Tracing the Roots of Jewishness. Who are the Jews?
For more than a century, historians and linguists have debated whether the Jewish people are a racial group, a cultural and religious entity, or something else. More recently, scientists have been weighing in on the question with genetic data. The latest such study, published today in the American Journal of Human Genetics, shows a genetic connection among all Jews, despite widespread migrations and intermarriage with non-Jews.
It also apparently refutes repeated claims that most Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Central Europeans who converted to Judaism 1000 years ago. Historians divide the world's 13 million living Jews into three groups: Middle Eastern, or Oriental, Jews; Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal; and Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. The origins of today's Jews have been less clear, especially those of the Ashkenazis, who make up 90% of American Jews and nearly 50% of Israeli Jews. Other researchers praise the work. Studies Show Jews’ Genetic Similarity. That is the conclusion of two new genetic surveys, the first to use genome-wide scanning devices to compare many Jewish communities around the world.
A major surprise from both surveys is the genetic closeness of the two Jewish communities of Europe, the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. The Ashkenazim thrived in Northern and Eastern Europe until their devastation by the regime, and now live mostly in the United States and Israel. The Sephardim were exiled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 and moved to the , North Africa and the Netherlands. The two genome surveys extend earlier studies based just on the Y chromosome, the genetic element carried by all men. They 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. Dr. What We Can Learn From the Jewish Genome. Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry.
Inventing Israel - by Evan R. Goldstein - Tablet Magazine. The key assumptions about Israel and the Jews are indelible.
Forced from Jerusalem into exile, the Jews dispersed throughout the world, always remaining attached to their ancient homeland. Psalmists wept when they remembered Zion. A people were sustained by an unflagging determination to return to their native soil. “Next year in Jerusalem!” The triumph of Zionism—the founding of Israel—is the fulfillment of that ancient vow. Jewish Peoplehood Denied, While Israel’s Foes Applaud. Opinion By Hillel Halkin Published June 24, 2009, issue of July 03, 2009.
Although there is probably no book too foolish to go un-admired by someone, there are subjects for which the market for foolishness is especially large. Www.isracampus.org.il/Extra Files/Anita Shapira - Shlomo Sand book review.pdf. An invention called 'the Jewish people' Israel Bartal’s Response to Shlomo Sands’ Invention of the Jewish People (Haaretz 7/2008) « ce399. According to Shlomo Sand, everything you ever thought you knew about the Jewish people as a nation with ethno-biological origins is false.
Israel Bartal, however, says Sand didn’t do his homework Mattai ve’ekh humtza ha’am hayehudi? (When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?) , by Shlomo Sand Resling (Hebrew), 358 pages, NIS 94. The first sentence of “When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?” This assertion, according to which an entire chapter in Jewish history was deliberately silenced for political reasons, thrust me back to my days as a ninth grader, in the late 1950s.
Sand suggests that it was “the wave of decolonization of the 1950s and 1960s [that] led the molders of Israeli collective memory to shield themselves from the shadow of the Khazar past. With considerable trepidation, I returned to my yellowing copy of volume IV of the Mikhlal Encyclopedia. When I reread the entry on the Khazars, my mind was put at rest. These claims are baseless. Descendants of pagans Prof. Shattering a 'national mythology'