Tracing Jewish history through genes

LOS ANGELES, May 15 (UPI) -- Surveys show that somewhere between 33 percent and 52 percent of all Jewish-Americans are now marrying gentiles. This is causing worry in some parts of the Jewish community about the long-term survival of Jews, at least outside Israel, as a coherent people.

As the public intellectual Irving Kristol has joked, the main threat to Jewish identity in the West today comes not from the desire of Christians to kill Jews, but from their desire to marry them.

Elliott Abrams, who is now the White House's senior director for Middle Eastern affairs, spent much of the past decade working to alert American Jews to the danger posed by their marrying non-Jews. In 1997, he wrote:

"Intermarriage is both inevitable in our open society, and immensely threatening to Jewish continuity here ... Despite the hopes of many in the Jewish community, the effect of mixed marriages on children is evident. Only 28 percent are raised as Jews, and an even smaller percentage marry Jews...

A three-generational study of Jews in Philadelphia found that no grandchildren of mixed marriages continued to identify as Jews."

From a historical perspective, however, this current era of Jews marrying gentiles is not unique, according to author Jon Entine. While other peoples have come and gone over the millennia, the world Jewish community has survived both through eras of horrific persecution and eras of high rates of intermarriage. Today's Jews are almost all the descendents of that core of past Jews who raised their children within the faith and the community.

Entine, a southern California science journalist, is writing a book on Jewish history with the working title of "From Abraham's Seed: How Genetic Research is Unlocking the Story of the Bible and the Unique History of God's Chosen People." It's slated for publication in spring 2004 by Gotham Books, an imprint of Penguin/Putnam.

United Press International: How did you decide to write about Jewish history from the perspective of the new genetic studies?

Entine: It flows directly out of two experiences: being hopeless in fulfilling my one ambition growing up, to be a professional football player; and the trauma of my bar mitzvah. The first led me in part to write a book in 2000 on the genetics of race and sports called "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It." Of course, "Taboo" was less about sports (and my intrinsic athletic shortcomings) and more about the historical debate over "human biodiversity," or racial differences.

It only seemed logical to extend that inquiry into other areas where genetics and culture collide. I grew up being inculcated with the pervasive, if unspoken, Jewish belief that we were indeed a chosen race, a special people. What more exciting subject than the study of the racial group that is perhaps mankind's most ancient -- the Jews?

There are few issues more intriguing than our own histories: Who are we? What are our origins and seminal beliefs? Until recently, the Bible was the primary source for clues about the origins and migrations of early western civilization. Now, genetic technology is also helping us better understand both our shared origins and our differences.

Racial identity, the notion that being Jewish is something beyond culture and extends to blood, is a fascinating -- if taboo -- subject. Like a moth to a flame, it draws my interest.

A: I suppose one could concoct an argument for why scientific or religious inquiry should be censored. There are always zealots who claim to want to protect the unwashed from potentially "dangerous ideas." Certainly, a few critics reviewing "Taboo" argued against airing the subject of human differences, claiming that the issue was too complicated for popular discourse and therefore even posing questions about genetics fans mistrust.

The thorny reality, however, is that frequencies of many "polymorphic" genes vary with population clusters and can have powerful health consequences. Genetic factors help explain the prevalence of Tay-Sachs, a neurological disease, among European Jews, and the proclivity to skin cancer and cystic fibrosis among northern Europeans.

These are all "racial" differences of a kind; potentially thousands more remain to be identified. Humanity is in the early stages of a biotechnological revolution that is transforming our understanding of human nature -- the commonalities that bind us and the differences that confer uniqueness. To suggest we shouldn't explore such research is criminal.

A: There's of course a cultural component to this research. Although Jews represent a tiny and vulnerable minority in the world population -- 15 million people, or a little over 0.2 percent -- they have had a disproportionately important impact on Western culture. Their religious beliefs underlie the world's three great monotheistic religions.

From a scientific perspective, Jews are a genetic goldmine. The question of identity has always been central to Jews' self-understanding. Biblical literalists have long contended that Jews are a "race apart," citing Deuteronomic Law: "You shall not intermarry with them (non-Jews)." As a result, some Jewish populations, such as the Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe, are among the more genetically distinct in the world, a fact even more remarkable because, unlike almost all other groups, they did not live in a geographically limited area but were dispersed throughout the world.

Scientists are learning that rare differences from person to person and group to group hold clues to medical mysteries. Small, reproductively isolated genetic islands show diseases and traits marked by unusual gene frequencies known as haplotypes. It is only from knowledge of "gene pools" that we can hope to reconstruct the evolutionary history of humanity and develop treatments for many medical problems.

While many groups are currently being studied -- the Finns, the Ainu, the Amish, American Indians, and Icelanders, among others -- Jews of central and eastern European ancestry, known as Ashkenazim, are among the most promising subjects.

A: No. Like all human populations, they've married outside the group at times. The first signs of it are in the Bible itself. For example, the wives of Jacob's 12 sons included a Canaanite and an Egyptian. Moses married a Midianite woman and then a Cushite. Samson married a Philistine. At least two non-Israelite female ancestors figured in King David's genealogy. Mixed marriages between Samaritans and Judaites were common.

Q: Have there been earlier eras similar to this one in which many Jews married gentiles and their descendents tended to be gentiles?

A: Yes. For example, during the Hellenistic period after Alexander the Great's conquests, Jewish intermarriage with gentiles was rampant. There was definitely a net "outflow" of Jews from the religion, yet Hellenized Judaism survived.

Q: Were there times when Jews married gentiles, but the children tended to remain within the faith?

A: Under the Roman Empire, the Jewish community in Italy was quite sizable for a time, with lots of flow in and out. During the early Christian period in the Roman Empire, Jewish males who had left the Mideast often took on Gentile wives. Their offspring probably became the core of Ashkenazi Jewry.

However, some time around the fall of Rome is when the taboos on intermarriage (imposed by both Jews and Gentiles) became stringent. The real end to Ashkenazi Jewish out-marrying did not come until the Middle Ages as the economic and social position of Jews worsened considerably.

This historical trend is reflected in the genetic data, which suggests that the genetic core of modern Ashkenazi Jewry was not formed until this period. The core consisted mostly of Jewish men with Middle Eastern roots marrying a high percentage of local Gentile women, then forming Jewish communities.

Q: Is that when the rule switched and membership in the Jewish community became no longer a function of one's father being a Jew, but of one's mother, which tended to cut down on outmarriage?

A: As economic and social pressures mounted, that mixed group evolved to become the Ashkenazi Jewish core, with almost no intermarriage with Christians ... less than one half of 1 percent per generation, geneticists estimate.

In the 19th century, however, the position of western European Jews improved considerably, leading again to a fair amount of intermarriage, particularly in German-speaking areas. This reflected the decline of orthodoxy and the birth of Reform Judaism.

"..we were told repeatedly that if we intermarried, we would be fulfilling Hitler's dream."

I have never been to Hebrew School. but that statement seems incredibly illogical to me. Weren't the Nazi's going after people who were 1/16 Jewish and at some point considering going after those who were only 1/32 Jewish? Hitler and the Nazi's went out of their way to kill as many Jews as possible, and according to some accounts actually tried to accelerate their efforts as the War was clearly coming to an end and not in their favor.

The Jew killers are illogical and evil.Ultimately they would have had to kill everyone. It is the same today with these primitive Muslim fanatics. Those would be the same fanatics that the Aholes from the 90's White House embraced so fondly. (Hey Hillary you fat bitch, byte me!) It is the Democrats and the Liberals who are the real evil ones. They would sell their souls in order to make nice with the disgusting Muslim regimes for the opportunity to keep the Islamic oil flowing.

Why on Earth would any rational thinking civilized modern person suck up to those aholes in the Middle East? It ain't about Democracy. They kiss ass because they want to do business with the reprobates. We are very fortunate to have Mr. Bush in the White House right now. Shades of Harry Truman. The buck indeed stops at the oval office. The liars in the left media think and assume that we are all stupid and ignorant. Perhaps that is true for many, but certainly not all. Thank God for the FR.com, and the Internet.

Geneticists Study Jewish Genes for Disease Clues

Sunday December 16 9:14 PM ET
Geneticists Study Jewish Genes for Disease Clues
By Megan Goldin
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011216/sc/health_israel_genetics_dc_1.html

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Genetic sleuths in Israel are collecting thousands of blood samples from Jews of European origin in a race to uncover the genetic causes of diseases such as schizophrenia, asthma and Parkinson's disease (news - web sites).

IDgene Pharmaceuticals is so far the only company in Israel with government approval to study the genetic make-up of Ashkenazi Jews in the hope it could help them hone in on the genetic causes of common diseases.

The relatively uniform genes of Ashkenazi Jews are a boon for geneticists who must sift through three billion human DNA sequences and around 40,000 genes in their search for the genetic causes of common and often deadly diseases.

``The population of Ashkenazi Jews is relatively homogenous which facilitates gene discovery,'' said Ariel Darvasi, IDgene's president and a geneticist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

Darvasi said the genes that cause diseases are easier to track in a homogenous population because there are less genetic differences in their DNA.

``The homogeneity reduces the genetic noise and the signal comes out more clearly,'' said Darvasi.

His company has collected 10,000 blood samples from Ashkenazi Jews in Israel suffering from eight diseases: asthma, type 2 diabetes, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites), breast cancer and colon cancer.

IDgene plans to study the genetic links for some 20 to 30 common diseases prevalent in some one percent of the population.

The genetic profiles of the anonymous Ashkenazi donors in each disease category are being compared to the genetic profiles of a control group of Ashkenazi Jews not suffering from the disease. All the donors have signed consent forms.

By searching for genes that frequently appear among sufferers of a disease, but do not show up among those without the ailment, geneticists can more easily find the genetic needle in the human genome haystack.

ASHKENAZI JEWS

The forefathers of the Ashkenazi community began to settle in parts of Europe during the Roman Empire, particularly after the Romans conquered Jerusalem in AD 70. Ashkenazis now make up more than 80 percent of world Jewry.

They moved to Spain, France, Italy and other Mediterranean basin countries, but spread over the centuries to the Rhineland in Germany, Poland and Russia. Frequent persecution kept their numbers small.

Modern Ashkenazi Jews are believed to descend from about 1,500 Jewish families dating back to the 14th century. But Darvasi said the forefathers of today's Ashkenazis came from an even smaller gene pool.

Darvasi said ``maybe 500 families were really the source of the total (Ashkenazi) population today...probably in the order of 100 independent chromosomes,'' because they enjoyed better nutrition and had lower infant mortality rates than less affluent Jews.

In the 18th century, Ashkenazi Jews began to flourish and their numbers swelled to around 10 million today.

For religious and historical reasons, most Ashkenazi Jews married within their community, a phenomena that Darvasi said shows up in the Ashkenazi genes he studies which tend to have a high degree of similarity.

HOMOGENOUS GENE POOLS

Darvasi said the 2.8 million Ashkenazi Jews in Israel provide a very large homogenous gene pool for researchers.

But there are non-Jewish groups, including Sardinians and French Canadians, who have similar potential in that they too are a relatively large pool of homogenous people to study, he said.

Iceland's deCODE genetics Inc has a head start over IDgene which began work two years ago.

DeCODE has already reported finding 350 genes linked to more than 40 common diseases.

Reykjavik-based deCODE is sorting through the medical records of Iceland's population of around 300,000 people which it says has changed little in genetic make-up since the Vikings arrived in the ninth and 10th centuries.

But Darvasi said geneticists disagree over the degree of homogeneity of Iceland's population, which according to some studies also includes people of Norwegian and Celtic descent.

In January, IDgene announced a $7.65 million second investment round by venture capitalists Apax Partners and IsraelSeed Partners and the British-based Wellcome Trust, one of the world's leading financiers of genetic research.

Darvasi said it will take researchers years to isolate the genes responsible for various diseases. But once they do, it will be possible to start developing drugs designed to treat the specific biological causes of the disease.

``Each gene encodes a protein...Once you identify it you can look at the chemical pathway it invokes,'' he said. ``We try through genetics to understand the biology of the disease and treat the disease with that knowledge.''

He said he is not concerned about the competition from Iceland and other companies studying other homogenous genetic groups.

``Most of this field is unknown so chances are that each of us will get something out of our research,'' Darvasi said.

"The forefathers of the Ashkenazi community began to settle in parts of Europe during the Roman Empire, particularly after the Romans conquered Jerusalem in AD 70. Ashkenazis now make up more than 80 percent of world Jewry."

Actually, Jerusalem was conquered by the Romans well before 70 AD. Jerusalem was besieged and actually destroyed in the year 70 AD by the Romans Legions under Titus. I will not pretend to be an expert on the Ashkenazi or Sephardic population statistics. In fact I am not an expert on anything. I have read some, and it seems to me that the nbrs that you quote concerning the World Jewry are likely to be spurious indeed.

In the end it matters not. God knows all things.

The Jews were Hellenized well before the fall of Jerusalem. There are some who have actually argued with distinction that it was only the rise of the Christian cult that caused the "Jews" to be saved from assimilation by the World. Israel would have fallen forever, but the Diasapora is what saved the Jewish Culture forever. If there were no Diasapora, there would never have been a birth of the Talmud. Arguably, the Talmud saved the Jewish culture for posterity, and likely forever.

In the end, it seems to me, that indeed everything happens for a reason.

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