[wardaddy]

A) Not surprising that Sephardic and Oriental Jews are so similar.

B) I believe Tay-Sachs is only found in the Ashkenazi is it not?....that difference must account for that among other stuff I've observed over the years personally.

C)I wonder which Jews they are referring to are closely related to non Arab northern middle easterners.

I'm one of these that thinks the Israelites were dispersed far beyond the confines of modern day world Jewry thru the many migrations and captivities and diasporas. (and that is 100% surmisal)

Thanks for responding....I love this stuff.

Can we do one on Angles and Saxons next?

[missyme]

Yair Davidi, a resident of Jerusalem, Israel and an orthodox Jewish researcher (http://www.geocities.com/hiberi/), who has written two books [“Ephraim: the Gentile Children of Israel” (280 pages) & “Joseph: The Israelite Destiny of America” (264 pages)] on the subject, says that hundreds of millions of Christians in England, France, Scandinavia, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. are the direct, genetic descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel (House of Israel) (Northern Kingdom of Israel) (Ephraim) (Joseph).

[ChicagoHebrew]

Tay-Sachs can be accounted for due to a "founders effect." Most people believe that the founding population of today's Ashkenazi Jews was quite small -- no more than a few thousand people. A random mutation present amongst that small group would lead to a high % of Ashkenazi Jews who carry the Tay-Sachs gene. Also, I've read -- although I'm not sure of this -- that a single copy of the Tay-Sachs gene provides immunity to the Black Plague, much like a single copy of the sickle-cell gene provides immunity to malaria. If true, then that would explain to preponderance of that mutation among Ashkenazi Jews.

[Cronos]

I'm one of these that thinks the Israelites were dispersed far beyond the confines of modern day world Jewry thru the many migrations and captivities and diasporas. (and that is 100% surmisal) Thanks for responding....I love this stuff. Can we do one on Angles and Saxons next?

I do agree with you in part on the dispersion bit. I don't agree with LostTribe and #3fan's point of view which was that the exclusive descendents of the Israelites were the Anglo-Saxons. If I understand YOU correctly, you're saying that with dispersion there would be people all over the world with some Israelite blood in them. I would agree with you to a large extent

[happygrl]

C)I wonder which Jews they are referring to are closely related to non Arab northern middle easterners.

I've heard, or read, the claim that Abraham was a Kurd.

So it may be the Kurds that this is referring to.

I've also read that the Pashto consider themselves a Lost Tribe, although they are Muslim now.