Who’s Your Daddy? Study Shows Genetic Link for Jewish People

What does it mean to be Jewish? According to a recent study, no matter whether a Jewish person is from Canada, Argentina, Russia, or Libya, he or she has more in common with other Jews genetically than anyone thought previously. While Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews have been presented as very distinct, separate entities, the truth, according to a new study, is that the Jewish people have remained remarkably close genetically over thousands of years. The genetic ancestry of Jewish communities from Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus all trace back to the Levant.

What’s really cool about this study is the way historical events are traced to a “split” in the Jewish population. The key is looking at the Y chromosome found only in males. Backtracking 2,500 years, scientists realized that the moment Iraqi and Persian Jews separated and began to form their own distinct genetic markers coincides with the destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadanezzar in 587 B.C.E.

Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews have less than a third European genes, and according to Dr. Aron Rodrigue of Stanford University, this shows “there may be common origins shared by the two groups, but also that there were extensive contacts and settlements.”

While Jews have been in the Holy Land for millenia, this evidence shows that over the years, the heart and DNA of world Jewry never strayed too far from Jerusalem.

What’s also interesting is that Israel’s Jewish majority is so closely related genetically to the one fifth of its citizens who are Arab that we can say for sure we are all children of Abraham.

Read the full article in the New York Times here.

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