Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Ashkenazi Jews Originated in Judah, Not Europe

Nadene Goldfoot                                                    
Judaism originated with Moses  in 1200s BCE during the Exodus.  They had already been a Monotheistic people from the teachings of their forefather, Abraham; the only ones on earth-at least not worshipping just the sun or an animal  but an unseen G-d .  All other people either had a pantheon of gods they worshipped and sacrificed to but had to have visual effects, making the Jews unique, for in their religion, they also had a moralistic expectation of their actions as well.

The period of their 3 most important kings, Saul, then David and his son Solomon, solidified their religion extensively.  David created an empire and Solomon enlarged it.  The tribe of Judah was the largest of the 12 tribes of Jacob.  They spread out onto the continent in trade, then taken onto that and to Europe by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, Babylonians in 597-586 BCE, and then the Greek and Roman conquerors.  from about 150 BCE to 135 CE.  In 70 CE their Temple, the 2nd, was utterly destroyed along with Jerusalem.   Where traders had lived in Rome, newcomers came as slaves.

Jews were barred from returning to Jerusalem  though there were Jews still living there.  From 132 to 135 Bar Kokhba, a General of Israel, had retaken Jerusalem and kept it for 3 years, then was killed in action.  The Romans had never faced such a strong rebellious army before and wee most angry, angry enough to change the name of the land to Palestine, naming it for the worst of Israel's enemies, the Philistines.

Jews were thus in Rome.  Being barred from returning home, and now they had lost their homes and family, they united and lived in places such as France almost 1,000 years later and the Rhineland (Germany).  Rashi, a famous biblical commentator, lived in Troyes, France, born there in 1040.  He worked in Worms, Germany in a school he had created.

These Jews had moved into Europe from the Middle East.  They were not Europeans who happened to read about Judaism and decide it would be something they would adapt to.  Also it should be known that even this happened over 2,000 years ago, communication did exist between the Judean people still residing there and the Jews of France and Germany.  The German Jews after years of living there created their own language of Yiddish; a mixture of Hebrew and German with a few other favorite words thrown in as well.

First of all, Christianity had started shortly after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  The first thing that happened was that in their meetings, they outlawed Judaism and took a stand against Jews.  "325 CE: The period of time from 325 to about 590 CE is often referred to as the "post-Nicene" era. This interval takes its name from the church Council of Nicea which was held in 325 CE. Actually, Christianity started in 50 CE with a meeting in Jerusalem. "The Council of Jerusalem or Apostolic Council was held in Jerusalem around 50 AD. It is unique among the ancient pre-ecumenical councils in that it is considered by Catholics and Orthodox to be a prototype and forerunner of the later ecumenical councils and a key part of Christian ethics."

The reasoning probably was that of competition.  The new Christians were competing with Judaism and using one of their sons as the demii-god, Jesus, son of G-d, similar to Greek and Roman  religious beliefs.  The result was that they did not intermix in any marriages.  That would have been taboo.  The same was felt by the Jews.  They have been marrying Jews and not others, so both groups did their best to keep the younger people apart.  Except, it did happen but not often.  As we see in DNA studies, Ashkenazi Jews may have a higher portion of non Jewish genes than the Sephardic or Mizrachi Jews.
                                                                             
An unpopular theory of people wanting to deny Ashkenazi Jews from living in Israel, the very land that they helped to create in 1920s with Europeean leadership, is that Ashkenazis came from Khazaria, now a part of Russia.  Behar, DNA geneticist, disproves with : "Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region."  Meaning, the Caucasus region is where Khazaria had been.  
                                                                          
Jews of Italy, 1st of Europe to have Jews reside there
Ghetto comes from Venice, Italy on March 29, 1516  to have Jews locked up at night
in ghettos.  Even before, Jews had little political rights.
The Pope was against Judaism, not creating an environment causing Judaism.  
"The Ashkenazim are Jews with a recent ancestry in central and Eastern Europe, in contrast to Sephardim (with an ancestry in Iberia, followed by exile after 1492), Mizrahim (who have always resided in the Near East) and North African Jews (comprising both Sephardim and Mizrahim). There is consensus that all Jewish Diaspora groups, including the Ashkenazim, trace their ancestry, at least in part, to the Levant, ~2,000–3,000 years ago   There were Diaspora communities throughout Mediterranean Europe and the Near East for several centuries prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE (Common Era), and some scholars suggest that their scale implies proselytism and wide-scale conversion, although this view is very controversial."  
Author Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3806353/


A statement from November 14, 2014 by a genetic expert, Bennett Greenspan, owner of Family Tree DNA in Houston, Texas,  is that 75% of all Jews share roots from the Middle East.  "“We’re not interlopers who came here from Eastern Europe, and we’re not Serbs or Kazars,” says Greenspan. “You can use whatever polemic you want to discredit the Jews or discredit the nation, but saying that we weren’t here is a lie.”
He pointed out that "Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, USA,  claims that many contemporary Jews do, indeed, have a distinctive genetic signature and can trace their ancestry back to the Middle East."  Greenspan went on by saying, "“No less than 75 percent of Ashekanzi, Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews, their ancestors came from what we call the general Middle East” – an assessment which he says is based on his company’s database."  
This is a database that my brother and I and my 2 children are in as well as 2 cousins and 3 friends, also Ashkenazis and who happen to be related to us through DNA.  We all have ancestors who had lived in Lithuania as well as other places in the Pale of Settlement.  
At the time of some Jews seeking asylum in Khazaria, our relatives were in France and Germany, not yet having been exiled from there causing Jews to move northward towards Poland and Lithuania.  That came later on.  
The important thing in making such a declaration as some have hurtfully done-that is to say that Jews just sprung up in Europe like wheat in a field, such as Arthur Koestler in his The 13th Tribe, is to have a humungus data base of people tested.  " To date, Family Tree DNA has tested more than one million people and has more than 700,000 records in its database. Among its more famous clients is the National Geographic Society. Altogether, says Greenspan, Jews comprise only about 3-4 percent of his clientele – much bigger than their share in the U.S. population, but just a fraction of his business."
A Jewish Ashkenazi friend's ethnic makeup through FTDNA is as follows:
Jewish diaspora 79%
European          13%
Middle Eastern    6%
East Asian           1%
With ancestors born in Europe probably for the past 2,000 years, the Jewish Diaspora % reflects how old the genes are compared to the 6% from the Middle East.                                                               
I have found that my brother's Yhaplogroup dna found in a man's test) is Q1b1a, or from a higher test, now called QBZ67.  A few Saudi Arabians, Pakistanis, and Afghanistanis carry this haplogroup as well.  A test by Family Tree DNA determined that an Arab client from Saudi Arabia of FTDNA was "7 percent Jewish, meaning 7 percent of his ancestors were determined to be Jewish." “I told him the difference between him and me, said Greenspan,  is that he’s a Muslim Arab and I’m a Jewish Arab. Period. Just like there are Christian Arabs. But the majority of us men, whether we’re Saudi, Palestinian, Syrian or Jews – the majority of us came from the Middle East a long, long time ago. Some of us left. Some of us didn’t. DNA shows that.”
What's interesting about the Arab versus the Jew, our males might carry the Cohen gene from Aaron, brother of Moses that also traces back to Abraham, father of Arabs and Jews.  Many Arabs also carry this haplogroup, J1, as well.  (J1c3d).  Here's where biblical history and dna agree.  


Resource:
http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol_preprints/41/
http://forward.com/news/israel/209236/genetics-expert-insists-75-of-jews-share-roots-in/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Ghetto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Jerusalem
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/158fd386f4addebb



2 comments:

  1. So the "Jews" only fled North?... What about the overwhelming evidence of millions of Yahudim fleeing into Africa?

    ReplyDelete
  2. You failed to mention the millions of Yahudim who fled in to Africa during the war of 70 AD. Some of their descendants are now living in South Africa(Lemba Tribe), and West Africa(Ashante, Igbo tribes). I will chalk your "oversight" up to ignorance.

    ReplyDelete