Yiddish was the everyday language of millions of Jews across Eastern Europe, Vilna, Warsaw, Odessa, Lemberg, Vienna, the shtetls between. Then the Holocaust murdered most of those speakers; Stalin and the Cold War silenced the rest. The 1948-1990 Soviet Aliyah brought Yiddish-Russian Jews to Israel. Knowing this geography is knowing where Israeli Ashkenazi families come from.
Cultural note, When an older Israeli says "I\'m from Tarnopol" or "from Vilna", they mean their family origin, not literally born there. The Yiddish heartland (between today\'s Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus) is where most Ashkenazim trace roots. Today places like Vilnius, Krakow, and Lviv are tourist sites for Israeli families. The Yiddish-speaking world before 1939 had ~11 million speakers; today fewer than 1 million.
Geographic Heartland
Historical Eras
Holocaust Vocabulary (Yiddish-rooted)
Yiddish Writers & Thinkers
Movements & Ideologies
A Family Tree from Vilna
A grandfather telling his grandson the family story, typical Israeli Ashkenazi narrative. Jewish Eastern Europe → Holocaust → Israel.