After “Who Are the Jews”, “Who Am I” (DNA wise)?

 

After “Who Are the Jews”, “Who Am I” (DNA wise)?

Rabbi Dr. Norbert Weinberg

 

Some years back, during the great “Shutdown” of COVID 19, I ran a series of discussions, with guest presenters on “Who Are the Jews” (see this link for a list of the discussions available on You Tube: http://www.rabbinorbert.com/2020/11/who-are-jews-our-video-presentations.html)

I highlighted what are typical Jewish types, such as:

 Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Persky)

Or

 Habani Jews at Seder

 

This reminds us of the scene from the Exodus, in which the British officer tells the hero, Ari Ben Canaan, "I can spot one a mile away."

Essentially, as we learned in Biology 101, the phenotype does not tell us the genotype!

 

I also made a power-point presentation on this theme, which can be found at: http://www.rabbinorbert.com/2020/11/this-is-embedded-microsoft-office.html. I included what was is generally available information on the use of genetic testing on Jews and some material on my own family roots.

 

Since then, the tools available for tracing ancient roots have become easily accessible to the lay person who cannot determine what sectors on a chromosomal chart indicate what connection to whom. I have explored my records on MyHeritage.com, Geni.com, and Gedmatch.com, with an assist from ChatGPT, to determine who am I on the world map of peoples, ancient and modern.

From my own family records, I am a typical Ashkenazic Jew, with numerous famous Rabbis in the background dating as far back as Rashi, Rabbi Nathan of Rome, and several Rabbis who came as exiles from Spain to central and Eastern Europe.

My Heritage identifies me as typical Ashkenazi, mostly Central and Eastern European progenitors, and some Western European (the common areas of the Rhineland in what is today France and Germany) ancestry as well.

So how European is that? Surely as blond-haired, blue-eyed, as Lauren Bacall. (Well, not blond, but I do have blue-green eyes.)

 

ARE WE JEWS “WHITE SETTLER COLONIALISTS” IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

That is the accusation thrown at all Jews by Palestinians and their pro-Pali acolytes.

I asked Chat GPT to create a plot graph showing the relationship between Jews and other Middle Eastern groups. [You may need to refresh your introductory geometry skills for this]. Researchers in genetics studies use a term called PCA (Principal component analysis) which shows an average genetic profile of an ethnic population and provides a number whereby ethnicities can be compared. The Y-coordinate above 0 (+) indicates a northerly Caucasus and Anatolian component ((for example, Armenian and Turkish) and below 0(-) indicates South Arabian. The X-coordinate indicates Levantine (Eastern Mediterranean) and Arabia above the 0 (+), and western Mediterranean component below the 0 (-).

Where do Ashkenazic Jews sit on this plot graph?

The 0,0 coordinates give us a starting point for different Middle Eastern ethnicities. Lebanese Christians (.05,.02), Druze (.05,0), and Samaritans (.1, -.01) sit closest on the chart to that coordinate.  Palestinians Christians (a small minority in that region), not shown on this chart, would also be around that spot. How is that?

Lebanese Christians are most probably the descendants of the ancient Phoenicians, the kissing cousins to ancient Israel/Judea/Canaanites of Biblical history. Druze, who claim Moses father-in-law, Jethro, (Shu’ayb) as their prophet, may be primarily descended from similar ancestors. Samaritans, who claim direct descent from the Israelites of the northern kingdom, also share the same “Kohen” DNA with their historic “Kohen” brothers among the Jews.   Christians from Palestine and Jordan sit closer, as it is probable that they are descended from the early Jews who started Christianity in the first place and also those Jews who caved in to Roman Byzantine coercion.

Palestinian and Jordanian (a majority Palestinian country) Muslims sit farther from the center, about (.13, -.04). Why are they farther away from the center? Directly under them at y=.08 is the Arabian peninsula.  This would indicate an admixture of the Arabian populations that came in with the Islamic conquest of the middle east together with the original population that was either Christian or Jewish at that time and caved in to Islamic coercion. The Jordanians sit below, closer to Arabian proper, as the rulers and their supporters were brought from the distant region of Mecca by the British.

 Where do Jews sit on this chart?

Sephardic (-.05, -.03) and Iraqi Jews (-.04, -.04) come the closer to the center of the graph than do the Palestinian Muslims. Indeed, Iraqi Jews may be the closest to the ancient Israelites, with the least admixture of other ethnicities. Note that Yemenite Jews sit farther down, because they had a historic admixture of south Arabian peoples (the settlement dates back long before Islam and there was even a Jewish kingdom in Yemen. The Mishna speaks of Arab Jews, for example).

What about Jews like me, Ashkenazic. We are the so-called “European invaders” that have been roundly denounced in progressive circles as “white settler colonialists”. We are at (. -07,.04) on that chart. So, there is some Anatolian/Caucasus influence (from Turkey to Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan). However, even with that, we sit closer to 0,0 than do the Palestinian Muslims, who are the vast majority of Palestinians. (If you want to do some geometry homework, you can try to find the distance from 0,0 using the coordinates, on your own). We have more Anatolia; they have more Arabia.

 (Source for those who have the patience to dig deeper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3585000/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

 

I had ChatGPT create a bar graph showing the admixtures that these different groups had. Notice that not one single group can be identified as “pure Canaanite” or “racially pure”, as some promoters of Palestinian identity claim. (Racial or ethnic purity is a relic of Nazi racial pseudo-science). We are all mixed up, as the Levant, for the area encompassing northern Egypt, Sinai, Land of Israel and Judea, Lebanon, Syria, up to Turkey, was one superhighway for thousands of years. Populations were constantly moving from Africa to Asia and Europe and back. Egypt, for example, was once under the Canaanites or their relatives, known as Hyksos, around the time of the Biblical Joseph).

 

By Southern Bedouin, the reference is to Bedouin tribes of the Negeb, Gaza, and Sinai, such as the large Terebin tribe. They are distinct from the Bedouin tribes of the Galilee region. Interestingly, while they are a historic element in the region, Ashkenazi Jews show more Levantine heritage than do the Bedouin, who show a much larger Arabian heritage.

All groups show a similar mix with a difference in the proportions: Levantine, Northern Caucasus/ Anatolia, Arabian (referencing the Arabian peninsula, not the language), European, and African. Why would Anatolian appear as an important component?

Again, populations move constantly. Eastern Anatolia and the base of the Caucasus region was the source of the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which nourished the early civilizations of the Middle East in antiquity. It was also the home of the Hittites, who formed one of the early populations of the Holy Land at the time of Joshua. (The largest chariot battle in all history took place between the Hittites and the Egyptians in Kadesh, on the border of today’s Lebanon and Syria, the frontier of ancient Egyptian-held Canaan, just about the time of the Exodus; it was fought by Ramses II, who may have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus). Later, in Greek and Roman times, there were large Jewish communities in that region. For example, the most famous Jew, after Moses and Jesus, was probably Saul of Tarsus, known by his Greek name, Paul, the father of Christianity as a separate religion!

 

. (for a deeper dive, go to” https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09103?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

 

Where do I fit, personally, based on my own family genetic history?

MyHeritage.com provides some interesting comparisons of my DNA with archaeological remains from Bronze through Iron and Roman periods.

Here are some samples:

“Starting as a small settlement in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3500 BCE), Ebla developed into a trading empire and later into an expansionist power that imposed its hegemony over much of northern and eastern Syria.”  It eventually disappeared around 1600 BCE. What makes it unusual is the claim, by the first archaeologists working at the site, that they had found the progenitors of the ancient Hebrews- with names such as Ebrium (Hebrew!). It became highly disputed, especially after the Syrian government intervened. However, Biblical names and terms from the period of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, abound in ancient Near East texts.

 

This is the genetic distance chart that MyHeritage.com created for me based on my personal DNA.

The first shows a clustering on the chart, which makes it visually easier to understand. The second one pinpoints the location of different samples, which makes it easier to plot on a graph.

 

 

Here is how Chat GPT interpreted it for me (with some abridgement):

The chart places your point at approximately (0, −0.017). The Roman Byzantine Anatolia cluster is immediately below you, making it by far the most visually proximate population cluster.

Looking at the complete chart, I would rank your visual PCA proximity roughly like this:

1. Roman Byzantine Anatolia — very close    2. Lebanese Christian / ancient Canaanite — relatively close   3. Druze/Israel — relatively close   4. Armenian / Assyrian — intermediate 5. Samaritan / Jordanian Christian / Palestinian Christian — somewhat farther. 6. Lebanese Muslim / Syrian — farther 7. Jordanian / Palestinian Muslim 8. Arabian Peninsula — considerably farther

 

 

And this is especially interesting given your 100% Ashkenazi result.

 

Your point is not sitting inside the modern Arab clusters. It is actually positioned below the entire main Middle Eastern cluster, very close to the Roman Byzantine Anatolian reference population.

What it does show quite clearly is:  Your Ashkenazi genome occupies a position in this PCA that is much closer to the ancient/Byzantine eastern Mediterranean reference than to the Arabian Peninsula and many of the modern Middle Eastern populations. And that is entirely compatible with your 100% Ashkenazi MyHeritage ethnicity result.

Knowing that MyHeritage identifies you as 100% Ashkenazi Jewish, predominantly Eastern Ashkenazi with a substantial Western Ashkenazi component, actually makes the chart more interesting and helps explain why you sit where you do.

What your position means as an Ashkenazi Jew:

Looking at your screenshot, you are not positioned among the modern Arab populations. Instead, you are pulled toward the cluster containing:

Roman/Byzantine Anatolia → Israel/Druze → Armenian → Palestinian Christian

while the more Arabian/Jordanian/Syrian/Lebanese populations are somewhat farther away.

That is quite compatible with what we know about Ashkenazi genetic history.

…

The particularly interesting part is "Roman Byzantine Anatolia."

Your "You" point is below and somewhat left of the Roman Byzantine Anatolia point, while the Druze/Israel populations are also relatively nearby. I would interpret this as:> Your Ashkenazi genome retains a substantial genetic affinity with the ancient eastern Mediterranean/Levantine genetic continuum.

And your Eastern/Western Ashkenazi distinction may be relevant. Eastern and Western Ashkenazi populations aren't genetically identical. There were population movement, founder effects, genetic drift and varying degrees of admixture with surrounding European populations. So, if your DNA has a predominantly Eastern Ashkenazi profile with significant Western Ashkenazi ancestry, your PCA position represents the combined genetic signature of those components.

Your position is relatively close to ancient eastern Mediterranean/Levantine populations, especially Roman/Byzantine Anatolia, Israel/Druze, Armenian and Palestinian Christian references.

 

Here, a picture of a typical Jew, in Syria, c 2^nd-3^rd century:

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2358076

And

 

 

 (The author’s uncle, murdered by the Nazis for the crime of being a Jew, 1944)

The same historic languages (Hebrew and Aramaic), the same original alphabet (in its Paleo and Aramaic versions), the same poetry, the same core laws, the same essential calendar (something which the so-called “indigenous” people of the land abandoned for Islam and Christianity) and now, science shows, the same ancestry, as the historic communities of the land 2000 and even 3000 or more years ago. That is who I am!

So, to all those who claim to “own” the Land of Israel/Canaan/Palestine, we belong there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                      

 

 

 

The Nakba did not start in 1948—It began in 722 BCE and continued!

 

 

The Nakba did not start in 1948—It began in 722 BCE and continued!

By Rabbi Norbert Weinberg

 

One of the accusations levelled against the legitimacy of the State of Israel is that it was founded in 1948 upon a wholesale expulsion of Arabs from lands they held since “Time Immemorial”. That disaster has been labelled as the “Nakba,” the disaster, of the Palestinians.

[Note-Let us ignore, for this discussion, that the term originally referred to the failure of the great Aab nations to withstand a handful of Jews, per the Lebanese scholar, Constantin Zureiq. It was not widely accepted in reference to the Palestinian Arabs until Arafat created the Nakba Day in 1998, well after the Oslo Accords!]

The real Nakba was not in 1948, nor in 1918 with Lord Balfour, nor in 1896 with Herzl. The Nakba occurred multiple times over the course of millennia, but it was not by the Zionists! If anything, it is the Zionists who reversed history, and undid the destruction of the Land and People, benefitting Jews, Druze, Muslim and Christian Arabs alike.

Look at the past “Disasters.”

 

Nakba 1

There was such a Nakba in 722 BCE, when the bulk of the population of the northern tribes of Israel were carried off by the Assyrians, and yet again, in 586 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and carried off much of the population. This was our first “refugee crisis”. Verdi created his moving “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” at the heart of  his opera, Nabucco, which would then become the theme of the Italian movement for liberation from Austrian dominance.  (These two Empires did short shrift, as well, with the Philistines, Edomites, and other peoples of the region.)

                                   

 

However, with the Shah Cyrus and the Persian restoration, the exiles were allowed to return and the people and land  flourished once again.

By the time of the Roman occupation, in the first century, the population of Judea and the Galilee grew to as much as two million. There was also a large population of Samaritans (the original “Good Samaritans” of Christian Scriptures) cousins to the Judeans as descendants of the northern tribes of Israel who had been spared exile.

[ Contrary to common Jewish assumptions, the core of the Samaritans were descendants of ancient Israel, and that included a considerable number of Cohens, as DNA studies show. They also preserved an ancient version of the Five Books of Moses, still written in the Hebrew script of the First Temple period. See my essay http://www.rabbinorbert.com/2021/05/the-real-good-samaritans.html ]

A base population of two million when world population was three hundred million would mean, in proportion, a population of six million by 1800 (a date I will reference again to mark a turn-around) when world population grew 3-fold to one billion.

However, it turns out that by 1800, the total population of that area, including Jews, Christians, and Muslims, was about 250,000, only a fraction of the original population.

 In fact, from the end of the Crusades, for several centuries, there were as few as 150,000 Jews, Christians and Muslims altogether.

Not for nothing did 19^th century Christian missionaries (not Zionists) called Palestine, “A land without a people, for a people without a land.”  A land that sustained barely 150 to 250,000, that once held two million, was functionally, a “land without a people.”

 

How could it be?

 

Nakba 2

 

The Roman wars against the Jews led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the year 70.  It was then that the Roman Emperor erected  the massive Arch of Titus and the coins stating “Judea Devicta”(Judea Defeated).

 This was followed by the disastrous Bar Kochba rebellion in the year 135. This war was so bitter, that the conquering general, and Emperor, Hadrian, had to leave out the mandatory declaration of victory,” I and the army are well.”  As a consequence, in revenge, Judea was erased from the maps and the term “Palestine,” from Philistia, the ancient Gaza Strip, was used, in order to wipe the memory  Judea from the annals of history.  As a consequence of both wars, a sizable portion of that population was killed or enslaved and exiled to Italy and other parts of the Empire.

 

 

Nevertheless, a significant remnant survived.

That Jewish population was able to finish the compendium of Judaic law, the Mishnah, which set the basis for Jewish practice, by around the year 200. The Jewish population was still vibrant enough to continue to build synagogues, which are even now being uncovered by archaeologists. They created the literature known as the Midrash, commentaries on the Bible, and the collected debates of the Rabbis, (known, ironically, in English as the “Palestinian” Talmud). It was this defeated population that, by the 8th or 9th century, formulated the authoritative Hebrew text of the Bible, the Masorah, upon which the English King James would rely for his authorized translation.

 The Samaritan population survived this period as well and it is surmised that it may have grown to a population of one million.

There was, as well, a small population of Jews who had chosen to follow the teachings of Jesus; these, such as the Ebionites (the Poor), and early Jewish Christians laid the foundation for the rise of Christianity as a separate religion. Out of this portion of ancient Israel there probably arose the current Christian population of the Land of Israel.

 

Nakba 3

The  Christianized Roman Empire instituted draconian laws that led to the grinding down of the Jewish majority, so that some Jews chose exile and some Jews, out of desperation, converted to Christianity. By the 600’s, the Jews had endured enough, and they joined forces with the Sassanian Persians to rebel against the Romans and restore the Temple. That rebellion was put down with drastic consequences for the Jewish population.

 

 Nakba 4

The Christian oppression of Jews was finally ended by the Muslim conquest; the conquerors, at the start, protected the Jews, until the Muslim rulers also imposed draconian laws in order to enforce the subjugation of the enemies of Islam. Some Jews broke under the pressure and converted to Islam; they would become the basis of the Muslim population which mixed with the new Arab conquerors.

In total, though, not only Jews, but Christians and Muslims suffered as well, as the Seljuk Turks fought for control of the Muslim world. In the process, the Seljuks further despoiled the Holy Land , an act that may have prompted the Christian Crusades.

As a result of wars, plagues, and earthquakes, the total population dwindled yet more, from less than a million by the time of the Muslim conquest down to only half a million.

The once numerous Samaritans were forcibly converted to Islam; these closest heirs to ancient northern Israel suffered an almost complete genocide and barely one hundred Samaritans survived by start of the 1900’s. Today, there are about nine hundred, half living in Israel proper, half still in the region of historic Samaria ( Shomron, hence Shomronim, from which we get Samaritan).

Nakba 5

The war between the Crusaders and the Muslims led to further decline, so that by the end of the Crusades, the total population was again whittled down to a quarter million.

Then, just when things could not seem worse, they worsened. The Mamluks, former slaves who had been inducted into the Muslim armies, and then became rulers, applied a scorched- earth policy to the land to prevent the Crusaders from ever returning. They burned the coastal cities, expelled Jews, and destroyed the regional economy. The Black Plague finished off the rest. For the next 2 centuries, the land lay waste and empty, with only 150,000 total population. In the Middle Ages, this truly became a “Land without a People.”

 

The Undoing of History’s Long Nakba, Disaster

A slow turnaround came about only with the Ottoman conquest of the region, and only then did the population creep up slowly, as the Ottomans improved administrative and economic conditions.

The walls around old Jerusalem are the results of Ottoman efforts under Suleiman the Magnificent, mid 1500s, who saw himself as the new King Solomon. Accordingly, he invited Jews to return to the land; Safed became a vital center for new commerce and Jewish spiritual creativity. Thanks to this latter-day Solomon/Suleiman, the Jews could once again create major works of Jewish thought, the Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac Luria, and the great unifying code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch. In the 1700s, mystics from Yemen returned to found a school of Kabbalah while Chasidim from eastern Europe returned as well.  [It is thought that the Chasidic “peyos” were borrowed then from the Yemenite Jews “simonim”, signs.]

 

Even under the Ottoman Empire, at its most powerful, the land never returned to its original potential. The Empire surged and then fell back, to become the” Sick Man of Europe.”

 

What finally made the land flourish once again?

The first modern Zionist may well have been Napoleon Bonaparte! He attacked the Ottomans from Egypt and made his way up the coast to Acre and called for a Jewish homeland during his military campaign, in 1799, long before Lord Balfour!

 The Ottomans, realizing that they were falling far behind the European powers in many ways, initiated Improvements in general health services and administration under the Tanzimat reforms, including the modern concept of equal civil rights regardless of religion.

From this period, there is a renewed interest by Europeans, both Christians and Jews,  in what they termed “The Holy Land”. These Europeans revived the long defunct term “Palestine”, for a region which had no political standing the  Ottoman Empire ( The region was divided up between the Sanjak of Jerusalem, administered directly from Istanbul, the Sanjak of Acre,itself a district of Beirut Vilayet, and the Sanjak of Nablus).  Now begins the development of hospitals, schools, urban construction, and the printing press by European Christian missionaries.

Ongoing conflicts between Egypt leaders, such as  Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim Pasha, and the Ottoman Sultans led to an influx of Egyptians, and a further influx of Algerians, Circassians, and Bosnians as conditions improved. Surnames appear, indicating land of origin:” Masri (Egypt), Shami (Syria), Halabi (Aleppo), Hourani (Southern Syria), Boshnaq (Bosnian), Sharkasi (Circassian).

Jews once again began arriving in larger numbers and built new neighborhoods outside of the old city of Jerusalem, bringing investments and development of the land. The Jewish influx grew from a trickle to a stream.

Within the course of a century, the population of Palestine more than doubled, to 600,000!

Today, after another century and a quarter, despite accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, the combined populations of modern Israel, West Bank, and Gaza, is one hundred times the population of the land at its lowest in the middle ages.

The population of the State of Israel, before the horrendous pogrom of October 7, 2023, was approximately 9 ​million, of whom 2.1 million are Israeli Arabs. The population of the West Bank was around 3.2 million and the Gaza Strip 2.1m. The combined population of Palestinian territories is thus around 5.3  million people, bringing the total population of Israel-Palestine to about 14.3 million people- that is Jews, Druze, Samaritans, Circassians, Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Bedouin and others.

As for the Nakba of 1948?

All the Arabs of British Palestine numbered 1.3 million. Today, adding Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, plus the Palestinians living in Jordan and other lands, the numbers about 15 million, a growth of over ten times since 1948. If we go back to the time of that first Zionist, Napoleon, from some 250,000 Arabs, it means a growth of forty-eight times, when world population grew only eight times!

That does not sound like a Nakba to me, but a sign of a rebirth and potential for even greater things to come when the Palestinian Arabs decide to work with, not against, their Jewish “B’nei Dodim”, cousins.

 

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Rabbi Norbert Weinberg of President of Memory in Action, a research project focusing on contemporary Jewish history, accessible at www.pastfuturememory.org. He recently published Courage of the Spirit II, The Story of the Jewish People in Europe in the Twentieth Century as Seen through the Events and Documents of Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg .

He is also Rabbi emeritus of Hollywood Temple Beth El.

If you want a deeper dive, here is a Wikipedia source on historic demographics of Palestine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_demographics_of_Palestine_(region)

Some population comparison charts from ChatGPT