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Hi. I’m researching about Russian Jews. I can’t find how they are called exactly. I know that European Jews are called Ashkenazi and Khazars. From Russia I was only able to find two names, Kenaanim and Khanaan. I’m still not sure. Is there a universal name for Russian Jews, like Ashkenazi and Khazars for Eurpean Jews ?
Rooshishe Yidden.
Russia is very big. It had Ashkenazic Jews, constituting the vast majority of Russian Jews, as well as Sephardic Jews in different regions. The Ashkenazim were generally in the European part of Russia whereas the Sephardim mostly lived in the Asian parts of Russia.
Khazar Jews were a tiny number of royal family members a thousand years ago that lasted a small time before they melted into other groups of Jews and haven’t existed as entity for nearly a millennia.
I call most Jews on the telephone.
Khazar being jews is a misnomer used by antisemites
huju: How do you have enough time to call most Jews?
There were two groups of “Kenaanim” in Europe: Czech Jews (speaking West Slavic) and Early Belarusian/Ukrainian Jews (speaking East Slavic). They are called West Knaan and East Knaan respectively by scholars like Alexander Beider. Both groups were primarily descended from Jews of western and southern Europe. East Slavic-speaking Jews had a small additional element from Romaniote Jews.
The Slavic-speaking Jews intermarried with Ashkenazic Jews and switched to Yiddish. The Ashkenazic people divided into subgroups such as Litvaks, Yekke, and Galitzianers.
It turns out that the Knaanim and the Ashkenazim never intermarried with the Khazars even though that had been speculated for a long time and I used to believe it was a possibility too. Genetic evidence disproved it starting in 2013.
Other Jewish ethnic groups that have lived in Russia at various times include the Karaite Jews, Krymchak Jews, and Mountain Jews. The Mountain Jews are not accurately classified as “Sephardim” but rather as “Mizrahim”. The real Sephardic culture developed in Spain and Portugal.
Krymchak Jews and Ashkenazi Jews intermarried to a limited extent with Sephardic Jews after 1492.
Details about all this are in my book “The Jews of Khazaria, Third Edition” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) in chapter 10.
@huju trying not to laugh
To ujm: It’s the only thing I can do during the Covid lockdown.
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