Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity - top countries
Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity is common in the following countries, according to MyHeritage DNA users' data.
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The percentages represent the portion of MyHeritage DNA users with Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity in that country.
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Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity
The Ashkenazim are a European Jewish diaspora who trace their communal origins to Germany and France, and later to the eastward migration towards Poland and the Slavic countries. Because of traditional marriage practices and segregation from surrounding cultures, the Ashkenazi Jewish population is genetically very closely knit. Due to persecution, genocides, and the devastation of the Holocaust, Ashkenazi Jews have migrated across the world, with the largest populations in the U.S. and Israel, and significant populations across the Americas, the Former Soviet Union, and in South Africa and Australia. Jewish culture emphasizes learning, which might explain why — while Jews represent only 0.2% of the world population — about a quarter of all Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish.