Jewish ethnic divisions: Encyclopedia II - Jewish ethnic divisions - Divisions

Jewish ethnic divisions - Divisions

Because of the independence of local communities, Jewish "ethnicities", even when they circumscribe differences in liturgy, language, cuisine and other cultural accoutrements, are more often a reflection of geographic and historical isolation from other communities. It is for this reason that communities are referred to by referencing the historical region in which the community cohered when discussing their practices, regardless of where those practices are found today. The Jewish communities of the modern world can all be found represented today in Israel, which is as much a melting pot as it is a salad bowl.

The smaller groups number in the hundreds to tens of thousands, with the Gruzim and Beta Israel being most numerous at somewhat over 100,000 each. Many members of these groups have now emigrated from their traditional homelands, largely to Israel. For example, only about 10 percent of the Gruzim remain in Georgia. A brief description of the extant communities is as follows, by the geographic regions with which they are associated:

Jewish ethnic divisions - Europe and the Caucasus

• Ashkenazim are Jews who migrated north from Italy into Germany and France, and later into Eastern Europe. Ashkenazim comprise far-and-away the majority of Jews, with approximately 70 percent of the Jewish total. Among the Ashkenazim are a number of cultural groups, roughly:
  • Western (sometimes called Yekkes), stemming from northern France, from the Lowlands, historical Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Scandinavia.
  • Oberlander, Western Yiddish speaking Jews originating in the Oberland region of Hungary and the disctrict surrounding Bratislava in Slovakia.
  • Central (Galitzianers) from Hungary, southwestern Poland, western Ukraine and northern Serbia and Montenegro
  • Northeastern (see Litvak)
  • Southeastern, predominantly from Ukraine, Moldova and Romania
• Bené Roma or Italkim are the Jews of Italy.
• Chuts were Dutch Jews, observing an amalgam of Ashkenazi and Sephardi customs, living in London, although this community has almost completely been lost to history.
• Gruzim are Georgian-speaking Jews from Georgia in the Caucasus.
• Juhurim are mountain Jews mainly from Daghestan and Azerbaidjan in the eastern Caucasus.
• Krymchaks and Karaim are Turkic-speaking Jews of the Crimea and Eastern Europe. The Krymchaks practice rabbinical Judaism, while the Karaim are Karaites. Whether they are primarily the descendants of Israelite Jews who adopted Turkic language and culture, or the descendants of Turkic converts to Judaism, is still debated.
• Romaniotes are Greek-speaking Jews from the Balkans that lived there from the Hellenistic era until today.
• San Nicandro Jews - from Italy
• Sephardim are Jews whose ancestors lived in Spain or Portugal, where they lived for possibly as much as two millennia before being expelled in 1492 (see Alhambra decree); they subsequently migrated to North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, Latin America, the Netherlands, the Balkans, and other parts of Europe. During the 1950s and '60s most Jews from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia fled to either Israel (where they presently comprise approximately 50% of the Jewish population) or to France (where they have become the majority of a Jewish population that was traditionally Ashkenazi).
  • Spanish and Portuguese Jews Nação - West Europe Sephardi
    • Conversos Belmonte, Portugal and some parts of Brazil
  • Baleares Chueta
  • Maghreb Anusim
    • Amazonian Hebraicos - Moroccan jewish communities in Belém, Santarém, Manaus and many river villages in the Amazon basin.
  • Salonika Jews

Jewish ethnic divisions - Middle East and Central Asia

• Bukharan Jews are Jews from Central Asia. They get their name from the Uzbek city of Bukhara, which once had a large community.
• Iraqi Jews are descendants of the Jews who have lived in Mesopotamia since the time of the Assyrian conquest of Canaan
• Kurdish Jews from Kurdistan, as distinct from the Persian Jews of central and eastern Persia
• Persian Jews from Iran (commonly called Parsim in Israel) have a 2,700 year old history.
• Yemenite Jews are Oriental Jews whose geographical and social isolation from the rest of the Jewish community allowed them to develop a liturgy and set of practices that are significantly distinct from other Oriental Jewish groups, and in fact comprise three distinctly different groups.
• Egyptian Jews are Jews who are descended from those who lived in Egypt at the time when Moses was alive. Because Moses is an Egyptian name, Moses himself was believed to be the ancestor of all Egyptian Jews.

Jewish ethnic divisions - Africa

• Abayudaya of Uganda
• Beta Israel from Ethiopia, tens of thousands of whom were brought to Israel during Operation Solomon and Operation Moses
• The House of Israel, several hundred Sefwi tribesmen in Ghana
• The emergent Jewish community among the Igbo in Nigeria, perhaps as many as 30,000 strong
• Various other small African Jewish populations are also found, from the Lemba in Malawi, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe; the "prophetic" Jews from the vicinity of Rusape, Zimbabwe; as well as vestigial communities in São Tomé e Príncipe and Timbuktu, Mali.

Jewish ethnic divisions - India and China

• Bene Israel are the Jews of Mumbai, India, most of whom presently reside in Israel.
• Cochin Jews are also Indian Jews from southwestern India, most of whom also now reside in Israel. Included among these are the Paradesi Jews.
• Baghdadi Jews [1] Those Jews came from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Arab countries and settled in India in 18th Century.
• Bnei Menashe. A group of Jews living in Manipur and Mizoram in northeastern India, claiming descent from the dispersed Biblical Tribe of Menasseh.
• Bene Ephraim, the Telugu-speaking Jews of Kottareddipalem in Andhra Pradesh, India.
• Chinese Jews: most prominent were the Kaifeng Jews, an ancient Jewish community in China, descended from merchants living in China from at least the era of the Tang dynasty. Today functionally extinct, although several hundred descendants have recently begun to explore and reclaim their heritage.

Jewish ethnic divisions - Americas

• Iglesia israelita: Some sects of Indians in the southern region of Chile who consider themselves Jews. They observe certain Jewish laws and customs.
• Inca Jews from the Andes Mountains north of Lima, Perú
• Note that most American Jews are Ashkenazim, but there is a significant minority of Sephardi and Mizraḥi Jews.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Divisions", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki