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SebRLuck OP t1_iz1nks8 wrote

Link to the paper

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01378-2

Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century

Highlights
• Genome-wide data for 33 Jewish individuals from 14th-century Erfurt, Germany
• Medieval and modern Ashkenazi Jews (AJ) have similar ancestral genetic sources
• Medieval AJ were genetically heterogeneous, likely divided into two or more groups
• The individuals descend from an extreme founder event shared with modern AJ

Summary
We report genome-wide data from 33 Ashkenazi Jews (AJ), dated to the 14th century, obtained following a salvage excavation at the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt, Germany. The Erfurt individuals are genetically similar to modern AJ, but they show more variability in Eastern European-related ancestry than modern AJ. A third of the Erfurt individuals carried a mitochondrial lineage common in modern AJ and eight carried pathogenic variants known to affect AJ today. These observations, together with high levels of runs of homozygosity, suggest that the Erfurt community had already experienced the major reduction in size that affected modern AJ. The Erfurt bottleneck was more severe, implying substructure in medieval AJ. Overall, our results suggest that the AJ founder event and the acquisition of the main sources of ancestry pre-dated the 14th century and highlight late medieval genetic heterogeneity no longer present in modern AJ.

​

Graphical Abstract

https://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/3759f43a-46a8-43c7-9dbf-77bbb60292b2/fx1.jpg

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-domi- t1_iz1x8wq wrote

According to Ari Shaffir, that's how Judaism gets to be both a race and a religion.

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HutSutRawlson t1_iz1zg83 wrote

There’s marginally more diversity in the more liberal forms of Judaism, which are more open to interfaith families. But with Orthodox sects he’s right on the money.

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silvandeus t1_iz2aurr wrote

Endogamous populations are inbred, who would have guessed?

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Zangee t1_iz35jyi wrote

Take this down quick before you summon the spirit of Kanye.

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hikehikebaby t1_iz370rr wrote

More accurately, it's an ethno religious group or "people". You can convert into Judaism if you are accepted by a court of Jewish law - like applying for membership. Judaism is very old and is much older than modern concepts of race and religion.

Ashkenaz issues are a subset of Jews, but all Jewish groups are ethnically distinct and have more in common with one another than with other groups - we all have common DNA from before we were concord and exiled.

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ConsciousLiterature t1_iz38hxk wrote

>More accurately, it's an ethno religious group or "people".

Isn't every group of people an ethnoreligious group?

>Ashkenaz issues are a subset of Jews, but all Jewish groups are ethnically distinct and have more in common with one another than with other groups - we all have common DNA from before we were concord and exiled.

You share 99% of your DNA with a banana. Is there some gene that only jews have or something?

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estherstein t1_iz39idb wrote

As an Orthodox Jew, my personal impression is that the race idea is almost entirely externally imposed- once people are persecuted for having "Jewish blood", it's kind of awkward to tell them outright that we really don't care if their father was Jewish.

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crusoe t1_iz3bxkr wrote

Yeah they kept getting killed in programs which was a heavy selective pressure....

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J11ghtman t1_iz3mqnt wrote

As a fully AJ Jew I’ve always hoped we’d one day know who our European admixture ancestors were. Sadly I dunno if the genetics will ever be able to climb that hill since the bottleneck was so extreme 1,000 or so years ago. I’d just love to know if my European “half” is Italian, or early German, or French, or whatever. But they killed so many of us and created such a generically distinctive line of survivors that it’s probably impossible to say.

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-domi- t1_iz3nwff wrote

Ari's point is that past a certain point of endogamy, the Ashkenazi are genetically distinct enough that they sort of share enough features that they kinda constitute their own race.

Well, to quote his words, specifically responding to the question of "how can it be a race," he says "cause you can pick a Jew out of a lineup."

And, yeah, i agree with you that the religion part is clearly a lot more flexible. But since the primary source of followers for Judaism is the offspring of existing Judaists, the two still have a big overlap.

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-downtone_ t1_iz3tafd wrote

I got one for ya. What if ALS is actually what powered the viking berserkers? I believe ALS causes a significant difference in electro chemical output. If it's the same, their was religion based around it with regard to different animals. Stories of them taking on the forms of animals. If that were the case, that's a large genetic difference along with religion and would qualify.

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ConsciousLiterature t1_iz3vaap wrote

>Ari's point is that past a certain point of endogamy, the Ashkenazi are genetically distinct enough that they sort of share enough features that they kinda constitute their own race.

Kinda? Sounds like he wants to stretch the definition to make the ashkenazi feel special.

>Well, to quote his words, specifically responding to the question of "how can it be a race," he says "cause you can pick a Jew out of a lineup."

Can you though? really?

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-domi- t1_iz3x0ji wrote

He contrasts it with Catholics, and in that sense i kinda see his point. Then again, there are Judaic Africans, so it's obviously not that simple. His point was definitely to shame Ashkenazi people over inbreeding, and when i recently saw a post in /r/dataisbeautiful of a user showing a graph of his mother's Ashkenazi genealogy (probably the wrong term, but i don't remember the term they used for the graph), it was obvious that the different "branches" were relatively closely related, and the whole thing looped.

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suvlub t1_iz425cv wrote

>Isn't every group of people an ethnoreligious group?

Like, every every? Are the people standing at bus stop an ethno-religious group?

>You share 99% of your DNA with a banana

No. Only 50%. You are confusing it with chimps.

>Is there some gene that only jews have or something?

Pretty much, and not just one. You can tell whether someone has Jewish ancestry by doing a DNA test.

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WolfghengisKhan t1_iz4cjz5 wrote

Well six million people being cut from the breeding population will do that.

0

Geertglas t1_iz54bj3 wrote

Who is going to make an ask-a-nazi joke?

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hikehikebaby t1_iz58adn wrote

I did - and there's a lot of genetic and historic evidence. Not only do we know that it happened, we know exactly when and how. I'm not going to summarize all of it here, but there's a ton of information online including on Wikipedia and there's a ton of information in mainstream historic sources.

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one_shattered_ego t1_iz59vpn wrote

There’s literally so much genealogical and historical evidence my dude. How else would you explain how Jews ended up all over, but still retain a narrow middle-eastern genetic lineage?

Also if you want more recent examples of Jewish exile you could look to the English expulsion of Jews in 1290, or the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. Jews have a long history of diaspora.

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TLTP t1_iz5a684 wrote

The murders go back way farther than that. That’s also the point of the article, but they happened multiple times in every century since 600 if you count all of Europe.

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geetarzrkool t1_iz5g4qh wrote

...but the mother does, according to Deuteronomy. Can't have it both ways. If you're a "tribal nation", that just means close blood relations, which have to be defined, but never are. "Traditions" and "interpretations" are non-scientific and serve no purpose. DNA doesn't lie. That's why people hate it.

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geetarzrkool t1_iz5gafc wrote

Which proves there never was some sort of "pure, unbroken line" of paternity, or maternity. Of course, there isn't even agreement on which form of decent is "correct". It's maternal in the OT, sometimes paternal by "tradition"/surname and either/both/neither, as needed thereafter. Not even Israel can/will define the term, much less the myriad "religious interpretations", as if they have any place in Science, or the study of genetics.

Until such time as even a basic definition of terms can be agreed upon, all of these "studies" are a waste of time and money.

−3

geetarzrkool t1_iz5gx9c wrote

"a certain point", "distinct enough", "sort of share", "kinda constitute", "race".....sigh.

Very Scientific and "racist"! We all know how "Jews look". Please, provide said list of features.

−1

J11ghtman t1_iz5jomz wrote

Ashkenazi Jews descend from a very specific ethnic genetic lineage. I realize I could convert and no longer be Jewish, or someone with no genetic relatives who are Jews could convert into Judaism. I realize your belief doesn’t change your genes and vice versa.

But Jews who come from other Jews who were born Jews tend to come from a specific genetic family tree, one that came to Europe with the Romans as soldiers, slaves, merchants, and sometimes even royalty, where many took European spouses and had babies that were roughly half European and half Levantine. Which is why Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews have European genetic features. The key though is that due to prejudice, at certain pivotal moments and places in history, the European admixture was severely limited and Jews were murdered in medieval quantities that approach genocide. This resulted in genetic bottlenecks described in the article.

The challenge then is the mystery of which European community or communities created the bulk of the Ashkenazi European genetic family tree. There are a lot of theories involving everything from Carolingian France (tolerant of Jews) to Germanic pagans along the Rhein to Italians and other mid-late Roman Empire peoples. The truth is probably a little of all of this, since many Catholic and Lutheran Europeans also have Jews in their family trees dating back to medieval times.

But generic bottlenecks create major challenges in identifying admixture populations because the genes themselves don’t have racial or religious traits, they can only be used to compare to other generic populations to source a common ancestor. The problem is that when prejudice and genocide severely limit a genetic community to a small population of founders, your genes resemble that community far more than any other community, creating a distinctive genetic pattern that is hard to match with others. So while we know that Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews have European admixture, it’s currently impossible to identify with certainty who those people were.

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estherstein t1_iz5k9lw wrote

I would argue though that since we only recognize matrilineal descent and we don't differentiate between descendants of converts it's a religious definition and not a tribal one. You cannot tell if someone is Jewish (according to Orthodox Jewish standards) by DNA. Maybe their great-great-great-great grandmother converted- and if that conversion was valid, and they can prove direct female descent, they're 100% Jewish.

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Salt-Artichoke5347 t1_iz6qajv wrote

nope jews are heavily inbred look at the rothchilds marrying cousins etc the jews have their own diseases like tay sachs due to inbreeding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease#:~:text=Tay%E2%80%93Sachs%20disease%20is%20an,the%20gene%20from%20each%20parent.

https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genetic-diseases/

whites are the least inbred people on earth but hey i dont expect ignorant people to understand that judaism is both a religion and ethnic group

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AlessandroFromItaly t1_izadnxo wrote

Really interesting and logical considering their history over the last millenium.

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fellow_enthusiast t1_izd7p5e wrote

> More accurately, it’s an ethno religious group or “people”. You can convert into Judaism if you are accepted by a court of Jewish law - like applying for membership. Judaism is very old and is much older than modern concepts of race and religion.

>Ashkenaz issues are a subset of Jews, but all Jewish groups are ethnically distinct and have more in common with one another than with other groups - we all have common DNA from before we were concord and exiled.

. Umm, no. no you did not. im not arguing wherher jews were or were not exiled, it just seemed like his question was a weird, antisemitic attack about something that you hadnt mentioned.

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one_shattered_ego t1_j10gdgz wrote

Sorry I’m super late to reply, but I just wanted to ask if you even read the comment you quoted? Read the last word of the quote in your own comment. I agree the person was being weirdly anti-Semitic and you were trying to have hitchhikebaby’s back, but the last word of their comment was literally “exiled”

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