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"Arm yourselves' says rabbi: Europe not protecting its Jews Asks governments for police protection or more attacks 'going to happen' ………………………………………………………………………………………………… Rabbi Menachem Margolin is the director general of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe and the European Jewish Association, the largest federation of Jewish organizations and communities in Europe. Last month Margolin called for European Jews to arm themselves. Asking for law enforcement protection for European Jewish institutions, Margolin said institutes not protected should work to secure themselves with armed guards. “This is a very dangerous situation,” he said. “It is clear that it is the obligation of each European...

‘Bottleneck’ dates back 600 to 800 years, genome analysis shows; researcher says among population ‘everyone is a 30th cousin. Illustrative photo of Ashkenazi Jews, taken from Nurit Ben Sheetri's 'The Redheads' exhibit at Dizengoff Center (courtesy Nurit Ben Sheetrit) A new study concludes that all Ashkenazi Jews can trace their ancestry to a “bottleneck” of just 350 individuals, dating back to between 600 and 800 years ago. The study, published in the Nature Communications journal Tuesday, was authored by Shai Carmi, a computer science professor at Columbia University, and more than 20 medical researchers from Yale, Columbia, Yeshiva University’s Albert...

Jews and Muslims in Denmark are in an uproar about a bill to ban circumcision for boys under the age of 15, according to Yediot Ahronot. The country's National Council for Children and Ethics Council have both endorsed the proposal and only the parliament's medical committee can prevent it from being heard. The National Council for Children argued that, "Circumcision is the irreversible damage to a child's body before he is given the chance to object." It also said the ban was a matter of equality, in the wake of a five-year-old ban on female circumscion. Denmark's Chief Rabbi Bent...

THE idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution. Even he, however, might tremble at the thought of what he is about to do. Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group...

Although they probably weren't named Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, four Jewish "founding mothers" who lived in Europe 1,000 years ago have been credited with being the ancestors of nearly half of all Ashkenazi Jews, who constitute the majority of the current Jewish population. About 3.5 million people - or 40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews currently alive - are descended from these matriarchs, who were among a small group, probably after migrating from the Middle East, according to the Israeli researchers, who also provide evidence of shared maternal ancestry between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi (Sephardi and Oriental) Jews. The studies that...

'Four mothers' for Europe's Jews There are now some 8m people of Ashkenazi origin around the world Almost half of Europe's Jews are descended from just four women who lived 1,000 years ago, a study says. Scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA - passed from mother to daughter - of 11,000 women of Ashkenazi Jewish origin living in 67 countries. The Ashkenazis moved from the Mid-East to Italy and then to Eastern Europe, where their population exploded in the 13th Century, the scientists say. One of the authors said the study shows the importance of Jewish mothers. "This I could tell...

"Purchases by foreign residents have taken off beyond anybody's wildest dreams," said Stuart Hershkowitz, head of the Bank of Jerusalem's international department. "It's a real revolution. In the past, I dealt with a million-dollar purchase every couple of months. Now, it's almost on a weekly basis." Foreign residents started a wave of property purchases about 18 months ago, as Palestinian violence began toning down, he said. Interest rates were low, but rising rates have yet to put a dent in the buying frenzy, "so it's not a purely economic phenomenon," he said. "Very few people are buying because they think...