Two new pieces of research looked at DNA evidence to try figure out who the Jews are. This has been done before, and the results consistently say what the Jews have been saying all along, though these two new projects seem to be based on broader evidence and techniques. The story, in a nutshell, goes like this:
The Jews came from the Levant (i.e: around here), and they share lots of DNA with local Arabs. The Ethiopian and Indian communities seem furthest out. There was a significant division around 2,500 years, when the Jews of Iran and Iraq seem to have largely broken off from those to their West. (Nebuchadnezzar, anyone?). The Ashkenazim, who lived in Europe from about a thousand years ago, and the Sepharadim, who lived in Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East (another name for here), seem to have intermarried more than you might have thought.
There was some intermarriage with the surrounding people all along, but not as much as it would have been reasonable to expect (whatever that means).
The NYT article mentions Shlomo Sand as being wrong, though I don't think he had convinced many Jews anyway, except of course the Mondoweiss camp who were convinced before he ever set pencil to paper, and will remain convinced no matter what contrary evidence is produced.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
25 comments:
I had a frist encounter with this site - he seems to be about telling Jewish history with the intent of including outsider-me
the piece leaves me with one question unanswered though, why were Jews under Ottoman rule so terribly poor?
(and yes Lee I asked myself this question inspired by you)
there may have been all kinds of reason like that the Ottoman empire was generally not conducive to the welfare of "little" ones.
Silke
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-alliance-re-made-jews-of-east.html
What about the Jews in India? Is there still a community there?
Silke,
why were Jews under Ottoman rule so terribly poor?
Under Islam, the Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and later the Hindus had to pay a poll tax (aka jizya). This burdensome tax, along with the daily humiliations of being a dhimmi, led many non-Muslims to eventually convert to Islam so as to escape these hardships.
Jews were often confined to live in poor areas of cities in the Arab world and had to face all kinds of rules that hurt their ability to achieve. In addition, the societies they lived in were fairly poor and primative in many cases, so being an oppressed group in those regions meant an ever greater level of poverty, in many cases, than for the Muslim majority. Imagine trying to do business with a Muslim who didn't want to pay for your goods. He could just shout to others in the marketplace that you insulted the Prophet and the easily insulted masses would be ready to deliver Islamic justice. So Jews were in very precarious positions and could easily be robbed or taken advantage in addition to the already burdensome taxes and restrictions placed upon them.
During the period of European colonial influence, opportunities for Jews and Christians became available and many were able to achieve significant wealth, particularly in Iraq. Europe was powerful enough to pressure the Ottomans to ease up on the enforcement of the dhimmi laws, though that by no means eliminated them as law or custom everywhere. Meanwhile, the colonial offices preferred, in many cases, to work with Jews and Christians, who were often more open to new ideas, appreciative of the opportunities they were being provided--seeing the Europeans as their protectors--and were thus less likely to pose a threat to the colonial administrators than the Muslim majorities.
The ancient Jewish community moved to Israel in the 1950s, and no-one is left (or almost no-one).
On the other hand, these days at any given moment there are thousands of Israelis in their early 20s spending months wandering around India getting the IDF-time out of their system.
Yaacov,
I find something in the article quite confusing. It talks about the close links between the Ashkenazim from Northern and Central Europe and the Sephardim, who it describes as being expelled from Spain and Portugal.
However later it mentions the Iranian and Iraqi Jewish communities (who are somtimes called Sephardic in articles) as having a distinct heritage, yet doesn't seem to explain how the DNA of these Mizrahi communities compares to the others. I was always under the impression that there were many Jewish communities thoughout the Middle East whose ancestors never left the Middle East, though they may have ultimately adopted the Sephardic style of prayer and had Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal settling among them.
Are the DNA of these Iranian/Iraqi Jews included in the study of Sephardic Jews or are they treated as a separate category?
I also think that the article avoids giving too much evidence, which has long been available, of the close genetic markers that Jews have in common with current groups like the Kurds or Palestinian Arab, neither of whom are ever asked to prove a genetic link to the areas in which they live.
4infidels
Tom Holland in Millenium claims that the "Sarazens" were smart at keeping the population in balance - very condensed as I understood it:
waging jihad was for muslims, financing it was for dhimmis and to get good taxes out of people you must let them thrive somewhat
- Holland says the system had evolved to perfection in Sicily when they managed to beat one of our Ottos sometime in the late 900s to pulp.
Also I remember that at one time there were too many conversions endangering the dhimmi tax basis and so they forbid conversions but I forgot at which time under which rule that happened.
So if in later centuries the Ottomans just impoverished their dhimmis they must have had very bad accountants working for them.
btw a bit later the Normans showed the muslims of Sicily that not all Northeners could be taken out. Ain't it strange that that started with superfluous sons from the bunch from which William the Conqueror came who saw a career chance for themselves in Southern Italy?
must have been quite some guys to figure out how to grab both, England and Sicily.
Silke
Silke,
I remember that at one time there were too many conversions endangering the dhimmi tax basis and so they forbid conversions but I forgot at which time under which rule that happened.
I think I remember reading something about that as well.
In India, where Hindus weren't considered "People of the Book," the only choices were conversion or death. After killing 80 million Hindus, it occurred to the Muslims that it might be better to keep them alive and have them pay the jizya, otherwise the Muslims would have to work without dhimmis to fund their lives of leisure.
Yaakov,
I recalled the Indian community, particularly the Cochin one, because I'm reading another brilliant book by the late Hyam Maccoby, titled "The pariah people: the anthropology of antisemitism", and he mentions the empirical fact that antisemitism didn't developed at all against that community from the Hindu majority. In fact they were highly regarded and only when the Portuguese arrived persecution christian-style began; again till the Dutch kicked the Portuguese out.
So much for the perverse myth that jews attracted the wrath whenever they lived.
See, Islam can reform! In India, Muslims revised the options offered Hindus from conversion or death to conversion, death or oppressively tax second-class subjects.
4Infidels -
My understanding of the article was that the Jews of Mesopotamia and East - so, Irak, Iran - were separate from the Sepharadim of Eretz Israel and Eastwards. We'd probably have to read the articles themselves to figure it out. The NYT reporter didn't come off as well-versed.
4infidels
in case you mean the original conquest of India by muslims the figure of 80 millions seems exaggerated to me
- I believe there just weren't enough masses available at that time that made the killing of such numbers possible.
John Julius Norwich and all other decent writers including the nitpickers at Ancient Warfare Magazine warn again and again that numbers from pre-modern times cannot be trusted, that they were notoriously exaggerated.
Silke
Silke,
I have heard numbers in that range before. Andrew Bostom, author of "The Legacy of Jihad," wrote this in a November 2008 article:
"Despite the brutal Islamization of India -- dating back to the initial 8th century Arab Muslim jihad ravages, and the subsequent more extensive campaigns under the Ghaznavids (Islamized Turkic nomads who annihilated the indigenous Hindus of Afghanistan by the mid-9th century), through the Delhi Sultanate period (1000-1525 C.E.) during which an estimated 70-80 million Hindus were slaughtered -- due largely to bowdlerized educational and public discourse on Islam, even many modern Hindus remain ignorant of both this history, and the Koranic injunctions which inspired the brutal waves of jihad conquest, and Muslim colonization of India."
Silke,
As to the effect of the jizya in impoverishing Jewish and other non-Muslim populations under Islamic rule, that article from Bostom has an interesting quote from Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624):
"The real purpose in levying jizya on them [Hindus] is to humiliate then to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya , they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It in intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honor and might of Islam..."
And though Sirhindi probably never had any dealings or personal knowledge of Jews, he found time to interject this into his anti-Hindu screed:
"Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam."
And only about 350 years prior to the Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank became the root cause of Muslim hatred of Jews.
Above comment from 4infidels
The founder of Saudi Arabia, King Ibn Saud, in 1937:
"The word of God teaches us, and we believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty."
4infidels
let me put it this way:
about the conquest of America by the Spaniards one can find all kinds of numbers
- I prefer those authors, historians or fastidious laymen alike, who tell me how they arrived at the numbers i.e. actually killed by invader, internecine warfare, epidemics, starvation etc. and then give me an idea which of those deaths could be considered "normal" given the conditions of the time i.e. for example did famines occur more often or where they more severe than could based on current knowledge be expected. Was internecine warfare exacerbated by the upheaval the conquerors caused etc. etc.
You cover a range of 700 years, that makes it 10 million per year killed - I don't buy it - given that at the time quite regularly whole armies let alone urban populations perished due to desease.
I may be wrong about not buying it but I never ever believe numbers which are either unspecified or don't synch with my gut/other knowledge/life experience.
According to this http://www.worldhistorysite.com/population.html
the whole world population in the year 800 CE was just 220 million, I just found out that India and China together are estimated to have had for long about 1/3 of the world's population. Lets be generous and grant the whole 1/3 to India, that would make 70 million and the conquerors killed 10 million of them in the year 800. First of all during the initial conquest it should have been more than average that'd make it between one/seventh and one/sixth of the population, such numbers sound plausible when the first crusade rampaged Jerusalem but not in rural areas.
but most of all whom would they have had left to enslave? - they needed servants, labourers whatever. - Before 1000 they raided the coasts of Italy regularly taking humans meant to become slaves as booty -
But most of all I think there are lots of ways to argue but the religious angle is contraproductive because it alienates the decent ones and at least in my country there are lots
- as long as they accept that I am agnostic they are welcome to their Koran.
Last but not least I have listened to countless history book presentations - American authors sound more often than not as if they are on a campaign and so are presenting their facts in a way that makes me feel I am supposed to become a believer. I don't like it when that's done with history.
Silke
Silke,
But most of all I think there are lots of ways to argue but the religious angle is contraproductive because it alienates the decent ones and at least in my country there are lots
Please explain...Are you saying that we shouldn't discuss the religious-political ideology motivating and guiding the jihadist enemy because we may offend those many Muslims who don't subscribe to that ideology?
Yaacov,
The NYT reporter didn't come off as well-versed.
No doubt, but I wonder if something else was at work as well, given the nature of NYT coverage of anything related to Israel.
I found the following in an article on the website Nature News:
"...the study also found strong genetic ties to non-Jewish groups, with the closest genetic neighbours on the European side being Italians, and on the Middle Eastern side the Druze, Bedouin and Palestinians."
While the NYT author focuses on strong ties between Jews and Italians, he fails to specifically note the strong genetic ties to the Druze, Bedouin and Palestinians. That is curious to me, considering the effort to delegitimize Jewish rights in the Middle East.
It seems that the Jewish connection to the Middle East, both ancient and modern, as an indigenous people with claims to belonging in the region similar to so many other groups whose connection to the ME is taken for granted, is often overlooked or downplayed by both supporters and detractors of Israel. This includes the fact that there were more Jews than Muslims in Jerusalem prior to the modern Zionist movement and the fact that more than half of today's Israelis trace their ancestry to those Jews who were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries in the late 1940s.
4infidels
listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Tavis Smiley
http://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/ayaan-hirsi-ali-may-25-2010/id251447071?i=83594364
I think she doesn't put it well but at least tries to include what I feel would be a better approach.
And to be clear, I want to remain free to treat decent people with the respect they deserve and which I demand for myself. I am an agnostic of the non wishy-washy kind i.e. I will not tolerate to be proselityzed from any corner or field whatsoever.
These sweeping history proclamations of the "they have always been evil" kind while leaving out the context of the times the preacher claims to be expert on as if 700 years had been all identical.
Just looking at the few decades I have lived and the changes I have experienced debunk even ridicule such argument completely.
Looking at the threat of today offers enough material for arguments - one hasn't to soil and smear what "little" ones need as consolation to make it through life.
-------
Don't you have anything to say about my calculations re the 70 million claim of your quoted author? - as you'd put it: please explain!
Silke
4infidels
when Jews were expelled from Spain, Muslims from I think Genoa sent a rescue fleet causing a traffic jam in the western Mediterranean
I know of no similar Christian operation ...
But that was then and today is today
so let's stick to today and come up with something that gets "us" across to "them" so that Gazans can enjoy accepting Israel's gift of free access to the World Cup thus saving them from getting fleeced by AlJazeera.
Now that is smart Israeli PR - I hope it goes viral
funny though when Israel does smart PR I come across no screaming all over the place about how wonderful they are
Silke
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/06/israel-provides-world-cup-broadcasts-in.html
Silke,
The reason I didn't respond to your calculations regarding the 70 million claim is that I was citing a source I thought was reliable, but what you say makes sense. I have nothing of any particular insight to add to the discussion of this matter.
Silke,
I want to remain free to treat decent people with the respect they deserve and which I demand for myself
Agreed. In my country, that means that they don't want the U.S. Constitution replaced by Sharia; they don't send their children to mosques and Islamic school where they are taught not to take Jews and Christians as friends; and they are more offended by terrorist attacks on civilians than cartoons.
These sweeping history proclamations of the "they have always been evil" kind while leaving out the context of the times the preacher claims to be expert on as if 700 years had been all identical.
I think the idea was to show a view the author thought was representative. I am by no means arguing that everyone was bad. My issue, and thus the reason I write about these issues with a sharp edge, is the fact that many in the West would rather comfort themselves by looking at examples that distract rather than contradict the idea that Islamists pose a serious threat to the preservation of our way of life.
Silke,
Unless you are willing to explore the effects of Islam on the motivations and actions of the Palestinians (and not just the "extremists" of Hamas), there is no way that Israel can come up with the proper policies to keep itself safe and secure.
Without Islam, the conflict becomes one over land and is ultimately amenable to all types of compromises and reasonable solutions. Unless, of course, you don't believe what the Palestinians say in their own language to their own people in media, schools and mosques.
Does this offend the little people for whom the identity of Islam provides comfort? I don't know. It bothers me that it could. But ultimately their feelings are not more important than the survival of Israel or the future of Western Civilization. Without doing some amount of generalizing that overlooks individual difference among populations, how does one assess threats from the practitioners of an ideology or the inhabitants of a neighboring territory?
4infidels
that it is a damnable Catch 22 I fully agree on.
Also my agnostic position is not sound bite conducive
But I am no issue evader, wherever I sit on the fence I do it with the intention of chosing sides.
On the other hand I think I may be useful as an argument sparring partner to people who want to come up with and are good at mass conducive slogans.
Alas my personal final argument as to Israel is unsuitable because it is everything else having been said and evaluated this one:
Given my appendix would act up smack in the middle of the Mediterranean and I had my choice of hospitals from all over including the French Riviera which hospital would I trust most?
For me that one is a really good one but alas only for me.
I must run now, but I'll come back to it, if I feel I have something else to say. Sometimes extensive beating around the bush may end with the discovery of a gem (even ages later) and if not, at least both our keyboards got some exercise.
Silke
Silke,
Sounds good...my keyboard was looking forward to getting some rest.
Post a Comment