= ASHKENAZI YIDDISH NON-WEST EUROPEAN ORIGINS EVIDENCE Written by Hikaru K…

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ASHKENAZI YIDDISH NON-WEST EUROPEAN ORIGINS EVIDENCE

✍️ Written by Hikaru Kitabayashi ✍️

Most of what we read about Ashkenazi origins is fantasy. No one can prove beyond doubt any of the theories that have been propounded. One of the problems is using the origin of Yiddish to establish the origin of Ashkenazi Jews.

But, what is Yiddish? Most linguists say it is a Germanic language. But certain rather famous linguists of personal acquaintance have claimed in private that it would make more sense to consider it as a Slavic language. In fact, the Standard Yiddish of today is, basically, a 20th century creation, constructed from a continuum of Germano-Slavic dialects containing varying degrees of Hebrew derived vocabulary. The Slavic influence was deemphasized as a result of standardization favoring Germanic and Hebraic elements. This unspoken bias seems to have been derived from a desire to give Ashkenazi Jews a more prestigious early Western European origin.

But, overwhelmingly, the Ashkenazi community, is not derived from individuals coming to Israel as immigrants from Western Europe. Rather, even for those coming via America, it is from Eastern Europe. However, the theory of exclusive Khazarian origin doesn’t add up either. Wishful thinking based on fiction is abundant, but not enough solid fact, either genetic or historical, exists to build a theory on.

So, let’s look at the history of Jewish settlement in eastern Europe. The first recorded attempt at contact in order to establish regular trade with the Black Sea communities of what is now Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Turkey was made by the kingdoms of Judah and Israel in the reign of Jehoshaphat of Judah from about 870 to about 849 BCE. Crimea, because of its location in close proximity to the mouths of the Don, Dnieper, and Danube rivers, proved to be a desirable location and it seems to have been an early place of Hebrew settlement as is purportedly evidenced by first century BCE Jewish inscriptions found there. Perhaps this was because Crimea gave access to a vast inland river trading network that connected southern Germany and the Balkans with Scandinavia and the Slavic and Turkic language speaking communities of eastern Europe. In any case, there appears to have been a continuous Jewish presence throughout Crimea’s history, whether it might be in connection with Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Old Rus, Turkish, or Russian Black Sea trading communities.

The Goths, speaking an East Germanic language, are of particular interest. Before moving on to invade the Roman Empire, the Goths conquered Crimea during the 3rd century. Even though, Eastern Roman empire control was reestablished in the 4th century. Gothic-speaking people continued living in the peninsula up until the second half of the 18th century.

So, as current theories of the origin of Yiddish are not fully convincing, here is another to add to the mix of less than perfectly convincing theories, but which would make sense in terms of geolinguistic ethnography. Perhaps, Yiddish developed as a Crimean Peninsula centered inland river trade creole of traders using small river boats to connect the Danube, Dneiper, and Don Rivers to facilitate trade between southern Germany and Old Rus, thus accounting for both its Germanic and its underlying Slavic features. And, perhaps Crimean Jewish tradesmen, in particular, might have found it particularly convenient, both in the Crimean Peninsula and abroad when facilitating trade between the Holy Roman Empire, the Turkish Empire, Poland, and Muscovy.

So, whether Khazarian or Rhineland German, speculations are speculations. And, this is true of Yiddish, also. In the end, we have no evidence that cannot be explained in more than one way.

So how about ambiguity? Ambiguity’s not a bad thing.

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