[NativeNewYorker]

ping

[Radix]

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

 

There are those who would consider them to be Jews anyhow. Some of those would do them great harm as well.

[Alouette]

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 matriarchal descent was established by Ezra, at the end of the Babylonian exile. (Ezra chapter 9).

[BrooklynGOP]

ping!

[DensaMensa]

}History of God's Chosen People.

Oh, dear, we're not going go through another one of these sessions, are we?

}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.

A more interesting study would explore why Jews don't want to marry each other. {ggg}.

}Are Jews a "pure race"

Oh, my, that alone would be enough to get this thread killed if it was posted by someone else, about someone else!  (But it will probably get this post killed.)

[Henchman]

73.006 Percent of all statistics are made up on the spot! If one considers that "Christians" are Jews who followed Christ, the number of "out marriages" drops. Other than the rabbi one follows, there is no real difference or ethics. We all need to get over it and the world will be better off.

My wife is a Jew, and I am a Jew who followed Christ. Depending on your point of view - there was no out marriage OR the percentage here is 100 percent out marriage. As I said, Stats are made up on the spot - "Figures don't lie, but liars figure".

[Pukka Puck]

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.

[DensaMensa]

}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.

Ahhhm, this gets a little sticky. While your point (marrying outside their tribes) is a valid one, none of Jacob's 12 sons were Jews. They were all Israelites. A thousand years later or so the offspring of 3 of those sons, Benjamin, Levi and Judah formed Judea from which the nickname "Jew" stuck following their return from Babylon.

Also, Moses was not a Jew nor any of the Israelites with him in Egypt, nor was Sampson.

[Verginius Rufus]

Steve Olson's new book, Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins (Mariner Books, 2003), has a chapter on the Jews (with some discussion also of the Samaritans). This is a very interesting and readable book, covering a lot of fascinating and contentious material--not everything he says has to be accepted.