A Jewish person whose ancestors lived in Central or Eastern Europe, particularly Germany and Poland.
From Hebrew 'Ashkenaz,' a biblical region associated with the area around Armenia and Turkey, later applied to Central European Jewish communities. Medieval Jewish scholars identified their settlement area with this biblical name.
Ashkenazi Jews developed Yiddish—a German-Hebrew hybrid language—which shows how languages blend when cultures mix; today most Jewish people worldwide are Ashkenazi, making this historical regional term now describe the majority.
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