Race, Religion or Politics?

Or all of the above?

“The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best—and therefore never scrutinize or question” - Stephen Jay Gould, 1996

It could be said that the scientists of today are the guardians of certain narratives, be they mythology or true to actual historic fact. This is no more true than in the study of race, cultural identity, and, of course, sexuality.

One of these narratives, now very much in the spotlight, has to do with the Jews, their origins, identity and influence on the global stage. A taboo topic if you stray outside certain rules, if you ask the wrong questions.

One genetic researcher who is simply presenting genetic facts, challenges some narratives about Jewish origins, or rather the genomes of those who identify as Jewish. This seems important to me because there’s a lot of rhetoric on racial grounds about the Jews, which seem to me to be more about religion and politics (mostly politics) than race. I’ve always wondered how the Jewish diaspora could possibly be genetically homogeneous after a few thousand years. Nevertheless I held the following views:

…two central Judeo-Christian narratives: the first, proposed less than two centuries ago by historian Heinrich Graetz, depicts the origin of modern-day Jews as the lineal descendants of the Biblical Judaeans. This narrative lacks historical (Sand, 2009) and linguistic (Wexler, 1993, 2011) evidence. The second, rooted in first century Christian myths that were internalized by Jewish scholars, alludes to the “Roman Exile” that followed the destruction of Herod's temple (70 A.D.) and introduced a massive Jewish population to Roman lands (Yuval, 2006). Such a population transplant, however, also lacks historical and linguistic support (Horon, 2000; Yuval, 2006; Sand, 2009; Wexler, 2016).

(Elhaik, E, 2017)

This is the work of Eran Elhaik, an associate professor of genetic studies at Lund University in Sweden. The importance of this aspect of his work (he’s researching a wide array of topics, not just human populations), I think, is disrupting a narrative based on race to back policy decisions in the Middle East. Let me quote more from his editorial…

Most of the genetic studies on Jews focused on Ashkenazic Jews (AJs). The first genetic study that challenged the Levantine¹ origin of AJs argued that such an origin has only been upheld and “replicated” due to the false dichotomy fallacy and that a Caucasus origin, never truly explored, explains the data better (Elhaik, 2013). A follow-up study (Costa et al., 2013) reported that at least 90% of Ashkenazic maternal ancestry is indigenous to Europe and likely originated through conversion of local populations with the remaining ancestries having East Asian or unidentified origins. These finding are supported by ancient DNA evidence showing 0–3% Levantine ancestry and a dominant Iranian ancestry (88%) in modern-day AJs (Das et al.). Interestingly, this evidence explains the higher estimates of Middle Eastern ancestry ranging from 27 to 65% (Figure 1) in that previous analyses either considered Iran and the Caucasus as part of the “Middle East,” thereby inflating the proportion of Middle Eastern ancestry, or compared AJs to Palestinians, themselves a population with 40% non-Levantine ancestry that increased their similarity to AJs (Das et al.). The second narrative has recently been revived due to the genetic similarity between AJs and south European populations (Xue et al., 2017). However, this similarity can be explained by the Greco-Roman origin of AJs who lived along the shores of the Black Sea in “ancient Ashkenaz” during the early centuries A.D. (Das et al., 2016), which is supported by historical (Harkavy, 1867) and linguistic evidence (Das et al., 2016). In light of these findings (Figure 1), Ostrer's proposal that land disputes in the Middle East should be decided by the proportion of Middle Eastern ancestry in one's genome (Ostrer, 2012) is regrettable and underlies the danger in developing policy based on ill-founded narratives.

(Elhaik, E, 2017)

The origins of the Ashkenazic Jews (AJs) is an interesting and controversial topic, as most would be aware. In an earlier study (the year before the quote above), Elhaik and colleagues, including the Department of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University in Israel, looked at the origins of Yiddish from a genetic/anthropology (there’s probably a name for that) perspective. This study reveals a lot about, not only the origins of Yiddish, but the make-up of the AJs. The following quote is from the discussion section of Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz

The most parsimonious explanation for our findings is that Yiddish speaking AJs have originated from Greco-Roman and mixed Irano-Turko-Slavic populations who espoused Judaism in a variety of venues throughout the first millennium A.D. in “Ashkenaz” lands centered between the Black and Caspian Seas ( figs. 4 and 5 ) ( Baron 1937 ). These pagans became Godfearers (non-Jewish supporters of Second Temple Judaism) probably around the first century A.D. after encountering Irano-Turkish Jews and have accepted the doctrine of Judaism to the extent that they created at least two translations of the Bible into Greek during the first and second centuries. They were also experienced maritime merchants who may have considered the mutual advantages in forming an alliance with the Irano-Turkish Jews.

At the height of the Khazar Empire (8th–9th centuries), Hebrew as a native language had been dead for five to six centuries. In the Empire, Slavic and Iranian had become major lingua francas ( Wexler 2010 ). At this time, Iranian Jews had brought to the Khazar Empire an Iranianized Judaism, together with the Talmud, as well as written Talmudic Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, written Hebroid, and spoken Eastern Aramaic and Iranian. The Khazars converted to Judaism to profit from the transit trade across their territories. They appear not to have participated very much as merchants abroad. The Judaization of the Khazar élite and the presence of the international Jewish merchants plying the international Silk Roads between China, the Islamic world, and Europe ( Baron 1957 ; Noonan 1999 ) prompted the Irano-Turko-Slavo Jewish merchants to create Yiddish for use in Europe, Loterā’i (a cryptic language first cited in 10th century Azerbaijan and surviving to the present day) for use in Iran, and the many variants of cryptic Hebrew and Hebroid lexicon for the use of Jewish merchants throughout Afro-Eurasia ( Wexler 2010 ). This is evident in both genetic and linguistic evidence: by the biogeographical proximity of Yiddish speakers to Iranian, Iranian Jews, and Turks ( figs. 4–6 ) and the existence of over 250 terms meaning “buying and selling” in Yiddish, most of which were Hebroidisms, Germanoidisms, and Slavisms, with only a handful of authentic German terms ( Wexler 2011a ). The existence of Jewish communities along major trade routes ( Rabinowitz 1945 ) who share religion, common Irano-Turko-Slavic culture, and history ( figs. 4 and 5 ), and a secret language ( Wexler 1993 ) created a political and spiritual unity and maintained a Jewish trading advantage. We note that while Hebrew could serve as the basis of the international cryptic trade lexicon, it could not serve as a full-fledged language since no Jew could speak the language by that time.

In the 9th century, a Persian postal official in the Baghdad Caliphate, ibn Khordādhbeh, described the Iranian Jewish traders, who by then may have already become a tribal confederation of Slavic, Iranian, and Turkic converts to Judaism, as conversant in the main components of Yiddish: Slavic, German, Iranian, Hebrew, in addition to several other languages. The total number of languages given was six, but some of his language names were most likely abbreviations of sets of languages, for example, ’andalusijja ’ probably denoted Andalusian Arabic, Berber, and various forms of Ibero-Romance.

When the Khazar Empire lost its prominence and the Jewish monopoly on the Silk Road ended (∼11th century), the relexification process was gradually abandoned ( Wexler 2002 ). At that point, Slavic Yiddish became the first and only spoken and written language of the European AJs (Iranian remained the language of the Central Asian and Iranian AJs—and both groups continued to call themselves “Ashkenazic” up to the present) and began to absorb more German influence post-relexificationally ( Wexler 2011a ). Consequently, Yiddish grammar and phonology are Slavic (with some Irano-Turkic input) and only some of the lexicon is German ( Wexler 2012 ). This process, however, was not accompanied by massive gene exchanges between Jews and non-Jews ( fig. 4 ), likely due to the severe restrictions set on mixed marriages by the Medieval Christian authorities ( Sand 2009 ). This is also consistent with the estimated dates of admixture in AJ genomes (695–1,215 A.D.) ( Moorjani et al. 2011 ). If one examines the “German” and “Hebrew” component of contemporary Yiddish, one can still see the enormity of the Germanoid and Hebroid components in comparison to genuine Germanisms and Hebraisms. To take one example, Yiddish unterkojfn ‘to bribe’ has German components (‘under’ + ‘to buy’), but the combination and meaning are impossible in all forms of German, past or present ( Wexler 1991 ).

Further evidence to the origin of AJs can be found in the many customs and their names concerning the Jewish religion, which were probably introduced by Slavic converts to Judaism. For example, the Yiddish term trejbern ‘to remove the forbidden parts of the animal to render the meat kosher’ is from Slavic, for example, Ukrainian terebyty means ‘to peel, shell; clean a field’ (the Yiddish meaning is obviously innovative). Another Ashkenazic custom of distinctly non-Jewish is the breaking of a glass at a wedding ceremony (Slavic and Iranian) ( Wexler 1993 ). A striking fact that is hardly ever appreciated is that Yiddish košer ‘kosher’ is not a Hebraism, as is widely believed (it appears centuries after the demise of colloquial Semitic Hebrew), but the source of the term is a common Iranian word meaning ‘to slaughter an animal’, for example, Ossete kušart means ‘animal slaughtered for food.’ Apparently, Yiddish speakers “Hebroidized” the Iranianism with the legitimate Biblical Hebrew kašer which meant only ‘fit, suitable’ but had no connection to food. Many of the Arabic-speaking Jews to this day do not use the Hebrew/Hebroid term at all.

Our findings illuminate the historical processes that stimulated the relexification of Yiddish, one of over two dozen other languages that went through relexification, like Esperanto (Yiddish relexified to Latinoid lexicon), some forms of contemporary Sorbian (German relexified to Sorbian lexicon) and Ukrainian and Belarusian (Russian relexified to Ukrainian and Belarusian lexicon) ( Horvath and Wexler 1997 ).

In another paper a study showed AJs exhibit a dominant Iranian (88%) and residual Levantine (3%) ancestries, as opposed to Bedouins ( 14% and , 68% respectively) and Palestinians ( 18% and , 58% respectively).

So to clarify, the above, for me, isn’t about Yiddish - I couldn’t care less about the origins of Yiddish - but it’s about the supposed genomic uniqueness of the Jews (in this case the AJs). Jewish genetics claims should be critically evaluated. Are there Jewish biomarkers that are robust (or even real) and can distinguish Jews from non-Jews²? If there isn’t, and so many claims are being made on the basis of race, then it has to be more about religion and politics³. And certainly there can be negative attitudes toward a religion or a political group, and equally, policies and direct action supporting or opposing religious or political movements. But let’s not confuse that with race⁴. I’m all for people groups to express an ethnicity, you can have a mixed genetic pool expressing a certain ethnicity⁵, and for them to present arguments and narratives based on that ethnicity. But the tenuous assumption of a pure genetic lineage of a large diaspora should not be the grounds for either attacking an entire people group nor supporting them on that basis. Now I’m not saying there aren’t Jews in Israel with a direct lineage back to ancient Israel - I’m sure there are. But religious identity and political/state identity are the more substantial things to which we can evaluate a religion or state.

Papers to consider:

Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz

Editorial: Population Genetics of Worldwide Jewish People

The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish

The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses

1. Levant describes the Middle Eastern regions roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

2. This isn’t my field but Elhaik claims there isn’t such a robust Jewish biomarker.

3. Making the term ‘antisemitic’ confusing at best. ‘Semitic’ being an old catch-all category for people of the Middle East, including Arabs. ‘Anti-Jew’ would be a less confusing term. And to clarify, in case you were wondering, I’m not anti-Jew, I’m not anti any people group!

4. As we might hear some blonde, blue eyed Jew claim he is not ‘white’ but ‘Jew’ - as if he’s genetically unique to white people (who are also supposed to be, somehow, genetically homogeneous).

5. I’d argue you can’t avoid a mixed pool.