While the term “Ashkenazi” today refers to Jews whose ancestors hail from Central and Eastern Europe, Ashkenaz was originally medieval Jews’ word for Germany. The first Ashkenazim established communities in the Rhineland and northern France around the year 900, and their distinctive customs tended to be similar to those of Jews in the Land of Israel, as opposed to the Babylonian customs and liturgy that dominated in North Africa and Spain. But where did these Jews come from? Tamar Marvin explains:

Earlier [scholarly] consensus, still widely accepted though at times modified, proposes that the earliest substrate of Ashkenazi Jews originated in Byzantine southern Italy, an amenable proposition in several ways: this cultural arena, being part of Byzantine lands, had been closely tied in antiquity with the Land of Israel when it too was under Byzantine control. This would explain Eretz-Yisraeli customs in Ashkenaz. In addition, the Rhine River, a major migration route, and the Rhineland Valley, the center of early Ashkenaz, lie north of Italy, making a migration pattern through Italy plausible. Indeed, we see a number of early Ashkenazi figures with names that sound Greek, i.e. plausibly originating in Greek-speaking southern Italy (such as the Kalonymos family), or Italianate-Latinate.

Whereas Jews living in Islamic lands were largely present at the time of the Muslim conquests, or else were immigrants from within the empire, Jews admitted to Christian territories, especially those of northern Europe, were immigrants from outside, at first, mostly merchants. They were granted conditional charters of settlement by royal or Church officials.

These documents, of which we possess a small but not insignificant number, reveal several key facts in relation to the establishment of Jewish life in the Latin West. First, they are . . . conditional: they stipulate terms of legal residence, as well as granting privileges. Inherently, such a charter may be revoked at any time, making Jewish life legally precarious; eventually, rights of settlement would be cancelled throughout Ashkenaz by local, then mass-scale, orders of expulsion.

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.