Short answers, pulled from the story.
The name Ashkenazi derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, who was the first son of Gomer and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations. Early Jewish communities in Europe began to use this term around the 10th century to describe Jews living in the Rhineland valley and neighboring France.
Expulsions from England in 1290, France in 1394, and parts of Germany during the 15th century gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewry eastward toward Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. By the 15th century, Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland became the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora.
About 6 million of the estimated 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. This included 3 million of 3.3 million Polish Jews, representing 91 percent of that population.
A 2000 study by Hammer and co-authors found that the Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews contained mutations common among Middle Eastern peoples but uncommon among indigenous Europeans. A 2025 statistical review found that most Ashkenazi Jews descend maternally from about 150 Near Eastern families, supporting a unified Near Eastern origin for both paternal and maternal lineages.
Ashkenazi Jews traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, and rice during Pesach, whereas Sephardi Jews typically do not prohibit these foods. In the traditional Ashkenazic rite, tefillin are wound towards the body rather than away from it, and prayer shawls are worn differently based on marital status or region.