These discussions generally do not cover Knaanic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knaanic_language. Based on Old Czech, it is the first language like Yiddish or Ladino and predates all of them by like 500 years.
And they wouldn't, because the only person who suggests that Knaanic was ancestral to Yiddish, rather than having been displaced by it, is Wexler. Who is an unpleasant and academically dishonest crank, who, in addition to his discredited linguistic views, makes claims about the ethnic origins of the Ashkenazim which were always on shaky ground, and which have been conclusively disproven by modern genetic analysis. Not that this fact has motivated Wexler to retract his bullshit arguments.
I'm saying that discussions of the origins of Yiddish do not cover Knaanic because it isn't a part of the origin of Yiddish. No different from Judeo-Arabic in that sense: an interesting topic in its own right, just not relevant.
> German Jews saw Knaanic and were inspired to create their own language
This is... not how it works. I know of only one case of "inspired to create their own language" in all of history, and it's Modern Hebrew. Which is a revival, not de novo.
No, I don't. Early jewish communities in Central Europe spoke the local language, then carried this language with them as they moved into Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Over centuries it diverged from its ancestral origin, as all languages do. At no point did anyone look at another jewish language and go “oh that's interesting; let's do something like that.”
I have a hunch that Jews came from Eastern Europe (I mean Israel before that). No, I don't think they are Khazars. But Ashkenaz was in Scythia, i.e. Eastern Europe.
Their history is very well documented. The Ashkenazi came from Italy into Germany, then moved into Poland (a bit different geographically from modern day Poland) after crusader pogroms in the 11th century.
I think that's a genuine dispute, because people consciously deciding to make a new language is a relatively rare phenomenon. Most language change is informal and unplanned.