Eastern European Jewry
Eastern European Jewry
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Eastern European Jewry

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Eastern European Jewry

The expression Eastern European Jewry can either refer to the current political spheres of the Eastern European countries or to the Jewish communities in Russia and Poland.

The phrase 'Eastern European Jews' or 'Jews of the East' (from German: Ostjuden) was established during the 20th century in the German Empire and in the western provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, aiming to distinguish the integrating Jews in Central Europe from those Jews who lived in the East.

This feature deals with the second meaning of the concept of Eastern European Jewry—the Jewish groups that lived in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Romania, Hungary and modern-day Moldova in collective settlement (from Hebrew: Kibbutz- קיבוץ), many of whom spoke Yiddish.

At the beginning of the 20th century, over six million Jews lived in Eastern Europe. They were organized into large and small communities, living in big cities, such as Warsaw (with a population of about 300,000 Jews), as well as in small towns with populations of only tens or hundreds of Jews.

At the beginning of the 16th century, the number of Jews who lived in Eastern Europe was estimated to be between 10,000 and 30,000. In parts of Eastern Europe, before the arrival of the Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe, some non-Ashkenazi Jews were present who spoke Leshon Knaan and held various other non-Ashkenazi traditions and customs.

As early as the beginning of the 17th century, it was known that there were Jews living in cities of Lithuania who spoke "Russiany" (from Hebrew: רוסיתא) and did not know the "Ashkenaz tongue", i.e. German-Yiddish.

In 1966, historian Cecil Roth questioned the inclusion of all Yiddish-speaking Jews as Ashkenazim in descent, suggesting that upon the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe to Eastern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, there were already a substantial number of Jews there who later abandoned their original culture in favor of Ashkenazi culture.

However, according to more recent research, mass migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews occurred to Eastern Europe from the west who increased due to high birth rates and absorbed and/or largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi Jewish groups of Eastern Europe (the latter groups' numbers are estimated by demographer Sergio DellaPergola to have been small).

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