Very well done genetic understanding of Ashkenazi jews. We had our genetics done by 23 and me, which came out 98% ashkenazi Jew with the rest either north african or italian/southern europe so we fit!
But I have another question- how long does indigeneity last? you see if the palestinian claim to indigeneity is never ending say 2000 years from now they can claim indigenous status and create a state of Palestine, why is it that Jews cannot do the same thing especially since archaeological evidence shows there were past jewish nations in that area? The reality is, that the antiisrael, Judenhass, Palestine cult, needs to try to eradicate the connection of the ashkenazi Jew or all Jews to the Land of Israel in any way they can. Or to try to subsume the history of the jews for the palestinian arabs, its why UNRWA schools even teach that there was never nations of israel, Judea or the holy temples. it's the only way they can keep their narrative about the palestinian arabs alive. Otherwise they are seen as the true hypocrites that they are
This nonsense only persists because the West is ruled by Luciferians who need to destroy Israel for their own ends.
The very best evidence against the Fakestinian Narrative is the Koran,which near the beginning,in Sura 5,states clearly,explicitly and unequivocally that Israel belongs to the Jews ,because God gave it to them.
They all know they are lying and have no heritage in Israel.
There are no innocent Fakestinian People,they are all hostile invaders and there is no valid reason to treat them as anything else.
Some Palestinians certainly have some original Canaanite/Levantine genes, but they also have so much genetic input from Arabs from the Arabian peninsula and from people converted to Islam from other areas who moved to the area of Israel in all the centuries of Islamic rule/conquest of Israel.
Yes,but they were not land owners in Israel,and sharecropping for foreign "owners",in the absence of Jews gives them zero claim to any part of Israel,and so does their religion.
Total resident Arab land ownership was 3 percent at the time of the "Nakba",and almost certainly that tiny percentage took up Israel's offer of citizenship,rather than join in the Hope of driving Jews into the sea and stealing the land.
Also,there is precious little modern genetic connection between Fakestinian People and Jews.
The shared genetics often spoken of are from millennia ago,very little from recent centuries and ancient genetics have only very generalized effects on a population.
For example though descendant from William the Conqueror,Charles ,III is considered too distant,too many matrilineal lines for there to be anything beyond a remote chance he might carry any of William's genes.
Non Geneticist people call it a " Diluted" inheritance reflecting it's insignificance.
This is a brilliant essay, a mine of information and just what I needed so thank you🙏🏻.. I am not religious in the slightest but since Oct 7 have become pretty obsessed with Jews, judaism and Israel on the whole and I find it fascinating. I am learning a lot from various authors on this platform and I can’t thank you all enough. Happy new year to you all 🎉😊🇮🇱🇮🇱🎗️
A handy rebuttal to have in hand when the haters refer to German and Polish surnames as "proof" of a European origin: All those names prove is that the holder's ancestors were living in those parts of Europe 200-250 years ago when Jews were required by law to adopt local surnames, nothing else.
The antisemites simply go nuts when they find out that Israeli Jews often Hebraicized their last names. That drives them crazy like they found out some dirty little secret.
I am going to read this important piece several more times! I wish I could understand the charts. I am very interested in this information, and realize what a big job this was. Thank you! I am 100% Ashkenazi, as far as I know. A question:
Many (many!) years ago, a Christian recruiter on a college campus (I had no interest, but as I recall she was pleasant) expressed surprise that Jews have blue eyes (mine are blue-ish, as was my mother and one brother. My father's were a light hazel.)! I was astonished that SHE was astonished! Also - so many Jews have really curly hair (I do - but both my brothers don't; my father had very curly hair, and my mother's was straight.) Plus, of the three siblings, the first boy was dark haired and tanned easily; the second boy was very blonde with fair skin that would burn to a crisp in the summer; and I had hair that could look red in the sunlight, but I'd always thought of as dishwater blonde. These three stark differences between the siblings always gave me questions as to what are the distinct variations in appearance of Ashkenazi Jews? And is there a predominant type?.
Anyway - I'm delighted to learn I am, in fact, Middle Eastern, by way of the Pale of Settlement!
My non Genetic response has always been that it takes a very special sort of brain dead to expect 12 sons and two grandsons out of five mothers,two of them foreign servants,two of Jacob's ethnicity,and an Egyptian Princess to produce a homogeneous posterity.
Excellent article. I wonder what would happen if Palestinians were to do an ancestry test. I wish much of the world would spit in the tube. I’ll bet they would be surprised at the percentage of “Ashkenazi Jewish” in their DNA.
If you call Palestinians those who came to the British Mandate during the British rule, then they have Arab roots, but they are settlers, and much later than the Ashkenazi Jews, who already in the mid-19th century not only lived in Eretz Israel, but also built the economy and cities.
If you consider Palestinians all those who lived in Palestine before 1948, then they will not only be Arabs and Jews, but also Druze, Samaritans, Kurds, Circassians and other ethnic groups.
You will hardly find any Arabs who conquered this territory in the 7th century. They disappeared for many reasons, and as far as I know, no more than three families can claim this. There are also many "Arabs" of Turkish origin, who came after the Ayyubid conquest, and the 18th and 19th century settlers from Egypt who migrated as the arable lands were depleted. They were also temporary settlers, refugees from tyranny and persecution, tribes who did not get the best lands in their countries (they did not find them in Palestine either). These were the people who are now defined as "migrants, settlers, colonists", but for some reason these definitions are applied only to the Jews, who always considered this land their home.
So if you check the ethnicity of the Arab population now, it may surprise many, because many ethnic groups were mixed and assimilated by the Arabs, if only because all Muslims and Arabic speakers came to be considered Arabs. I would not be surprised if the majority of those called Palestinians had Turkic, Kurdish, Semitic and Levantine roots.
I think it’s important to note that after the Roman-era expulsion, some Jews did remain in the land that is now Israel. Jews were a majority in some areas, for the next 2,000 years.
Meanwhile, Diaspora Jews all over the world never stopped praying to return to the Land of Israel. The Zionist movement answered those prayers. Ottoman-era landowners willingly sold unproductive swamps and arid hills to the Rothschilds, Montefiores, and other philanthropists.
As the Jews reclaimed the land and invested their labor and capital, Arabs began moving there from Syria and Egypt in large numbers, in search of opportunity. By 1948, abundant new immigrants included Arabs from across the Middle East, as well as the remnants of Ashkenazi Jewry who had survived the Holocaust. They were soon joined by hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from every country in the Middle East and North Africa.
As a result, many — possibly most — of the self-defined Palestinian Arabs are no more indigenous to the Land of Israel than are the Ashkenazi Jews.
Thanks for the ammo.I have very low stress levels. My secret is that I take out my frustrations on Jew Haters,they are so uniformly stupid I can't resist mocking and abusing them on their own sites,and when I attack them on other sites,I get lots of up voted because I am good at it.
Welcome aboard.I will keep your post current and hit you back after New Years with my next target This will be the author of the New Year's most idiotic and repugnant screed.
The likeliest contenders are Ron Unz Helens Glass and Celia Farber.Glass is on WordPress and both the looniest and by far the dumbest.Tge other two infest Substack.
I also regularly send hate mail to Lew Rockwell directly,but I don't know how to let you in on those.
There is one,and it's quite recent.i don't recall the title but just search a relevant phrase,it's very well written and researched and offered percentages.
Mizrahi were the most "pure",,but only a trace over 1 percent separated Ashkenaz from Sephardi.
It’s not altogether accurate to state that Jews never sought to convert others. There was a brief time under the Hasmoneans when they forced the conversion of tribes they had subdued. Perhaps the most famous descendant of such a forced conversion was King Herod. Sine then, the rabbis became involved and conversion to Judaism became the more drawn out process described in the article.
None of this is to say that people living in Antiquity were not drawn to Judaism. Such a group existed but did not, in modern parlance, go all the way. They were referred to as God-fearers, and I always wondered whether this group found Paul’s version of the Jewish cult of the Nazarene attractive once circumcision and kosher laws were dispensed with.
On a final (and not particularly serious) note, the article points the way to a solution of the Palestinian problem: they exercise their “right of return” to their religious roots and, after due study and reflection, convert en masse back to Judaism.
There was a chart going around (I believe made by Razib Khan) showing that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are more closely related to Southern Italians than they are to each other. This was used by some people (not Razib) to argue that Jews are descended from Italians and not the Middle East.
This article notes that there were many Roman converts to Judaism, but it went the other way too -- the rise of Christianity is an obvious example, and then there was another significant influx of Jews into Italy (in particular Southern Italy) during the Inquisition, who then converted or pretended to convert to Christianity. I've seen estimates that around 15-25% of Southern Italians have Sephardic Jewish ancestry from the Inquisition.
This is also true. I have two branches of Southern Italian family -- one adoptive and one biological -- and when one of my adoptive cousins got his DNA tested, it said he had a bunch of Lebanese ancestry. Not uncommon. And I had a very small amount of Jewish DNA show up from my Calabrian grandfather.
This nonsense arose from a myth that appeared when DNA testing was banned as proof of Jewishness (I still don't have the time or desire to verify how true this is). Of course, this immediately gave rise to the myth that tests are banned altogether. Welcome to the world of educated conspiracy theorists.
Although most non-Jews do not believe in G-d (except a number of Christians who have read & believe the Torah and New Testament) the answer is simple: G-d gave the Jews the land of Israel in perpetuity.
This helps explain why my father and sister, who both have blue eyes, showed Italian as well as some East African DNA in their 23-and-me tests (I haven’t taken it). I had been wondering where that DNA came from and thought it might have had something to do with Jewish people moving through Italy during the Inquisition. Very interesting research!
Fun factoid: I am nearly 100 percent Ashkenazi. Heritage from Russia and Germany. However, there was long a rumor in the family that there was an Asian ancestor way way way back and that is why many of my cousins on my father's side (mostly the older ones of my grandparents' and parents' generation) have very distinctive looks that suggest they are part-Asian. I finally took a DNA test several years ago and lo and behold--I'm, like, 97 percent "Ashkenazi Jewish" and the rest "Asian." Hmmm. Was Genghis Khan my mystery ancestor?
Very well done genetic understanding of Ashkenazi jews. We had our genetics done by 23 and me, which came out 98% ashkenazi Jew with the rest either north african or italian/southern europe so we fit!
But I have another question- how long does indigeneity last? you see if the palestinian claim to indigeneity is never ending say 2000 years from now they can claim indigenous status and create a state of Palestine, why is it that Jews cannot do the same thing especially since archaeological evidence shows there were past jewish nations in that area? The reality is, that the antiisrael, Judenhass, Palestine cult, needs to try to eradicate the connection of the ashkenazi Jew or all Jews to the Land of Israel in any way they can. Or to try to subsume the history of the jews for the palestinian arabs, its why UNRWA schools even teach that there was never nations of israel, Judea or the holy temples. it's the only way they can keep their narrative about the palestinian arabs alive. Otherwise they are seen as the true hypocrites that they are
This nonsense only persists because the West is ruled by Luciferians who need to destroy Israel for their own ends.
The very best evidence against the Fakestinian Narrative is the Koran,which near the beginning,in Sura 5,states clearly,explicitly and unequivocally that Israel belongs to the Jews ,because God gave it to them.
They all know they are lying and have no heritage in Israel.
There are no innocent Fakestinian People,they are all hostile invaders and there is no valid reason to treat them as anything else.
Some Palestinians certainly have some original Canaanite/Levantine genes, but they also have so much genetic input from Arabs from the Arabian peninsula and from people converted to Islam from other areas who moved to the area of Israel in all the centuries of Islamic rule/conquest of Israel.
Given the Pals' propensity to marry their first cousins, for generations, I'm not sure how much variety is in their DNA.
Yes,but they were not land owners in Israel,and sharecropping for foreign "owners",in the absence of Jews gives them zero claim to any part of Israel,and so does their religion.
Total resident Arab land ownership was 3 percent at the time of the "Nakba",and almost certainly that tiny percentage took up Israel's offer of citizenship,rather than join in the Hope of driving Jews into the sea and stealing the land.
Also,there is precious little modern genetic connection between Fakestinian People and Jews.
The shared genetics often spoken of are from millennia ago,very little from recent centuries and ancient genetics have only very generalized effects on a population.
For example though descendant from William the Conqueror,Charles ,III is considered too distant,too many matrilineal lines for there to be anything beyond a remote chance he might carry any of William's genes.
Non Geneticist people call it a " Diluted" inheritance reflecting it's insignificance.
It’s complete erasure of a Jewish past which only shows what complete liars they are
This is a brilliant essay, a mine of information and just what I needed so thank you🙏🏻.. I am not religious in the slightest but since Oct 7 have become pretty obsessed with Jews, judaism and Israel on the whole and I find it fascinating. I am learning a lot from various authors on this platform and I can’t thank you all enough. Happy new year to you all 🎉😊🇮🇱🇮🇱🎗️
A handy rebuttal to have in hand when the haters refer to German and Polish surnames as "proof" of a European origin: All those names prove is that the holder's ancestors were living in those parts of Europe 200-250 years ago when Jews were required by law to adopt local surnames, nothing else.
The antisemites simply go nuts when they find out that Israeli Jews often Hebraicized their last names. That drives them crazy like they found out some dirty little secret.
I am going to read this important piece several more times! I wish I could understand the charts. I am very interested in this information, and realize what a big job this was. Thank you! I am 100% Ashkenazi, as far as I know. A question:
Many (many!) years ago, a Christian recruiter on a college campus (I had no interest, but as I recall she was pleasant) expressed surprise that Jews have blue eyes (mine are blue-ish, as was my mother and one brother. My father's were a light hazel.)! I was astonished that SHE was astonished! Also - so many Jews have really curly hair (I do - but both my brothers don't; my father had very curly hair, and my mother's was straight.) Plus, of the three siblings, the first boy was dark haired and tanned easily; the second boy was very blonde with fair skin that would burn to a crisp in the summer; and I had hair that could look red in the sunlight, but I'd always thought of as dishwater blonde. These three stark differences between the siblings always gave me questions as to what are the distinct variations in appearance of Ashkenazi Jews? And is there a predominant type?.
Anyway - I'm delighted to learn I am, in fact, Middle Eastern, by way of the Pale of Settlement!
My non Genetic response has always been that it takes a very special sort of brain dead to expect 12 sons and two grandsons out of five mothers,two of them foreign servants,two of Jacob's ethnicity,and an Egyptian Princess to produce a homogeneous posterity.
Even some Middle Eastern non-Jews have blue eyes: Bashar Assad for example.
We are indigenous to that land
Excellent article. I wonder what would happen if Palestinians were to do an ancestry test. I wish much of the world would spit in the tube. I’ll bet they would be surprised at the percentage of “Ashkenazi Jewish” in their DNA.
Depends on who you call "Palestinians".
If you call Palestinians those who came to the British Mandate during the British rule, then they have Arab roots, but they are settlers, and much later than the Ashkenazi Jews, who already in the mid-19th century not only lived in Eretz Israel, but also built the economy and cities.
If you consider Palestinians all those who lived in Palestine before 1948, then they will not only be Arabs and Jews, but also Druze, Samaritans, Kurds, Circassians and other ethnic groups.
You will hardly find any Arabs who conquered this territory in the 7th century. They disappeared for many reasons, and as far as I know, no more than three families can claim this. There are also many "Arabs" of Turkish origin, who came after the Ayyubid conquest, and the 18th and 19th century settlers from Egypt who migrated as the arable lands were depleted. They were also temporary settlers, refugees from tyranny and persecution, tribes who did not get the best lands in their countries (they did not find them in Palestine either). These were the people who are now defined as "migrants, settlers, colonists", but for some reason these definitions are applied only to the Jews, who always considered this land their home.
So if you check the ethnicity of the Arab population now, it may surprise many, because many ethnic groups were mixed and assimilated by the Arabs, if only because all Muslims and Arabic speakers came to be considered Arabs. I would not be surprised if the majority of those called Palestinians had Turkic, Kurdish, Semitic and Levantine roots.
Thank you.
I didn't know this and am glad to have learned it!
Excellent. I would like to hear about studies that compare Mizrahim to Ashkenazi in their genetic makeup.
We are very close to one another. An Iraqi Jew will cluster more closely to an Ashkenazi Jew from Poland than he would to an Iraqi Arab.
I think it’s important to note that after the Roman-era expulsion, some Jews did remain in the land that is now Israel. Jews were a majority in some areas, for the next 2,000 years.
Meanwhile, Diaspora Jews all over the world never stopped praying to return to the Land of Israel. The Zionist movement answered those prayers. Ottoman-era landowners willingly sold unproductive swamps and arid hills to the Rothschilds, Montefiores, and other philanthropists.
As the Jews reclaimed the land and invested their labor and capital, Arabs began moving there from Syria and Egypt in large numbers, in search of opportunity. By 1948, abundant new immigrants included Arabs from across the Middle East, as well as the remnants of Ashkenazi Jewry who had survived the Holocaust. They were soon joined by hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from every country in the Middle East and North Africa.
As a result, many — possibly most — of the self-defined Palestinian Arabs are no more indigenous to the Land of Israel than are the Ashkenazi Jews.
Especially after the Jews got malaria under control.
Thanks for the ammo.I have very low stress levels. My secret is that I take out my frustrations on Jew Haters,they are so uniformly stupid I can't resist mocking and abusing them on their own sites,and when I attack them on other sites,I get lots of up voted because I am good at it.
Now I want to follow you and make some popcorn.
Welcome aboard.I will keep your post current and hit you back after New Years with my next target This will be the author of the New Year's most idiotic and repugnant screed.
The likeliest contenders are Ron Unz Helens Glass and Celia Farber.Glass is on WordPress and both the looniest and by far the dumbest.Tge other two infest Substack.
I also regularly send hate mail to Lew Rockwell directly,but I don't know how to let you in on those.
Unz attracts absolutely awful Jew-haters. I’m done with them.
There is one,and it's quite recent.i don't recall the title but just search a relevant phrase,it's very well written and researched and offered percentages.
Mizrahi were the most "pure",,but only a trace over 1 percent separated Ashkenaz from Sephardi.
It’s not altogether accurate to state that Jews never sought to convert others. There was a brief time under the Hasmoneans when they forced the conversion of tribes they had subdued. Perhaps the most famous descendant of such a forced conversion was King Herod. Sine then, the rabbis became involved and conversion to Judaism became the more drawn out process described in the article.
None of this is to say that people living in Antiquity were not drawn to Judaism. Such a group existed but did not, in modern parlance, go all the way. They were referred to as God-fearers, and I always wondered whether this group found Paul’s version of the Jewish cult of the Nazarene attractive once circumcision and kosher laws were dispensed with.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-fearer
On a final (and not particularly serious) note, the article points the way to a solution of the Palestinian problem: they exercise their “right of return” to their religious roots and, after due study and reflection, convert en masse back to Judaism.
There was a chart going around (I believe made by Razib Khan) showing that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are more closely related to Southern Italians than they are to each other. This was used by some people (not Razib) to argue that Jews are descended from Italians and not the Middle East.
This article notes that there were many Roman converts to Judaism, but it went the other way too -- the rise of Christianity is an obvious example, and then there was another significant influx of Jews into Italy (in particular Southern Italy) during the Inquisition, who then converted or pretended to convert to Christianity. I've seen estimates that around 15-25% of Southern Italians have Sephardic Jewish ancestry from the Inquisition.
If I recall correctly southern Italians have a lot of middle eastern ancestry.
This is also true. I have two branches of Southern Italian family -- one adoptive and one biological -- and when one of my adoptive cousins got his DNA tested, it said he had a bunch of Lebanese ancestry. Not uncommon. And I had a very small amount of Jewish DNA show up from my Calabrian grandfather.
Interesting!
Question. Why do the antisemites on line say that DNA testing like 23 and me is not allowed in Israel? What’s that crap all about?
This nonsense arose from a myth that appeared when DNA testing was banned as proof of Jewishness (I still don't have the time or desire to verify how true this is). Of course, this immediately gave rise to the myth that tests are banned altogether. Welcome to the world of educated conspiracy theorists.
Thx. I knew that everything emanating from them is a lie or distortion. Every single thing. This was helpful.
Although most non-Jews do not believe in G-d (except a number of Christians who have read & believe the Torah and New Testament) the answer is simple: G-d gave the Jews the land of Israel in perpetuity.
This helps explain why my father and sister, who both have blue eyes, showed Italian as well as some East African DNA in their 23-and-me tests (I haven’t taken it). I had been wondering where that DNA came from and thought it might have had something to do with Jewish people moving through Italy during the Inquisition. Very interesting research!
Fun factoid: I am nearly 100 percent Ashkenazi. Heritage from Russia and Germany. However, there was long a rumor in the family that there was an Asian ancestor way way way back and that is why many of my cousins on my father's side (mostly the older ones of my grandparents' and parents' generation) have very distinctive looks that suggest they are part-Asian. I finally took a DNA test several years ago and lo and behold--I'm, like, 97 percent "Ashkenazi Jewish" and the rest "Asian." Hmmm. Was Genghis Khan my mystery ancestor?
My family feels that we had this ancestor also but didn’t have DNA testing!
Thank you—this is so good.