In part 2 of this series, we began tracing the Israelite heritage of Ashkenazi Jews by documenting how early Judean exiles came to live in Italy, and then following that community’s continuous presence through the 8th century. This section covers the migration of Italian Jews to the German Rhineland―where Ashkenazi Jewish identity and culture began to develop―and their painful medieval history through the 14th century.
In the first part of this series, we began an overview of Ashkenazi Jewish history by establishing the strong Israelite heritage of Jews in Yeshua’s day, in both the Land of Israel and the Diaspora. Leaving biblical times, this article will cover the period from the destruction of Jerusalem through the 8th century, focusing specifically on the exiled Jewish communities in Italy.
In February of this year, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, a longtime conservative commentator and former host of a top-ranked cable news program. When Ambassador Huckabee expressed his belief that the Jewish people have a covenantal and historical claim to their ancestral homeland of Israel, Carlson showed hostility, arguing, “The only thing we know about them is they lived in Latvia or Poland—they’re Eastern European…. By what definition [are they Jewish]? How do we know they have any connection to the Jews of the Bible?”1
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