Genetic studies indicate what Jews already knew…
…which is that Jews are more closely related to other Middle Eastern peoples than they are to the natives of the countries they encountered in their millenia of wanderings, and that they are also very closely related to each other:
The two genome surveys…refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People” that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times.
Jewish communities from Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus all have substantial genetic ancestry that traces back to the Levant; Ethiopian Jews and two Judaic communities in India are genetically much closer to their host populations…
[C]alculations show that Iraqi and Iranian Jews separated from other Jewish communities about 2,500 years ago. This genetic finding presumably reflects a historical event, the destruction of the First Temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. and the exile of many Jews there to his capital at Babylon.
The shared genetic elements suggest that members of any Jewish community are related to one another as closely as are fourth or fifth cousins in a large population, which is about 10 times higher than the relationship between two people chosen at random off the streets of New York City, Dr. Atzmon said.
Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews have roughly 30 percent European ancestry, with most of the rest from the Middle East, the two surveys find. The two communities seem very similar to each other genetically, which is unexpected because they have been separated for so long.
Fourth or fifth cousins; that seems about right.
Although there’s unquestionably been a lot of genetic mixing, these studies show how relatively stable these populations have been. However, that trend has probably changed dramatically in the last generation or so in this country, as the pace of intermarriage and assimilation has stepped up.
Which reminds me of a classic Jewish joke (when told orally, the way I first heard it, this features a Yiddish accent for the elderly woman):
A man is sitting next to an old lady on an airplane. They begin to chat, and after the preliminaries she cuts to the chase and asks him, “You Jewish?”
“No ma’am, I’m not.”
“Don’t be shy,” she said “You can tell me.”
“No, I’m just not Jewish” he responds.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of being Jewish,” she says, as she leans closer.
“I’m not,” he answers. “If I were Jewish I’d be proud. But I’m just not Jewish.”
“Maybe your mother, your father, a grandparent, somebody was Jewish?”
“No,” he said, “nobody.”
The lady gets testier and says, “You know, you’re not fooling me. I’m going to keep asking you until you come clean.”
The man decides to give in, just to shut her up. “Okay, if it makes you happy, okay, I’ll say it: yes I’m Jewish.”
“Funny, you don’t look it.”
There are geneticists who make further conclusion that even though the idea of Ashkenazim assimilated genetically with their North and Central-European host population is refuted, they can substitute it with South-Europeans (Italians, French, Greeks and Spanish) being among the ancestors of contemporary Ashkenazim as well as Sefardim. Which is naturally cheered by so called Palestinians and other Arabs, as it supports their claim that Israeli Jews have no history in the region.
See here (the post was originally named “Jewish Question”, the title remains in the URL).
See my reaction on it here.
To the topic itself: why yes, we’ve always known that (that we are distinct people with shared genetic ancestry, not a religious group formed by various ethnicities authentic to the host regions). So I don’t find anything “ironic” in it, unlike Mr. Khan when he exclaims:
“Ironically assimilated European Jews themselves internalized this sense of their racial/national distinctiveness, evident even in those with no religious aspect of Jewish identity at all such as Sigmund Freud.”
“Funny, you don’t look Jewish.”
I get that all the time.
vanderleun:
you should point out to that study and say – I’m one of those Sefardim that flew to Netherlands from Spanish inquisition in 1492!
Centuries of Easter time pogroms tend to create very tight knit communities.
For 9th grade I went to a regional high school, and made a friend- a WASP- from another town. One time our senior year he made a remark that implied that I was Jewish. I found out that since freshman year he had assumed I was Jewish. Funny, I didn’t look Jewish, as I had blue eyes and light brown-dirty blond hair. I had enough Jewish friends in the school that I thought that was funny. Like someone mistaking a Boston accent for a Southern accent. Perhaps it was my German surname that threw him off, or maybe my hanging with some Jewish kids. So even a card-carrying WASP can be mistaken for one of the Juice.
Not only that but a tribe in South Africa that claimed Jewish descent was found to have Jewish genetic markers.
Also the Jews closest genetic relatives are the Kurds.
Also repudiated is the claim the Jews are really descendants of the Khuzars.
“Centuries of Easter time pogroms tend to create very tight knit communities.”
And how many centuries will *this* blood libel endure?
Ilion,
“libel”?
Reminds me of the team of the Israeli anthropologists tramping through the deepest jungle of Africa when they come across a tribe of pygmies. The pygmies turn out to be very friendly and the anthropologists set down to work. After a few days the pygmy chief tells the Israelis that the next day is their weekly religious festival. The Israelis note in amusement that it happens to be shabbat.
And the Israelis are amazed when the religious festival turns out to be the shabbat liturgy. They are furiously taking notes when a pygmy comes out from one of the huts, dressed in a mask, bedecked with all sorts of strange ornaments, holding a rattle. The chief gestures and proudly says, “My son, the doctor.”
I love it Alex!
How about the Cherokees?
http://www.breslev.co.il/articles/society/noahide_world/cherokee_moon.aspx?id=15293&language=english
The following link provides a more direct article on whether or not the Cherokees are Jewish.
http://www.breslev.co.il/articles/society/jewish_world/the_cherokee_connection.aspx?id=9625&language=english
Neo, if you have not seen this already- I suspect you do look at Newsbusters since you have liked to them before….
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/06/13/rabbi-who-outed-helen-thomas-liberal-who-opposed-iraq-war-reevaluatin
“linked” not “liked”
Glad you liked it, Curtis. Here’s a variant:
A Jewish businessman finds himself in Shanghai on Yom Kippur and, unhappy that he cannot attend services, wanders the streets. He happens to be going down a small side street when to his amazement he seems to hear a Yom Kippur liturgy. He investigates, looks in a door to a room, and finds an entire room full of Chinese people engaged in a Yom Kippur service.
Happily he joins in and at the end of the service shakes the rabbi’s hand, expressing his joy at being able to find a service in such a place.
“You Jewish?” asks the rabbi and the businessman replies that he is. “Funny,” responds the rabbi, “you no lookee Jewish.”
Irrelevant.
Irrelevant.
And for the third time: Irrelevant.
Like I said back in the Poland thread, Jewishness is not defined by racial criteria. The biological component is important–one born of a non-Jewish woman is not a Jew–but the Jewish nation is not a racially-closed club. Though the rabbis on the conversion panels do everything they can to discourage prospective converts, in order to be absolutely sure the wish to convert comes from the motive of sincerity (meaning: the conviction that Judaism is the Truth), potentially any person from any race can become a Jew.
Though the Khazar Convert hypothesis of Askhenazi Jewry has been thoroughly debunked, it wouldn’t matter even if it were true. As Steven Plaut says, in his excellent article The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism: “If all Ashkenazi Jews were indeed converted Khazars, as the racial anti-Zionists claim, they would be no less legitimately Jews – and, as such, would have the same legitimate claims to the Jewish homeland as any other group of Jews.”
Because, contrary to what the Left, the so very devoutly anti-racist Left, says,
Jewishness is not defined by race.
Jewishness is not defined by race.
And for the third time: Jewishness is not defined by race.
Gringo: this demonstrates the truth of the saying: what do Jews look like? The answer is: they look like anybody.
(Visit Israel and you’ll see it — black Jews, Oriental Jews, redheaded Irish Jews, Iranian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Ladino-speaking South American Jews, and so on. I haven’t heard yet of a tribe of Eskimo Jews, but that’s probably just a matter of time.)
Or, in the formulation of Harry Golden: Jews are just like everyone else, only more so.
Jewishness is not defined by race.
ÐÑ…, раз, ещё раз, ещё много-много раз!
As if if you say it 500 times, it becomes true.
Daniel: I can recognize Ashkenazi Jews from Russia, Poland and Ukraine on the street. I’m sure Irish recognize their Jews and Eskimo – theirs (if they exist).
Because we are different. One people in among multitude of others.
Tatyana: perhaps what is meant is that, although in general Jews do resemble each other genetically (as the article and research finds), it is not a racially closed group. It is open to converts of any race or background. There are also subgroups (such as the Ethiopian Jews) that are genetically different from most Jews.
Neo,
yes, I know we are not closed people – in principle. That’s why I see so many young couples on Manhattan streets: he – a Jew and she – a Chinese, with a charming baby in a stroller. Although the goyim all over the world (the word Mr. Britain finds so offensive) did all they could to keep us compact – as nyomythus pointed out.
Still, as you pointed out in the post, only 30% of our genes have non-Jewish markers. And I like it this way – I don’t want my people to dissipate among nations.
Tatyana, I know repeating something doesn’t make it true. I don’t need to make my statement true–it’s true from the start. The purpose of the repetition was to surmount excessive cranial diameters.
ziontruth: it’s a Yiddisher kop !
How about the Cherokees?
So if the Cherokees might be Jewish, does that make the Trail of Tears more or less tragic to the lefti community? Just trying to keep up with current fashion.
Less. Way less. So much less that less is not the right word. What a sight that would be. But in fact, the end of all the Indians was sealed with the Cherokee tragedy, starting with Andrew Jackson’s refusal to enforce federal law and the decision of the Supreme Court. So there might already be some blindness. The singularity of the Cherokees was not unknown.
Race ? Let this term to old 19 th century european culture and stop wasting time looking for genes afer twenty century. All this genetic criteria are easily defined by ideological view. For instance latest genetical researcher in Italy pretend to show that italian genetic has no changed over twenty century as well and I hope that basing on this someone on the right of this country would not claim that Italians are still the Romans. Race is maybe a correct term for animals not forhuman beings defined by their culture. Remember A Einstein – asked about his race was he answered “human “.