WE HEAR A GREAT MANY CLAIMS AS TO THE BEGINNINGS OF THE JEWS, who they are or are not. Yet it has been made hard to pinpoint the roots to the terms Ashkenazim and Sephardim, the two chief groups who together make up some 98% of those who call themselves, Jews. You will not get much truth from Jewish sources on this unless you know what you are looking for.
Basically they stonewall you with two bold and un-backed statements which tend to make the casual researcher say, “aha, that is what the terms mean”. Thus satisfied they look no further. The statements are made by rabbis yet Jewish historians are at last giving details which agree with facts given by European historians a long time ago
The two un-backed statements are, “Sefarad is the Hebrew word for Spain and “Ashkenazim is the Hebrew word for Germany”, now think about this, if this were to be so, then it stands to reason that all Spaniards could call themselves, the Sephardim, thus giving all Spaniards Jewish rights to Palestine, assuming Jews have rights to the land, it also means that the Germans can call themselves, the Ashkenazim and lay claim to Palestine if the Ashkenazim have any such rightful claims. Yet for some loopy reason the Jews who claim that the terms mean Spain or Germany feel the terms only befit Jews. The real reason becomes clear with a little delving, It may also reveal the true reason why the Jewish lobby in the USA is so hell-bent on smashing the Iraqi leadership of the day.
The reason why the Jews do not readily share these terms, Sephardic and Ashkenazim with the non-Jewish folks of Spain and Germany is because the terms simply do not really mean Spain and Germany at ail! The terms are uniquely fixed to the Jews because they are ethnic pointer terms.