A majority of the Jewish people in the Roman Empire lived in what became
the Eastern Roman Empire, and were Grecophonic, not Latin speakers. The
Western Empire became depopulated over the years, and when the capitol
was shifted to Constantinople there were only a few thousand people
living in Rome. If all the Empire Jews were Ashkenazi, it means that
Ashkenazi extended as far as the towns on the Black Sea, where remains
of public buildings have been found serving as synagogues.
Jules Levin
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On 6/5/2021 3:32 PM, Richard Cooper wrote:
This is absolutely fascinating!
It shows that the ancestry of the subject (you, Adam?) at the time of
the foundation of the Jewish people was broadly half
Canaanite/Israelite and half from the classical Graeco-Roman world.
This coalesces around the time of the expulsion of the Jews from
Israel by the Romans into entirely Roman/Latin ancestry. The only
explanation that fits this is that at the beginning of the Diaspora
period, Judaism could be either patrilineal or matrilineal, and was
not fixed as matrilineal only until around 1000CE. And pretty much all
the subject's ancestors ended up in or around Rome itself in the wake
of the expulsion. But I'm no expert - corrections welcome!
--
Ric Cooper
Midhurst, UK
BORENSTEIN, MORDECHELEVITCH,GODZINSKIJ & ZIMNOWICZ from Warsaw and Grodno
MILLET, ENGELBERG, BLUMENKEHL, SUSSWEIN, WACKS & PITERZIL from Tarnow,
Dabrowa Tarnowska and Lezajsk
LEZTER, SALENDER, RINENBERG, EISEN & KRAETTER from Rzeszow and Kolbuszowa
YAROSHEVSKY, SHAPOCHNIKOW & GRANITUR from Odessa and Zlatopol/Novomirgorod
LEWINSTEIN from Berdichev
ADLER, FINKELSTEIN, PARYLLE, WEINTRAUB & ZILZ from Tarnopol and Trembowla
