Are most modern Jews primarily of European or Middle and Near Eastern ancestry?ย That controversial subjectโat the heart of the debate over the historical โright ofย returnโ claimed by many religious Jewsโis back in the headlines with the releaseย of a massive new study published in Nature Communications challenging someย established views of the origins of European Jewry.
The total Ashkenazi population is estimated at around 8 million people. Theย estimated world Jewish population is about 13 million.
Before the advent of advanced DNA research, it had been thought by someย historians that European Jewry traced to the largely pagan population of ancientย Khazaria in the Caucuses, whose leadership was believed to have converted toย Judaism beginning around 700 AD. But that theoryโknown as the Khazarianย hypothesisโhas been largely discredited by DNA research. One geneticist, Eran Elhaik, has recently attempted to revive the theory, but his research has been sharply challenged.
A groundbreaking paper published in 2000 by Harry Ostrer, a professor of geneticsย at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and University of Arizona geneticistย Michael Hammer showed that most modern Jews are descended on their male sideย from a core population of approximately 20,000 Jews who migrated from Italy overย the first millennium and eventually settled in Eastern Europe.
โAll European [Ashkenazi] Jews seem connected on the order of fourth or fifthย cousins,” Ostrer has said.
Known as the so-called โRhineland hypothesis,โ the consensus research holds thatย most Ashkenazi Jews, as well as many Jews tracing their lineage to Italy, Northย Africa, Iraq, Iran, Kurdish regions and Yemen, share common paternal haplotypesย also found among many Arabs from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Only a smallย percentage of the Y-DNA of Ashkenazi Jewsโless than 25 percentโoriginatedย outside of the Near East, presumably as converts.
This historical and genetic mosaic has provided support for the controversialย concept of a โJewish people.โ The Law of Return, the Israeli law that establishedย the right of Jews around the world to settle in Israel and which remains in forceย today, was a central tenet of Zionism. It is invoked by some religious Jews to supportย territorial claims (even though, based on this research, many Arabs, includingย Palestinians, where therefore also have a genetic โright of returnโ).
But what about the female lineage? That history is more obscure and contentiouslyย debated. Duke Universityโs David Goldstein and Mark Thomas of the Center forย Genetic Anthropology in London reported in 2002 that much of the mitochondrialย DNA of women in Jewish communities around the world that they examined did notย seem to be of Middle or Near Eastern origin, and indeed each community had itsย own genetic pattern. This suggested that migrating Jewish men might have taken onย local wives, who converted to Judaism. The estimates of the percentage of Ashkenaziย women of European image was probably more than 50 percent, they estimated, butย the data was too murky to come up with a firm estimate.
But a subsequent and more extensive study in 2006 by a team based at Technionย and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa suggested that Ashkenazi womenโ40 percentย or moreโmay indeed have had ancient Near and Middle Eastern roots, and mayย have accompanied their husbands as part of families migrating together.
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The new study published in Nature Communications aligns itself more closely withย the 2002 hypothesis, although there are differences. Professor Martin Richards,ย who heads the University of Huddersfieldโs Archaeogenetics Research Group (andย who participated in the 2002 study), and colleagues sequenced 74 mitochondrialย genomes and analyzed more than 3,500 mitochondrial genomes โ far more dataย than the 2006 survey, which reviewed only a short length of the mitochondrial DNA,ย containing just 1,000 or so of its 16,600 DNA units, in all their subjects.
Richards and his team claim that maternal lineages did not originate in the Nearย or Middle East or the Khazarian Caucasus but rather, for the most part, withinย Mediterranean Europe. Another twist in the findings: Jewish women may haveย been assimilated in Europe as far back as 2,000 years agoโearlier than most otherย studies have projected. The researchers believe the DNA could trace back to theย early Roman Empire, when as much as 10 percent of the population practicedย Judaism, many of them converts. Overall, they claim, at least 80 percent of Ashkenaziย maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe while 8 percentย originated in the Near East, with the rest uncertain.
According to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, Doron Behar, one of the keyย authors of the 2006 analysis, said he disagreed with the conclusions, but hasย provided no detailed critique as yet.
Wade also talked to David Goldstein, who said he believed the estimate that 80ย percent of Ashkenazi Jewry originated in Europe was too high considering theย unpredictability of mitochondrial DNA data.
The new research underscores an emerging consensus that wandering Jewish men,ย from the Near East, established a mosaic of small Jewish communitiesโfirst inย Italy and then scattered throughout Europe, often taking on local gentile wives andย raising their children as Jews.
Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a senior fellow atย the Center for Health & Risk Communication and STATS (Statistical Assessmentย Service) at George Mason University.
Additional Resource:
Abrahamโs Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, Jon Entine
