| Group: | German Jews in Israel |
| Population: | 70,000 (2012) |
| Popplace: | Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Netanya, Ashdod, Beersheba and many other places |
| Rels: | Judaism |
| Langs: | Hebrew, German, Yiddish, Shassi |
A Yekke (also Jecke) is a Jew of German-speaking origin.[1]
The wave of immigration to British Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s known as the Fifth Aliyah had a large proportion of Yekkes, around 25% (55,000 immigrants). Many of them settled in the vicinity of Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv, leading to the nickname "Ben Yehuda Strasse." Their struggle to master Hebrew produced a dialect known as "Yekkish." The Ben Yehuda Strasse Dictionary: A Dictionary of Spoken Yekkish in the Land of Israel, published in 2012, documents this language.[1]
A significant community escaped Frankfurt after Kristallnacht, and relocated to the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, where they still have a synagogue, Khal Adath Jeshurun, which punctiliously adheres to the Yekkish liturgical text, rituals, and melodies.[2]