Survival of Ashkenazi Jewish People
Good or bad, Jewish people are a kind of representative group of the mankind, not because of the huge scale of their size but because of their importance in religion and culture of human beings.
Today, they have virtually their own state called Israel where about 90% of the population are descendants of a group of Jewish people called Ashkenazim who are believed to be formed in Europe. However, how Ashkenazi Jewish people were established is a kind of mystery.
A model based on the genetic sequencing of 128 Ashkenazi Jews concludes that today’s Ashkenazim descend from the fusion of European and Middle-Eastern Jews during the medieval era, between 600 to 800 years ago.It can be easily inferred that the era of the Crusades (1000s to 1400s) should have a decisive influence on the Ashkenazi Jewish people.
(https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/.premium-ashkenazim-derive-from-350-people-1.5263886)
After the two Jewish-Roman Wars about A.D. 70 and 130, the new diaspora began. Jewish people were driven out of Jerusalem and Palestine, scattering around the Mediterranean and in the Roam Empire.
In the above figure, the dark spots and areas marked black are Jewish residential areas between 100 and 300 after the Jewish-Roman Wars. It is interesting to refer to a map showing Roman arterial roads.
So, it can be thought that some Jewish people moved in the Roman Empire along Roman arterial high ways deep into the north of the Alps up to the Rheine. Probably they traveled with Roman troops, providing services to the troops or joining the troops. Or they might be treated as slaves by Roman troops. Anyway, it is likely that Jewish people crossed over the Alps, accompanying Roman troops or being forced to follow them after the Jewish-Roman Wars. But before 500, the Empire collapsed facing invasion of Germanic people, called Great Barbarian Invasion between 400 and 600.
As time went by, the Kingdom of the Franks rose to accept Christianity:
The Frankish Church grew out of the Church in Gaul in the Merovingian period, which was given a particularly Germanic development in a number of "Frankish synods" throughout the 6th and 7th centuries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francia). According, those Jewish people must be suppressed by these Church and the Vatican. They must have moved from the Rhine river region to the Germanic areas.
But, finally, a great tragedy fell on the Jewish people fleeing from Christian Franks to the east of the Rhine. The Crusade began around 1000. The main forces of the Crusade started around today's Paris and got across the Germanic areas to the east and then down to the south to Palestine or got down south to the Mediterranean and sailed to Palestine. And along both the routes, many Jewish people were killed by Crusade soldiers.
(https://sites.google.com/site/portfoliowilliamsteaching/assignments/homeworkforweekofoctober11th/mapping-the-crusades)
As the massacre of the diaspora Jewish people by the crusades was so intense and through, almost they were extinct.
The math also indicates that today’s sprawling community of Ashkenazi Jews — there are more than 10 million around the world — derived from just 350 people or so. That previously postulated population bottleneck — a drastic reduction in population size — occurred between 25 to 32 generations ago, the scientists say.(https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/.premium-ashkenazim-derive-from-350-people-1.5263886)So, surviving Jewish people spoke Yiddish in which their past movements were reflected.
Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century[4] in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a High German-based vernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic as well as from Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized version of the Hebrew alphabet.The ancestors of Ashkenazi Jewish people left Palestine after the Jewish-Roman Wars and got mingled in Roman citizens or slaved by Roman troops and moved with Roman troops to Western Europe, while those Jewish people kept Hebrew and Aramaic languages or before they completely forgot those languages; but after the fall of the Empire, they stayed there or Western Europe where Roman troops had been stationed. But afterwards, they got driven out of the Rhein region by the Frankish Churches to east Germanic region but later suffered massacre by the Crusade. But only hundreds of Jewish people who ran away into a Slavic region must have been able to survive. All these past movements are reflected in their language, Yiddish, as the above citation implies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish
So, Judaism today owed much to these hundreds Jewish people who could escape attacks from the Christian churches, the Vatican, and the Crusades between 1000 and 1500. Their sense of enthusiasm for sticking to Judaism realized further survival of Judaism.
However, it is thought that the Old Testament adopted by Christianity into the Christian holy books helped these Jewish people who were almost annihilated. Whereas those Jewish people lost almost all of their assets and traditions due to severe attacks by the crusades, Christian churches presented Jewish traditions to them through the Old Testament. Based on the Old Testament, modern Judaism must have been rebuilt, ironically, at least for Ashkenazi Jewish people.
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Mat 12:17 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,
Mat 12:18 Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.