title: Judi Dench

text: In 2002, Dench was cast opposite Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, and Reese Witherspoon in Oliver Parker's "The Importance of Being Earnest", a comedy about mistaken identity set in English high society during the Victorian Era. Based on Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners of the same name, she portrayed Lady Bracknell, a role she had repeatedly played before, including a stint at the Royal National Theatre in 1982. The film was released to lukewarm reactions by critics – who called it "breezy entertainment, helped by an impressive cast", but felt that it also suffered "from some peculiar directorial choices" – and earned just US$17.3 million during its limited release. Dench's other film of 2002 was "Die Another Day", the twentieth instalment in the James Bond series. The spy film, directed by Lee Tamahori, marked her fourth appearance as MI6 head M and the franchise's last performance by Pierce Brosnan as Bond. "Die Another Day" received mixed reviews


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2004, Dench appeared as Aereon, an ambassador of the Elemental race who helps uncover the mysterious past of Richard B. Riddick, played by Vin Diesel, in David Twohy's science fiction sequel "The Chronicles of Riddick". Selected by Diesel, who prompted writers to re-create the character to fit a female persona because he wanted to work with the actress, she called filming "tremendous fun", although she "had absolutely no idea what was going on in the plot". The film was a critical and box office failure. In his review of the film, James Berardinelli from "ReelViews" remarked that he felt that Dench's character served no more "useful purpose than to give [her] an opportunity to appear in a science-fiction movie".


title: Judi Dench

text: She followed "Riddick" with a more traditional role in Charles Dance's English drama "Ladies in Lavender", also starring friend Maggie Smith. In the film, Dench plays one half of a sister duo and takes it upon herself to nurse a washed up stranger to health, eventually finding herself falling for a man many decades younger than she. The specialty release garnered positive reviews from critics, with Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" calling it "perfectly sweet and civilized [and] a pleasure to watch Smith and Dench together; their acting is so natural it could be breathing". Also in 2004, Dench provided her voice for several smaller projects. In Walt Disney's "Home on the Range", she, along with Roseanne Barr and Jennifer Tilly, voiced a mismatched trio of dairy cows who must capture an infamous cattle rustler, for his bounty, in order to save their idyllic farm from foreclosure. The film was mildly successful for Disney.


title: Judi Dench

text: A major hit for Dench came with Joe Wright's "Pride & Prejudice", a 2005 adaptation of the novel by Jane Austen, starring Keira Knightley and Donald Sutherland. Wright persuaded Dench to join the cast as Lady Catherine de Bourgh by writing her a letter that read: "I love it when you play a bitch. Please come and be a bitch for me." Dench had only one week available to shoot her scenes, forcing Wright to make them his first days of filming. With both a worldwide gross of over US$121 million and several Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, the film became a critical and commercial success.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench, in her role as M, was the only cast member carried through from the Brosnan films to appear in "Casino Royale" (2006), Martin Campbell's reboot of the James Bond film series, starring Daniel Craig in his debut performance as the fictional MI6 agent. The thriller received largely positive critical response, with reviewers highlighting Craig's performance and the reinvention of the character of Bond. It earned over US$594 million worldwide, ranking it among the highest-grossing James Bond films ever released. Also in April 2006, Dench returned to the West End stage in "Hay Fever" alongside Peter Bowles, Kim Medcalf and Belinda Lang. She finished off 2006 with the role of Mistress Quickly in the RSC's new musical "The Merry Wives", a version of "The Merry Wives of Windsor".


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench appeared opposite Cate Blanchett as a London teacher with a dedicated fondness for vulnerable women in Richard Eyre's 2006 drama film "Notes on a Scandal", an adaption from the 2003 novel of the same name by Zoë Heller. A fan of Heller's book, Dench "was thrilled to be asked to ... play that woman, to try to find a humanity in that dreadful person". The specialty film opened to generally positive reviews and commercial success, grossing US$50 million worldwide, exceeding its £15 million budget. In his review for "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert declared the main actresses "perhaps the most impressive acting duo in any film of 2006. Dench and Blanchett are magnificent." The following year, Dench earned her sixth Academy nomination and went on to win a BIFA Award and an Evening Standard Award. Dench, as Miss Matty Jenkyns, co-starred with Eileen Atkins, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton, and Francesca Annis in the BBC One five-part series "Cranford". The first season of the series began transmission in November 2007.


title: Judi Dench

text: That same year, Dench narrated "Go Inside to Greet the Light," a film about the spiritual experience of Quaker meetings for worship in James Turrell's Deershelter Skyspace.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench became the voice for the narration for the updated Walt Disney World Epcot attraction Spaceship Earth in February 2008. The same month, she was named as the first official patron of the York Youth Mysteries 2008, a project to allow young people to explore the York Mystery Plays through dance, film-making and circus. Her only film of 2008 was Marc Forster's "Quantum of Solace", the twenty-second Eon-produced James Bond film, in which she reprised her role as M along with Daniel Craig. A direct sequel to the 2006 film "Casino Royale", Forster felt Dench was underused in the previous films, and wanted to make her part bigger, having her interact with Bond more. The project received mixed reviews from critics, who mainly felt that "Quantum of Solace" was not as impressive as the predecessor "Casino Royale", but became another hit for the franchise with a worldwide gross of US$591 million. For her performance, Dench was nominated for a Saturn Award the following year.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench returned to the West End in mid-2009, playing Madame de Montreuil in Yukio Mishima's play "Madame de Sade", directed by Michael Grandage as part of the Donmar season at Wyndham's Theatre. The same year, she appeared in Sally Potter's experimental film "Rage", a project that featured 14 actors playing fictional figures in and around the fashion world, giving monologues before a plain backdrop. Attracted to the fact that it was unlike anything she had done before, Dench welcomed the opportunity to work with Potter. "I like to do something that's not expected, or predictable. I had to learn to smoke a joint, and I set my trousers alight", she said about filming. Her next film was Rob Marshall's musical film "Nine", based on Arthur Kopit's book for the 1982 musical of the same name, itself suggested by Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical film "8½". Also starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, and Sophia Loren, she played Lilli La Fleur, an eccentric but motherly French costume designer, who performs the song "Folies Bergères" in the film. "Nine" was nominated for four Academy Awards, and awarded both the Satellite Award for Best Film and Best Cast. Also in 2009, Dench reprised the role of Matilda Jenkyns in "Return to Cranford", the two-part second season of a Simon Curtis television series. Critically acclaimed, Dench was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Satellite Award.


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2010, Dench renewed her collaboration with Peter Hall at the Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which opened in February 2010; she played Titania as Queen Elizabeth I in her later years – almost 50 years after she first played the role for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In July 2010, Dench performed "Send in the Clowns" at a special celebratory promenade concert from the Royal Albert Hall as part of the proms season, in honour of composer Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday. In 2011, Dench starred in "Jane Eyre", "My Week with Marilyn" and "J. Edgar". In Cary Joji Fukunaga's period drama "Jane Eyre", based on the 1847 novel of the same name by Charlotte Brontë, she played the role of Alice Fairfax, housekeeper to Rochester, the aloof and brooding master of Thornfield Hall, where main character Jane, played by Mia Wasikowska, gets employed as a governess. Dench reportedly signed to the project after she had received a humorous personal note from Fukunaga, in which he "promised her that she'd be the sexiest woman on set if she did the film". Acclaimed among critics, it was a mediocre arthouse success at the box office, grossing US$30.5 million worldwide. In Simon Curtis' "My Week with Marilyn", which depicts the making of the 1957 film "The Prince and the Showgirl" starring Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, Dench played actress Sybil Thorndike. The film garnered largely positive reviews, and earned Dench a Best Actress in a Supporting Role nomination at the 65th BAFTA Awards.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench's last film of 2011 was Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar", a biographical drama film about the career of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, from the Palmer Raids onwards, including an examination of his private life as a closeted homosexual. Hand-picked by Eastwood to play Anna Marie Hoover, Hoover's mother, Dench initially thought a friend was setting her up upon receiving Eastwood's phone call request. "I didn't take it seriously to start with. And then I realised it was really him and that was a tricky conversation", she stated. Released to mixed reception, both with critics and commercially, the film went on to gross US$79 million worldwide. The same year, Dench reunited with Rob Marshall and Johnny Depp for a cameo appearance in "", playing a noblewoman who is robbed by Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Depp. She made a second cameo that year in Ray Cooney's "Run for Your Wife".


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2011, Dench reunited with director John Madden on the set of the comedy drama "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" (2012), starring an ensemble cast also consisting of Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, and Penelope Wilton, as a group of British pensioners moving to a retirement hotel in India, run by the young and eager Sonny (Dev Patel). Released to positive reviews by critics, who declared the film a "sweet story about the senior set featuring a top-notch cast of veteran actors", it became a surprise box-office hit following its international release, eventually grossing $US134 million worldwide, mostly from its domestic run. "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" was ranked among the highest-grossing specialty releases of the year, and Dench, whom Peter Travers from "Rolling Stone" called "resilient marvel", garnered a Best Actress nod at both the British Independent Film Awards and Golden Globe Awards.


title: Judi Dench

text: Also in 2012, "Friend Request Pending", an indie short film which Dench had filmed in 2011, received a wide release as part of the feature films "Stars in Shorts" and "The Joy of Six". In the 12-minute comedy, directed by "My Week with Marilyn" assistant director Chris Foggin on a budget of just £5,000, she portrays a pensioner grappling with a crush on her church choirmaster and the art of cyber-flirting via social networking. Dench made her seventh and final appearance as M in the 23rd James Bond film, "Skyfall" (2012), directed by Sam Mendes. In the film, Bond investigates an attack on MI6; it transpires that it is part of an attack on M by former MI6 operative Raoul Silva (played by Javier Bardem) to humiliate, discredit and kill M as revenge against her for betraying him. Dench's position as M was subsequently filled by Ralph Fiennes' character. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, "Skyfall" was positively received by critics and at the box office, grossing over $1 billion worldwide, and became the highest-grossing film of all time in the UK and the highest-grossing film in the James Bond series. Critics called Dench's Saturn Awards-nominated performance "compellingly luminous".


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2013, Dench starred as the title character in the Stephen Frears-directed film "Philomena", which was inspired by true events of a woman looking for the son which the Catholic Church took from her a half-century before. The film was screened in the main competition section at the 70th Venice International Film Festival, where it was very favorably received by critics. On Dench's performance, "Time Magazine" commented that "this is Dench's triumph. At 78, she has a golden career behind her, often as queens and other frosty matriarchs. So the warmth under pressure she radiates here is nearly a surprise [...] Dench gives a performance of grace, nuance, and cinematic heroism." She was subsequently nominated for many major acting awards, including a seventh Oscar nomination.


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2015, Dench appeared opposite Dustin Hoffman in Dearbhla Walsh's small screen adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel "Esio Trot" (1990), in which a retired bachelor falls in love with his widowed neighbour, played by Dench, who keeps a tortoise as a companion after the death of her husband, First broadcast on BBC One on New Year's Day 2015, it became one of the most-watched programmes of the week, and earned Dench her first Best Actress nomination at the 2016 International Emmy Awards. On her performance, "Telegraph"s Michael Hogan commented: "We've grown accustomed to seeing Dench in forbidding roles, but here, she recalled her footloose, flirtatious side, displayed in sitcoms as "A Fine Romance" and "As Time Goes By". The Dame was sparkly and downright ravishing."


title: Judi Dench

text: As with most of the original cast, Dench reprised the role of Evelyn in John Madden's "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" (2015), the sequel to the 2011 sleeper hit. The comedy drama was released to lukewarm reviews from critics, who found it "as original as its title – but with a cast this talented and effortlessly charming, that hardly matters". From April to May 2015, Dench played a mother, with her real-life daughter Finty Williams playing her character's daughter, in "The Vote" at the Donmar Warehouse. The final performance was broadcast live on More4 at 8:25 pm; the time when the events in the play take place. The appearance marked her first performance at the theatre since 1976. On 20 September 2015, she was the guest on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs" for the third time, in which she revealed that her first acting performance was as a snail. She reprised her role as M in the 2015 James Bond film "Spectre", in the form of a recording that was delivered to Bond.


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2016, Dench made Olivier Award history when she won Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her rôle as Paulina in "The Winter's Tale", breaking her own record with her eighth win as a performer. Next, she co-starred as Cecily Neville, Duchess of York to Benedict Cumberbatch's Richard III in the second series of the BBC Two historical series "The Hollow Crown". The same year, she was cast alongside Eva Green and Asa Butterfield in Tim Burton's dark fantasy film "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children". Dench played Miss Esmeralda Avocet, a headmistress who can manipulate time and can transform into a bird. The film garnered mixed reviews from critics, who felt it was "on stronger footing as a visual experience than a narrative one". Budgeted on US$110 million, it became a commercial hit, grossing nearly US$300 million worldwide.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench's first film of 2017 was Justin Chadwick's "Tulip Fever", alongside Alicia Vikander and Christoph Waltz. Set during the period of the tulip mania, the historical drama follows a 17th-century painter in Amsterdam who falls in love with a married woman whose portrait he has been hired to paint. Filmed in 2014, the film went through several delays and earned largely negative reviews from critics, who called it a "handsomely-mounted period piece undone by uninspired dialogue and excessive plotting". Also in 2017, Dench reprised the role of Queen Victoria when she headlined Stephen Frears's "Victoria & Abdul". The biographical comedy drama depicts the real-life relationship between the monarch and her Indian Muslim servant Abdul Karim, played by opposite Ali Fazal. While the film was met with lukewarm reviews for its "imbalanced narrative", Dench earned specific praise for her performance, earning the actress her 12th Golden Globe nomination.


title: Judi Dench

text: In September 2017, the website LADBible posted a video of Dench rapping with UK Grime MC Lethal Bizzle. The collaboration came about because the slang term "dench", which is used as a compliment, features in Bizzle's lyrics and on his clothing brand Stay Dench which Dench had previously helped to promote. Dench's last film that year was Kenneth Branagh's "Murder on the Orient Express", based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie. The mystery–drama ensemble film follows world-renowned detective Hercule Poirot, who seeks to solve a murder on the famous European train in the 1930s. Dench portrayed Princess Dragomiroff opposite Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Penélope Cruz. The film has grossed $351 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the cast's performances, but criticism for not adding anything new to previous adaptations.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench was cast as the elder version of titular character Joan Elizabeth Stanley in Trevor Nunn's spy drama film "Red Joan" (2018). Based on Jennie Rooney's same-titled novel, it was inspired by the life of KGB intelligence source Melita Norwood. While the film earned generally negative reviews, Dench was applauded for her performance, with "The Daily Telegraph" agreeing that "Dench is wasted in this absurd portrayal." Her other film of 2018 was "All Is True", a fictional historical film for which she reunited with Kenneth Branagh to portray William Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway. Released to favorable reviews, critics called the film "impressively cast and beautifully filmed. "All Is True" takes an elegiac look at Shakespeare's final days." Also in 2018, Dench appeared alongside Eileen Atkins, Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith in Roger Michell's documentary film "Nothing Like a Dame" which documents conversations between the actresses, interspersed with scenes from their career on film and stage. It received rave reviews, with "The Guardian" declaring it an "outrageously funny film".


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2019, Dench presented a two-part nature documentary series for the ITV network called "Judi Dench's Wild Borneo Adventure" in which she and her partner travelled across the island, looking at its remarkable wildlife and efforts by conservationists to preserve it for future generations. In autumn 2019, she starred as Old Deuteronomy in Tom Hooper's film adaptation of "Cats" alongside Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, and James Corden. The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, who criticized the CGI effects, plot, and tone, with many calling it one of the worst films of 2019. Also, the film became a box-office bomb, having so far grossed $62 million on a budget as high as $100 million. In May 2020, Dench became the oldest person to be featured on the cover of British "Vogue".


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2020, Dench reteamed with Kenneth Branagh in his science fantasy adventure film "Artemis Fowl", based on the first novel in the same-titled series by Eoin Colfer. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, who criticised the plot, dialogue, characters, and visual effects. She also appeared as a headmistress alongside Eddie Izzard, Carla Juri, and James D'Arcy in Andy Goddard's war drama film "Six Minutes to Midnight" (2020) about a discovery at a school for the daughters of the Nazi elite that leads to a series of deadly events. The film received largely mixed reviews from critics who found it a "fascinating fact-based WWII-era story to tell," but also remarked that it "largely loses it in muddled spy shenanigans." Dench's third film in 2020 was "Blithe Spirit", a comedy film based upon the 1941 play of the same name, in which she played an talentless but eccentric medium named Madame Arcati. Directed by Edward Hall, it was released to negative reviews, with Sheila O'Malley from RogerEbert.com calling it "aggressively un-funny," though Dench was named the "only bright spot" in the film.


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2021, Dench had a brief role in Jules Williamson's comedy drama "Off the Rails", starring Kelly Preston, Jenny Seagrove, and Sally Phillips, about three friends in their 50s who embark on a European train adventure to celebrate the life of their recently deceased friend. The film earned largely negative reviews. Her other film that year was Kenneth Branagh's "Belfast", a black-and-white coming of age comedy drama that centres on a young boy's childhood amid the tumult of Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the 1960s. Released to rave reviews, the film won the People's Choice Award at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and earned Dench her eighth Academy Award nomination. In October 2021, it was announced that Dench would be joining the cast of "Allelujah", a film adaptation of Alan Bennett's play of the same name directed by Richard Eyre, which will also star Jennifer Saunders, Russell Tovey, David Bradley, and Derek Jacobi.


title: Judi Dench

text: In November 2022, the BBC aired "Louis Theroux Interviews: Dame Judi Dench" featuring Dench and documentarian Louis Theroux.


title: Judi Dench

text: In March 2013, Dench was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by "The Guardian". One of the highest-profile actresses in British popular culture, Dench appeared on Debrett's 2017 list of the most influential people in the UK.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench is a long-time resident of Outwood, Surrey. A Quaker since her school years, she said of her faith in 2013, "I think it informs everything I do. [...] I couldn't be without it." She is a long-time supporter of Liverpool-based football team Everton F.C., and has been an honorary patron of its charity branch since 2012.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench married actor Michael Williams in 1971; they remained together until his death from lung cancer in 2001. Their only child, daughter Finty Williams, was born in 1972 and became an actress. Through her daughter, Dench has a grandson who was born in 1997.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench has been in a relationship with David Mills, a conservationist, since 2010. In a 2014 interview with "The Times" magazine, she discussed how she never expected to find love again after her husband's death and said, "I wasn't even prepared to be ready for it. It was very, very gradual and grown up. It's just wonderful." The couple met when Mills invited her to open a squirrel enclosure at the wildlife centre he runs near her home in Surrey.


title: Judi Dench

text: In early 2012, Dench discussed her macular degeneration, with one eye "dry" and the other "wet", for which she has been treated with injections into the eye. She said that she needs someone to read scripts to her. She also underwent knee surgery in 2013, but recovered from the procedure well and stated that her knee was no longer an issue.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench has been an outspoken critic of prejudice in the movie industry against older actresses. She stated in 2014, "I'm tired of being told I'm too old to try something. I should be able to decide for myself if I can't do things and not have someone tell me I'll forget my lines or I'll trip and fall on the set. [...] Age is a number. It's something imposed on you. It drives me absolutely spare when people say, 'Are you going to retire? Isn't it time you put your feet up?' Or tell me [my] age."


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench has worked with the non-governmental indigenous organisation Survival International, campaigning in the defence of the San people of Botswana and the Arhuaco people of Colombia. She made a supporting video saying the San are victims of tyranny, greed, and racism. Dench is also a patron of the Karuna Trust, a charity that supports work amongst some of India's poorest and most oppressed people, mainly, though not exclusively, Dalits.


title: Judi Dench

text: On 22 July 2010, Dench was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by Nottingham Trent University. The Dr Hadwen Trust announced on 15 January 2011 that Dench had become a patron of the trust, joining, among others, Joanna Lumley and David Shepherd. On 19 March 2012, it was announced that Dench was to become honorary patron of Everton in the Community, the charity branch of Liverpool-based football team Everton, of which she is a long-time supporter.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench is an advisor to the American Shakespeare Center. She is a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. She is also a patron of Shakespeare North, a playhouse project due to be completed in 2022 in the town of Prescot near Liverpool. She is patron of East Park Riding for the Disabled, a riding school for disabled children at Newchapel, Surrey. Dench is also a vice-president of national charity Revitalise, that provides accessible holidays for those with disabilities. In 2011, along with musician Sting and billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, she publicly urged policy-makers to adopt more progressive drug policies by decriminalizing drug use.


title: Judi Dench

text: In 2014, Dench was one of 200 celebrities to sign an open letter to the people of Scotland asking them to vote to remain part of the UK in that year's referendum.


title: Judi Dench

text: In a 2022 opinion piece for "The Times" following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Dench expressed criticism of the Netflix show "The Crown" accusing it "crude sensationalism" and being "cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent," as well as having the potential to mislead non-British viewers through dramatic license. She furthermore argued the show should add a disclaimer warning to remind viewers that it is a fictional drama.


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench is the Patron and President of the alumni foundation of Drama Studio London, a Patron of the British Shakespeare Association, and a vice-president of wildlife conservation NGO Fauna and Flora International. She has participated multiple times in the Explorers against Extinction wildlife conservation fundraiser Sketch For Survival, in which celebrity artists join prominent wildlife artists in sketching wildlife as well as they can in 26 minutes, and the results are auctioned off.


title: Judi Dench

text: In a biography by John Miller it was noted that in the late 1990s Dench was the patron of over 180 charities, many of which were related either to the theatre or to medical causes, for example York Against Cancer. Dench is a patron of the Leaveners, The Archway Theatre, Horley, Surrey, and the relationship research and innovation charity OnePlusOne (formally known as OnePlusOne Marriage and Partnership Research, London.)


title: Judi Dench

text: She became president of Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London in 2006, taking over from Sir John Mills. She has been president of Questors Theatre, Ealing, since 1985, where the main auditorium is known as The Judi Dench Playhouse, being the only theatre to bear her name. She was also patron of Ovingdean Hall School, a special day and boarding school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Brighton, which closed in 2010, and Vice President of The Little Foundation. Dame Judi is also a long-standing and active Vice President of the national disabled people's charity Revitalise.


title: Judi Dench

text: Among her numerous accolades for her acting work, Dench has won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in the romantic comedy "Shakespeare in Love" (1998). She has received five Best Actress nominations, and three Best Supporting Actress nominations. She also has earned six British Academy Film Awards, four British Academy Television Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Tony Award, and seven Laurence Olivier Awards.


title: Judi Dench

text: Over her distinguished career she has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:


title: Judi Dench

text: Dench was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1970 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1988 New Year Honours. She was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2005 Birthday Honours. She has also earned a variety of Scholastic, Commonwealth, and Honorary awards titles, and degrees.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Ashkenazi Jews ( ; , ; ), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim, are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. Their traditional diaspora language is Yiddish (a West Germanic language with Jewish linguistic elements, including the Hebrew alphabet), which developed during the Middle Ages after they had moved from Germany and France into Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. For centuries, Ashkenazim in Europe used Hebrew only as a sacred language until the revival of Hebrew as a common language in 20th-century Israel.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Throughout their numerous centuries living in Europe, Ashkenazim have made many important contributions to its philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and science.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The rabbinical term "Ashkenazi" refers to diaspora Jews who established communities along the Rhine in western Germany and northern France during the Middle Ages. Upon their arrival, they adapted traditions carried over from the Holy Land, Babylonia, and the western Mediterranean to their new European environment. The Ashkenazi religious rite developed in cities such as Mainz, Worms, and Troyes. The eminent "rishon" from medieval France"," Rashi, has had a significant influence on the interpretations of Judaism by Ashkenazim.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the late Middle Ages, due to widespread persecution, the majority of the Ashkenazi population steadily shifted eastward, moving out of the Holy Roman Empire into the areas that later became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; these areas today comprise parts of present-day Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Over the course of the late-18th and 19th centuries, those Jews who remained in or returned to historical German lands generated a cultural reorientation; under the influence of the Haskalah and the struggle for emancipation as well as the intellectual and cultural ferment in urban centres, they gradually abandoned the use of Yiddish and adopted German while developing new forms of Jewish religious life and cultural identity.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: It is estimated that in the 11th century, Ashkenazim comprised 3 percent of the global Jewish population, while an estimate made in 1930 (near the population's peak) listed them as comprising 92 percent of the world's Jewish population. However, the Ashkenazi population was decimated shortly after as a result of the Holocaust that was carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II, which affected almost every Jewish European family. Immediately prior to the Holocaust, the worldwide Jewish population stood at approximately 16.7 million people. Statistical figures vary for the contemporary demography of Ashkenazi Jews, ranging from 10 million to 11.2 million. Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio D. Pergola, in a rough calculation of Sephardi Jews and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi Jews made up 65–70 percent of Jews worldwide in 2000. Other estimates place the Ashkenazim as comprising upwards of 75 percent of the global Jewish population.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews—researching both their paternal and maternal lineages as well as autosomal DNA—indicate that they are of mixed Levantine and European (mainly western European and southern European) ancestry. These studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of their European admixture, with some focusing on the extent of the European genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Middle Eastern genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi paternal lineages.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The name "Ashkenazi" derives from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz, the first son of Gomer, son of Japhet, son of Noah, and a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations (). The name of Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The Biblical "Ashkenaz" is usually derived from Assyrian "Aškūza" (cuneiform "Aškuzai/Iškuzai"), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates; the name "Aškūza" is identified with the Scythians. The intrusive "n" in the Biblical name is likely due to a scribal error confusing a "vav" with a "nun" .


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as one of three kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni and Ararat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon. In the Yoma tractate of the Babylonian Talmud the name Gomer is rendered as "Germania", which elsewhere in rabbinical literature was identified with Germanikia in northwestern Syria, but later became associated with "Germania". Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia, viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, as early as a 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the 10th-century "History of Armenia" of Yovhannes Drasxanakertc'i (1.15), Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia, as it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Crimea and areas to the east. His contemporary Saadia Gaon identified Ashkenaz with the "Saquliba" or Slavic territories, and such usage covered also the lands of tribes neighboring the Slavs, and Eastern and Central Europe. In modern times, Samuel Krauss identified the Biblical "Ashkenaz" with Khazaria.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Sometime in the Early Medieval period, the Jews of central and eastern Europe came to be called by this term. Conforming to the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was denominated "Sefarad" (Obadiah 20), France was called "Tsarefat" (1 Kings 17:9), and Bohemia was called the "Land of Canaan". By the high medieval period, Talmudic commentators like Rashi began to use "Ashkenaz/Eretz Ashkenaz" to designate Germany, earlier known as "Loter", where, especially in the Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the most important Jewish communities arose. Rashi uses "leshon Ashkenaz" (Ashkenazi language) to describe Yiddish, and Byzantium and Syrian Jewish letters referred to the Crusaders as Ashkenazim. Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France and Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany and France.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Like other Jewish ethnic groups, the Ashkenazi Jews originate from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Ashkenazi Jews share a significant amount of ancestry with other Jewish populations and derive their ancestry mostly from populations in the Middle East and Southern Europe. Other than their origins in ancient Israel, the question of how Ashkenazi Jews came to exist as a distinct community is shrouded in mystery, and has given rise to several theories.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Beginning in the fourth century BCE, Jewish colonies sprung up in southern Europe, including the Aegean Islands, Greece, and Italy. Jews left ancient Israel for a number of causes, including a number of push and pull factors. More Jews moved into these communities as a result of wars, persecution, unrest, and for opportunities in trade and commerce.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Jews migrated to southern Europe from the Middle East voluntarily for opportunities in trade and commerce. Following Alexander the Great's conquests, Jews migrated to Greek settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean, spurred on by economic opportunities. Jewish economic migration to southern Europe is also believed to have occurred during the Roman period.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In 63 BCE, the Siege of Jerusalem saw the Roman Republic conquer Judea, and thousands of Jewish prisoners of war were brought to Rome as slaves. After gaining their freedom, they settled permanently in Rome as traders. It is likely that there was an additional influx of Jewish slaves taken to southern Europe by Roman forces after the capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Herod the Great with assistance from Roman forces in 37 BCE. It is known that Jewish war captives were sold into slavery after the suppression of a minor Jewish revolt in 53 BCE, and some were probably taken to southern Europe.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Regarding Jewish settlements founded in southern Europe during the Roman era, E. Mary Smallwood wrote that "no date or origin can be assigned to the numerous settlements eventually known in the west, and some may have been founded as a result of the dispersal of Palestinian Jews after the revolts of AD 66–70 and 132–135, but it is reasonable to conjecture that many, such as the settlement in Puteoli attested in 4 BC, went back to the late republic or early empire and originated in voluntary emigration and the lure of trade and commerce."


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The first and second centuries CE saw a series of unsuccessful large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome. The Roman suppression of these revolts led to wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and enslavement. The First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Two generations later, the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE) erupted. Judea's countryside was devastated, and many were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony under the name of Aelia Capitolina, and the province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death. Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: With their national aspirations crushed and widespread devastation in Judea, despondent Jews migrated out of Judea in the aftermath of both revolts, and many settled in southern Europe. In contrast to the earlier Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, the movement was by no means a singular, centralized event, and a Jewish diaspora had already been established before.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: During both of these rebellions, many Jews were captured and sold into slavery by the Romans. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, 97,000 Jews were sold as slaves in the aftermath of the first revolt. In one occasion, Vespasian reportedly ordered 6,000 Jewish prisoners of war from Galilee to work on the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece. Jewish slaves and their children eventually gained their freedom and joined local free Jewish communities.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Many Jews were denied full Roman citizenship until Emperor Caracalla granted all free peoples this privilege in 212 CE. Jews were required to pay a poll tax until the reign of Emperor Julian in 363 CE. In the late Roman Empire, Jews were free to form networks of cultural and religious ties and enter into various local occupations. But, after Christianity became the official religion of Rome and Constantinople in 380 CE, Jews were increasingly marginalized.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The Synagogue in the Agora of Athens is dated to the period between 267 and 396 CE. The Stobi Synagogue in Macedonia was built on the ruins of a more ancient synagogue in the 4th century, while later in the 5th century, the synagogue was transformed into a Christian basilica. Hellenistic Judaism thrived in Antioch and Alexandria, and many of these Greek-speaking Jews would convert to Christianity.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Sporadic epigraphic evidence in gravesite excavations, particularly in Brigetio (Szőny), Aquincum (Óbuda), Intercisa (Dunaújváros), Triccinae (Sárvár), Savaria (Szombathely), Sopianae (Pécs) in Hungary, and Mursa (Osijek) in Croatia, attest to the presence of Jews after the 2nd and 3rd centuries where Roman garrisons were established. There was a sufficient number of Jews in Pannonia to form communities and build a synagogue. Jewish troops were among the Syrian soldiers transferred there, and replenished from the Middle East. After 175 CE Jews and especially Syrians came from Antioch, Tarsus, and Cappadocia. Others came from Italy and the Hellenized parts of the Roman Empire. The excavations suggest they first lived in isolated enclaves attached to Roman legion camps and intermarried with other similar oriental families within the military orders of the region.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Raphael Patai states that later Roman writers remarked that they differed little in either customs, manner of writing, or names from the people among whom they dwelt; and it was especially difficult to differentiate Jews from the Syrians. After Pannonia was ceded to the Huns in 433, the garrison populations were withdrawn to Italy, and only a few, enigmatic traces remain of a possible Jewish presence in the area some centuries later. No evidence has yet been found of a Jewish presence in antiquity in Germany beyond its Roman border, nor in Eastern Europe. In Gaul and Germany itself, with the possible exception of Trier and Cologne, the archeological evidence suggests at most a fleeting presence of very few Jews, primarily itinerant traders or artisans.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Estimating the number of Jews in antiquity is a task fraught with peril due to the nature of and lack of accurate documentation. The number of Jews in the Roman Empire for a long time was based on the accounts of Syrian Orthodox bishop Bar Hebraeus who lived between 1226 and 1286 CE, who stated by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as many as six million Jews were already living in the Roman Empire, a conclusion which has been contested as highly exaggerated. The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world. Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing. The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens and thus included non-Jews, the figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' "Chronicon". Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken. Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in Egypt. Brian McGing rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the Jewish demographic in the ancient world. Sometimes the scholars who accepted the high number of Jews in Rome had explained it by Jews having been active in proselytising. The idea of ancient Jews trying to convert Gentiles to Judaism is nowadays rejected by several scholars. The Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of the land of Israel/Judaea. They collected an annual temple tax from Jews both in and outside of Israel. The revolts in and suppression of diaspora communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete during the Kitos War of 115–117 CE had a severe impact on the Jewish diaspora.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A substantial Jewish population emerged in northern Gaul by the Middle Ages, but Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orléans. Throughout this period and into the early Middle Ages, some Jews assimilated into the dominant Greek and Latin cultures, mostly through conversion to Christianity. King Dagobert I of the Franks expelled the Jews from his Merovingian kingdom in 629. Jews in former Roman territories faced new challenges as harsher anti-Jewish Church rulings were enforced.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Charlemagne's expansion of the Frankish empire around 800, including northern Italy and Rome, brought on a brief period of stability and unity in Francia. This created opportunities for Jewish merchants to settle again north of the Alps. Charlemagne granted the Jews freedoms similar to those once enjoyed under the Roman Empire. In addition, Jews from southern Italy, fleeing religious persecution, began to move into Central Europe. Returning to Frankish lands, many Jewish merchants took up occupations in finance and commerce, including money lending, or usury. (Church legislation banned Christians from lending money in exchange for interest.) From Charlemagne's time to the present, Jewish life in northern Europe is well documented. By the 11th century, when Rashi of Troyes wrote his commentaries, Jews in what came to be known as "Ashkenaz" were known for their halakhic learning, and Talmudic studies. They were criticized by Sephardim and other Jewish scholars in Islamic lands for their lack of expertise in Jewish jurisprudence and general ignorance of Hebrew linguistics and literature. Yiddish emerged as a result of Judeo-Latin language contact with various High German vernaculars in the medieval period. It is a Germanic language written in Hebrew letters, and heavily influenced by Hebrew and Aramaic, with some elements of Romance and later Slavic languages.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 11th century, Jewish settlers moving from southern European and Middle Eastern centers (such as Babylonian Jews and Persian Jews) and Maghrebi Jewish traders from North Africa who had contacts with their Ashkenazi brethren and had visited each other from time to time in each's domain appear to have begun to settle in the north, especially along the Rhine, often in response to new economic opportunities and at the invitation of local Christian rulers. Thus Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, invited Jacob ben Yekutiel and his fellow Jews to settle in his lands; and soon after the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror likewise extended a welcome to continental Jews to take up residence there. Bishop Rüdiger Huzmann called on the Jews of Mainz to relocate to Speyer. In all of these decisions, the idea that Jews had the know-how and capacity to jump-start the economy, improve revenues, and enlarge trade seems to have played a prominent role. Typically, Jews relocated close to the markets and churches in town centres, where, though they came under the authority of both royal and ecclesiastical powers, they were accorded administrative autonomy.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the 11th century, both Rabbinic Judaism and the culture of the Babylonian Talmud that underlies it became established in southern Italy and then spread north to Ashkenaz.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Numerous massacres of Jews occurred throughout Europe during the Christian Crusades. Inspired by the preaching of a First Crusade, crusader mobs in France and Germany perpetrated the Rhineland massacres of 1096, devastating Jewish communities along the Rhine River, including the SHuM cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. The cluster of cities contain the earliest Jewish settlements north of the Alps, and played a major role in the formation of Ashkenazi Jewish religious tradition, along with Troyes and Sens in France. Nonetheless, Jewish life in Germany persisted, while some Ashkenazi Jews joined Sephardic Jewry in Spain. Expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (15th century), gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jewry eastward, to Poland (10th century), Lithuania (10th century), and Russia (12th century). Over this period of several hundred years, some have suggested, Jewish economic activity was focused on trade, business management, and financial services, due to several presumed factors: Christian European prohibitions restricting certain activities by Jews, preventing certain financial activities (such as "usurious" loans) between Christians, high rates of literacy, near-universal male education, and ability of merchants to rely upon and trust family members living in different regions and countries.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: By the 15th century, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This area, which eventually fell under the domination of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (Germany), would remain the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The answer to why there was so little assimilation of Jews in central and eastern Europe for so long would seem to lie in part in the probability that the alien surroundings in central and eastern Europe were not conducive, though there was some assimilation. Furthermore, Jews lived almost exclusively in shtetls, maintained a strong system of education for males, heeded rabbinic leadership, and had a very different lifestyle to that of their neighbours; all of these tendencies increased with every outbreak of antisemitism.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In parts of Eastern Europe, before the arrival of the Ashkenazi Jews from Central Europe, some non-Ashkenazi Jews were present who spoke Leshon Knaan and held various other Non-Ashkenazi traditions and customs. In 1966, the historian Cecil Roth questioned the inclusion of all Yiddish speaking Jews as Ashkenazim in descent, suggesting that upon the arrival of Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe to Eastern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the 16th century, there were a substantial number of non-Ashkenazim Jews already there who later abandoned their original Eastern European Jewish culture in favor of the Ashkenazi one. However, according to more recent research, mass migrations of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews occurred to Eastern Europe, from Central Europe in the west, who due to high birth rates absorbed and largely replaced the preceding non-Ashkenazi Jewish groups of Eastern Europe (whose numbers the demographer Sergio Della Pergola considers to have been small). Genetic evidence also indicates that Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews largely descend from Ashkenazi Jews who migrated from central to eastern Europe and subsequently experienced high birthrates and genetic isolation.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Some Jewish immigration from southern Europe to Eastern Europe continued into the early modern period. During the 16th century, as conditions for Italian Jews worsened, many Jews from Venice and the surrounding area migrated to Poland and Lithuania. During the 16th and 17th centuries, some Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire migrated to Eastern Europe, as did Arabic-speaking Mizrahi Jews and Persian Jews.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the first half of the 11th century, Hai Gaon refers to questions that had been addressed to him from Ashkenaz, by which he undoubtedly means Germany. "Rashi" in the latter half of the 11th century refers to both the language of Ashkenaz and the country of Ashkenaz. During the 12th century, the word appears quite frequently. In the "Mahzor Vitry", the kingdom of Ashkenaz is referred to chiefly in regard to the ritual of the synagogue there, but occasionally also with regard to certain other observances.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the literature of the 13th century, references to the land and the language of Ashkenaz often occur. Examples include Solomon ben Aderet's Responsa (vol. i., No. 395); the Responsa of Asher ben Jehiel (pp. 4, 6); his "Halakot" (Berakot i. 12, ed. Wilna, p. 10); the work of his son Jacob ben Asher, "Tur Orach Chayim" (chapter 59); the Responsa of Isaac ben Sheshet (numbers 193, 268, 270).


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the "Midrash" compilation, "Genesis Rabbah", Rabbi Berechiah mentions Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah as German tribes or as German lands. It may correspond to a Greek word that may have existed in the Greek dialect of the Jews in Syria Palaestina, or the text is corrupted from "Germanica". This view of Berechiah is based on the Talmud (Yoma 10a; Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 71b), where Gomer, the father of Ashkenaz, is translated by "Germamia", which evidently stands for Germany, and which was suggested by the similarity of the sound.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern and western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany and Poland. Thus the prayer-book of Isaiah Horowitz, and many others, give the piyyutim according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz and Poland.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: According to 16th-century mystic Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, Ashkenazi Jews lived in Jerusalem during the 11th century. The story is told that a German-speaking Jew saved the life of a young German man surnamed Dolberger. So when the knights of the First Crusade came to siege Jerusalem, one of Dolberger's family members who was among them rescued Jews in Palestine and carried them back to Worms to repay the favor. Further evidence of German communities in the holy city comes in the form of halakhic questions sent from Germany to Jerusalem during the second half of the 11th century.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Material relating to the history of German Jews has been preserved in the communal accounts of certain communities on the Rhine, a "Memorbuch", and a "Liebesbrief", documents that are now part of the Sassoon Collection. Heinrich Graetz also added to the history of German Jewry in modern times in the abstract of his seminal work, "History of the Jews", which he entitled "Volksthümliche Geschichte der Juden."


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In an essay on Sephardi Jewry, Daniel Elazar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs summarized the demographic history of Ashkenazi Jews in the last thousand years. He noted that at the end of the 11th century, 97% of world Jewry was Sephardic and 3% Ashkenazi; in the mid-17th century, "Sephardim still outnumbered Ashkenazim three to two"; by the end of the 18th century, "Ashkenazim outnumbered Sephardim three to two, the result of improved living conditions in Christian Europe versus the Ottoman Muslim world." By 1930, Arthur Ruppin estimated that Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry. These factors are sheer demography showing the migration patterns of Jews from Southern and Western Europe to Central and Eastern Europe.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In 1740, a family from Lithuania became the first Ashkenazi Jews to settle in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the generations after emigration from the west, Jewish communities in places like Poland, Russia, and Belarus enjoyed a comparatively stable socio-political environment. A thriving publishing industry and the printing of hundreds of biblical commentaries precipitated the development of the Hasidic movement as well as major Jewish academic centers. After two centuries of comparative tolerance in the new nations, massive westward emigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries in response to pogroms in the east and the economic opportunities offered in other parts of the world. Ashkenazi Jews have made up the majority of the American Jewish community since 1750.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the context of the European Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation began in 18th century France and spread throughout Western and Central Europe. Disabilities that had limited the rights of Jews since the Middle Ages were abolished, including the requirements to wear distinctive clothing, pay special taxes, and live in ghettos isolated from non-Jewish communities and the prohibitions on certain professions. Laws were passed to integrate Jews into their host countries, forcing Ashkenazi Jews to adopt family names (they had formerly used patronymics). Newfound inclusion into public life led to cultural growth in the "Haskalah", or Jewish Enlightenment, with its goal of integrating modern European values into Jewish life. As a reaction to increasing antisemitism and assimilation following the emancipation, Zionism developed in central Europe. Other Jews, particularly those in the Pale of Settlement, turned to socialism. These tendencies would be united in Labor Zionism, the founding ideology of the State of Israel.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Of the estimated 8.8 million Jews living in Europe at the beginning of World War II, the majority of whom were Ashkenazi, about 6 million – more than two-thirds – were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. These included 3 million of 3.3 million Polish Jews (91%); 900,000 of 1.5 million in Ukraine (60%); and 50–90% of the Jews of other Slavic nations, Germany, Hungary, and the Baltic states, and over 25% of the Jews in France. Sephardi communities suffered similar devastation in a few countries, including Greece, the Netherlands and the former Yugoslavia. As the large majority of the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, their percentage dropped from an estimate of 92% of world Jewry in 1930 to nearly 80% of world Jewry today. The Holocaust also effectively put an end to the dynamic development of the Yiddish language in the previous decades, as the vast majority of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, around 5 million, were Yiddish speakers. Many of the surviving Ashkenazi Jews emigrated to countries such as Israel, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and the United States after the war.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Following the Holocaust, some sources place Ashkenazim today as making up approximately 83–85 percent of Jews worldwide, while Sergio DellaPergola in a rough calculation of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, implies that Ashkenazi make up a notably lower figure, less than 74%. Other estimates place Ashkenazi Jews as making up about 75% of Jews worldwide.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In Israel, the term "Ashkenazi" is now used in a manner unrelated to its original meaning, often applied to all Jews who settled in Europe and sometimes including those whose ethnic background is actually Sephardic. Jews of any non-Ashkenazi background, including Mizrahi, Yemenite, Kurdish and others who have no connection with the Iberian Peninsula, have similarly come to be lumped together as Sephardic. Jews of mixed background are increasingly common, partly because of intermarriage between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi, and partly because many do not see such historic markers as relevant to their life experiences as Jews.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Religious Ashkenazi Jews living in Israel are obliged to follow the authority of the chief Ashkenazi rabbi in halakhic matters. In this respect, a religiously Ashkenazi Jew is an Israeli who is more likely to support certain religious interests in Israel, including certain political parties. These political parties result from the fact that a portion of the Israeli electorate votes for Jewish religious parties; although the electoral map changes from one election to another, there are generally several small parties associated with the interests of religious Ashkenazi Jews. The role of religious parties, including small religious parties that play important roles as coalition members, results in turn from Israel's composition as a complex society in which competing social, economic, and religious interests stand for election to the Knesset, a unicameral legislature with 120 seats.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Ashkenazi Jews have played a prominent role in the economy, media, and politics of Israel since its founding. During the first decades of Israel as a state, strong cultural conflict occurred between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews (mainly east European Ashkenazim). The roots of this conflict, which still exists to a much smaller extent in present-day Israeli society, are chiefly attributed to the concept of the "melting pot". That is to say, all Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were strongly encouraged to "meltdown" their own particular exilic identities within the general social "pot" in order to become Israeli.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Religious Jews have minhagim, customs, in addition to halakha, or religious law, and different interpretations of the law. Different groups of religious Jews in different geographic areas historically adopted different customs and interpretations. On certain issues, Orthodox Jews are required to follow the customs of their ancestors and do not believe they have the option of picking and choosing. For this reason, observant Jews at times find it important for religious reasons to ascertain who their household's religious ancestors are in order to know what customs their household should follow. These times include, for example, when two Jews of different ethnic background marry, when a non-Jew converts to Judaism and determines what customs to follow for the first time, or when a lapsed or less observant Jew returns to traditional Judaism and must determine what was done in his or her family's past. In this sense, "Ashkenazic" refers both to a family ancestry and to a body of customs binding on Jews of that ancestry. Reform Judaism, which does not necessarily follow those minhagim, did nonetheless originate among Ashkenazi Jews.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition and ritual follow Ashkenazi practice. Until the Ashkenazi community first began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad and in Islamic Spain. Ashkenaz (Germany) was so distant geographically that it developed a "minhag" of its own. Ashkenazi Hebrew came to be pronounced in ways distinct from other forms of Hebrew.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In this respect, the counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic, since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they are ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi woman who marries into an Orthodox or Haredi Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her children to be Ashkenazi Jews; conversely an Ashkenazi woman who marries a Sephardi or Mizrahi man is expected to take on Sephardic practice and the children inherit a Sephardic identity, though in practice many families compromise. A convert generally follows the practice of the beth din that converted him or her. With the integration of Jews from around the world in Israel, North America, and other places, the religious definition of an Ashkenazi Jew is blurring, especially outside Orthodox Judaism.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: New developments in Judaism often transcend differences in religious practice between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. In North American cities, social trends such as the chavurah movement, and the emergence of "post-denominational Judaism" often bring together younger Jews of diverse ethnic backgrounds. In recent years, there has been increased interest in "Kabbalah", which many Ashkenazi Jews study outside of the Yeshiva framework. Another trend is the new popularity of ecstatic worship in the Jewish Renewal movement and the Carlebach style minyan, both of which are nominally of Ashkenazi origin. Outside of Haredi communities, the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew has also drastically declined in favor of the Sephardi-based pronunciation of Modern Hebrew.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of "Yiddishkeit", which means "Jewishness" in the Yiddish language. "Yiddishkeit" is specifically the Jewishness of Ashkenazi Jews. Before the Haskalah and the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of Torah and Talmud for men, and a family and communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men and women. From the Rhineland to Riga to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, and spoke Yiddish in their secular lives. But with modernization, "Yiddishkeit" now encompasses not just Orthodoxy and Hasidism, but a broad range of movements, ideologies, practices, and traditions in which Ashkenazi Jews have participated and somehow retained a sense of Jewishness. Although a far smaller number of Jews still speak Yiddish, "Yiddishkeit" can be identified in manners of speech, in styles of humor, in patterns of association. Broadly speaking, a Jew is one who associates culturally with Jews, supports Jewish institutions, reads Jewish books and periodicals, attends Jewish movies and theater, travels to Israel, visits historical synagogues, and so forth. It is a definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel, or immigration to North America, and other English-speaking areas such as South Africa; and Europe (particularly France) and Latin America, the geographic isolation that gave rise to Ashkenazim have given way to mixing with other cultures, and with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales. Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews, although many Hasidic and Hareidi groups continue to use Yiddish in daily life. (There are numerous Ashkenazi Jewish anglophones and Russian-speakers as well, although English and Russian are not originally Jewish languages.)


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: France's blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that is going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were two distinct Jewish populations. One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition and concentrated in the southwest, while the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, and mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish. (The third community of Provençal Jews living in Comtat Venaissin were technically outside France, and were later absorbed into the Sephardim.) The two communities were so separate and different that the National Assembly emancipated them separately in 1790 and 1791.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: But after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian revolution, and the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, and many Jews were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years and the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, first by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, and later by Sephardi immigrants and refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Ashkenazi Jews did not record their traditions or achievements by text, instead these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe. Reasoning for this could be related to the development of a new style of Jewish arts and culture developed by the Jews of Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, which in conjunction with the decimation of European Ashkenazi Jews and their culture by the Nazi regime made it easier to assimilate to the new style of ritual rather than try to repair the older traditions. This new style of tradition was referred to as the "Mediterranean Style", and was noted for its simplicity and metaphorical rejuvenation of Jews abroad. This was intended to replace the Galut traditions, which were more sorrowful in practice.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Then, in the 1990s, yet another Ashkenazi Jewish wave began to arrive from countries of the former Soviet Union and Central Europe. The result is a pluralistic Jewish community that still has some distinct elements of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic culture. But in France, it is becoming much more difficult to sort out the two, and a distinctly French Jewishness has emerged.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews who settled in Central Europe. For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have argued that genetic variations have been identified that show high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population, be they for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) and for matrilineal markers (mitotypes). Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of region


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The "Halakhic" practices of (Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jews may differ from those of Sephardi Jews, particularly in matters of custom. Differences are noted in the "Shulkhan Arukh" itself, in the gloss of Moses Isserles. Well known differences in practice include:


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The term "Ashkenazi" also refers to the "nusach Ashkenaz" (Hebrew, "liturgical tradition", or rite) used by Ashkenazi Jews in their "Siddur" (prayer book). A "nusach" is defined by a liturgical tradition's choice of prayers, the order of prayers, the text of prayers, and melodies used in the singing of prayers. Two other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazic Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, as used by Lubavitch Hasidim.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Several famous people have Ashkenazi as a surname, such as Vladimir Ashkenazy. However, most people with this surname hail from within Sephardic communities, particularly from the Syrian Jewish community. The Sephardic carriers of the surname would have some Ashkenazi ancestors since the surname was adopted by families who were initially of Ashkenazic origins who moved to countries with Sephardi communities and joined those communities. Ashkenazi would be formally adopted as the family surname having started off as a nickname imposed by their adopted communities. Some have shortened the name to Ash.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim have at times been tense and clouded by arrogance, snobbery and claims of racial superiority with both sides claiming the inferiority of the other, based upon such features as physical traits and culture.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: North African Sephardim and Berber Jews were often looked down upon by Ashkenazim as second-class citizens during the first decade after the creation of Israel. This has led to protest movements such as the Israeli Black Panthers led by Saadia Marciano, a Moroccan Jew. Nowadays, relations are getting warmer. In some instances, Ashkenazi communities have accepted significant numbers of Sephardi newcomers, sometimes resulting in intermarriage and the possible merging between the two communities.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Ashkenazi Jews have a notable history of achievement in Western societies in the fields of natural and social sciences, mathematics, literature, finance, politics, media, and others. In those societies where they have been free to enter any profession, they have a record of high occupational achievement, entering professions and fields of commerce where higher education is required. Ashkenazi Jews have won a large number of the Nobel awards.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: According to the 2000 book "" published by Cambridge University, 21% of Ivy League students, 25% of the Turing Award winners, 23% of the wealthiest Americans, 38% of the Oscar-winning film directors, and 29% of Oslo awardees are Ashkenazi Jews.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The achievements of so many Ashkenazi Jews, have led some to the view that Ashkenazi Jews have higher than average intelligence. However many of these studies which show superior intelligence have been discredited, and other studies note that one should not "confuse racial categories with scientific ones."


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Efforts to identify the origins of Ashkenazi Jews through DNA analysis began in the 1990s. Currently, there are three types of genetic origin testing, autosomal DNA (atDNA), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA). Autosomal DNA is a mixture from an individual's entire ancestry, Y-DNA shows a male's lineage only along his strict paternal line, mtDNA shows any person's lineage only along the strict maternal line. Genome-wide association studies have also been employed to yield findings relevant to genetic origins.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Like most DNA studies of human migration patterns, the earliest studies on Ashkenazi Jews focused on the Y-DNA and mtDNA segments of the human genome. Both segments are unaffected by recombination (except for the ends of the Y chromosome – the pseudoautosomal regions known as PAR1 and PAR2), thus allowing tracing of direct maternal and paternal lineages.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: These studies revealed that Ashkenazi Jews originate from an ancient (2000–700 BCE) population of the Middle East who had spread to Europe. Ashkenazic Jews display the homogeneity of a genetic bottleneck, meaning they descend from a larger population whose numbers were greatly reduced but recovered through a few founding individuals. Although the Jewish people, in general, were present across a wide geographical area as described, genetic research done by Gil Atzmon of the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine suggests "that Ashkenazim branched off from other Jews around the time of the destruction of the First Temple, 2,500 years ago ... flourished during the Roman Empire but then went through a 'severe bottleneck' as they dispersed, reducing a population of several million to just 400 families who left Northern Italy around the year 1000 for Central and eventually Eastern Europe."


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Various studies have arrived at diverging conclusions regarding both the degree and the sources of the non-Levantine admixture in Ashkenazim, particularly with respect to the extent of the non-Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi maternal lineages, which is in contrast to the predominant Levantine genetic origin observed in Ashkenazi paternal lineages. All studies nevertheless agree that genetic overlap with the Fertile Crescent exists in both lineages, albeit at differing rates. Collectively, Ashkenazi Jews are less genetically diverse than other Jewish ethnic divisions, due to their genetic bottleneck.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The majority of genetic findings to date concerning Ashkenazi Jews conclude that the male lines were founded by ancestors from the Middle East.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A study of haplotypes of the Y-chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer "et al." found that the Y-chromosome of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews contained mutations that are also common among other Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the autochthonous European population. This suggested that the male ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews could be traced mostly to the Middle East. The proportion of male genetic admixture in Ashkenazi Jews amounts to less than 0.5% per generation over an estimated 80 generations, with "relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim," and a total admixture estimate "very similar to Motulsky's average estimate of 12.5%." This supported the finding that "Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors." "Past research found that 50–80 percent of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East," Richards said. The population has subsequently spread out.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2001 study by Nebel "et al." showed that both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish populations share the same overall paternal Near Eastern ancestries. In comparison with data available from other relevant populations in the region, Jews were found to be more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent. The authors also report on Eu 19 (R1a) chromosomes, which are very frequent in Central and Eastern Europeans (54–60%) at elevated frequency (13%) in Ashkenazi Jews. They hypothesized that the differences among Ashkenazim Jews could reflect low-level gene flow from surrounding European populations or genetic drift during isolation. A later 2005 study by Nebel "et al.", found a similar level of 11.5% of male Ashkenazim belonging to R1a1a (M17+), the dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Central and Eastern Europeans. However, a 2017 study, concentrating on the Ashkenazi Levites where the proportion reaches 50%, while signalling that there's a "rich variation of haplogroup R1a outside of Europe which is phylogenetically separate from the typically European R1a branches", precises that the particular R1a-Y2619 sub-clade testifies for a local origin, and that the "Middle Eastern origin of the Ashkenazi Levite lineage based on what was previously a relatively limited number of reported samples, can now be considered firmly validated."


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Before 2006, geneticists had largely attributed the ethnogenesis of most of the world's Jewish populations, including Ashkenazi Jews, to Israelite Jewish male migrants from the Middle East and "the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism." Thus, in 2002, in line with this model of origin, David Goldstein, now of Duke University, reported that unlike male Ashkenazi lineages, the female lineages in Ashkenazi Jewish communities "did not seem to be Middle Eastern", and that each community had its own genetic pattern and even that "in some cases the mitochondrial DNA was closely related to that of the host community." In his view, this suggested, "that Jewish men had arrived from the Middle East, taken wives from the host population and converted them to Judaism, after which there was no further intermarriage with non-Jews."


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In 2006, a study by Behar "et al.", based on what was at that time high-resolution analysis of haplogroup K (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Additionally, Behar "et al." suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from ~150 women, and that most of those were also likely of Middle Eastern origin. In reference specifically to Haplogroup K, they suggested that although it is common throughout western Eurasia, "the observed global pattern of distribution renders very unlikely the possibility that the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population".


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In 2013, a study of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA by a team led by Martin B. Richards of the University of Huddersfield in England reached different conclusions, in line with the pre-2006 origin hypothesis. Testing was performed on the full 16,600 DNA units composing mitochondrial DNA (the 2006 Behar study had only tested 1,000 units) in all their subjects, and the study found that the four main female Ashkenazi founders had descent lines that were established in Europe 10,000 to 20,000 years in the past while most of the remaining minor founders also have a deep European ancestry. The study argued that the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Near East or the Caucasus, but instead assimilated within Europe, primarily of Italian and Old French origins. The Richards study estimated that more than 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to (mainly prehistoric Western) Europe, and only 8 percent from the Near East, while the origin of the remainder is undetermined. According to the study these findings "point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities." Karl Skorecki criticized the study for perceived flaws in phylogenetic analysis. "While Costa et al have re-opened the question of the maternal origins of Ashkenazi Jewry, the phylogenetic analysis in the manuscript does not 'settle' the question."


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2014 study by Fernández et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their maternal DNA, suggesting an ancient Near Eastern matrilineal origin, similar to the results of the Behar study in 2006. Fernández noted that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the 2013 study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In genetic epidemiology, a genome-wide association study (GWA study, or GWAS) is an examination of all or most of the genes (the genome) of different individuals of a particular species to see how much the genes vary from individual to individual. These techniques were originally designed for epidemiological uses, to identify genetic associations with observable traits.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2006 study by Seldin et al. used over five thousand autosomal SNPs to demonstrate European genetic substructure. The results showed "a consistent and reproducible distinction between 'northern' and 'southern' European population groups". Most northern, central, and eastern Europeans (Finns, Swedes, English, Irish, Germans, and Ukrainians) showed >90% in the "northern" population group, while most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards) showed >85% in the "southern" group. Both Ashkenazi Jews as well as Sephardic Jews showed >85% membership in the "southern" group. Referring to the Jews clustering with southern Europeans, the authors state the results were "consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups".


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2007 study by Bauchet et al. found that Ashkenazi Jews were most closely clustered with Arabic North African populations when compared to Global population, and in the European structure analysis, they share similarities only with Greeks and Southern Italians, reflecting their east Mediterranean origins.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2010 study on Jewish ancestry by Atzmon-Ostrer et al. stated "Two major groups were identified by principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews. The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry", as both groups – the Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews – shared common ancestors in the Middle East about 2500 years ago. The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome and shows that the Jewish groups (Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi) share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships and that each of the Jewish groups in the study (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek and Ashkenazi) has its own genetic signature but is more closely related to the other Jewish groups than to their fellow non-Jewish countrymen. Atzmon's team found that the SNP markers in genetic segments of 3 million DNA letters or longer were 10 times more likely to be identical among Jews than non-Jews. Results of the analysis also tally with biblical accounts of the fate of the Jews. The study also found that with respect to non-Jewish European groups, the population most closely related to Ashkenazi Jews are modern-day Italians. The study speculated that the genetic-similarity between Ashkenazi Jews and Italians may be due to inter-marriage and conversions in the time of the Roman Empire. It was also found that any two Ashkenazi Jewish participants in the study shared about as much DNA as fourth or fifth cousins.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2010 study by Bray et al., using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis found that when assuming Druze and Palestinian Arab populations to represent the reference to world Jewry ancestor genome, between 35 and 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome can possibly be of European origin, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome" with this reference point. Assuming this reference point the linkage disequilibrium in the Ashkenazi Jewish population was interpreted as "matches signs of interbreeding or 'admixture' between Middle Eastern and European populations". On the Bray et al. tree, Ashkenazi Jews were found to be a genetically more divergent population than Russians, Orcadians, French, Basques, Sardinians, Italians and Tuscans. The study also observed that Ashkenazim are more diverse than their Middle Eastern relatives, which was counterintuitive because Ashkenazim are supposed to be a subset, not a superset, of their assumed geographical source population. Bray et al. therefore postulate that these results reflect not the population antiquity but a history of mixing between genetically distinct populations in Europe. However, it is possible that the relaxation of marriage prescription in the ancestors of Ashkenazim drove their heterozygosity up, while the maintenance of the FBD rule in native Middle Easterners has been keeping their heterozygosity values in check. Ashkenazim distinctiveness as found in the Bray et al. study, therefore, may come from their ethnic endogamy (ethnic inbreeding), which allowed them to "mine" their ancestral gene pool in the context of relative reproductive isolation from European neighbors, and not from clan endogamy (clan inbreeding). Consequently, their higher diversity compared to Middle Easterners stems from the latter's marriage practices, not necessarily from the former's admixture with Europeans.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The genome-wide genetic study carried out in 2010 by Behar et al. examined the genetic relationships among all major Jewish groups, including Ashkenazim, as well as the genetic relationship between these Jewish groups and non-Jewish ethnic populations. The study found that contemporary Jews (excluding Indian and Ethiopian Jews) have a close genetic relationship with people from the Levant. The authors explained that "the most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant".


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A study by Behar et al. (2013) found evidence in Ashkenazim of mixed European and Levantine origins. The authors found the greatest affinity and shared ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews to be firstly with other Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa, and secondly with both southern Europeans (such as Italians) and modern Levantines (such as the Druze, Cypriots, Lebanese and Samaritans). In addition to finding no affinity in Ashkenazim with northern Caucasus populations, the authors found no more affinity in Ashkenazi Jews to modern south Caucasus and eastern Anatolian populations (such as Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, and Turks) than found in non-Ashkenazi Jews or non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and Lebanese).


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2017 autosomal study by Xue, Shai Carmi et al. found an admixture of Middle-Eastern and European ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews: with the European component comprising ≈50%-70% (estimated at "possibly 60%") and largely being of a Southern European source with a minority being Eastern European, and the remainder (estimated at possibly ≈40%) being Middle Eastern ancestry showing the strongest affinity to Levantine populations such as the Druze and Lebanese.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2018 study, referencing the popular theory of Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) origins in "an initial settlement in Western Europe (Northern France and Germany), followed by migration to Poland and an expansion there and in the rest of Eastern Europe", tested "whether Ashkenazi Jews with recent origins in Eastern Europe are genetically distinct from Western European Ashkenazi". The study concluded that "Western AJ consist of two slightly distinct groups: one that descends from a subset of the original founders [who remained in Western Europe], and another that migrated there back from Eastern Europe, possibly after absorbing a limited degree of gene flow".


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: In the late 19th century, it was proposed that the core of today's Ashkenazi Jewry are genetically descended from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora who had migrated westward from modern Russia and Ukraine into modern France and Germany (as opposed to the currently held theory that Jews migrated from France and Germany into Eastern Europe). The hypothesis is not corroborated by historical sources, and is unsubstantiated by genetics, but it is still occasionally supported by scholars who have had some success in keeping the theory in the academic consciousness.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The theory has sometimes been used by Jewish authors such as Arthur Koestler as part of an argument against traditional forms of antisemitism (for example the claim that "the Jews killed Christ"), just as similar arguments have been advanced on behalf of the Crimean Karaites. Today, however, the theory is more often associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: A 2013 trans-genome study carried out by 30 geneticists, from 13 universities and academies, from nine countries, assembling the largest data set available to date, for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins found no evidence of Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews. The authors concluded:


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The authors found no affinity in Ashkenazim with north Caucasus populations, as well as no greater affinity in Ashkenazim to south Caucasus or Anatolian populations than that found in non-Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jewish Middle Easterners (such as the Kurds, Iranians, Druze and Lebanese). The greatest affinity and shared ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews were found to be (after those with other Jewish groups from southern Europe, Syria, and North Africa) with both southern Europeans and Levantines such as Druze, Cypriot, Lebanese and Samaritan groups.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: There are many references to Ashkenazi Jews in the literature of medical and population genetics. Indeed, much awareness of "Ashkenazi Jews" as an ethnic group or category stems from the large number of genetic studies of disease, including many that are well reported in the media, that have been conducted among Jews. Jewish populations have been studied more thoroughly than most other human populations, for a variety of reasons:


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: The result is a form of ascertainment bias. This has sometimes created an impression that Jews are more susceptible to genetic disease than other populations. Healthcare professionals are often taught to consider those of Ashkenazi descent to be at increased risk for colon cancer. People of Ashkenazi descent are at much higher risk of being a carrier for Tay-Sachs disease, which is fatal in its homozygous form.


title: Ashkenazi Jews

text: Genetic counseling and genetic testing are often undertaken by couples where both partners are of Ashkenazi ancestry. Some organizations, most notably Dor Yeshorim, organize screening programs to prevent homozygosity for the genes that cause related diseases.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: Shameless is an American comedy drama television series developed by John Wells that aired on Showtime from January 9, 2011, to April 11, 2021. It is an adaptation of Paul Abbott's British series of the same name and features an ensemble cast led by William H. Macy and Emmy Rossum. The show is set on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: With the premiere of the ninth season on September 9, 2018, "Shameless" became the longest-running original scripted series in Showtime's history. In January 2019, the series was renewed for a tenth season, which premiered on November 10, 2019. In January 2020, the series was renewed for its eleventh and final season, which was scheduled to premiere in mid-2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it instead premiered on December 6, 2020. On December 14, 2020, Showtime announced that they were airing a clip show series during Season 11, "Shameless: Hall of Shame," containing new scenes juxtaposed with clips from the show to summarize the characters' journeys during the prior 10 seasons.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: The series depicts the poor, dysfunctional family of Frank Gallagher, a neglectful single father of six: Fiona, Phillip, Ian, Debbie, Carl, and Liam. He spends his days drunk, high, or in search of misadventures, while his children learn to take care of themselves. The show's producers sought to distinguish this production from previous American working-class shows by highlighting how Frank's alcoholism and drug addiction affect his family.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: "Shameless" was adapted from a long-running, award-winning British television comedy drama of the same name. HBO began developing an American version of "Shameless" after striking a deal with John Wells in January 2010. By April 2010, development had moved to Showtime. John Wells Productions taped a pilot episode for the cable network in December 2010. The show's creator Paul Abbott said, "It's not "My Name Is Earl" or "Roseanne." It's got a much graver level of poverty attached to it. It's not blue collar, it's no collar." Showrunner John Wells fought efforts to place the show in the South or in a trailer park. "We have a comedic tradition of making fun of the people in those worlds," he said. "The reality is that these people aren't 'the other'—they're people who live four blocks down from you and two blocks over."


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: William H. Macy stars in the lead role as Frank Gallagher, joined by Emmy Rossum as Fiona and Justin Chatwin as Steve, former co-stars from "Dragonball Evolution". Paul Abbott, whose semi-autobiographical telescript was the basis for the UK pilot, is credited as an executive producer on the U.S. version.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: The Sheila Jackson character (a romantic interest for Frank), was first portrayed by Allison Janney in a pilot; however, in late August 2010, the role was recast and Joan Cusack ended up playing Sheila for the aired episodes. Production began in mid-September.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: A preview of the pilot aired on December 12, 2010, after the Season 5 finale of "Dexter". The first season officially began airing on Showtime on Sunday, January 9, 2011.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: Most episodes begin with one of the main characters breaking the fourth wall to berate the viewer about missing previous episodes. Then the show cuts to a recap montage of plot points relevant to the current episode, followed by the opening title sequence.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: The series is mostly filmed at a Los Angeles studio, with some scenes filmed in Chicago. Initial shooting of the second season began on July 5, 2011 and premiered January 8, 2012. The series was renewed for a third season on February 1, 2012, and initial shooting began June 27, 2012. The third season premiered on January 13, 2013, and two weeks later on January 29, "Shameless" was renewed for a fourth season. It premiered January 12, 2014. On February 18, 2014, the series was renewed for a fifth season. Production on the first episode of the fifth season began on July 3, 2014 with the first episode table read, with initial shooting for the season beginning on July 8, 2014. The series was renewed for a sixth season on January 12, 2015. "Shameless" was renewed for a 12-episode seventh season on January 12, 2016. Season 7 premiered on October 2, 2016.


title: Shameless (American TV series)

text: In December 2016 it was reported that Emmy Rossum, after multiple seasons of being paid significantly less than her co-star William H. Macy, requested that she be paid equally and compensated in future seasons to make up for the previous salary discrepancies. The equal pay negotiations, which were vocally supported by her co-star Macy, briefly delayed work on an eighth season of the series while she and Warner Bros. Television negotiated. The dispute came to an end on December 14, when Rossum confirmed through Twitter that she would continue to work on the series, with production of an eighth season to begin in May 2017. On December 19, 2016, Showtime officially announced that "Shameless" had been renewed for an eighth season. Just days after the eighth season premiere, it was announced that the show had been renewed for a ninth, which would bring the show past the 100-episode mark.