Comments on: Chosen genes of the Chosen People

By: onur

onur — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:15:17 +0000

There are three genetic bodies among Caucasoid Jews (today all Jews except Sub-Saharan and South Asian Jews), each of which is genetically separated from each other: There is an uninterrupted genetic continuity between Ashkenazi, Sephardic (note that Greek, Turkish, Moroccan and Syrian Jewish communities are composed of more Sephardic immigrants than the native Jews of those countries) and Italian Jews, so they form one genetic body. The native Jews of the Middle East except Yemen, of the Caucasus and of Central Asia also have an uninterrupted genetic continuity and they form another genetic body. Yemenite Jews form yet another genetic body.

Here is a PCA plot showing all the three genetic bodies of Caucasoid Jews in a West Eurasian context:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ish7688voT0/TBDgV2r3hxI/AAAAAAAACck/sYi1shNB8bc/s1600/westeurasianpca.jpg

And here is a PCA plot showing all the three genetic bodies of Caucasoid Jews except the Yemenite one (note that the populations designated with three capital letters are all Jewish populations) again in a West Eurasian context:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ish7688voT0/TAimWIpgDAI/AAAAAAAACao/0uuOXPXvqcQ/s1600/pc-jews.jpg

Which of the three Caucasoid Jewish genetic bodies is the genetically closest to the original Jews of the Iron Age is at least for now an open-ended question, but clearly each of the three genetic bodies shows some genetic closeness to some of its respective gentile (non-Jewish) host populations.

By: Y ddraig werdd

Y ddraig werdd — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:44:42 +0000

I don’t thing they are a race either and the German banker didn’t say anything like that. He just said that they have distinctive genes in common, just as the Basques. This is all that he said about this. The rest of the interview was about Turkish immigration. My problem was that the reactions (especially in the US, see Huffington Post for example) was along the lines of Jew have genes in common => Jews are a race => Nazi. I mean the state of Israel does exactly what Stephan Kramer of the Central Council of Jews in Germany condemns as racist. I was thinking that with the popularity of sites like 23andme and the like, the fact that ancestry can be, in most cases, pinpointed using genes was finally accepted. But it appears that you don’t even have to say something still controversial and tabu like genetic differences in intelligence and still you can be attacked as racist.
Regarding the adoptions and the conversions I think this is a very recent and limited phenomenon to have a big effect. Do you really think that a Jewish couple could adopt a non-Jewish child anywhere in the world until 50-60 years ago? What do you think would have been the reactions of locals?
My opinion is that starting from about 500-600 AD due to political / religious reasons there wasn’t any big gene flow from gentiles to Jews. (the reverse was definitely true, a lot of Jews being converted by force or converted themselves).Because of this Jews are a very big extend family and a Ashkenazi Jew f has more genes in common with Sephardi Jew then each of them has with the neighboring populations. (not sure about the Yemeni Jews) Evidence for this can be found on the many posts on this blog about Jewish genetics.
I also think is dangerous for Jews themselves to insist on the converting, adoption thing because this is basically what a lot of anti-Semites and Palestinians say. ( the whole theory of “If they are just a bunch of converted Khazars and whatnot then what are they doing in Israel?”)

By: nebbish

nebbish — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:17:55 +0000

Y ddraig werdd,

I don’t disagree with your point that there is a genetic component to Jewishness, but it’s a bit of a stretch to consider the Jews a race in the sense of the continental scale macro-races like Caucasoids, Mongoloids, etc. Almost all self-labeled Jewish populations are clearly Caucasoid. Ashkenazim appear to be for the most part a mixture of Middle Eastern Caucasoids and South European Caucasoids, and this places them not particularly far from other European Caucasoids in a global genetic context. If you would describe the English, Russians, Chinese, etc. as races, then I suppose using the term to describe Jews would not be inconsistent.

By: Leah

Leah — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:12:56 +0000

Thanks for a fascinating series on this topic.

I think the racial issue is complex, because while Jews may have been a race at some point, after two thousands years of scattering across the world, there have been (and continue to be) many converts, as well as coerced mixing, and more recently, a huge jump in interracial (if we’re defining Jewish as a race) marriages.
The difference between this gene-pool and the Kohen haplotype is that Kohens are restricted in marriage in ways that other Jews are not. Still, if a gentile woman converted to Judaism, her daughter could potentially marry a Kohen and transmit “gentile” mitochondrial DNA to her Kohen grandkids. How would geneticists interpret this?
I think the hesitation around a racial definition has more to do with its historic abuses, and current political wars about land rights in the Middle East.

By: Y ddraig werdd

Y ddraig werdd — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:44:49 +0000

The Jewish genome is one of the most, if not the most, studied genomes. A lot of studies have even reached the mainstream press. But still we get things like the German banker (Thilo Sarrazin ) accused of racism for saying that Jews share genes. I mean “ Stephan Kramer of the Central Council of Jews in Germany told German news agency DAPD: “Whoever tries to identify Jews by their genetic makeup succumbs to racism.”” Even there one traditions state that you are Jewish if you have a Jewish mother.
Is it simply “German says Jews are a race = Nazi” or the “elite” really lives in some kind of time warp?

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:12:14 +0000

omar, no other groups in such detail. the etruscan genetics, and reich et al.’s study of indians, and the neandertal paper jump out at me.

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:23:29 +0000

yolvas

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2009/09/yes-uyghurs-are-a-new-hybrid-population/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2008/03/uyghurs-are-hybrids/

By: omar

omar — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:29:47 +0000

It seems like there are a lot of population genetics studies on Ashkenazi Jews (no surprise perhaps, since there are so many Ashkhenazi Jews doing the studying), but I just wanted to ask Razib: what other groups have been studied in this kind of detail and is there some finding that leapt out at you in those studies? I may have exposed my total ignorance here, but all I know about this field is from cursory readings of your blog and I am just trying to take a shortcut.

By: Yolvas Tiger

Yolvas Tiger — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:10:51 +0000

I am a Uyghur. I am pleasantly surprised to find out that Uyghurs are an admixture of West and East Eurasians. I was just wondering how you came to this conclusion. I would really appreciate your scientific answer. I’d love to translate that into Uyghur.

Thanks.

Yolvas

By: dan

dan — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:46:37 +0000

i maintained focus until i got to Natalie Portman….

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:34:33 +0000

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