequency distribution of the number of mismatches obtained in this way provides information about recent or less recent bottlenecks. The mismatch distributions also indicated a bottleneck in the West European Jewish population but not in the East European. For the first time, we see that a genetic difference between West and East European Jews is reported in the DNA literature. This difference goes hand in hand with both the conclusion that mass migrations of German Jews to Eastern Europe didn’t take place and the calculation of the number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500, and as such is in accordance with the opinion advanced in this book that East European Jews have a different origin from West European Jews. Behar et al. remark that it is an interesting difference, but they do not comment on it any further. A bottleneck only for West

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European Jews does not concord with the ideas of the authors of the article, who are of the opinion that East European Jews originated from the Rhineland as well (and thus should also show the same bottleneck). According to the authors, there have been a number of possible bottlenecks in Jewish history. One of them was around the first century C.E. This period could very well qualify for a bottleneck in the West European Jewish population, because, as far as is known, in that period there were as yet few Jews living in Western Europe. As mentioned above, the Jews studied came from Germany, France, and the Netherlands. During or shortly after the period mentioned, Jews lived in Cologne. Dutch Jews, for the most part, are descendants of German Jews. As to those French Jews who were studied, they came from the Rhine valley, that is, from Alsace and Lorraine. On p. 35 we saw that at the beginning of 1500 hardly any Jews lived there, and that when French troops entered Metz in 1552, Jews also entered the city. Perhaps more important is the report that on lists of names from 1637 there were many Jews with names based on those of German cities. One should be careful drawing conclusions from names that refer to cities, but it is a useful indication that for those French Jews (from the German-French border region) studied, the same holds true as for German and Dutch Jews. Didn’t East European Jews pass through a bottleneck at the same time? In chapter V, I calculated that the number of Jews around the beginning of the Common Era must have been somewhere between 2,000 and 230,000, probably closer to the upper than to the lower limit of the range. This number is such that there wasn’t necessarily a bottleneck. This is in agreement with the results of Behar et al. Via simulation experiments, Behar et al. concluded that their data agree best with a 200௅fold reduction in size, about 150 generations, or about 3,750 years ago. They do add, though, that their estimate especially depends on two assumptions, that the Ashkenazim did not admix with the European host populations and that the mutation rate is 1.2 × 10௅3 per sequence per generation. Their own research (Behar et al. 2003; Behar et al. 2004a) showed admixture among both East and West European Jews. It is therefore not clear what the significance of the computer simulations is with regard to Ashkenazi Jews. Founding mothers Behar et al. (2006) also studied the founder events of the Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews with mtDNA. Ashkenazi Jews appeared to have unique mutations in the K and N1b haplogroups. The authors were able to establish four Ashkenazi founding events, three in haplogroup K and one in haplogroup N1b, that could be derived from just four founding mothers

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who accounted for 40 percent of the mtDNAs of the present Ashkenazi population. The term “founding mother” should not be taken literally; there may have been more “mothers” with haplotype K or N1b at different times. Behar et al. also calculated the coalescence ages, that is, how long ago the mutations entered the Jewish community. These appear to agree with the period in which, according to Ostrer (2001), Jewish settlements arose due to the immigration of a few Jewish families from Italy during the seventh and eighth centuries. The authors also assume that the number of Ashkenazi Jews in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries amounted to about 25,000. Therefore, the founding events must have taken place before the twelfth century. The authors mention that it is very unlikely that the four founding mothers belonged to a European host population, because the relevant founder lineage sequences in the mtDNA of the Ashkenazi Jews did not appear in the mtDNA of non-Jewish British, Irish, German, or Italian subjects. They also add that the non-Ashkenazi Jews who have K-lineages in common with the Ashkenazi Jews originate in Jewish communities whose origin can be traced back to the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The shared lineages may as a result be due to common origin or to admixture between the two groups after the expulsion. Behar et al. choose the first option, because the presence of Ashkenazi founding lineages, albeit in low frequencies in Jews from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, points to joint ancestors from the Middle East. The occurrence of haplogroup N1b in Southwest Asia and North Africa points more to a Middle Eastern than a European origin as well. Finally, Behar et al. indicate that their data do not provide answers to questions about the size and location of the ancestral population from which Ashkenazi Jewry arose. When the coalescence ages were tested statistically, the standard deviations (measure of reliability of the measured data) were very large. For example, one of the mutations had a coalescence age of 1,614 years with a standard deviation of 1,142 years. This means that the mutation entered the Jewish community somewhere between 472 and 2,756 years ago. In chapter III it was pointed out that Rhineland Jewry arose before the fourth century and that the only thing known about these early Jews is that they originated somewhere in the Roman Empire. The number 25,000 is not correct either, if we start out from realistic annual growth rates. When we take these points just mentioned into account, it is not clear how relevant the coalescence ages are; total periods do not point to a specific date, and the dates of settlement and the size of the Jewish population that are referred to are not correct either.

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The next problem is with the non-Jewish subjects from the four West European countries mentioned, who were chosen to show whether the founding mothers were of European origin; Jewish subjects of these countries did not significantly contribute to East European Jewry. The assumption that the aforementioned non-Ashkenazi Jews originated from Spain is also dubious. Again, the authors relied on what subjects said about this, without having the possibility of verifying their statements. Here we are dealing with the origin of ancestors in 1492, 15 generations ago, not just three or four. (In genealogy one reckons with three generations per century.) Even the surname of a man may not be the surname of his forefather just 200 years ago, but the surname of one of his foremothers. The conclusion that the common ancestor therefore came from the Middle East cannot really be proven. I will come back to this issue in the next section. Regarding the DNA studies about the East European Jews, we see that most molecular geneticists start out from the generally accepted views about their origin. Thus the molecular geneticist Motulsky (1980, 354; 1995) quotes the estimates of the Jewish population in Poland in 1500 (10,000–15,000 and 200,000 respectively) by Weinryb. He even states that these numbers are based on historical data. Ostrer (2001) writes that during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Ashkenazi Jews were thrown out of Western Europe. While discussing the history of Jews in Germany during this period (see chapter IV), it was clearly shown that Jews remained in Germany. Nothing is known about final expulsions in other West European countries either. Finally, Behar et al. (2006) write: “Two features have made the Ashkenazi Jewish population an excellent candidate for genetic studies. First, its unique, well-documented overall demography is consistent with [...] dramatic expansions, from an estimated number of ~25,000 in 1300 C.E. to >8,500,000 around the turn of the century.” This fragment is based on the earlier mentioned chapter by DellaPergola. I find it rather strange that molecular biologists rely on historical data, the sizes and growth rates of Jewish populations mentioned in the literature, without checking whether these data are plausible. As a result, excellent genetic research is being tied to old historical and demographic ideas that lack a sound basis. The result is that often the conclusions do not agree with reality, or sometimes no conlusions can be drawn at all. The latter becomes evident with the finding that West European Jews differ genetically from East European Jews. The authors cannot draw any conclusions from this finding, because they are committed to the idea that East European Jews originated from Germany. As mentioned a number of times, the investigations which deal with admixture of Ashkenazi Jews use non-Jewish test subjects from the wrong

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countries. Even in the case that test subjects would be collected from the right countries, e.g., from today’s Ukraine and Belarus, the following points show that it still isn’t that simple to determine admixture. 1. At the beginning of the Common Era, Jews probably formed a relatively low percentage of the populations in the regions just mentioned. 2. It is unknown to which tribes, with the exception of Alans and Khazars who actually are only mentioned in the ninth century, the non-Jewish partners belonged, and where they lived. 3. It is unknown whether there are descendants related to these nonJewish partners, and if so, we don’t know where to locate them. 4. It is unknown what the genetic relationship was between the different tribes. The above-mentioned additional points make the determination of the right test subjects and the sample size a problem that is nearly impossible to solve. In any case, it is clear that the sampling procedures used in the literature are certainly not good to determine admixture. Non-Ashkenazi Jews Behar et al. (2008) also studied the founding mothers of the non-Ashkenazi Jews. They distinguish three groups of Jewish communities in the female line according to variations in the mtDNA. Group 1: Jews from Azerbaijan, Georgia, India (Mumbai and Cochin), Libya, Tunisia and Portugal (Belmonte). One founding mother proved to be sufficient to explain 40 percent of the variations in the present mtDNA of most of the Jews of group 1. To explain more than 30 percent of the variation among the Jews from Cochin and Tunisia, two founding mothers were needed. As to the so-called Mountain Jews from Azerbaijan and Dagestan, one of the mtDNA lineages appeared to occur among one of the 111 Kumyks (from Dagestan) studied as well. Of the 74 Georgian Jews studied, 43 (58.1 percent) belonged to the same haplogroup. The Jews from Mumbai (the former Bombay), the Bene Israel, and from Cochin belonged mainly to subgroups of haplogroup M that are specific for this region. Both groups of Indian Jews are autochthonous populations. Libyan Jews were related to Tunisian Jews. The two mutations specific for both of them also occurred among non-Jewish Tunisians. Jews from Belmonte formed a small group of Jews who, despite the expulsion from Portugal in 1492, remained there. Their haplotype was HV0b.

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It is remarkable that no Azeris, the most important inhabitants of Azerbaijan, were included among those non-Jews studied. In the article it does not say whether the non-Jewish Tunisians were Arabs or Berbers, which would be interesting to know in view of earlier remarks about Berbers. On the other hand, it is also possible that Arabs who, during the spread of Islam, came to North Africa married local (Berber) women, thereby introducing Berber mtDNA to the Arab population. As to the Indian Jews, Zoosmann-Diskin came to the same conclusion in his PhD thesis, and again the reader is denied this information. It is scientifically rather indecent not to quote someone who obtained the same result earlier. Finally, to put such phenotypically and genotypically different Jews together in one group is incomprehensible. The finding that the variation in their mtDNA could be attributed to one or two founding mothers is not a valid reason to put such a group together. There must be many groups with these features. Because they have more or less the same religion, they should be grouped together genetically? Group 2: Jews from Bulgaria, Turkey, Morocco, and Ethiopia. The Jewish communities from these countries were put together because the variation in their mtDNA cannot be atributed to one or a few founding mothers. Furthermore, Behar et al. maintain that the first three Jewish populations only settled in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Morocco after the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian peninsula, thus after 1492. They consider these entire communities as representatives of the parental Jewish population of Spain. Ethiopian Jews, like Indian Jews, showed mainly haplogroups that also occurred among the non-Jews of the region. In this case, this points toward East African origin. The remark about the expulsion is not correct. Jews lived before the expulsion in all three contries (see the Jewish Encyclopedia under these countries). As to Morocco, I already mentioned that there is a clear indication that admixture with Berbers took place. Sadly enough, while discussing these North African Jews, the authors do not provide genetic information about Berbers either. As to Turkey and Bulgaria, a few objections can be raised against the idea that the Turkish and Bulgarian Jewish communities are a Sephardic community (in the correct definition of the word). Again the authors relied on information provided by the studied subjects. As long as it is unknown how large the Jewish communities in Turkey and Bulgaria were before 1492, and how many Spanish Jews really went to these countries, it remains open to discussion whether the whole Jewish communities of Turkey and Bulgaria may be labeled Sephardic from way back. If it is indeed

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true that East European Jews are genetically closest to Bulgarian Jews (Zoossmann-Diskin 1997, 64), does this mean that East European Jews originated from the Iberian peninsula as well? The haplogroup HV0, given as an indication of an Iberian origin, is one of the most common haplogroups in Macedonia, which also belonged to the Ottoman Empire (Zimmerman et al. 2007). Therefore, it remains to be seen whether this haplogroup is strong evidence for Iberian origin. In the Netherlands there are many Jewish immigrants from the Iberian peninsula. They almost all arrived with typically Spanish and Portuguese surnames. Why should most of them have disposed of these beautiful names in Turkey and Bulgaria? As far as I know, this did not happen in other countries either. Finally, again we are dealing with an illogical grouping: Ethiopian Jews in one group with Bulgarian, Turkish, and Moroccon Jews. Ethiopian Jews are an African population that has nothing to do with the other Jews. Zoossmann-Diskinn also found that Ethiopian Jews were an autochthonous population, and again he is not being quoted. Group 3: Jews from Iraq, Persia, and Yemen. This group consists of non-Ashkenazi Jews some of whom have been living outside the Land of Israel for more than 2,000 years, and who have a relatively large number of founding mothers. Five founding mothers could account for 43 percent of the variation in the mtDNA of the Iraqi Jews, while six founding mothers could account for 41.5 percent of the variation in Persian Jews. The haplogroups of both Iraqi and Persian Jews all occur in Western Eurasia. Five founding mothers could account for 42 percent of the variation in the mtDNA of the Yemenite Jews. Together with the Ethiopian Jews, they also have haplogroup L, the haplogroup of Africans. We must realize that we actually don’t know what the genetic makeup of the original Israelites was. If, indeed, for hundreds of years, the early Israelites were slaves in Egypt, one may wonder where the women they married came from in those days. It would seeem plausible that they married other slaves the Egyptians fetched from more southern parts of Africa. An indication of this possibility could be the information from the Bible (Numbers 12: 1) that Moses married a woman from Cush (Nubia). The presence of a Nubian woman could also indicate that at least some African slaves had taken advantage of the situation, and had left Egypt together with the early Israelites. Another possibility could be that there were already contacts between Africans and inhabitants of the Land of Israel (for example through trade) before the Common Era. Thus, there are a number of ways through which haplogroup L may have entered the Israelite community

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that lived in the Land of Israel at an early stage. If any of these possibilities is indeed correct, the presence of haplogroup L is not necessarily evidence of today’s Yemenite Jews being “recent” converts at all. What makes Yemenite Jews such an interesting group is not only that they had lived in Yemen already for a very long time, something also mentioned by Behar et al., but also that the way they pronounce Hebrew is considered to be the most authentic. They are the only ones who consistently pronounce all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet differently (except for sameh and sin). This feature, together with their relative isolation for centuries, their phenotypic uniqueness, the great genetic distance between them and other Jewish groups (Zoossmann-Diskin 1997, 57), and their genetic relationship to Palestinians (ibid., 77), could make Yemenite Jews potential candidates for being the only ones who, as a group, are immediate descendants of the original Israelites. As we saw before, the presence of haplogroup L would not necessarily contradict this. The genetic relationship between Yemenite Jews and Palestinians is also interesting in view of Belkind’s discussion (1928, 10–19) of the origin of the Muslims who lived in Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although he does not provide adequate sources, I will follow his discussion rather extensively, because it makes sense. He starts out by mentioning that the Arabs who brought Islam to Palestine did not have the intention to destroy peoples but to convert them to Islam. He calls this a “spiritual conquest.” According to the chroniclers, whom he does not name, the conquerors consisted of small numbers of Arabs from Arabia. Belkind mentions that Egypt was conquered during the Arabs’ first years of expansion. For over 1,300 years Egyptians have spoken Arabic, and they are, for the most part, Muslim, while ethnically, they have remained Egyptian. He concludes that the situation in Palestine was not different. This leads to the obvious question: who did the Arabs find in Palestine when they conquered it from the Byzantines? Before answering this question, he proposes that it is not true, as historians maintain, that almost all Jews had left the country following the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. First, there was the revolt by Bar Kokhba (132–135 C.E.), some 60 years after the destruction of the Second Temple. Second, during the seventh century, the Persian King Chosroes II (590– 628) fought against the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, employing 26,000 Jewish soldiers from Galilee. While these Jewish soldiers attacked Jerusalem, another Jewish regiment of 20,000 men attacked Tyre. I don’t know where Belkind obtained this information from and how reliable it is. If Belkind is correct, these examples show that quite a large Jewish population remained in Palestine.

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Before the Muslims took over, there was already a wide gap between the rabbis and the rural population (‘am-ha’arets). The rural population did not follow the religious laws, as a result of which rabbis minimized social contacts with them. After the Muslims had taken over, the upper classes left the country. Scribes who preferred religion above country left for Babylon to found Talmud schools, and rich merchants went westwards to found firms in the Byzantine Empire. However, the farmers stuck to their land. After the spiritual leaders had left, the rural population was first unable to resist the religious pressure of the Christians, and afterwards that of the Muslims. In 1333, the traveler Isaac Hilu (1926, 74) wrote that in Arad, in the south of Palestine, there were poor Jews, “shepherds, who earned a living from the small income of their herds. The rabbi [...] is a shepherd of small stock, and his students follow him to the field to learn the Torah from him.” Belkind is of the opinion that these people must have been descendants of Jews who had lived there in early times. Jews who arrived later on did not become shepherds. They went to the big towns and engaged in Torah studies and handicraft. In the eighteenth century, there were still Jews in villages who were engaged in agriculture. The only village in Belkind’s time that contained Jews was Peki‘in. These Jews didn’t differ in any way from the Muslim villagers except for their religion. They may have been descendants of the old Jewish population. Belkind puts forward another piece of information. In his day the inhabitants of Palestine did not call themselves “Arabs” but farmers (falahim). They only called Beduins “Arabs,” as these people indeed arrived from abroad. On the other hand, these farmers did speak Arabic. According to Belkind, these Muslims felt they spoke the language of a foreign people who conquered the country 1,300 years earlier, but, remarkably, they did not turn into Arabs. Greeks and Romans changed the Hebrew names of many places in the Land of Israel. For example, Acco became Ptolomais, Lud became Diospolis, and Beit-She’an became Scythopolis. When the Romans and Byzantines left the country, these names changed back into Hebrew names. Belkind argues that if Arabs had lived there, they would not have reused the old Hebrew names. He sees this development as proof that descendants of the old Jewish population continued to live there. Finally, I would like to point out some important remarks by Behar et al. in their discussion of putative founding lineages: “any lineage present in the contemporary population, irrespective of its current frequency, might have been a founder lineage at time the community was established, while an unknown number of founder lineages might have been lost ... our research

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identifies the list of ‘successful’ founders with respect to the contemporary mtDNA pools of the corresponding Jewish Diaspora communities.”

Hereditary “Ashkenazi” Diseases As the name indicates, hereditary diseases are passed on from parents to children. Therefore, they can provide medical information about ancestors and possible offspring. Here we are dealing with diseases that arose in the past due to a DNA change (mutation). By retrieving when this must have happened, sometimes it is possible to find out in which country or in which region this change took place. In the United States, at the end of the 1950s, research into hereditary diseases like Gaucher (GD), idiopathic torsion dystonia (ITD), and TaySachs (TSD) got started. These diseases occur especially among East European Ashkenazi Jews. The way factors that cause hereditary diseases among Ashkenazi Jews were and still are explained has mostly been influenced by ideas one had (and still does) about the historic development of these Jews (Goodman 1979). Therefore, it is not unthinkable that this approach introduced a certain subjectivity concerning both the way the studies were done and their conclusions. This objection does not take into account the possibilty that the ideas about the historic development may be incorrect. That this possible subjectivity is not unfounded may become apparent from the following “facts” mentioned by Goodman (ibid., 4–5): “Oriental Jewry represents the original ‘gene pool’ of the Jewish people,” “Sephardic Jewry is an outgrowth of Oriental Jewry,” and “Ashkenazi Jewry is an outgrowth of Oriental Jewry, mainly its Palestinian segment.” In order to interpret their results, those Jewish scientists who studied hereditary diseases started from the “factual” information worded by Goodman, while none of his assertions was ever borne out by evidence. Tay-Sachs (TSD) TSD is a fatal neurological disease of infants, who usually die before the age of five. Aronson and Volk (1962, 390) reported that a large proportion of the ancestors of Jewish children in the United States who had TSD came from the Polish-Russian provinces of Grodno (Hrodna), Suwalki, Vilno, and Kovno. Very few TSD grandparents came from the western parts of the Balkans and Germany (Myrianthopoulos and Aronson 1967, 435). Fraikor (1977) found that the disease is a hundred times more prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestors came from Eastern Europe than

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among Ashkenazi Jews from elsewhere or among non-Jews. She also mentions that the mutation probably had already been present in the Rhineland, or arose there before the mass migration of the German Jews to Eastern Europe. Because by far the largest number of American Jews originate from Eastern Europe, it is not surprising that most of the research concerning this disease was carried out in the United States of America. Let me discuss first the remarks by Fraikor. From discussions with Dutch and German neurologists, I know that there are no data about TSD among German and Dutch Jews. If Fraikor is right that the mutation arose already before the mass migration of the German Jews to Eastern Europe, it is very strange that nothing is known about TSD among the German and Dutch Jews. To begin with, Fraikor has no evidence whatsoever that the mutation was present, or arose, in the Rhineland. This idea is simply and solely based on the myth that East European Jews originated from Germany. Her remarks about mass migrations to Poland from the crusades is neither here nor there. Next, it is not clear how many carriers of the mutation went to Eastern Europe. Finally, the carriers of the mutant (or was it only one?) had to be one of the few Jews who did leave for Eastern Europe as well. Fraikor’s story is not convincing. I am aware of only one case of TSD in the Netherlands, and it is in a non-Jewish family. Region-bound mutations In 1983 an article by Gloria M Petersen et al. appeared in the American Journal of Human Genetics, entitled “The Tay-Sachs Disease Gene in North American Jewish Populations: Geographic Variations and Origin.” The authors found that the TSD carrier frequency among the tested Jews was .0324, or 1 in 31 individuals. They found no carriers among tested Jews from the Middle East. The finding that the carrier frequency among Jews from Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary was more than twice that of the Jews from Eastern Europe was remarkable. The authors also tried to determine when the mutation leading to the disease had occurred. Finally, they come up with three interesting conclusions: 1. Because the Jewish migrations to Central Europe took place before the ones to Poland and Russia, the increase of the disease in the Ashkenazi Jewish population must have started before the migrations to Poland and Russia, that is, before 1100 C.E. 2. The low frequency of the TSD mutation among Jews from the Middle East suggests that the increase of the gene occurred after the second diaspora (70 C.E.). Or, putting it differently, the mutation cannot have been brought along from the Middle East. This accords with the possibility that the disease first occurred among Jews in Central Europe and

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then, through admixture with Polish/Russian Jews, spread through Poland and Russia. 3. The results found are in agreement with the possibility that Khazars were the source of the TSD gene, as was suggested by Neel (1979), based on The Thirteenth Tribe (Koestler 1976). There is historical evidence that Khazars migrated to Hungary. The authors also refer to Lowden (1973), who analyzed the high TSD gene frequency among Canadian Jews of Polish-Russian origin and found that the tested Russian Jews mainly came from southern Russia. In a recent publication (Risch et al. 2003), two important TSD mutations are mentioned, one of them, probably the older, in Central Europe. The other, which mainly occurs in Lithuania and Russia, is probably much younger. About the older mutation, which must have occurred about 1,100 years ago, Risch et al. say that it is not limited to just one Ashkenazi group. An Ashkenazi disease? If East European Jews are indeed a European population, one may wonder whether the period suggested by Petersen et al. for the origin of the mutation is still relevant. The earliest possible date suggested is the year 70 C.E., because in that year Jews were expelled from the Land of Israel (and the disease hardly appears in that region). If East European Jews, as a group, do not originate from the Land of Israel, this date is not applicable. The upper limit, 1100, results from the assumption of Petersen et al. that Jews first migrated to Central Europe and then to Poland and Russia. However, there is no proof for this assumption. From the ninth century on, Jews may have migrated straight from southern Russia to Poland (and of course also to Central Europe). Their results do agree with those of Risch et al. as to the oldest mutation that occurs more frequently in Central Europe. The conclusion that Khazars were the source of the mutation is not verifiable, and it need not be the case. The mutation may indeed have come from Khazaria, but not necessarily from a Jew who was a Khazar. According to Risch et al., this oldest mutation can be found among all Ashkenazi Jews. It is questionable whether this is correct. It is known that Dutch Jews mainly descend from German Jews, and to a lesser extent from Czech Jews, while no higher carrier frequency is known among Dutch Jews. Therefore, TSD does not occur among all Ashkenazi Jews in a higher carrier frequency. The distribution of the mutation apparently remained limited to Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. Considering TSD a “Jewish disease,” as was assumed on Dutch TV some years ago, is thus not correct in view of the situation in Germany and the Netherlands. This also follows from the following quote: “I agree that this is most likely an East European

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Jewish disease, not specifically a ‘Jewish disease.’ Because of the history of immigration to America, the vast majority of Jews came from Eastern Europe in the 1800's. So, in America, TSD is essentially thought of as a ‘Jewish disease’” (personal communication by Gloria M. Petersen, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA). As to the Khazars who, according to some sources, migrated to Hungary, it must be mentioned that these were Kabars, a group associated with the Khazars. Kabars probably weren’t Jews. It is plausible that Jews from southern Russia moved to Hungary, but the presence of Kabars isn’t evidence for this. Parkinson’s disease Mutations that cause diseases are also used to show that the various Jewish groups originate in the Middle East; for example, the mutation G2019S that occurs in patients with Parkinson’s disease. A French (Lesage et al. 2006) and an American (Ozelius et al. 2006) group each published an article about this mutant in the New England Journal of Medicine. The French group showed that the mutant occurred in a number of North African Arabs and in one Sephardic Jew they had studied. They also mentioned that the prevalence of the mutant is high in Ashkenazi Jews as well, referring to the article by the Americans. The American group wrote, among other things: “The apparently high frequency among North African patients with Parkinson’s disease and controls, particularly those of Arab ancestry as well as among Ashkenazi Jewish subjects as shown here, suggests a likely Middle Eastern origin for the G2019S mutation. It also establishes once again the Middle Eastern origin of Ashkenazim.”

As evidence for the above, the Americans refer to the article by the French. Concerning the French article, I had two questions: what was the origin of their Sephardic Jews and were these North African Arabs Arabs or Berbers? The first question was in reference to a remark by Zoossmann-Diskin (2000) that the term ‘Sephardic’ refers to Jews originally from Spain/Portugal and that it should not be used for Oriental Jews, as is the custom in Israel. The second question came to my mind because of the presence of many Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands who at first were thought to be Arabs, but who later turned out to be mainly Berbers. I put both questions to one of the authors of the French article. The Sephardic Jews appeared to be Oriental Jews, and more importantly, the North African Arabs appeared to be Berbers and not Arabs. Berbers are North Africans who live in a region extending from an oasis in Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean in Morocco. It is only logical that the Berbers who arrive in France originate in either Algeria or Morocco. In the French article, in-

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deed, two carriers of the mutation from Algeria and one from Morocco are mentioned. As long as it has not been shown that the test subjects are genetically related to the Arabs in the Middle East, the two quoted sentences are unfounded. Because of the inaccuracy of the French in designating Berbers as Arabs, the American group was able to claim that the Ashkenazi Jews originate from the Middle East. I tried to discover why the French scientists called their Berbers “North African Arabs,” but I did not receive an answer to this question. In an earlier publication, Lesage et al. (2005) mentioned that the mutation G2019S occurs among the following Europeans: Norwegians, Irish, Poles, French, Belgians, Portuguese, and Dutch. In addition, the mutation also occurs in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. The many non-Jewish Europeans who also carry the mutation make a recent Middle Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi Jews because of the G2019S mutation even less necessary.

Conclusions 1. Three items emerged from the anthropological, partly anthropometric studies: a. Jews aren’t a race, and large differences as to phenotypes occur. b. East European Jews, as a group, mostly resemble southern Russians. c. Between 15 and 20 percent of East European Jews are blond and have grey or blue eyes. However, anthropometric research is not consistent with present scientific standards. Yet, in view of the results found by Zoossmann-Diskin and the research group of Behar, we have to be careful not to dismiss a priori the above-mentioned anthropological research. 2. In 1997, the work of Zoossmann-Diskin caused a technological breakthrough in the field of Jewish genetic research. This led to some surprising results: a. Different groups of Jews are more related to the population in the midst of which they live than to each other. b. East European Jews have a large Italian DNA component. Zoossmann-Diskin attributes this component to many conversions during the Roman Empire. c. The large phenotypic differences between different Jewish groups (like Indian, European, and Ethiopian Jews) are due to admixture. d. Yemenite Jews are most closely related to Palestinians. Palestinians in turn are related most closely to Lebanese, and vice versa.

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e. The interpretation of the Italian component and the related origin of East European Jews is not tenable in view of the large number of Jews in Eastern Europe in the year 1000, not to mention the vague origin of Italians in the places and regions studied. 3. The haplotype of the priests (Cohen modal haplotype) is not specific; it also appears in non-Jewish populations. 4. There is insufficient evidence to assume that the Roman Jews form a separate group. 5. Through the above-mentioned studies of Y chromosomes, to a certain extent admixture can be shown to have occurred between European Jews and the non-Jewish host population. Dutch Jews had the highest level of admixture. 6. The low percentages of admixture among Ashkenazi Jews mentioned in literature are the result of the use of irrelevant non-Jewish populations. The samples are not representative either. 7. The conclusion that the non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities of Bulgaria and Turkey can be considered as representatives of those Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula is dubious. 8. The conclusion that the hypothetical four founding mothers of Ashkenazi Jewry did not belong to a European host population is based on the sampling of non-Jewish populations from countries where Jewish subjects did not contribute significantly to East European Jewry. 9. Research on mtDNA has revealed a genetic difference between West European and East European Jews, which supports the opinion that East European Jews did not originate from Germany. 10. The opinion that Ashkenazi Jews constitute a Middle Eastern population is not supported by the phenotypic reality and is based on unproven assumptions. 11. The local origin of Ethiopian and Indian Jews, as determined by Zoossmann-Diskin, was supported by Behar’s research group. 12. Zoossmann-Diskin’s conclusion, that in most cases, Jews genetically resemble the population in the midst of whom they live, and as a result are part of that population, appears to be the most plausible phenotypically. 13. It is preferable to call the so-called hereditary “Ashkenazi” disease Tay-Sachs an East European Jewish disease. To define this disease as “Ashkenazi” does not accord with the different origin of East and West European Jews or with the occurrence of the disease.

VIII. The Revised Origin and Development of East European Jewry Introduction In this chapter I will first devote some attention to the name Ashkenaz; after this, the origin and development of East European Jewry will be discussed in accordance with the results obtained so far. Almost all of the subjects to be treated will involve the period before 1650, because the calculated annual growth rates after this period do not indicate a development of East European Jewry that deviates from what we find in the literature. Ashkenaz In the foregoing chapters, Ashkenazi Jews were mentioned without going into the question of why European Jews (with the exception of Spanish and Portuguese Jews) are actually called “Ashkenazi.” This is a question that kept me wondering for years, because at first sight it is not logical at all to call them by that name. The Hebrew name ashkenaz appears in the Bible for the first time in Genesis 10:3, where it says that Gomer was the father of Ashkenaz. Ashkenaz can also be found in Jeremiah 51:27, which mentions the kingdoms of Ashkenaz, Minni, and Ararat. In other words, Ashkenaz is located somewhere around the eastern part of today’s Turkey, near the Caucasus. What would be the relationship between the Caucasus and Ashkenazi Jews? As far as I know, Kutschera (1910) was the first to associate Ashkenaz with the Khazars. He refers to the above-mentioned sentence in the book of Jeremiah and claims that the sefardim called the descendants of the Khazars “Ashkenazim” because they originated from the area called Ashkenaz. However, his claim lacks a basis. In 1932, Samuel Kraus from Vienna published an article in the Hebrew journal Tarbiz in which he also wondered why Ashkenazi Jews were so called. He comes up with an interesting analysis of the problem that I will try to briefly reproduce.

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According to historians of antiquity, the word ashkenaz comes from ashkuza, whereby an n was written instead of a u (these Hebrew letters are similar). By ashkuza the Scythians are meant, a nomadic people from southern Russia. The Scythians lived in an earlier period (around 500 B.C.E.). Kraus is of the opinion that the name Ashkenaz was preserved for the successors of the Scythians and the Sarmatians, and that eventually it was used for any people that lived between Armenia and Asia Minor. The word asia turns up much later in the specific letter to the envoy of ibn Shaprut in Constantinople, one of the letters about the Khazars. In Jewish literature the Hebrew name of the region, ashkenaz, would then have been preserved for the successors of the Scythians and the Sarmatians. However, the name of the region changed to Khazaria. According to the letter sent by King Joseph of the Khazars to ibn Shaprut (written between 954 and 961; see p. 7), the Khazars descended from the biblical Togarmah, brother of Ashkenaz. Kraus concludes that the name Ashkenaz for Khazarian Jews must not be viewed as representing a genetic relationship, because the Togarmans with whom the Khazars are associated were Turks. According to him, the old Hebrew name of the region is the reason the name Ashkenaz was passed on from one people to the next. The name ashkenaz for Germany only became a vogue during the times of R. Gershom ben Yehuda (960–1040). Before this, names like renus and the like were used. For Germany, King Joseph of the Khazars used the word nemets, a name also used by Byzantine, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hungarian authors. Actually, there wasn’t a Hebrew name for Germans, and the name ashkenaz, which indicated Khazars, came into use for the former only later. Kraus presumes that also the names tsarefat and sefarad were used from the second half of the tenth century onward in order to be able to differentiate between France and Spain respectively. As the borders changed, the use of the name ashkenaz also changed. At first, it was used for Khazars, then it was used for Slavs, and finally it was used for Germans. From the point of view of the Khazars, everything that descended from them was considered ashkenaz, roughly corresponding to the Christian world. The Islamic world that remained was considered sefarad, and the Jews who lived there were called sefardim. Kraus then makes the following remark (from Hebrew): “However, I do not intend to say that the whole world has become filled with the descendants of the Khazars [...] at all events, the two names Sefarad and Ashkenaz have arisen in their territory, and when the remaining Jews sought safety in flight via Khazaria, they heard these names and took them along to all the countries where they settled.”

The article by Kraus was criticized rather sharply by Mann (1933). Obviously, the two already had differences of opinion before the article by

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Kraus was published. One of the pieces of evidence mentioned by Kraus had to do with a letter from the Geniza (Neubauer 1897), and the interpretation of this letter formed the major point of contention. In this letter Ashkenazim are mentioned, defined by Kraus as Khazars and by Mann as Germans. According to the latter, the letter refers to the crusaders. I am somewhat inclined to follow Kraus because it says in the text (from Hebrew): “and the Ashkenazim came [...] with their women.” As far as I am informed, the crusades were military expeditions and the crusaders did not take their women along. In addition, the crusaders were mostly French and not German.

The Origin of East European Jewry First, I would like to review the most important findings of the foregoing chapters. These are important in determining the origin and subsequent development of East European Jewry. 1. The Khazar hypothesis cannot be verified. There is no information about the numbers of Khazars (or persons of other tribes) who converted to Judaism. There is also no possibility of identifying their descendants. 2. The Germany hypothesis is not correct, because the massive migrations of German Jews did not take place and the calculated size of the East European Jewish population in 1500 was so large that it could not have originated from Germany. 3. French and Italian Jews did not contribute substantially to the numerical development of East European Jewry either. 4. Jews from Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary also did not contribute significantly to the development of East European Jewry. These regions may have been important as an intermediate stage for Jews who left southern Russia. 5. Jews lived in Eastern Europe before the Yiddish language developed; they spoke a Slavic language. 6. The transition to Yiddish was a drawn-out process that took centuries. 7. The East European Jews are (East) Europeans as to phenotype. 8. It appears from studies with Y chromosomes that admixture among East European Ashkenazim was higher than among West European Ashkenazim, although the difference was statistically not significant. 9. Results from mtDNA show that West European and East European Ashkenazim have different origins, and that West European Ashkenazim experienced a bottleneck that East European Ashkenazim did not.

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These results leave us no other choice then to investigate the possibility that the Jews in southern Russia must be viewed as the ancestors of today’s East European Jews. The numerical, linguistic, anthropological, and genetic data found so far should in principle all lead to the same conclusion. Before proceeding to describe the development of East European Jewry based on the Jews of southern Russia, I would like to quote Cecil Roth (1966, 302–303): “Was the great Eastern European Jewry of the 19th century preponderantly descended (as is normally believed) from immigrants from the Germanic lands further west who arrived as refugees in the later Middle Ages, bearing with them their culture? Or did these new immigrants find already on their arrival a numerically strong Jewish life, on whom they were able to impose their superior culture, including even their tongue (a phenomenon not unknown at other times and places— as for example in the 16th century, after the arrival of the highly cultured Spanish exiles in the Turkish Empire)? Does the line of descent of Ashkenazi Jewry of today go back to a quasi-autochthonous Jewry already established in these lands, perhaps even earlier than the time of the earliest Franco-German settlement in the Dark Ages? This is one of the mysteries of Jewish history, which probably will never be solved.”

So Roth considers the matter unsolvable. Nevertheless, I will try to answer this question. The period up to 1000 Southern Russia Historical sources show that at the beginning of the Common Era, Jews lived in southern Russia. They may have arrived straight from the Middle East or via Byzantium, and to some extent they may have been proselytes from any region. From literature, nothing is known about numbers. In chapter V, calculating back, we arrived at 2,000 to 230,000 Jews at the beginning of the Common Era. This is a large spread, and the question is therefore: what number is the most plausible? That 230,000 Jews, or their ancestors, came from the Middle East does not seem very plausible. What then, is possible? We have to start from the available information from this period. At the beginning of the Common Era there were Jewish settlements in the Crimea, and, as was shown by Harkavy (see p. 66), those Jews who lived there were strongly assimilated (Hellenized). The second piece of information implies that these Jews did not differ much from the other inhabitants as to their way of life. As a result, admixture must have been a common phenomenon, probably during this whole period. This observation is enforced by the resemblance of East European Jews to southern Russians.

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If we look at the upper limit for a second time, we have to point out that the ethnic composition of these people is not certain at all. We don’t know what part of them originally came from the Land of Israel, what part had converted to Judaism, and what part still had to be converted to Judaism. For the Jewishness of their progeny, this obviously does not matter; this book does not deal with the question who is a Jew, it only deals with the ethnic background of the Jews. With a total population of only 2.3 million in European Russia, of whom 300,000 were in the Caucasus at the beginning of the Common Era (Maddison 2001, 232), the estimate of 230,000 Jews does not sound very plausible. Therefore, it is probably better to use a somewhat different wording for the Jewish population increase between the beginning of the Common Era and 1000: the 32,000 to 490,000 Jews calculated for the year 1000 are the descendants of 2,000 to 230,000 ancestors at the beginning of the Common Era. By switching from the word “Jews” to the neutral word “ancestors” also the upper limit becomes plausible, and I leave aside how many non-Jews entered the Jewish community during that period. These non-Jews converted to Judaism, of course. There is hardly an alternative for using this terminology, as we are completely in the dark as to the extent of the admixture. Not only were conversions to Judaism before and after the beginning of the Common Era frequent, but conversion was also a very informal matter. This makes the occurrence of admixture not only possible but even very probable, and considering the hundreds of years that Jews had lived in southern Russia, additional admixture is not really surprising. The European phenotype of the East European Jews, and the finding by Behar’s group that admixture occurred among East European Jews agree with the foregoing. We must leave the possibility open that Khazars and members of other tribes also converted to Judaism. However, we should not forget that the official conversion of Khazars to Judaism took place only towards the end of the first millennium, and that admixture had thus occurred already for more than 800 years. Poland From the Raffelstettener Zoll- und Schiffahrtsurkunde, the story by Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, and the study by Harkavy and Mark, the conclusion can be drawn that in the ninth century the presence of Jews in Poland was a fact. Here we are certainly talking about slave traders. From both sources it cannot be concluded that they also lived there. As we saw before, they possibly came from Italy, France, and/or Germany. According to Harkavy and Mark, the Slavic-speaking merchants of the ninth and tenth centuries indeed lived in the Slavic countries. Their conclusion that in 1031, certainly, Jews lived in Poland is reinforced by the previously mentioned incident

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with the two children from Przemysl (see p. 72) who spoke the Slavic language. The letter that, according to Mann, probably dates from before the eleventh century in which a Jewish traveler is mentioned who spoke only Russian also reinforces the conclusion by Harkavy and Mark. An early numerical estimate? According to Mark (1957, 122) a manuscript was found in the Geniza of Cairo which says that hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the Slavic countries. Mark does not mention where he found this information, so I have to rely totally on what he writes. Although this number is considered an exaggeration and a poetic expression, according to Mark researchers do think that it has a certain amount of truth. He refers to J. Mann, who is of the opinion that during the early Middle Ages there were numerous Jewish settlements in southern Russia and Poland. In view of the number of Jews I calculated in chapter V for the year 1000 (32,000 to 490,000), the number mentioned in the manuscript may not be far from the truth. If we compare the calculated number of ancestors/Jews to the total population of Russia plus Poland in the year 1000, the former make up 0.6 to 9 percent of the total population. This range is, in view of the situation in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, not particularly large and is as such justifiable. It appears that what happened in Eastern Europe during the first millennium must have been crucial for the development of its Jewry. If we add the conclusion from the DNA studies by Zoossmann-Diskin—that Jews genetically mostly resemble the surrounding population—to what is known about the situation in Western Europe, it is safe to say that in Eastern Europe during the first millennium, a considerable amount of admixture probably must have taken place as well. Looking back at the beginning of the first millennium, we may wonder what weight can be attributed to the range of 2,000 to 230,000 ancestors, and how reliable these numbers are. As far as growth rates are concerned, the computed numbers are certainly plausible. Since I am talking about ancestors, the numbers are neither more nor less speculative than all other population sizes calculated for European countries for that time.

The Further Development of East European Jewry The period 1000 to 1348 In view of the number of Jews I calculated in chapter V for that region in the year 1000, the 32,000 to 490,000 Jews/ancestors didn’t live in southern

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Russia only, but also in southern Poland and probably also in Lithuania, and a small part also in Bohemia and Hungary. The beginning of the destruction of the Khazar Empire (965 C.E.) may have been a good reason for a part of the Jews to move away from southern Russia. Naturally, after this period Jews may also have left. Nothing is known about the numerical distribution over the countries mentioned before. Anyway, it is clear that the number of Jews who ended up in Bohemia and Hungary must have been low, in view of the final number of Jews in these areas compared to the number in Eastern Europe. In the first instance, their number may not have been so low, if Bohemia and Hungary served as stopovers on their way to Poland and Lithuania. Lithuania Migration to Lithuania probably was more popular than to Poland. This has to do with the fact that Lithuania did not embrace Christianity until 1387. Until that time, Christian hostility towards Judaism, so important afterwards, did not play a role. Therefore, we may assume that certainly until 1400 admixture occurred. As the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in those days included also large parts of Belarus and the Ukraine, admixture may have been quite extensive. The large number of blond Jews also points in this direction. Fishberg found only 2 percent blond types among the Jews from the Caucasus, and 30 percent blonds among the Jews from Galicia (Poland). In addition, he concluded from his studies that blond Jews in Eastern Europe are not due to admixture with Germans, but with Slavs. After 1400, admixture probably did not take place so much because the level of religious knowledge of East European Jewry increased, and because after that time the Christian clergy, who were very much opposed to admixture whereby one of the partners converted to Judaism had become strong enough to prevent it in many cases. Poland The Crusades (1096, 1146, and 1188) did not bring about an influx of German Jews. Did Jews already live in Poland when Princess Judith ransomed slaves from Jewish merchants in 1085? There is a very good chance that they did. From the story of Cosmas it can certainly be deduced that in 1098, Jews lived in Poland and Hungary. Otherwise it is inexplicable that these Jews would want to ship their expensive belongings to those countries. It would be somewhat strange if only 13 years earlier, there had been no Jews living there. That the foregoing conclusion is correct follows from the story of the two brothers from Przemysl and the existence of the religious court in Krakow at the beginning of the eleventh century.

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The Jewish-German contribution to the German settlement of Eastern Europe (peaking in 1150–1350) is not known, nor is it known how many Jews came to Poland, and from where, at the invitation of the prince of Galicia-Volhynia after the Mongols had been defeated. In addition to Jews from southern Russia, who were involved in the development of Polish Jewry, Jews from Bohemia also moved to Poland. The story by Cosmas (in 1098) alludes to this, but nothing is known in a quantitative sense. It is not known either where these Jews originally came from. Prague was located at the end of the trade route Kiev–Przemysl– Krakow–Prague, a route used from the tenth century (Ganshof, 1966). Therefore, it is quite possible that part of these Jews who migrated from Bohemia to Poland originally also came from southern Russia. Convincing evidence that Jews moved from Bohemia to Poland is provided much later, at the beginning of the sixteenth century when there was a sharp conflict in Krakow between the “autochthonous” Jews and the Jewish community that originated from Bohemia. The development of Yiddish Halfway through the period under discussion, Yiddish expanded into the Bavarian-speaking region that, in addition to the area around Regensburg, included Bohemia and Moravia. Religious education played an important role. Due to the lack of massive migrations from Jews from these areas to Eastern Europe, the language must have been disseminated among the East European Jews by teachers and/or rabbis. This also explains why it took centuries before Yiddish could become the lingua franca of East European Jews. The period 1348–1500 Between 1348 and 1500, two more pogroms occurred in Europe which are associated with the development of East European Jewry: the pogrom of 1348, as a result of the plague, and that of the fifteenth century, whereby Jews were banished from the German cities. However, it has been shown that neither led to mass migrations of German Jews to Eastern Europe. Hungarian Jews possibly also contributed to East European Jewry, either via Bohemia or via another route. It is known from the account of ibn Yaqub that there was a trade route Hungary–Prague–Krakow. A number of those who were expelled from Hungary in 1360 went to Poland, but it is unknown if they stayed there. Since it is also unknown to what extent Hungarian Jews who lived in 1360 were descendants of Jewish (Roman) soldiers from Syria and their families or of Jews who immigrated from

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southern Russia, it is impossible to say anything meaningful about the contribution of Hungarian Jews to the development of East European Jewry. A last remark about the so-called mass migrations of German Jews to Poland. The discussion of this subject has been carried on for almost a century. Polish archival material should be an important source for these migrations. The fact that even Polish historians like Mahler, Schipper, and Vetulani were unable to come forward with proof from Polish archives makes these mass migrations even less plausible. Followers of the Jewish faith (Judaizers) The Encyclopaedia Hebraica (1972, v. 24, 734) devotes some attention to persons who, during the second half of the fifteenth century in Russia, accepted Jewish laws in varying degrees. In Hebrew, these people were called mityahadim, converts to Judaism. In some cases they fully converted to Judaism. It started with the conversion of two monks in 1471 in Novgorod. Next, many at the court of Ivan III in Moscow converted to Judaism. Shortly thereafter, the persecution of the “heretics” started, and by the end of the sixteenth century the sect ceased to exist. Therefore, it is not plausible that these mityahadim in the Grand Duchy of Moscow added much to the numerical development of East European Jewry. The period 1500 to 1650 From the year 1500 onwards, we may certainly replace “ancestors” by “Jews.” Obviously, every now and then there must have been a non-Jewish inflow, but the extent of it must have been relatively small. The number of Jews calculated for the year 1500, 460,000 to 860,000, may seem very large, but we should not forget that, as mentioned earlier, we are dealing with an area of one million square kilometers, almost three times the size of present-day Germany (357,000 km2). On the face of it, the check on the calculation by way of the calculation of the number of Jews in Germany in 1500 seems to turn out favorably. The numbers calculated agree with the numbers Weinryb provides. However, he does not indicate how he arrived at these numbers. This means that the reliability of his numbers cannot be verified, and as a result, the similarity between his and my numbers is of little value. Because the number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1500 is only based on the number of East European Jews in 1900, we cannot determine what the contribution to Polish Jewry was of the Bohemian, Moravian, and Hungarian Jews, who left for Poland during the sixteenth century. Fur-

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thermore, a number of them may have originated from southern Russia, and may have used the aforementioned regions as an intermediate stop only. They simply are included, and I can only say that no large migrations are mentioned in the literature during this period. Judaizers Pietrzyk (1993) discusses Judaizers who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century in Poland. He indicates that Judaizing was quite popular in Poland, and he gives three root causes: the propagation of Judaism by Jews; the influx of people who were considered heretics in their own country, among them the Judaizers from Muscovy; and heretic intellectuals whose ideas were based on the principles of the anti-Trinitarian communities. The last group started out as Catholics, became Calvinists and then anti-Trinitarians, and finally turned to Judaizing. As for the members of the sect from Moscow, it was shown above that they were probably not important from a numerical point of view. It is sad to relate that a request to Pietrzyk to provide some quantitative data was to no avail. Therefore, it is impossible to use his information. The tragedy in 1648 (the Cossack uprising) In chapter V we saw that the counting of houses and the number of seats in the synagogues were not useful for a good estimate of the size of the Jewish population in 1648. Next it was shown that the numbers of Mahler and the annual growth rates of DellaPergola are not correct either. So what about the low number of casualties of Stampfer? Is he right, or are the estimates of the Jewish chroniclers plausible after all? In chapter V, the number of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1650 was calculated to be 830,000 to 1.14 million. However, Stampfer’s article is about the Ukraine. In 1897, the percentage of Jews in the Ukraine was about 40 percent of the total number in European Russia. In 1764, 44 percent (258,205 out of 587,236) of the Jewish population in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lived in “Ukraine” (Mahler 1946, 237; he mistakenly states 42 percent). In 1648, the name Ukraine was used “in a territorially less specific manner” (Magocsi 1996, 171). This would make a determination of the number of Jews there a bit uncertain. In view of the percentage in 1897, it is not unthinkable that Mahler’s estimate of the percentage for 1650 is correct (his absolute numbers certainly are wrong), which means that the number of Jews must have been somewhere between 370,000 and 500,000. The size of the Jewish population in 1648 should be roughly the same as the one in 1650 when the casualties are included. The number of Jews who left the region probably does not greatly change this. To obtain the

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size of the Jewish population in Ukraine in 1648, the lowest and highest numbers of casualties were added to the number of Jews in 1650 and the percentages killed were calculated (Table 11). Table 11. The possible Jewish population sizes in Ukraine in 1648, the lowest and highest number of Jews killed, and the corresponding percentages of the total Jewish population.

Size of the Jewish population in 1648 470,000 565,000 600,000 695,000

Number of Jews killed 100,000 195,000 % % 21 35 17 28

a. Lowest number of Jews killed; see p. 88. b. Highest number of Jews killed; see p. 88.

The results in table 11 show that the percentage killed lies between 17 and 35 percent of the original Jewish population in Ukraine in 1648, with an average of 25 percent. The latter is a percentage few historians will object to. In addition, it gives a fair amount of credibility to the chroniclers ben Nathan and Hanover. Stampfer’s low number of casualties is only right if it can be proven that the estimates by the seventeenth-century Jewish chroniclers are ten- to twenty-fold exaggerations and the applied very high Jewish annual growth rates between 1500 and 1900 (in relation to the non-Jewish population) are plausible. No correction of the number of Jews in 1500 In chapter V it was mentioned that the high number of casualties during the Cossack uprising probably does not call for an adjustment of the number of Jews in 1500. The highest number of casualties was that of Hanover, 235,000, and this stays within the range of the number of Jews calculated for the year 1650, 830,000–1,140,000. Therefore, it is quite possible that a correction of the number of Jews I calculated before 1650 is not necessary. However, there are two more reasons that I decided not to apply a correction for this disaster. First, the numbers mentioned by ben Nathan and Hanover remain unreliable, despite the fact that they can be defended numerically, as a result of which it is not possible to assess the correction adequately. Second, a correction of the number of Jews in 1500 (and earlier) would not lead to an essentially different situation in relation to the numbers mentioned in the literature.

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Harkavy’s “disappearance act” The Mongol invasion was mentioned as a reason for the disappearance of the Jews who had been living in southern Russia from before the Common Era. Harkavy (1867, 40) proposes another reason. He puts the disappearance of the Russian-speaking Jewish population from southern Russia during the Cossack uprising in 1648. This part of the population would have been killed, while the Yiddish-speaking Jews, who originated from Germany and who lived in the Polish and western Russian districts, would have been spared. Harkavy also does not provide evidence for his position. If Harkavy is right, and all Russian-speaking Jews were killed, this would mean that about 75 percent of the remaining Ukrainian Jews would have originated from Germany. This, of course, is an absurd assertion. Therefore, the disappearance of only the Russian-speaking part of the Jewish population does not make any sense. Besides, why would the Cossacks care whether a Jew spoke Yiddish or a Slavic language? It looks as if we are dealing with another attempt to have modern East European Jewry originate in Germany. The period 1650 to 1900 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Judaizing sects appear again, for example, the Subbotniki, who celebrated the Sabbath. In the second half of the eighteenth century, such groups also arose in the central and Volga districts of Russia, among them the Molokans. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the authorities started to persecute all these groups. According to the Encyclopaedia Hebraica (1972, 734), there remained about 20,000 followers of the sects in 1823. Despite all the persecutions, some fully converted to Judaism, and from the end of the nineteenth century, some of them also migrated to Palestine. I would think that the genetic impact of these 20,000 converts in 1823 would be small as compared to the admixture that took place during the first millennium. Until 1800, due to a lack of numerical data, it remains unclear how fast the Jewish population increased, and we are left with a range based on two annual growth rates. We may assume that in 1800, there were about two million East European Jews, who increased somewhat faster than the total population during the nineteenth century. As a result, their final number was more than seven million in 1900.

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Final Conclusions Concerning East European Jews By approaching the problem of the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews from different angles, the following conclusions were drawn, which for the most part do not agree with the prevailing ideas found in the literature, especially concerning the East European Jews. 1. During the Middle Ages, there were no mass migrations of German Jews to Poland. 2. Starting from the reliable census in Russia of 1897, and using realistic Jewish population increases, it can be determined by back calculation that 460,000 to 860,000 Jews must have lived in Eastern Europe in 1500. 3. Arguments found in the literature to explain the supposedly very rapid population growth among Jews as compared to that among non-Jews (necessary to explain the millions of Jews in the twentieth century starting from the excessively low numbers in 1500) are not based on solid evidence and for the most part belong to mythology. 4. Literature referring to population increases of Jews and non-Jews in the Netherlands, Germany, and Congress Poland (Posen) shows that the Jewish populations in the regions just mentioned increased faster than their non-Jewish counterparts, but far from twice as fast. 5. As a result of conclusions 1 through 4, it is not possible that East European Jewry originated from German Jewry. In the Middle Ages, German Jewry simply did not contain enough Jews to produce 460,000 to 860,000 Jews in 1500. 6. It appears possible to describe a development of East European Jewry using realistic population increases, starting from southern Russian instead of German Jews. 7. From the foregoing, it follows that the region of origin was not Germany but an area roughly between the Caspian Sea and Moldavia. Jews who lived there around the beginning of the Common Era may have come from the Middle East or from the Byzantine Empire. They will also, partly, have consisted of proselytes, either local or from outside the region. 8. Because Jews already lived in the above-mentioned region from the beginning of the Common Era, because their religious knowledge did not amount to much, and because the Catholic Church was not yet strong enough during the first millennium to prevent admixture, admixture must have taken place during this period to a large extent. This clearly explains the phenotypic similarity between the East European

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9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

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Jews and the non-Jewish inhabitants of Eastern Europe, who were dark-haired or fair. The genetic background of East European Jewry (Jews from the Caucasus not included) is probably very heterogeneous and to a large extent has its origin in people who lived in areas now called Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland and to a lesser extent in Jews from Byzantium and the Middle East. The meaning of the resemblances with Italians, as suggested by Zoossmann-Diskin, is not clear, because the origin of these Italians was not determined. The results of population genetic research showing that the (East) European and Oriental Jews descend from a common Jewish paternal population originating from the Middle East are the result of mistaken non-Jewish subjects as control groups to show admixture, and of assumptions concerning modern Jewish populations that require proof. The so-called “Cohen modal haplotype” (a typical piece of DNA that occurs on the Y chromosome of Jewish priests) also occurs among Kurds, Hungarians, Italians, and Lembas, and thus is not specifically Jewish. Studies with mtDNA show that West European Ashkenazim are genetically different from East European Ashkenazim, and that the former passed through a genetic bottleneck. Because of a lack of crucial information, it is impossible to show what contribution the Khazars made to the numerical development of East European Jewry. It is likely that only cultural contributions remind us of the Khazars, like the shtraymel, the kaftan, and gefilte fish, and possibly the occurrence of surnames like Kagan and Kaganovich. In the literature there is no evidence to show that modern Ukrainian Jewry is unrelated to medieval Ukrainian Jewry. In light of the fact that the German component of Yiddish originated from Bavarian, the Yiddish language was probably originally brought to Eastern Europe by rabbis and teachers who mainly originated from the Bavarian-speaking region. In the first instance, East European Jews spoke the Slavic language of the area where they lived. They slowly switched to Yiddish. Responsa from the beginning of the seventeenth century show that it took centuries before Yiddish became the vernacular. It can be shown via archaeological finds that the historic argument on which the origin of the Yiddish language in western Germany is based, that is, the disappearance of the Jewish community from Cologne during the transition of the rule to the Franks, is not correct. The Jewish community stayed. The linguistic argument, the transcription of the name of the river Rhine written in Hebrew as in rinus (a mixture of

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Middle High German and Latin), can also be refuted, since the transcription may just as well be renus, the Latin name of the river. The last option is much more plausible in view of the Roman background of Cologne Jews. 18. Roth’s question at the beginning of the chapter—“Does the line of descent of Ashkenazi Jewry of today go back to a quasi-autochthonous Jewry already established in these lands, perhaps even earlier than the time of the earliest Franco-German settlement in the Dark Ages?”— can be answered affirmatively by this point. 19 The development of the autochthonous Jewry in southern Russia from the beginning of the Common Era (or even earlier) onwards, and not the pogroms in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, was crucial for the establishment of the large East European Jewry in the nineteenth century.

Epilogue The reader has finished the most important part of my book, and it must have become clear that my conclusions regarding the origin of East European Jews (and other groups as well) do not agree with those of the establishment. Therefore, I think that this is a good point to furnish some information about my background and its possible influence on the conclusions I have reached. After the Second World War, I was taken in by a religious family (Agudas Yisro’el) with whom my parents had been friendly before the war. My father had not been religious, my mother had been moderately religious. When I was about 19, I started to question my religious upbringing, and some ten years later I wasn’t religious at all anymore. When I studied in Israel, I saw Indian Jews who I first thought to be tourists, as they didn’t look at all like the Jews I was used to in the Netherlands. I didn’t have much time to give it a thought, I just registered the encounter. Years later, I read a publication by Robert Shapiro, who mentioned the possibility that East European Jews descended from Khazars. If I remember correctly, this had something to do with the occurrence of red hair among East European Jews and among Khazars. Descent from Khazars obviously didn’t agree with my upbringing—East European Jews had to originate from the Land of Israel via Italy and Germany, and they had not intermarried with the locals—but in view of the Indian Jews I had seen, Shapiro’s idea didn’t seem impossible to me. I became interested in the possibility that East European Jews indeed descended from Khazars. I started to read Koestler’s book The Thirteenth Tribe, Polak’s book Khazaria, and Kutschera’s book Die Chasaren, and I was quite captivated by the idea that East European Jews descended from Khazars. Kutschera explained that during the Middle Ages, there were not enough Jews in Germany to account for the very large number of Jews in Eastern Europe in 1900. In modern terms, he was saying that East European Jewry could not have originated from Germany unless there had been excessive population increases. His explanation appealed to me, and it occurred to me that there was a serious controversy about the origin of East European Jewry. I decided to investigate the controversy myself, as I wanted to find out what was the origin of East European Jewry, although I had no preference for either theory.

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From the beginning, my position was that when someone claims a theory, he or she should provide evidence for this theory, or should at least make it plausible. I consider this the only correct way, scientifically. For example, there is no evidence for mass migrations of German Jews during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, I was criticized a number of times for not being able to prove that they did not take place. That is putting the burden of proof in the wrong place. When I began to read more about this historic subject, I was somewhat surprised to find a difference in historiography between German Jewish and East European Jewish historians. I couldn’t escape the impression that East European Jewish historiography is based more on wishful thinking than on proven facts, notably when West European history is involved. This became apparent during my study of the mass migrations of West European Jews during the Middle Ages to Eastern Europe. The clearest example of wishful thinking is the remark by Ankori that by the end of the Middle Ages, Western Europe was judenrein (see p. 53). Leaving aside, as I just mentioned, that there is no proof for this statement, it leaves unanswered where the more than 600,000 Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe in 1900 came from, not to mention all the Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. As the research progressed, I decided that it had to comply with a number of conditions: 1. no population increaes that were implausible, 2. phenotypic data should be taken into account, and 3. the investigation had to be purely scientific, and politics was to be kept out completely. The fact that I had freed myself from religion did not affect my research, because the origin of East European Jews had nothing to do with religion. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite sources was the rabbinic literature, particularly the responsa (she’elot u-tshuvot in Hebrew). As the reader may recall, the questions are often about everyday things of life, and as a result they may provide more information than can be deduced from the question and answer alone. The story about the Jewish lady who left the key of her house with the non-Jewish neighbor (see p. 34) is a good example. The responsum deals with a religious problem, but it provides extra information about the good social relationships in the countryside at that time as well. Responsa by the rabbis, who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century complained that many people in Eastern Europe didn’t speak Yiddish, only Russian, are another example (see p. 126). For the rabbis this was important because it led to questions about the performing of certain religious rites. The extra information from these responsa is that Yiddish obviously

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was not the vernacular of these Jews. I consider this extra information as reliable, because it is hardly feasible that these rabbis would complain about the inability to speak Yiddish because they adhered to some hypothesis about the origin of the language. Again we obtain some extra information, this time about the vernacular of many East European Jews. As I read more about the Khazars, I began to question the correctness of Khazars as the ancestors of East European Jewry. This had nothing to do with the heavy, and often personal, attacks by American-Jewish quarters on Koestler, which I suspected were mainly inspired by the implication that East European Jews did not descend from the original Jews from the Land of Israel. I considered the latter as irrelevant, because whether someone is Jewish is determined by religion and not by ethnicity. As far as I was concerned, all the people I was investigating were Jews. The question “who is a Jew” was not under discussion. I simply followed the halakha (Jewish law) in order not to make matters more complicated than necessary. My doubts about the Khazars were, as mentioned in the relevant chapter, the result of lack of essential information. First, the number of converts is unknown. Second, it is not known who today can be identified as a descendant of Khazar ancestors, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. I therefore decided to give the Khazars a lower priority and look for an alternative. The more the investigation progressed, especially when the demographic aspects came up, the more it became clear to me that a solution for the problem had to come from southern Russia after all. From the literature it appeared that already before the beginning of the Common Era, Jews lived in southern Russia. It is almost certain that ancestors of the modern East European Jews must have been part of these Jews. Because of the low level of Jewish knowledge among East European Jews during the first millennium, admixture must have been substantial, as is clearly demonstrated by the European phenotype of their descendants. The conversion of King Bulan of the Khazars to Judaism didn’t take place before the second part of the ninth century. This means that by that time, the Jewish population must have increased to a considerable size. The question then is: did the conversion of Khazars during the period of King Bulan significantly add to the number of Jews already present? After I had finished the Dutch version of this book, Shlomo Sand’s book The Invention of the Jewish People was published. His opinion that in early times Jews were not a people in the modern sense of the word but a tribal society is based on the situation in the Land of Israel. I don’t have the competence to agree or disagree with him on this issue. In addition to the history of the Jews in the Middle East, Sand treats the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe as well. He comes to the conclu-

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sion that East European Jews do not originate from Germany, based on the opinion of, among others, Mieses, Polak, and Koestler, who, as has become clear, were right, although they were unable to prove their point. It would have been nice if Sand could have come up with evidence for his conclusion. I agree with him that East European Jews are mainly descendants of converts. However, he limits himself to Khazars as the non-Jewish ancestors of most East European Jews. Before I discuss this limitation, I first would like to point to an important part of his book in which he describes the change in attitude of historians toward the Khazars, especially after the proclamation of the State of Israel. I had noticed this as well, albeit with reference to other historians. I would like to go into this matter briefly, because it shows what may happen to a scientific discussion. As mentioned before, in 1943, Polak published his book Khazaria in what was then Palestine. In the review by M. Landau (1944, see p. 19-20), we see a normal way of criticizing a book, with arguments that are to the point. We jump to 1972. In the introduction of chapter II, I referred to the Polish-Jewish historian Weinryb with the following quote: “The Khazar hypothesis has a certain dramatic background and was propounded as a result of large-scale falsifications in the nineteenth century.” This is no longer a balanced criticism. In 1976, Koestler published his book The Thirteenth Tribe. I consider this book a successful effort to make the German (Kutschera) and Hebrew (Polak) literature about the Khazars available to the English-speaking public, irrespective of whether Koestler’s analysis was right or wrong. In the same year Wieseltier published his review of Koestler in the New York Review of Books. It is interesting to see how the change of tone continued: “In fact Koestler has merely reproduced Poliak’s allegations and garnished them with a medley of quotations from better-known historians, all of which combine to make him appear learned.” I will end with a somewhat more recent opinion about the Khazars. Under the heading “Gründungslegenden” (founding legends), Toch (1998, 80; from German) also mentions the Khazar theory: “The Khazar theory, which unconditionally wants to make the Ashkenazi Jews descendants of this Turkish Caucasus people of the seventhth to tenth century, still circulates. In 1976 it was taken up anew by Arthur Koestler, and it is currently spread from America via computer networks to negate the claim of the Jews to the Holy Land [...]. Such hypotheses [evidently there is another variation of the Khazar theory] hardly touch the history of the Jews; on the other hand they do show a persistent tendency, to cast doubt on the continuity of Jewish identity, discredited as a ‘textbook version,’ and to construct ethnically colored ‘counterhistories’ against it.”

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The criticism by Toch shows what the discussion about the Khazars has come down to. We are no longer dealing with a good scientific discussion, but with a political one. This is not the way a historical subject should be treated. Back to Sand. He underpins his opinion about the Khazars as follows: since there was a Jewish kingdom in southern Russia, many Jews must have lived there; this explains why there were many more Jews in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe (personal communication). I’m not sure that a Jewish kingdom necessarily means a very large Jewish community. I don’t understand why he ignores the early Jewish community in southern Russia and its proliferation until the middle of the ninth century, when King Bulan converted. There are other possible facts which make a larger Jewish presence in Eastern Europe explainable as well, for example: 1. The power of the Christian Church, the biggest stumblingblock for admixture, was greater in Western than in Eastern Europe. This may also be deduced from the fact that Khazars (and Alans) could convert to Judaism without any problems. Lithuania, for example, became Christian only in 1387. 2. Southern Russia is closer to the Land of Israel than Western Europe, possibly leading to a larger Jewish community than in Western Europe in earlier times. Thus, my difference of opinion with Sand does not concern the fact that East European Jews are mainly descendants of converts, it concerns only the question with whom and when intermarriage occurred, especially during the first millennium. I do not object to a hypothesis stating that East European Jews mainly descended from Khazars, if this can be based on evidence. However, there is no such evidence. The clearly geographically defined phenotypes show that Jews do not constitute an ethnic entity, and in that sense are not a people. This is unrelated to Sand’s opinion that the Israelites were not a people either, as we define a people nowadays. The idea of an ethnic entity could easily develop in Europe because Jews had the feeling that they indeed formed an entity. This feeling was reinforced by the non-Jews. For example, in the Netherlands, around 1800, the authorities spoke about the Joodse Natie (Jewish nation) when they referred to the Jewish community. The fact that Jews did not look very different from other Europeans did not seem to be a problem. During the Middle Ages, Jews had to wear special markings in order to distinguish them from non-Jews. The “typical Jewish nose” may be a fact in cartoons, but not in real life. If it is so typically Jewish, why do we hard-

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ly find it among European Jews, and why don’t we find it at all, for example, among Moroccan or Yemenite Jews? The only clear difference between Jews and non-Jews is the religion. Culturally speaking, the differences between the various Jewish groups are much more significant than those between Jews and the people among whom they live. For example, klezmer, the so-called Jewish music, is just East European music. North African and Asian Jews do not even know this kind of music. East European Jews pronounce Hebrew different from West European Jews, and neither group really knows how (or is able) to pronounce Hebrew the proper, authentic way (it is assumed that only Yemenite Jews do). The idea that Jews are a people could be maintained for so long because Europeans, Jews and non-Jews alike, had actually no idea how Jews from African and East Asian countries looked. With the arrival in Israel of Jews from those regions, a Jewish people as an ethnic entity could not be maintained anymore. On the other hand, one can speak of an Israeli people, as we speak of the American people, which is not an ethnic entity either. Despite the large phenotypic differences between the various Jewish groups, population geneticists (except for Zoossmann-Diskin) kept on trying to prove that Jews are all related and originate from the Land of Israel. However, they gradually realized that with certain groups (Indian and Ethiopian Jews and, in dribs and drabs, Moroccan Jews) this position is not tenable anymore. Sand (2009, 275–279) treats a number of DNA publications as well. He has little faith in the results, which are supposed to show that most Jews are related and originate from the Land of Israel, although he is unable to put his finger on the weak point: the use of irrelevant non-Jewish populations as controls for admixture, because of incorrect demographic starting points. It is too bad that he heard about the publications by Zoossmann-Diskin only after he finished his book (personal communication). The addition of Zoossmann-Diskin’s results would certainly have improved his section on DNA. In summary, from my investigations it appears that East European Jews, within Europe, are mainly descendants of people who were living in today’s Ukraine and Belarus. They are a cultural-religious group, just like Indian, Ethiopian, or Moroccan Jews are.

Appendix Calculation of the annual growth rates of Jews and non-Jews in Posen, Germany, and the Netherlands (van Straten and Snel 2006). Table 1. Calculation of the annual growth rate of Jews and non-Jews in Posen during the nineteenth century. Number in 1825a Provisional no. in 1871a Migrantsb Provisional no. including migrants Provisional growth rate: 1825–1871 (%) Descendants of migrants Total number in 1871 Annual growth rate: 1825–1871 (%) Number in 1800 Number in 1900 Increase: 1800–1900 (×) Annual growth rate: 1800–1900 (%)

Jews 65,131 61,437 +46,982 108,419 1.11c +7,546 15,965 1.26 47,600d 166,700e 3.5 1.26

Non-Jews 966,794 1,508,521 -2,164 1,506,357 0.97 -37,449 1,468,908 0.91 770,800 1,910,200 2.5 0.91

a. Based on von Bergmann (1883, 44). b. Ibid., 55, 58; positive number indicates more emigrants; negative number indicates more immigrants. c. Calculation: 108,419/65,131 = 1.66; log 1.66 = 0.2213; 0.2213/46 = 0.0048; antilog 0.0048 = 1.0111; the annual growth rate is 1.11. d. Calculation: 65,131/1.012625 = 47,624 e. Calculation: 1,012629 × 115,965 = 166,734.

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Table 2. Calculation of the annual growth rate of Jews and non-Jews in Germany during the nineteenth century, according to records from 1816, 1848, and 1900 Number in 1816 Provisional no. in 1848 Idem including migrants Provisional annual growth rate: 1816–1848 (%) Descendants of migrants Total no. in 1848 Annual growth rate: 1816–1848 (%) Number in 1800 Provisional no. in 1900 Idem including migrants Provisional annual growth rate: 1848–1900 (%) Descendants of migrants Total no. in 1900 Increase: 1800–1900 (×) Annual growth rate: 1800–1900 (%)

Jews 171,495a 245,260a 258,160b 1.29

Non-Jews 18,555,275a 26,124,473a 26,697,710c 1.14

4,631 262,791 1.34 138,600d 460,937f 529,000h 1.32

40,646 26,738,356 1.15 15,453,000e 42,139,788g 47,208,957c 1.10

50,000 579,000 4.2 1.44

1,650,271 48,859,000 3.2 1.16

Source. Records for 1816 and 1848 are from Jersch-Wenzel (1996, 59); the record for 1900 is from Statistisches Archiv 1905 (source Amtliche deutsche Statistik); increase in the non-Jewish population is according to Maddison (2001, 34, 36). Note. Germany does not include the former Polish provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen, and Silesia. a. Based on Silbergleit (1930, 7; source: Statistisches Landesamt). b. Based on von Bergmann (1883, 54, 58) and Jersch-Wenzel (1996, 65). c. Based on the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1975, 105௅106). d. Calculated with an annual growth rate of 1.34. e. Calculated with an annual growth rate of 1.15. f. Based on Statistisches Archiv 1905 and Richarz (1997, 24). g. Based on Maddison (2001, 36) and Statistisches Handbuch für den Preussischen Staat (1903, 85). h. Based on von Bergmann (1883, 54, 58) and Brenner (1996, 304).

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Table 3. Calculation of the annual growth rate of Jews and non-Jews in the Netherlands during the nineteenth century. Number in 1809 Number in 1830 Annual growth rate: 1809–1830 (%) Number in 1800 Provisional no. in 1900 Idem, including migrants Provisional annual growth rate: 1800–1900 (%) Descendants of migrants Total no. in 1900 Increase: 1800–1900 (×) Annual growth rate: 1800–1900 (%)

Jews 37,062a 43,854b 0.80 34,500c 98,500b 114,900f 1.21

1,944,000d 5,043,500e 5,218,400g 1.07

10,000 124,900 3.6 1.29

75,100 5,294,000 2.7 1.01

a. Based on Michman, Beem, and Michman (1992, 596). b. Based on Boekman (1936, 17). c. Calculated with an annual growth rate of 0.80. d. Based on Maddison (2001, 35) and van der Woude (1980, 134). e. Based on Maddison (2001, 37). f. Based on Swierenga (1994, 321–323). g. Based on Oomens (1989, 46).

Non-Jews

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Index Page number in bold face means that on this page a subject is being explained. Abraham ben Azriel 121 Abraham ibn Daud 18 Abyssinian Jews 132 Acco 173 admixture 66, 129, 133, 134, 136, 137, 155–162, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 176, 178, 179, 183–187, 192– 194, 199, 201, 202 Africa 45, 132, 139, 156, 171, 220 aggregate population 150, 155, 156 agriculture 132, 173 Alans 14, 66, 169, 201 Albert, Hungarian king 62 albinism 156 Alemanns 44 almemar 42 Alsace 32, 35, 36, 166 Altenahr 47 Amalfi 55 Amsterdam x, 23, 24, 29, 87, 89, 96, 160, 163, 207, 209, 211, 216, 218, 219 Amulo, archbishop 144 Anapa 10, 66 annual growth rate xi, 83, 84, 86, 89, 90, 94–100, 103–107, 140, 167, 181, 190–192, 203–205 Anophia 66 anthropology ix, 4, 129, 133 anthropometry 132 Antioch 59

Arabic 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 27–29, 42, 44, 55, 68, 70, 123, 156, 172, 173, 182 Ararat 181 Arles 38 Armenia 10, 29, 65, 66, 67, 81, 182 Arpad, Hungarian king 7 Ashkenaz 67, 82, 126, 181, 182, 214 Ashkenazi Jews ix, 1, 20, 23, 113, 136, 147, 153–157, 159, 160, 163–169, 171, 174, 176–179, 181, 193, 198, 200, 207, 212, 213, 216, 217 Ashkenazi Levites 152, 153, 207 Ashkuza 182 Asia Minor 141, 182 Asian Jews 132, 202 Athanasius, Church Father 44 Augsburg 48, 51 Austrasia 25 Austria 2, 23, 34, 48, 50, 54, 57, 61, 62, 80, 99, 151, 165, 175 Austrian Jews 159 Austrians 154, 155, 159, 160 Avignon 35 Azerbaijan 11, 17, 169, 170 Azeris 170 ba‘aley batim 86–89 Balkans 30, 114, 116, 119, 127, 174 Bamberg 51 Bari 30, 55 Basel 36

224 Basil II, Byzantine emperor 17 Bautzen 153 Bavaria 62, 70, 114, 115, 117, 146 Bavarian 20, 109, 114–124, 128, 188, 194 Bavarian-Czech hypothesis 109, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121, 124, 128 Middle Bavarian 117 Beduins 173 Bela Vezha 16 Belarus 1, 78, 88, 101, 102, 109, 124, 126, 128, 137, 151, 159, 162, 169, 187, 194, 202 Belgian Congo 81, 125 Belitz 47 Belmonte, Portugal 53, 169 Bene Israel 169 Berbers 45, 155, 156, 170, 177, 213 Bessarabia 102 bet din 73, 124 Bet-she’an 173 Betuwe 163 Bible 72, 73, 75, 97, 115, 121, 142, 151, 154, 171, 181 Black Death, see plague 33, 48 Black Sea 5, 6, 9, 15, 66, 82 blond Jews 132, 140, 148, 158, 187 blood group system 136 blood group proteins 137 Bohemia 2, 4, 23, 30, 45, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56–58, 61–63, 68–70, 74, 80, 104, 106, 116–121, 124, 128, 132, 183, 187, 188 Boleslav I, Bohemian duke 30 Boleslaw I Chrobry, Polish king 3, 69 Boleslaw III, Polish duke 74 Bonn 47 bottleneck 165, 166, 183, 194 Breslau 2, 52, 58, 62, 81, 209–212 Brest 124, 126 British Isles xi, 84, 85

Index

Brtnice 58 Brunhild, Merovingian queen 25, 26, 144 Budweis 59 Bukhara 76 Bulan, Khazar king 7, 10, 14, 199, 201 Bulgaria 61, 138, 170, 171, 179 Bulgars 7, 11 Burgundy 32 Byzantine Empire 66, 173, 193 Byzantines 5, 14, 16, 17, 28, 172, 173, 221 Byzantium 10, 14, 16, 29, 70, 74, 184, 194 Calque 115 Calvinists 190 Cambridge Document 8 Campana 147 Canaan 74, 121, 123, 213 Canary Islands 156, 217 Cappadocia 59 Carolingian period 27, 41, 42, 43, 144, 145 Carolingian synagogue 39, 41, 42, 43, 81 Carolingians 39, 63, 219 Carpentras 35 Caspian Sea 4–6, 10, 17, 28, 73, 133, 193 Catholicism 62, 67, 217 Catholics 67, 82, 91, 190 Caucasus 6, 9, 10, 14, 16, 17, 65, 77, 82, 133, 134, 167, 181, 185, 187, 194, 200 ýelarevo 60 celibacy 92, 93 Central Asia 10, 81, 148 Central Europe 50, 116, 175, 176 Central European Jews 50, 160, 164, 175, 176 Cerdagne 32

Index

Charlemagne, Carolingian emperor 23, 28, 82 Charles the Bald, Carolingian king 144 Chechens 77 Chernigov 18, 68, 75 chi square (F2) 150, 155 Chichek, Khazar princess 12 Childebert I, Merovingian king 143 China 28, 68, 216 Chinese Jews xi, 81, 130, 131, 221 Chlotar, Merovingian king 25 Chosroes II, Persian king 172 Christ 31 Christian Druthmar 11 Christian(s) 11, 12, 14, 16, 24, 26, 29, 32–34, 38, 44, 46, 47, 62, 74, 78, 81, 92, 93, 125, 129, 142–145, 161, 173, 182, 187, 201 Christian servants 34, 74 Christian slaves 74, 143, 144, 145 Christianity 11, 12, 14, 16, 37, 38, 57, 76, 142, 187 Church council 24, 31, 34, 63, 142, 145 Council of Clermont 31, 143 Council of Châlons-sur-Sâone 144 Council of Gerona 31 Council of Mâcon 144 Council of Orléans 144 circumcision 11, 142 Clermont 31, 143 Clovis, Merovingian king 66, 142, 143, 213 coalescence ages 167 Cochin 169 Cohen modal haplotype 150, 151, 179, 194 Colmar 36 Cologne x, 37–41, 44, 48, 51, 52, 63, 81, 110–113, 166, 194, 207, 211, 213, 217, 219 Comtat-Venaissin 35 confidence interval 152, 153, 163

225 Congress of Vienna 101 Congress Poland see Poland Constantine I, Roman emperor 11, 37– 39, 111, 142 Constantine V, Byzantine emperor 5, 12 Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Byzantine emperor 5, 7, 15 Constantine, missionary 11, 12 Constantinople 8, 10, 12–14, 16, 28, 29, 67, 72, 182 conversion 5, 7, 10–14, 20, 44, 57, 82, 133, 141–143, 145, 152, 155, 162, 185, 189, 199, 217 converts 9, 24, 57, 66, 141, 142, 145, 150, 151, 158, 161, 162, 172, 189, 192, 199–201 Cordoba 7, 30, 60 Cossacks 19, 85, 140, 192 Cossack uprising 85, 94, 105, 140, 190–192 cranial index 132, 133 Crimea 3, 9, 10, 14, 16–18, 65–67, 71, 76, 82, 102, 184, 220 Crimean Tatars 76 Croatia 61 crusade 31, 32, 43, 45, 46, 56, 57 First Crusade 23, 45–47, 56, 57, 69, 71, 75, 145 Second Crusade 31, 47 Cyrillos, see Constantine, missionary 11 Czech Jews 54, 57, 176 Czechoslovakia 98, 175 Czersk 119 Daberstadt 51 Dagestan 15, 169 Dagobert I, Merovingian king 25 Danube 5, 59, 61, 71, 109, 114, 115, 119, 120 Danube hypothesis 114, 115, 119, 120

226 demographic miracle 94, 96 Denmark 135 Danes 135 Derbend 6 desecration of the host 47 Deutz 51, 52 DNA 129, 135–138, 146, 147, 150, 154, 157, 160, 163–165, 168, 174, 178, 186, 194, 202, 221 mtDNA 164–167, 169–171, 174, 179, 183, 194, 212 Dnieper122, 220 Dnister 6 Dutch Indies 158 Dutch, the 44, 51, 55, 135, 139, 153, 158, 160, 162, 166, 175, 176, 178, 179, 199, 220 Dutch Jews 160, 162, 166, 175, 176, 179 earthquake 39, 41–43 East European Jewry 2, 3, 4, 5, 19, 21, 47, 63, 78, 98, 103, 104, 108, 109, 133, 146, 148, 168, 179, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199 East European Jews ix, 1, 2, 4, 20, 21, 68, 76, 81, 97, 104, 109, 121, 125, 127, 128, 133, 134, 137, 138, 140, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153, 157–160, 162, 164– 166, 168, 171, 175, 176, 178, 179, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 192, 193, 194, 197–202 East Prussia 103, 106, 204 Eastern Europe x, xi, xii, 1–3, 5, 20, 23, 26, 29, 36, 46, 53, 57, 67, 69, 78, 86, 90, 92, 97, 98, 101–111, 114, 119, 122, 123, 125–127, 133, 134, 137, 145–148, 158, 159, 162, 164, 165, 174–176, 179, 183, 184, 186– 189, 193, 194, 197, 198, 200, 201 Egypt 35, 86, 97, 141, 155, 171, 172, 177, 213, 215

Index

Egyptians 156, 162, 171, 172 Elbe 56 electrophoretic proteins 137 Eller 47 England 31, 53, 86, 177, 215–217 Enns 62 Ephraim bar Jacob 32 Erfurt 2, 51, 81 Esztergom 61 Ethiopia 132, 137, 156, 170 Ethiopian Jews xi, 130, 131, 139, 154, 158, 162, 170, 171, 178, 202 Ethiopians ix, 130, 139, 149, 154, 156, 162 etrog 60 Etruscans 147 Eugene III, pope 31 European Jews 4, 76, 77, 109, 122, 129, 130, 134, 138–140, 146–149, 153, 158, 159, 165, 168, 171, 176, 179, 181, 185, 188, 197, 199–202 expulsion 26, 32–35, 51–53, 63, 77, 141, 167, 169, 170, 214 Ferdinand I, Austrian emperor 58 Finns 6 Firanja 28 “foreign” genes 138–140, 145, 162 founder events 166 founding mothers 166–171, 179 Fourth Council of the Lateran 116, 129 France xi, 1, 4, 23–25, 28, 30–33, 35– 38, 45, 53, 62, 63, 68, 74, 84, 85, 92, 110, 112, 121, 151, 165, 166, 177, 182, 185, 198, 207–209, 213, 214, 217, 219 French Jews 24, 31, 32, 63, 113, 166 northern France 25, 110, 113, 119 southern France 31, 33, 48, 63 Franche-Comté 32

Index

Frankfurt 48, 51, 95, 96, 210, 212, 214, 219 Frankish Empire 27, 29 Franks 28, 38, 67, 111, 113, 142, 194, 213 Friesland 135 G2019S mutation 177, 178 Galicia 18, 71, 75, 99, 103, 124, 134, 187, 188 East Galicia 67 Gaucher (GD) 174 Gaul 24–26, 38, 44, 110, 111, 113, 144 gefilte fish 194 geniza 8 Geniza of Cairo 8, 16, 18, 74, 123, 186 Georgia 10, 65, 137, 169 Georgian Jews 169 German 1–3, 5, 9, 18, 20, 31, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 44–51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 63, 67, 77, 81–83, 90, 95, 97, 103, 106, 109, 111–118, 121–124, 132, 153, 154, 159, 160, 165–167, 175, 176, 183, 184, 187–189, 193, 194, 195, 198, 200, 220, 221 East Middle German 117 German component 116, 117, 123, 194 Germany hypothesis 1, 3, 108, 183 Middle High German 110, 195 Old High German 110 Germany x, xi, xii, 1–4, 19, 21, 23, 29, 32, 34, 36–39, 43–53, 56, 57, 62, 65, 67–70, 72–74, 76–78, 80, 81, 83, 94, 95, 97, 99, 106, 108–111, 113, 114, 117, 120–122, 127, 128, 132, 138, 151, 153, 165, 166, 168, 174–176, 179, 182, 183, 185, 189, 192–194, 197, 198, 200, 203, 204, 213, 219, 220 German Jews 3, 36, 38, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 53, 63, 77, 83, 106, 109, 111, 113, 121, 124, 159, 165,

227 166, 175, 176, 183, 187–189, 193, 198 Germans 38, 75, 110, 112, 137, 154, 155, 159, 160, 182, 183, 187 Gershom ben Yehuda 72, 118, 121, 182 Gniezno 124 Gomer 181 Gorgippia see Anapa 10 Görlitz 153 Grand Duchy of Moscow 78, 159, 189 Greek 28, 66, 72, 123, 142, 149, 209 Gregory I, pope 144 Grodno 174 growth rate xi, 83, 84, 89–91, 97–100, 103, 105–108, 153, 168, 186, 203– 205 Guebwiller 36 haggadah 35, 155 Hanseatic League 45 haplogroup see molecular genetics Harun al-Rashid, caliph 13 Hasdai ibn Shaprut 7, 30, 60 Hebrew 7, 8, 16, 20, 31, 32, 42, 47, 51, 57, 61, 66, 72, 74, 77, 80, 86, 95, 96, 109, 110, 112, 116, 118, 121– 123, 126, 127, 130, 135, 142, 151, 153, 155, 172, 173, 181–183, 189, 194, 198, 200, 202, 207–210, 212– 219 Hebrew component 116, 118, 121 Heilbronn 51 Hellenized 60, 66, 184 Heraclius, Byzantine emperor 25, 26, 172 hereditary diseases 163, 174 High Holidays 34 Hochheim 51 House of Aragon 32 Hungary 2, 4, 15, 17, 18, 23, 34, 50, 52, 55–63, 70, 71, 73, 75, 98, 104, 106,

228 114, 120, 151, 165, 175–177, 183, 187, 188, 217, 218 Hungarians 6, 15, 55, 60, 61, 151, 153, 160, 194 Huns 11, 147 Hunu, Slavic king 30 hypocaust heating xi, 40 Iberia 10 ibn Jakub (Yaqub) 44, 45, 55, 56, 68, 187, 188 idiopathic torsion dystonia (ITD) 174 Iglau 58 Indian Jews ix, xi, 130, 139, 169, 170, 179, 197 infant mortality 94, 95 Innocent III, pope 129 intermarriage 60, 143, 201 Iranians 156 Iraqi Kurds 151 Isaac Or Zarua 72, 121 Islam 11, 12, 14, 76, 139, 170, 172, 213 Isle-sur-la-Sorgue 35 Israel, Albanese bishop 12 Italy 1, 24, 28, 45, 68, 74, 82, 116, 119, 127, 141, 146, 147, 162, 164, 167, 185, 197 Italian component 138, 146, 179 Italian Jews 146, 147, 159, 164, 183 Italians 17, 146, 147, 151, 154, 160, 162, 179, 194 northern Italy 47, 114, 119, 147 south[ern] Italians 147, 148 Itil 6, 29, 73 Jacob ben Hanuka 8 Jerusalem 55, 123, 135, 141, 172, 208– 210, 213, 215, 217–219 Jewish disease 163, 176, 179 Jewish emigrants 104

Index

Jewish merchants 27–29, 46, 54, 70, 71, 187 Johanan ben Zekharyah, the Khazar 18 Johannes von Capestrano, Franciscan priest 62 Joseph Kara, tosafist 121 Joseph, Khazar king 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 30, 61, 182, 207, 221 Judaism 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12–16, 21, 24, 45, 57, 63, 66–68, 122, 123, 141– 147, 149, 155, 161, 162, 183, 185, 187, 189, 190, 192, 199, 201, 212, 218, 220, 221 Judaizers 189, 190, 217 judenrein 33, 53, 198 Judeo-French x, 110 Judeo-Latin, see Roman Loez 110 Judeo-Romance 116, 119 Judith, Polish princess 74, 80, 187 Kabars 15, 60, 177 kaftan 3, 19, 194 Kagan 6, 9, 11–13, 20, 194 Kálmán, Hungarian king 61 Kamianets-Podilskyji Kazimierz 2 kena‘an 72–74, 121 Kerch 10, 66 Khamlij 28, 29 Khan Boris, Bulgarian ruler 11 Kharkiv 6 Khazaria 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15–21, 29, 30, 67, 68, 70, 81, 82, 176, 182, 197, 200, 209, 212, 214, 217 Khazar Empire 5, 6, 16, 17, 19, 68, 69, 124, 187 Khazar Jews 3, 5, 8, 9, 19, 21, 60, 68, 75 Khazaria hypothesis 2, 21 Khazars 2–7, 9–21, 28–30, 60, 61, 66–69, 76, 82, 125, 133, 148, 149, 169, 176, 177, 181–183,

Index

185, 194, 197, 199–201, 207, 210, 215, 217, 220, 221 Khirbet El-Samara 39 Khmelnytsky 18, 85, 87, 88, 105 Kiev 18, 68, 71, 73, 75, 76, 81, 114, 122, 126, 188 Kievan letter 8, 9 Kievan Rus 2, 14, 16, 17, 18, 68, 70 Kipchaks 18 Koblenz 113 kohanim 9, 150 Kovno 174 Krakow 2, 55, 70, 71, 73, 80, 82, 120, 124, 187, 188 Kufin 9 Kumyks 169 Kurdistan 80, 209 Lajos I, Hungarian king 62 Land of Israel ix, 1, 25, 65, 135, 139, 171, 173, 176, 185, 197, 199–202, 208 Landau 19, 20, 36, 200, 214 László V, Hungarian king 62 Latvians 92 Lazio 147 Lebanese 156, 178 Lembas 150, 151, 194 Lemberg (Lviv) 51, 124 Leo III, the Isaurian, Byzantine emperor 12 leprosy 33 Levite 9, 151–153 Levi 151, 154 Levie 153 levirate marriage 77 Lex Salica 142 liberation deed 66 Libya 137, 169 Libyan Jews 156, 169, 218 life expectancy of Jews 92, 95

229 Life of St. Abo 12 linguistic reconstruction 115, 116 Lithuania 1, 2, 19, 20, 46, 49, 50, 63, 65, 75, 76, 78, 83, 88, 101, 102, 109, 115–117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 151, 159, 165, 176, 187, 194, 201 Lithuanian Jews 117, 120 loan words 15, 118 Loez 110 Roman Loez 110 Western Loez 110 Lombardy 147 Longobards 147 Lorraine 35, 36, 63, 82, 166 loter 82, 110, 112 Louis the German, Carolingian king 55, 145 Louis the Pious, Carolingian king 144 Louis VII, French king 32 low age at first marriage 90 Lublin 70 Lud 173 Lviv 51, 124 Maccabean kings 141 Macedonia 171, 221 Magdeburg 56, 117 Magyars 5, 7, 15, 55, 60, 61, 215 Mainz 30, 36, 38, 45, 51, 72, 73, 82, 93, 113 Mallorca 32 marker 135 Marseille 24 Massenbach 51 Mass migrations 46, 47, 50, 53, 63, 85, 97, 124, 125, 127, 165, 175, 188, 189, 193, 198 Matthias Corvinus, Hungarian king 62 Mazovia, Duchy of 116, 120 Me’ir Kats Ashkenazi 126 Medina 28

230 menorah 60 Merovingian period 25, 142 Merovingians 27, 63, 110, 141, 142 Merseburg 56 Mesopotamia 71, 141 Methodius, missionary 29, 146 Metz 35, 110, 166 Middle Ages 1, 3, 5, 17, 33, 50, 53, 54, 63, 67, 75, 83, 108, 116, 121, 129, 144, 145, 184, 193, 195, 197, 198, 202, 210 early Middle Ages 186 late Middle Ages 36 Middle East 129, 134, 136, 140, 150, 154, 156–158, 162, 164, 167, 168, 175, 177–179, 184, 193, 194, 200, 212 Middle Eastern Jews 156, 157 Middle Eastern type 135 Mieszko, Polish prince 80 mikve 42, 93 Military service 92, 94 Minni 181 mismatch distributions 165 mityahadim 189 Mogilev 126 Mohammedans 91 molecular genetics 4, 132, 135, 149 gene pool 138, 139, 174 genetic adaptation 139 genetic distances 138, 146 genotypic frequencies 137 haplogroup 150, 152, 160, 164, 166, 167, 169, 171 haplogroup HV0 171 haplogroup K 166 haplogroup L 164, 171, 172 haplogroup M 169 haplogroup N1b 166, 167 haplogroup R1a1 152

Index

haplotype 150–154, 167, 169, 171, 172, 179 parental population 137, 138, 154– 157 population genetics x, 135 random genetic drift 138, 139 Molokans 192 Molsheim 36 Mongols 18, 19, 75, 76, 81, 82, 124, 188 Mongolian type 60 Moravia 4, 23, 29, 46, 52, 54, 56, 58, 59, 62, 63, 68, 74, 116–121, 124, 128, 183, 188 Morocco 137, 155, 170, 177, 178, 209 Moroccan Jews 150, 155, 156, 202, 209 Moselle 110 Mountain Jews 10, 17, 169 Mtskeh 10 Mühlheim am Rhein 51 Muiderberg xii, 160, 161 Mulhouse 36 Mumbai 169 Muslims 14, 17, 31, 44, 55, 172, 173 Narbonne 28, 38 Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylonian king 10, 65 Neckarsulm 51 nefel 95 nemets 182 Netherlands, the ix, xi, 84, 85, 94, 95, 109, 129, 135, 151, 153, 160, 165, 166, 171, 175–177, 193, 197, 198, 201, 203, 205, 217 Neumark 49 Neustria 25 New Amsterdam 39 New York 39, 147, 200, 207, 210–217, 219, 221 Nice 35

Index

Nigeria 156 Nördlingen 51 North Africa 45, 150, 154–157, 162, 167, 170, 177, 202, 209, 214, 215 North African Arabs 177, 215 North African Jews 150, 154, 155, 156, 170 Norwegians 178 Nuremberg 47, 48, 52 Ober-Glogau 59 Obernai 36 Olbia 66 Old Czech 74, 118, 120, 125 Old Polish 74, 118, 123 Old Testament 97 Olmütz 58 Oppeln 59 Orange 35 Orthodox 3, 19, 91, 92 Ossetes 77 Ostkolonisation 77 Ottoman Empire 171 Ovadia, Khazar king 13, 15 Pale of Settlement xi, 102, 103 Palestine 19, 32, 36, 47, 62, 172, 173, 192, 200, 213, 215 Palestinians 137, 156, 158, 172, 178 Pannonia 15, 57, 59 Pantikapaion see Kerch 10, 66 Paris 24, 30, 47, 207–212, 214, 215, 218, 219 Parkinson 132, 177, 214, 215, 217 Pechenegs 15, 16, 18 Pécs 60 Peki’in 173 Pereyaslav 18 Pereyaslavl 68 Persia 10, 67, 70, 81, 171

231 Persians 5, 59, 65 Petahiah of Ratisbon 30 Phanagoria (Tamatarca) see Taman 10 phenotype 140, 157–159, 183, 185, 199 phenotypic differences 136, 158, 162, 178, 202 phenotypic similarity 156, 162, 193 Philip August, French king 32 Philip the Fair, French king 32 Pilsen 58 plague 23, 33, 45, 48, 49, 61, 77, 124, 188 Plock 120, 124 Podolia 67, 76, 126 pogrom 1, 23, 26, 31, 32, 45, 48, 49, 53, 57, 58, 62, 63, 72, 94, 111, 188, 195 Poland xi, 1–3, 5, 17–20, 23, 27, 30, 35, 45–53, 56–59, 61–63, 65, 67– 75, 77, 78, 80–86, 88, 90, 98–103, 107, 109, 114–116, 118, 119, 123, 124, 127, 128, 132, 134, 137, 151, 159, 165, 168, 175, 176, 185–190, 193, 194, 209, 210, 212, 215, 217, 219, 220, 221 Congress Poland xi, 94, 95, 99– 106, 193 southern Poland 18, 70, 71, 74, 118, 123, 187 Versailles Poland 100 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth xi, 78, 84, 85, 100, 101, 105–107, 146, 190 Polish-Lithuanian Jewry 3, 4, 18, 19, 23 Polish-Lithuanian Jews 18, 20 Polovtsy 17, 18 Pomerania 106, 204 Pomerelia, Duchy of 116 Portugal 53, 132, 169, 177 Posen 103, 104, 106, 124, 193, 203, 204, 208

232 Poznan 103, 124 Prague 2, 30, 54–58, 69, 71, 73, 75, 114, 118, 188, 209, 219 Prausnitz 59 Primut 72 proselytes xii, 26, 160, 161, 184, 193 Protestants 91 Provence 24, 32, 34, 35, 219 Przemysl 70, 72, 73, 74, 82, 120, 123, 186–188 Puklitz 58 Pullitz 58 Pyrenees 32, 111 rabbis 13, 46, 82, 113, 118, 121–123, 125, 126, 128, 173, 188, 194, 198 Radhanites 27, 28, 30, 55 Raffelstetten (Asten) 54 Raffelstettener Zoll- und Schiffahrtsurkunde 54, 68, 185 rape 140 Rashi 73, 74, 114, 121 raysn see “Russia” 67 Reccared, Visigothic king 145 red hair 149, 197 Red Sea 132 Regensburg 2, 30, 61, 71, 73, 81, 113, 114, 116, 120, 188 religious education 118, 122, 126, 128 renus 112, 113, 182, 195 responsum 7, 13, 14, 126, 198 responsa 34, 35, 71, 121, 128, 198 Rhine 36, 42, 45, 110–112, 163, 166, 194 Rhineland 25, 36, 39, 44–47, 49, 109–114, 119, 166, 167, 175, 219 Rhineland hypothesis 44, 110, 111 Ribeauvillé 36 rinus 110, 112, 194 ritual bath 42, 93, 142

Index

Roman Empire 59, 110, 141, 142, 147, 167, 178, 209 Roman basin 43 Roman Jews 141, 152, 154, 163, 164, 179, 216 Roman law 30, 144 Romans 24, 28, 36, 38, 59, 60, 110, 112, 139, 147, 173 Rome 28, 29, 59, 141, 163 Romance 28, 29, 109, 110, 112–114, 116, 119, 211, 220 component 110, 113 words 113, 114, 119 Romania 98, 104, 106, 151, 165, 209 Rothenburg/Tauber 51, 75, 216 Rouen 31 Roussillon 32 Russia 3–6, 17, 23, 46, 61, 65, 67, 68, 70–73, 74–76, 78, 83, 91, 92, 98, 99, 101, 102, 107, 120, 123, 126, 132–134, 137, 151, 162, 165, 175, 176, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193, 199, 201, 208, 210, 212, 217 Old “Russia” 76 “Russia” 67, 68, 70 European Russia ix, 1, 84, 85, 91, 101, 103, 107, 185, 190, 208 Russians 18, 55, 92, 102, 137, 148, 154, 155, 159, 160, 162 southern Russia 3, 4, 15, 65, 69, 70, 77, 82, 83, 119, 120, 124, 132, 133, 148, 153, 176–178, 182–190, 192, 193, 195, 199, 201 southern „Russia“ 68 Saale 44 Saint-Avold 35 Samarkand 76 Samkarts 10, 73 San 120, 208 Sandomierz 71

Index

Sarkel 16, 18 Sarmatians 182 Savoy 32, 33, 34, 35 Sawarta 9 Scandinavians 55 Schaff family 51 Schweinfurt 51 Scythians 182 Sea of Azov 16 Second Temple 13, 36, 66, 142, 172, 218 Sélestat 36 Semender 6 Semites 20 Sephardic Jews 1, 29, 150, 177, 198 sefarad 182, 214 sefardim 181, 182 Shirvan 17 shtar shihrur 66 shtraymel 3, 19, 194 Siegburg 51 Sigibert I, Merovingian king 25 Sigismund, Hungarian king 62 Silesia 2, 4, 23, 50, 52, 54, 58, 59, 63, 104, 106, 124, 204 Silesian 52, 59, 109, 124, 128 Silesian hypothesis 124 slaves 28, 29, 44, 54, 55, 66, 97, 121, 141, 143–145, 171, 187 slave traders 29, 74, 144, 146, 185 Slavic language 9, 69, 74, 116, 118, 123, 125, 126, 128, 183, 186, 192, 194 Slavic component 109 Slavonia 30 Slavs 28, 55, 68, 69, 134, 182, 187, 212 Sontheim 51 Sorbs 125, 152, 153 Sorb hypothesis 118, 125 South European type 133 south Russian type 133

233 Spain 7, 18, 29, 31, 32, 45, 53, 73, 74, 81, 145, 150, 167, 168, 170, 177, 182 Speyer 2, 45, 51, 81, 110 status of the woman 96 Strasbourg 48 Subbotniki 192 Suwalki 174 Switzerland 67 Syria 59, 141, 188, 213 Syrians 60, 156 Talmud 66, 72, 73, 113, 119, 121, 122, 142, 173 Talmud[ic] schools 113, 119, 122, 173 Taman 10, 16 Tanais 10 Tängri-Xan 10, 11 Tarsus 59 Tatars 6, 16, 17, 75 Tatar type 133, 157 Taurida 16 Tay-Sachs 132, 163, 174, 175, 179, 207, 211, 216, 217 TSD 174, 175, 176 Thessalonica 114, 123 Theudebert II, Merovingian king 144 Theuderic, Merovingian king 143, 144 Theuderic II, Merovingian king 144 Third Council of the Lateran 34 Thirty Years War 35 Thrace 138 Thüringen 30 Tiberius, Roman emperor 141, 142 Tmutarakan 18 Togarmah 182 Toledo 18, 29, 81 Trier 39, 44, 110, 113, 207, 214 Troyes 73, 214 Trzeszte 58

234

Index

tsarefat 182 Tunisia 137, 169, 178 Tunisian Jews 151, 169 Tunisians 156, 162, 169, 170 Turkey 52, 137, 138, 170, 171, 179, 181 Turks 7, 11, 12, 15, 55, 129, 182 Tuscany 147

Vistula 119, 120 Vladimir 2, 16, 18 Vladimir I, Kievan prince 2, 16 Vltava 56 Volga 16, 29, 127, 192 Volhynia 18, 67, 75, 76, 126, 188 Voronezh 6 ›æ‡Š”ƒ† 55

Ubians 112 Ukraine xi, xii, 1, 6, 65, 67, 70, 76, 78, 82, 85–89, 101, 102, 105, 109, 120, 124, 126, 128, 134, 137, 140, 153, 159, 162, 165, 169, 187, 190, 191, 194, 202, 215, 219, 220 Ulm 51 Umbria 147 United States 39, 104, 148, 174, 220 unrounding 117, 118, 120, 121 Ural 6 Urban II, pope 31

Warsaw 116, 119, 210, 215, 218 Wends 26 West European Jews 159, 165, 166, 168, 179, 198, 202 West European Ashkenazim 164, 183, 194 West Prussia 103, 106, 204 Western Eurasia 171 western immigration 57, 58 Worms 2, 36, 38, 45, 47, 51, 81, 113

Valentinian I, Roman emperor 44 Vandals 147 Vavaillon 35 venereal diseases 95, 96 Venice 28, 29, 30, 55, 85, 146, 212 vernacular 4, 114, 115, 123, 127, 128, 194, 199 Vienna 33, 85, 181, 210, 212, 214, 216, 218 Vikings 42, 55, 112 Vilnius 124, 126, 212, 213 Vilno 174 Vincent Kadlubek, bishop 80 vineyards 44 Visigoths 110, 161 Visigothic Spain 26

Y chromosomes 149, 150, 179, 183 Yaroslav the Wise, Kievan prince 73 Yaroslavl 75 Yehuda ben Barzilay 7, 13 Yemen 137, 171, 172 Yemenite Jews 139, 154, 157, 171, 172, 178, 202, 212 Yiddish x, 1–4, 44, 57, 63, 73, 86, 109– 128, 183, 188, 192, 194, 198, 209– 211, 213–215, 218–221 Eastern Yiddish 109 Lithuanian Yiddish 116, 117, 122, 123 Polish Yiddish 117, 123 Western Yiddish 109 Zeeburg xii, 160, 161