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Abstract Among the regional subcultures of medieval Judaism, there were few, if any, that contributed less to medieval Jewish philosophy than Ashkenazic Judaism. This absence is striking in view of the crucial place of Ashkenazic Jews in medieval Jewish intellectual life, on the one hand, and in modern Jewish philosophy, on the other. There is one major exception: during the late sixteenth century, three of the most significant Jewish thinkers were Ashkenazic Jews: Moses Isserles, Judah Loewe ben Bezalel (called Maharal of Prague), and Eliezer Eilburg. If the impact of Ashkenazic Jews on medieval Jewish philosophy was in general slight, the reverse is not true. The impact of Jewish rationalism on Ashkenazic Judaism, beginning in the twelfth century and throughout the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, was far-reaching. A word about ethnic definitions: “Ashkenaz” is a Biblical place name, repurposed in the Middle Ages as the Hebrew name for “Germany.” In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the connotation of the adjective “Ashkenazi,” then expanded to include all Yiddish- or Judeo-German speaking Jews, or even descendants of Yiddish-speaking Jews, including those who lived outside of the German lands, mainly in Italy, Bohemia, and Poland. On account of their extensive social and religious ties, the Jews of medieval “Ashkenaz” are often paired with those of “Tsarfat,” which in medieval usage meant specifically “northern France.” The discussion here will encompass all the Jewish communities north of the Alps and the Loire between 1150 and 1750.