H O M E - C R Y P T - B I O

Jewish Genes and Lost Tribe

The studies come in the wake of the recent completion of the mapping of the human genome. So much more knowledge is discoverable now since we can read the genetic blueprint and correlate it with some heretofore assumptions which turn out not to be entirely correct.

One study attempted to trace the lineage of the kohanim (Eng: "priests") - a title and class in Jewish tradition where those who were direct male descendants of Moses and Aaron were given responsibility and obligations to conduct important Jewish rites. What it showed in the study released in 1997 was a high correlation of the distinct priestly Y chromosome in those claiming to be Kohanim (usually with identifying family names like Cohen, Kohn, Kohen, Cohn, etc.) higher than with those who claimed to be Kohanim than those who did not. The study was conducted by scientists from the U of Arizona, Haifa Technion and genetic anthropology department at University College, London. It found that only 3-5% of all male Jews have the kohen-specific Y-chromosome haplotypes or DNA markers, and were accurate to more than 50% for those who identified as Kohanim.

Another project which was fascinating was the study and research by a London-Oxford University research team who looked at a black, Bantu-speaking African tribe in South Africa and Zimbabwe, which are called Lemba While today they are for the most part Christian, they have an oral tradition which maintains Jewish practices, i.e. circumcision, ritual slaughter, not eating pork, etc. and they claim to be descendants of the Jews. Those claims have never been taken seriously by most academics who studied them but now there was a test. for at least Jewish priestly genes and the results were absolutely astounding.

For the 9 percent of the Lemba tribe who were tested, there were 2 to 3 times more Kohenite Y chromosomes (sometimes even higher) held by Lemba than that held by OTHER Jewish populations. The Lemba were more priestly that is than known Jews who were tested. And the study, it seems, would also establish that these black Africans were of Jewish ancestry.

Another study which was presented at proceedings of the National Academy of Science from an international collaboration of scientists which was led by Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona and Batsheva Bonne-Tamir of Tel Aviv University studied the more general Jewish profile of Y chromosomes, instead of emphasizing the chromosomal link to Kohanim. Based on genetic samples from seven Jewish population groups, which included: Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian (including 16 non-Jewish groups and including the Lemba).

Here are their conclusions:

With the exception of the Ethiopian Jews, ALL Jewish samples from the study show a high genetic "Jewish" Y-chromosome correlation. It demonstrated that Jewish males of Russian and Polish ancestry have a Y-chromosome profile which more closely resembles (more like) Moroccan, Kurdish, and Iraqi Jews than Russian and Polish NON-JEWS. Male Jews of Yemenite ancestry are closer to Jews from Rome than to Muslims from Yemen. So much for the Khazar conversion myth

Other conclusions were besides these Jewish groupings being closely related to each other, they are also closer genetically (some intermarriage or inter-breeding seemed obvious) to Palestinian Arabs, Syrians and the Lebanese. We may be cousins after-all?

Hillel Halkin wrote of these studies: "In descending order after these Middle Easterners, Ashkenazi Jews correlate best with Greeks and Turks; then with Italians; then with Spaniards; then with Germans; then with Austrians; and least of all with Russians. The Y chromosomes of non-Ashkenazi Jews correlate best with Egyptians and Tunisians."

Lemba black Africans have Y-chromosome haplotypes more like Jews than they are like sub-Saharan Africans which would indicate a closer ancestrial relationship with Jews than other black Africans (or are other Jews more like black (Lemba) Africans than other whites?).

What is evident from these studies is that traditional assumptions are not correct assumptions. As Hillel points out in his article:

"On the one hand, the existence of a kohenite Y chromosome traceable to a single progenitor who lived near the supposed date of the Exodus supports, if not the Bible's account of the priesthood's origins, at least the antiquity of the institution and its hereditary nature. At a time when a radical "biblical minimalism" denying the historicity of the entire Pentateuch has been gaining ground among scholars, the kohenite Y chromosome is thus a striking argument for a more conservative reading of biblical texts."

and,

"On the other hand, there are the Lemba. Out of the blue, as it were--for nowhere in any Jewish or non-Jewish source are they even hinted at--we find an ethnic group near the southern tip of Africa with a genetic tie to Jews elsewhere. Where did they come from? How did they get to be where they are? If they lived totally apart from other Jews for hundreds or thousands of years while retaining a distinct "Jewish" identity, can this have happened in other places, too? Did the Jewish people have another, "shadow" history, inhabited by groups that we know little or nothing about?"

and,

"...the Hammer/Bonne-Tamir report would seem to corroborate the age-old Jewish belief that, allowing for a relatively small increment of proselytes throughout the ages, the Jewish people forms a biologically close-knit family originally hailing from the Fertile Crescent and Palestine. On the face of it, then, these findings refute various "revisionist" theories proposing that, not only in remote regions like Ethiopia and Yemen but even in such great Jewish population centers as Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin, much or possibly most of the Jewish community resulted from a massive conversion of non-Jews."

As to maintaining Jewish Peoplehood, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science state:

"Our results indicated a relatively minor contribution of European Y chromosomes to the Ashkenazim.... If we assume 80 generations since the founding of the Ashkenazi population, then the rate of admixture would be (is less than) 0.5 percent (less than half of one percent) per generation."

There is a very low rate of accretion through proselytization. And the article correctly points out that small genetic input can have a big influence in appearance so it should not be surprising that there are physical differences and differences in appearance (that Ashkenazim tend to look so different from non-Ashkenazim and some Ashkenazim have blond hair and blue eyes), whereas there is great similarity and connectedness in genes among the world's Jews.

The predominance of female converts to Judaism also influences appearance but not the male Y-chromosome inheritability and Hillel does point out that the Lemba do remain the enigma, about which we know very little. Lost tribe theory, anyone?

And those are the facts.

Hank Roth