The Ashkenazi Revolution

296Amihai PaglinAmihai Paglin, code name “Gidi”(December 1, 1922 - February 26, 1978), was the Chief Operations Officer ofthe Irgun, the commander of the battle to conquer Jaffa in the 1948 Arab–IsraeliWar, and, following independence, Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s counterterrorismadvisor.Arlosoroff Haim Arlozoroff (1899 — 1933)was a Zionist leader in Palestine during the era of the British Mandate forPalestine and head of the political department of the Jewish Agency. Arlosoroffwas assassinated while walking on the beach in Tel Aviv in 1933.Arthur Wokoff Arthur Wokoff was the British high commissioner inPalestine 1931-1938. He sympathized with a Jewish homeland and allowedmany Jews to enter Palestine during his watch. (http://goo.gl/xhgvk )AshkenazThe Ashkenazi nation as a whole.AshkenaziAshkenazi Jews, also knownas Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from themedieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in thesouth to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name forthis region and thus for Germany. Thus, Ashkenazim or Ashkenazi Jews areliterally "German Jews." Later, Jews from Western and Central Europe came to becalled "Ashkenazi" because the main centers of Jewish learning werelocated in Germany. Ashkenaz is also a Japhetic patriarch in the Table ofNations (Genesis 10). Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward,forming communities in non German-speaking areas, includingHungary, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, andelsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. With them, they took anddiversified Yiddish, a Germanic language with Hebrew influence, written inHebrew letters. It had developed in medieval times as the lingua franca amongAshkenazi Jews. The Jewish communities of three cities along theRhine: Speyer, Worms and Mainz, created the SHUM league (SHUM after thefirst Hebrew letters of Shpira, Vermayza, and Magentza). The ShUM-cities areconsidered the cradle of the distinct Ashkenazi culture and liturgy.Although in the 11th century, they composed only 3 percent of theworld's Jewish population, at their peak in 1931, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for92 percent of the world's Jews. Today they make up approximately 80percent of Jews worldwide. Most Jewish communities with extended