The terms Ashkenaz and Sefarad are found in the Bible, but most likely refer to areas of present-day Turkey and Armenia, respectively. How did they. . .

The questions of where and when Yiddish originated, and how it spread, were long regarded as solved. No more. 

Ashkenazi Jews are forbidden to eat kitniyot—rice, corn, and legumes—on Passover, while Sephardim are permitted. Why?

The theory that Ashkenazi Jews descend from the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic tribe of the 10th century, is not only malicious; there’s also no evidence for it.

Most Ashkenazi Jews did not take surnames until compelled to do so by government authorities at the turn of the 19th century. Here, a list. . .

A new genetic study of Ashkenazi Jews traces their maternal lineage to Europe rather than the Near East—suggesting, if true, that Jewish men married local women.

Contrary to the claims of some historians, discrimination against Mizrahi Jews in 1950s Israel was real and no myth. What’s a myth? That 1950s Israel. . .

In the monumental three-volume Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, Mikhl Herzog lovingly attended to the minutiae, and to the living heart, of Yiddish-speaking Jewry.

Should the 19th-century Jewish Enlightenment be understood instead as the Romantic movement in Judaism? The evidence is underwhelming.