Ashkenazi Jews Jews worldwide. 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. Religious Ashkenazi
Sephardi Hebrew the Ashkenazi pronunciation was derived from that of Palestine in Geonic times (7th-11th centuries) and that the Sephardi pronunciation was derived from that of Babylonia. The theory was supported by the fact that in some respects, Ashkenazi Hebrew resembles the western dialect of Syriac, and Sephardi Hebrew resembles the eastern dialect: Eastern Syriac "Peshitta" as against Western Syriac "Peshito". Ashkenazi Hebrew, in its written form, also resembles Palestinian Hebrew in its tendency to "malē" spellings (see Mater lectionis). Others, including Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, believed that the distinction is more ancient and represents the distinction between the Judaean and Galilean dialects