Another Genetic Study Confirms Racial Basis of Judaism

October 10, 2012 at 9:51 am

Jewish extremist claims that Judaism is “only a religion” and nota race, have been disproven once again by a new study—by aJewish geneticist—which shows a common biological base toSephardic Jews in particular.

The study, led by well-known New York-based Jewish HarryOstrer, M.D., professor of pathology, of genetics and ofpediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of YeshivaUniversity and director of genetic and genomic testing for thedivision of clinical pathology at Montefiore Medical Center, waspublished in the Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences under the title “North African Jewish and non-Jewishpopulations form distinctive, orthogonal clusters.”

This study showed that Jews from North Africa provide a clear map of the Jewish Diaspora and support thehistorical record of Middle Eastern Jews settling in North Africa during Classical Antiquity, proselytizing and marryinglocal populations, and, in the process, forming distinct populations that stayed largely intact for more than 2,000years.

In a previous genetic analysis, the researchers showed that modern-day Sephardic (Greek and Turkish), Ashkenazi(Eastern European) and Mizrahi (Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian) Jews that originated in Europe and the Middle East aremore related to each other than to their contemporary non-Jewish neighbors, with each group forming its owncluster within the larger Jewish population.

Further, each group demonstrated Middle-Eastern ancestry and varying degrees of mixing with surroundingpopulations. Two of the major Jewish populations – Middle Eastern and European Jews – were found to havediverged from each other approximately 2,500 years ago.

The new study extended that analysis to North African Jews – the second largest Jewish Diaspora group. Theirrelatedness to each other, to other Jewish Diaspora groups, and to their non-Jewish North African neighbors had notbeen well defined until now.

The study also included members of Jewish communities in Ethiopia, Yemen and Georgia. In all, the researchersanalyzed the genetic make-up of 509 Jews from 15 populations along with genetic data on 114 individuals fromseven North African non-Jewish populations.

North African Jews exhibited a high degree of endogamy, or marriage within their own religious and cultural group inaccordance with custom. Two major subgroups within this overall population were identified: Moroccan/AlgerianJews and Djerban (Tunisian)/Libyan Jews.

The two subgroups varied in their degree of European mixture, with Moroccan/Algerian Jews tending to be morerelated to Europeans – most likely stemming from the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from Spain during theInquisition, starting in 1492. Ethiopian and Yemenite Jewish populations also formed distinctive genetically linkedclusters, as did Georgian Jews.

In other words, the new study has shown once again that it is possible to identify Jews by DNA, putting lie to theclaim that Judaism is “only” a religion.

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