Yiddish language and Ashkenazic Jews: A perspective from culture, language, and literature

Abstract

The typology of Yiddish and the name Ashkenaz cannot serve as arguments to support the theory put forward by Das et al. (2016). (Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz. Genome Biol Evol. 8:1132–1149.) that the origin of Ashkenazic Jews can be located in ancient Iran. Yiddish is a Germanic, not a Slavic language. The history of the use of the term Ashkenaz from the Middle Ages onward is well documented. Ashkenazic Jewry is named for the Hebrew and Yiddish designation for Germany, originally a Biblical term.