References: (and noting, so that if anyone should ask me - I’ll know):
Orthodox Judaism: Yeshiva: Kabbalistic studies, though increasingly popular, never became part of the formal Ashkenazi studies, as they did in Italy and in the Levant.
The Holocaust brought the yeshivot of Eastern and Central Europe to an end, but in a number of Western countries which had no yeshivot or where yeshivot had ceased to exist a number of large ones were established. From the mid-20th century the greatest number of yeshivot, and the most important of them, was centered in Israel and in the United States, but they were also found in many other Western countries (e.g., inGateshead , England). The Chabad movement was especially active in this direction, establishing yeshivot in France, Australia, and North Africa.
Germany Virtual Jewish History Tour : The most well-known example of this latter phenomena was the friendship of
Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786) and G.E. Lessing in Berlin. However, it was an atypical example, for while Mendelson remained scrupulously observant, most
maskilim did not, which seriously eroded Jewish unity in Germany.
Jews Around the Globe Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews The Jewish world is more ethnically and racially diverse than many people realize. By Rabbi Rachel M. Solomin : The Jewish ethnic identity most readily recognized by North Americans — the culture of
matzah balls, black-hatted Hasidim, and Yiddish — originated in medieval Germany. Although strictly speaking, “Ashkenazim” refers to Jews of Germany, the term has come to refer more broadly to Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Jews
first reached the interior of Europe by following trade routes along waterways during the eighth and ninth centuries.