The Tribe of Levi That Moses Was From

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Jacob had 12 sons who were the origins of the famous 12 Tribes of of Jacob.  Levi was Jacob's 3rd son with Leah, his first wife.  The Levites were the tribe that Moses and his brother, Aaron, were from.

                                                   

Aaron was made high priest by Moses, and all his sons were to follow in his footsteps.  His DNA has been found to be called J1 or the Cohen gene.  Supposedly, all the Levites should have carried the same Y haplogroup of Jacob, and Jacob would have been carrying the same as his father, etc.                         

Scientists have found that this is true of the Cohens who lived under special conditions like not marrying a divorced woman, other  conditions, but is not proving to be true for the group designated as the Levites.                                       

                 Daniel Eskow, Levite, Russian Jewish,  painting by me

Levites:  In very ancient times, all the male descendants of the tribe of Levi were consecrated by Moses to serve in the  the Temple and to instruct the people.                       

 In those days, the 1st-born of each family served as priest, but because of the loyalty of the Levites during the incident of the Golden Calf, they replaced the first born of everyone. 

Each family of Levites was assigned specific duties connected with the transport and assembly of the parts of the future Temple in the wilderness.  The family of Aaron was singled out for service as priests within the Temple-to-be (as a temporary site, referred to as the Tabernacle.)                             

             Bon Voyage party before moving to Israel to teach

After the conquest of Canaan, the Levites were enjoined to teach the Torah to the people, being therefore excluded from any territorial inheritance but receiving 48 towns with their environs throughout the country, as well as a tithe of the agricultural produce.  This arrangement worked somewhat differently to practice.   Daniel, above, finally became a high school history teacher, and he was amazing at it in Oregon.

                                                

Certain towns assigned to the Levites were only captured a long time after the conquest, or not at all, and there is no evidence to show how effective was the collection of tithes.  Consequently, some of the Levites served at High Places, especially in the Northern Kingdom after Jeroboam had instituted independent worship.  

According to Chronicles at the very end of the Tanakh, when the Temple service was organized, traditionally by David, the Levites were divided into groups, each engaging in different work (singers, instramentalists, gatekeepers, assistants to the priests during the sacrifice, etc.  Like the priests, every group was divided into 24 sections, each serving for a week at a time.                        

Out of the tribe of Levi, with the Cohens being the direct line of Aaron, the Levites outnumbered the Cohens.They had become a 2nd-class priesthood.  They got to read from the Torah after the Cohens.  Temple-sacrifice privileges--at the very core of Jewish sacred ritual--were limited to the sons of the high priest Zadok (Cohens), whereas Levites became responsible for more mundane tasks such as day to day upkeep of the Temple, guarding the door, and transporting the Ark of the Covenant.                                                      

     Danny in Israel, teaching.  Under Israeli pressure now in my painting. He's wearing the Israeli style prayer shawl.  

In 2nd Temple times, the Priests outnumbered the Levites, and apparently shared their tithes.  In halakhah, or the law, the Levite is regarded as 2nd to the Priest, and has the privilege of having the Priest's hands before the latter blesses the people.  They had less influence and prestige than the Cohanim.  The Levite position was therefore ambiguous:  of high status but impoverished, "priestly" but not high priests.  Dan never felt impoverished in the status of a Levite but very proud to be one and took it seriously.  Sadly, he died without being DNA tested. 

 However, their responsibilities grew to include composition and performance of liturgical music, as well as teaching, administration and interpretation of Jewish law and ritual.  These functions became especially important during the Hellenistic period and, long before the destruction of the 2nd Temple, helped steer Jewish worship away from the Temple and into the homes and new synagogues.

About R1a-Y2619 Ashkenazi Levites

According to a 2003 study, about 52% of Ashkenazi men with a tradition of Levite descent belong to the R1a haplogroup. That haplogroup is less common among Ashkenazim without a tradition of Levite descent (and R1a-Y2619 men without a tradition of Levite descent are often able to determine from genealogical records or tombstones that their direct male line is in fact Levite). The haplogroup is found only rarely among Sephardim (both Levites and non-Levites).

Men belonging to this R1a cluster of Ashkenazi men have become known as R1a1a Ashkenazi Levites or, more recently, as R1a-Y2619 Ashkenazi Levites (Y2619 is a single-nucleotide polymorphism ("SNP") that is shared by all R1a1a Ashkenazi Levites.) It is possible that the origin of this haplogroup comes from Khazaria.

Many Levites have been found to carry the R-M17 haplogroup line, and it is now thought to have originated from Khazaria. The Khazar Empire stood to the east of the area of the Ashkenazi Jews, between the Dnieper and Volga rivers, and reached south into the modern nation of Georgia. Khazaria was established by Central Asian Turkic speaking people whose empire converted to Judaism when confronted that they were trading with Christians, Jews and Muslims, and so the Bulan or king actually chose Judaism and all followed. The people were no doubt Slavic and carriers of R-M17. We can't be sure, but it's a good possibility.

Today, the tribe of Levi, made up of the Cohanim and Levites, is the only tribe left out of the 12 Tribes of Jacob, though one would have thought that it wound be the tribe of Judah! Why is that? Similar to the modern-day Cohanim, non-Cohen Levites are estimated to account for some 4% of the contemporary Ashkenazi community and somewhat less of the Sephardi population. They are found in synagogues all over the world. Remember, they were scattered among all the tribes, and didn't have their own plot of land. In more observant congregations, Levites continue to discharge their historical religious functions. While they no longer have occasion to enforce rectitude at sword point as they once did, in some congregations, they still wash the hands of the Cohanim before the contemporary "priests" deliver their blessings.

In my experience, I have 3 DNA matches of the Y haplogroup E-L117, father and son, with son being very musical, a pianist, and another being a musician, playing the clarinet in his band. Could they also be Levites? Or could this just be coincidence? I wonder about the Cantors of Judaism? How many of them are Levites?

One would think that the general public of Jews, who are called the Israelites, would be the group who suffered the most in the Holocaust, being the remainder of the tribe of Judah, not counting the Cohens and Levites. Jews remaining are only 0.02% of the world population. Jews make up 2% of the USA population.

We're a very small group that should be protected, yet we still suffered from anti-Semitism. We're a group made smaller on our own as well by marrying outside out faith and assimilating., as well. We also have a 3rd danger of our own people turning against us in their desire to be liked by their own peer group; self-hating Jews. Sometimes I think they're out biggest danger.

Resource:

Updated with title: 12/29/2021, 10pm Pacific Time

https://sites.google.com/site/levitedna/home 

Book: Jacob's Legacy : A Genetic View of Jewish History

Kiev, Ukraine's Jewish Connections

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

Kiev is the capital of the Ukraine.  It was a Russian city at one time.  It's possible that the Khazars founded it in the 8th century.  Khazaria, ruled by Bulan, had selected Judaism for the Royal Court out of the 3 religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism to follow.  It had become a haven for Jews suffering from anti-Semitism in those days. They came to Ukraine from Khazaria, the Caliphate and Byzantium between the 9th and 12th centuries; from Central Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, and from Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Severe massacres happened there during the Chmielnicki and Haidamak uprising of the 17th and 18th centuries.   This state lay in what is the southern part of Russia on today's maps.  Jewish merchants had visited the Kiev  in the 9th and 10th centuries causing the Jewish population there to grow steadily, despite persecutions which started in 1113.
                                                                         

Jewish scholars from Kiev were known from the 12th century.  The community was then destroyed by the Tatars of Russia in 1240.  From the end of the 14th century, Jews were encouraged to return.  Both a Rabbanite and Karaite community existed there during the 15th century.

Expulsions were decreed in 1495, shortly after the 1492 ones from Spain by the Catholic church.  It happened again in 1619.  Peter the great permitted Jews to trade in Kiev from 1708.
                                                                             
In 1827, Kiev was excluded from the Pale of Settlement, which was land set aside in 1791 by Catherine II.  where Jews were allowed to live. it included Ukraine, Crimea, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,  White Russia, Bessarabia, 25 provinces of Czarist Russia in all.   They were excluded from Russia.  Therefore Kiev became one of the largest Russian communities.
                                                                             

Sholem Aleichem (Shalom Rabinovich 1859-1916) wrote Fiddler on the Roof, about Jews in the Ukraine.  In his most difficult years, he created the character of Tevye the milkman in the story.

Many pogrom happened here in 1881 and on, and even in 1905.  1,200 Jewish families were expelled in 1910.

  The Beilis Ritual Murder Trial occurred in 1913, which is hard to imagine happening at that late date.   Jews do not use blood in any way.  They do not eat blood, either, like some people do.  It's part of the laws of kashrut (kosher) not to do so, so when people say they use blood in matzos at Passover time, it's against all reason.  Here the Russians, who were very anti-Semitic, were accusing a Russian Jew, Menahem Mendel Beilis,  of Kiev,  of this.

350,000 Jews lived in Kiev in 1939, at the height of the Nazi days where Jews were definitely not safe anymore.  Most of those trapped by the Nazi advance were massacred in 1941.  Babi Yar is an example.  This was a ravine outside of Kiev where tens of thousands of Jews were killed in September 1941.  The massacre was a horror.  No memorial was erected until the 1980's to remind people of what had happened which was caused by anti-Semitism.  The Soviet poet, Evgeni Yevtuschenko, used it in his poem, "Babi-Yar" in 1962.  Later the event was used in a symphony by Shostakovitch and the subject of a novel by Anatoly Kuznetzov.  Jews who had lived in Ukraine were wiped out by the Ukrainians and Germans  from 1942 to 1942.
                                                                         

In the post-war period, Soviet anti-Semitism has been felt strongly in Kiev.  In 1988 there were 152,000 Jews living there.  Today Jews are not safe again due to the Russian and Rebels fight over Ukraine as a independent state.  In February, "“The situation here is dire,” said Yossi Asman, a Chabad yeshiva student and son of the chief rabbi. “We have been gathering up families and shuttling them out to safer neighborhoods.”  Two Chabad Yeshiva students had been attacked in Kiev.  Even the food supply in the city was dwindling.  The Israeli Embassy told the Jewish community not to go outside their homes.  Too many attacks had been discovered that were planned on Jews.  Again, 2014, Jews are still the scapegoats  of attacks in the battle between Ukrainians and Russia.   Perhaps Israel is the only answer for them.  

Resource: The New Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menahem_Mendel_Beilis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Ukraine
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/21/chief-rabbi-of-ukraine-urges-jews-to-flee-kiev-after-attack-on-students/

The Armenian Jews: Where They Came From-Where They Went

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

Armenian historians have written that Jews came to Armenia right after the destruction of the 1st Temple of Solomon.  This would have Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE who destroyed it.  Armenia is a part of Western Asia and is east of the Caspian Sea. Yerevan, Armenia is 779 miles away from Jerusalem, Israel.  If it is 9:26pm in Jerusalem, it is 11:26pm in Yerevan.  One could drive from Portland, Oregon to Cottonwood Heights, Utah and also cover 779 miles.  It would have made quite a camel caravan of traveling.  Traders would have made the trip before and possibly led people there.  
                                                                               

The Temple was rebuilt from 538 to 515 BCE and then was called the 2nd Temple.  It took 71 years to regain this 2nd Temple.  Of course, ties existed between the Jews who stayed in Armenia and the Jews of Judah during the 2nd Temple days.  Judah had been a section of Israel that split off when King Solomon died in 933 BCE.  The state of Judah lasted with kings till Zedekiah was the last king from 597 to 586 BCE when they were attacked.  

The Romans had taken over Jerusalem making Herod a King of Judea.  He lived from 73 BCE to 4 BCE.  He was the son of Antipater, the Idumean  and  had a Nabatean mother, Cypros.  Antipater had helped the Romans take over Jerusalem.  He had at one time been the ruler of Idumea (Edom).  This was a country in SE Eretz Israel, also called Mount Seir. Edomites were traditional enemies of the Israelites.  They had fought against the first Jewish King Saul and King David.  In the 8th century the Edomites were vassels of Assyria.  It was John Hyrcanus who forced them to convert to Judaism.   Edom  was a mountainous country and was south of the Dead Sea and bordered on the Red Sea at Elath. They were Semites, traditionally descendants of Esau and were hunters.   Herod  was a cruel ruler and a murderer.  He had ordered the slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem.  

 One of his grandsons, Aristobulus, was made king of Little Armenia by Nero.  Two other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia.While young, Herod had been appointed Governor of the Galilee of Judah by his father.  He showed no problem coming on very strong with the population and executed any who disagreed with him.  For this the Sanhedrin wanted to give him the penalty of death for killing, but Hyrcanus and Sextus Caesar, governor of Syria, intervened with higher powers.  

The Romans also allied with  King Tigranes II the Great of Armenia. Armenia became the strongest state in the Roman republic.   He lived from 140 to 55 BCE.  Tigranes brought with him 10,000 Jewish captives to Armenia when he left Judah because of the Roman attack on Armenia in 69 CE.  He also became king of Syria as well.  Like Armenia, Tigranes was a pagan.  

Many Jews settled in Armenia during these next generations.  The Talmud mentions a Rabbi Jacob of Armenia and a school at Nisibis.  

From the 4th century on, the Jewish population started to shrink  because of exile and emigration.  Medieval travelers found many small Jewish communities at Nisibis and other places.  

Armenian Christians lived in Jerusalem since the 5th century and there is an Armenian quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.  

The longest river in Europe is the Volga River.  It flows through Central Russia and along this river lived a Turkic people, including the: "Azerbaijanis, Chuvashes, Kazakhs, Tatars, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uyghurs,Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Qashqai, Gagauz, Yakuts, Crimean Karaites,Krymchaks, Karakalpaks, Karachays, Balkars, Nogais and as well as past civilizations such as the Göktürks, Kumans, Kipchaks, Avars, Bulgars,Turgeshes, Khazars, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, Mamluks, Timurids,Khiljis, and possibly Huns and the Xiongnu".  

Since Turkey bordered Armenia, it is good to know that there came to be many  varieties of people in the area.  However, Khazaria did not come about to its fullest till the 8th to 10th centuries CE.  They were made up of either Turkish or Finnish tribes  and their capital was Itil in the Volga delta and were called the White Ugrians. 
 "The Khazars probably belonged to the West Turkish Empire (from 552 C.E.), and they may have marched with Sinjibū (Istämi), the first khāqān of the West Turks, against the Sassanid (Persian) fortress of Ṣul or Darband"

 Hungarians were called Black Ugrians.  The Khazar royal house intermarried with the Byzantiums.  Their king Bulan and supposedly 4,000 of his royal household converted to Judaism in the 8th Century CE.  Their Prince Obadiah saw to it that they were converted properly.  The original Khazars came from the east. 

We have some Jews leaving Armenia in the 300's and their neighbors, Turkey and Russia, having Khazaria appearing in their lands by the late 700's.  Whether any Jews had drifted into Khazaria is not known.  That is a long span of time.  Being Christians from Armenia went to Jerusalem in the 5th century tells me that Jews from Armenia must have gone back, also.  As proof of this, Jews have been praying every day to return to Jerusalem lest they should lose their right arm if they forget it.  This remembering and returning is very important.  

Then from 360 to 370 there was an increase in Jewish Hellenistic immigration into Armenia.  Many Armenian towns became mostly Jewish.  By the same token, the Persian Shapur II began deporting thousands of Jews to Persia (today's Iran).  

Hellenism made an impact in Armenia so studies did not grow here.  During the Medieval days, most of the Jews left, thought to become part of the Kurdish Jewry.  A cemetery lies in Vayots Dzor in the city of Eghegis SW of Yerevan with more than 40 tombstones that date to the 13th century and 16 with Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions.  

Much later in the 19th century, Jews entered Armenia from Persia and Poland, so then they had a mixture of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews.  From 1840 they had communities in Yerevan.  Hundreds of displaced Jews moved to Soviet Armenia.  Then there were at least 10,000 Jews living there.  Another wave came in between 1965 and 1972 made up of the intelligentsia, military and engineers.  They were attracted to a more liberal society.  

The Ottoman Empire learned a lot from the Germans who were their allies in WWI.  Muslim leaders were visiting with Hitler during WWII who were against the Jews.  The empire committed Armenian genocide and slaughtered from 1 million to 1 1/2 million Armenians.  They massacred the males and forced the women and children in marches in the Syrian desert.  Other ethnic groups were to be next.  Today of course there is still this divide between the Armenians and the Turks because of this needless slaughter that took place in 1915.  .  

Today there are less than 1,000 Jews in Armenia because of  emigration and assimilation.  Between 1992 and 1994, more than 6,000 Jews  immigrated to Israel because of economic and political reasons hurting Jews.  However, in 1995, Chabad House was established in Yerevan.  They offered classes about Judaism, Hebrew, Jewish traditions and free meals.  

Resource:  The new Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_River
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_people
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/khazars.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/armenia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigranes_the_Great
http://www.ldolphin.org/chron.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

Who Were the Jews of Ukraine? Khazars?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                            

                                                                                                   Kiev, Russia
Jews from Judah have lived in the Balkans, in the Caucasus including Georgia, along the northern shores of the Black Sea and in other areas of eastern Europe since Roman days, probably even before 70 CE when Jerusalem fell and people were either slaughtered or taken as captives destined to be slaves.  Jews have been traders for ages as they lived in the crossroads of civilization.  There were large Jewish communities there before the Khazar empire was established.  Romans and Byzantines took control over ancient Greek colonies, and the Crimean Jews began to trade often with the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.  Later, most of the Crimea became part of the Khazarian empire.  The descendants of the early Jewish populations of the Crimea and Caucasus could have influenced the decision of the Khazars to convert to Judaism.  It was the Crimean Jews that came into direct contact with the Khazars.

Southern Russia back in the 600's was known as Khazaria.  They were Turkic horsemen from the steppes of central Asia, or the mountains of the Urals or Caucasus who believed in shamanism, the worship of spirits,  and the sky,  and lived as nomads. Trees were sacred.  They came to settle down as the centuries went by and a Kagan (king), named Bulan,  chose Judaism for the royal house and converted.  Only the king, leaders and members of the upper class converted to Judaism as reported in 903, by a Persian historian named Muhammad ibn Rustah, in Kitab A'laq an-Nafisa. He said that Judaism later spread to the general populace.   His people were able to choose for themselves whether they wanted to be Christians, Muslims or Jews as everyone was replacing their former Tengri beliefs.  It's thought that he chose Judaism as it was more politically correct at that time since then he didn't have to side with the many Muslims against Christians in trading.  There  was no anti-Semitism and the people were very liberal in Khazaria.

After the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity, conversion to Judaism became prohibited. "Many Greek and Roman women married Jewish men before conversion to Judaism was outlawed by the Roman Empire, and many of the Southern European ancestral lines in Ashkenazic families come from these marriages." In 315, Emperor Constantine I issued the first Roman edict forbidding Jews from seeking converts.  No wonder it isn't our thing to do.  Even today we do not  practice this.  The punishment for doing so was that property would be taken away from  Jews caught assisting anyone to convert.  However, Judaizing movements did continue to spring up in many lands.   Bulgaria proselytes converted others to Judaism in the 800's.  There were even some Christian clergy members who converted.

The Byzantine Empire from 324-638 had strong anti-Jewish policies where they forced many Jews to leave for less dangerous places such as Khazaria.  Some of their emperors' policies were of forced baptism.  By 632, the emperor Heraclius said that all Jews must convert to Christianity.  Emperor Leo in  722 had the same policy.  Jews could not live in that empire.

Everyone referred to The Khazars as Turks.  They were described as having blue eyes, light or white skin and reddish hair.  Other Turkish tribes also had red hair.  Other writers said they had black hair and that there were black Khazars and white Khazars, light and dark skinned.  In an excavation of burial mounds from the 10th to 12 centuries, archaeologists found Khazars belonging to the Slavic people while others were short-skulled Europeans.  Only a few Mongolian types were found.  Another theory was that they originated from Khorasan which was eastern Persia who united with the Sabirs in the 6th century.  One claim is that they are related to the Georgians and Armenians.  Some of the Turkic people believe that they descended from Noah through Japheth and son Gomer to Togarmah who had 10 sons and that the Khazars were descendants of the 7th son.  According to what I find in the Bible, Noah leads right from Shem to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and he leads to Moses and Aaron.
                                                                     

Khazaria was on the Silk Road and a lot of trading with everyone, east and west, went on.  Jews came to live in Khazaria from other places who had been persecuted and found a haven there. Being it was a trading center, people of all types lived there.   Ancient Russian chronicles say that some Jews from Khazaria visited Vladimir, the prince of Kiev, which became the capital of Ukraine, to try to convert him to Judaism in 986.  Jews were already living in Kiev by then.  It lay on the River Dnieper which was the commercial crossroads of Western Europe and the Orient which attracted Jewish traders in the 8th century.  Jewish merchants from the West called Radanites were traders in the city and were referred to in Hebrew as "goers to Russia."

Khazaria was a large empire with many large Jewish settlements.  At its maximum size, it took in the northern Caucasus and the Volga delta, and went as far east as the steppes of Khwarizm/Khorezm and as far west as Kiev. Between 730 and 750, the city of Atil, which was serving only as a royal camp, became the 3rd and final capital of the Khazar Empire. Here the kagan lived with the bek, members of the army, 4,000 attendants and "pure-bred Khazars.  A brick wall surrounded the city.  This could have been a Jewish camp.  Khazaran-Atil sat on the lower Volga near the Caspian Sea in eastern Khazaria and was the most important trading center of the empire and also was the center of religion and government.  It had many markets and baths.  People of all 3 religions lived here in harmony!  Iranians and Khwarizms, Muslims lived in the eastern half of the city which was known as Khazaran.  30 mosques were in the capital in the 920's.  There were still pagans who lived here.  In the 920's the ruler was Khaz, a Muslim.

  Starting in the 10th century the empire started to get smaller and eventually ended.  In the year 930, Kiev was under Khazarian rule.  Two Jewish suburbs of Kiev were Kozary and Zhidove.  There were riots that broke out on the the death of Prince Svyatopolk in 1113 when the people attacked Jewish homes and burned them down.

In comparing Ashkenazis to Sephardim,
1. Ashkenazi showed twice the amount of R1a haplogroup DNA than Sephardim-10:5. and is very common throughout Europe and western Eurasia.
2.  J1, called the Cohen gene,  was almost even with a few more in Sephardim-22:19. found in Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Kurds, higher % in Iran and Iraq, carried by traders into Europe, central Asia, India, Pakistan
3. E showed up twice as much in Ashkenazim-20.5:9 but is found in the Middle East.
4. Q showed Ashkenazim being more prominent-5:2. found in northern and central Asian population, native Americans and 5% of Jews have this haplogroup.
5. Neither showed any N which was 0:0, found in northern Eurasia in Finns, Russians and Hungarians.  It's a common line in western Siberia.

The Jews tested today from Ukraine for their DNA most likely are showing genes inherited from Khazaria along with genes from Judea and Israel itself besides other possibilities.  Not all Ashkenazi Jews originated from Khazaria from the royal house that were converts.  Many Jews had lived in this empire from all sorts of other places.  It is possible that Jews whose ancestors had resided in Ukraine back to the 600's could have have Khazarian ancestors.  There are Jews whose haplogroup is an R1a1 who might show this distinction as this haplogroup is thought to come from southern Russia.    At one time I thought my father's line of Q1b1a could be the royal descendants, but that theory has been discarded even though we are connected to other Q'a who are the native Americans and we both originated from Mongolia, Siberia and parts of  Turkey and make up only 5% of today's Jews. My grandfather came from Lithuania.   Whatever ancestors reside in the Jews from Ukraine, they have turned out to be some of the most intelligent people with great leadership skills such as Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meier and Yitzhak Rabin, former prime ministers of Israel.    A Jew from Ukraine should feel most proud of his rich heritage.

Resource: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11117.html
The Jews of Khazaria, 2nd edition, by Kevin Alan Brook
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_European_populations
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html
http://www.khazaria.com/

What Genetics Tells Us About Our Ashkenazi Origins

Nadene Goldfoot                                                           

Ashkenazi Jews (from Europe) came originally from Israel and Judea according to historic evidence.    What do DNA studies tell us about our origins?  Arthur Koestler (b: September 5, 1905 in Budapest, d: March 1, 1983) , who wrote the Thirteenth Tribe back in 1976 thought Ashkenazi Jews all came from Khazaria, a southern part of Russia.  He belonged to the Communist Party in Germany and resigned in 1938.  He is also known for his book, "Darkness at Noon", and died of suicide in 1983.  His wife was Jewish but he wasn't.  We learn that in Khazaria, the kagan or king had converted to Judaism and his royal house followed suit.  This happened in about the 7th century CE.  Koestler's book is used against Jews in that he diminishes the fact that Ashkenazim also came from the Middle East and were descendants of Abraham just like the Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews were.  Today some Muslims are trying to use this as reason for Israelis not to be in Israel and that they should all leave since about half the population of Israel is of Ashkenazi descent.

Jews have long felt that their creative zeal comes from living in their own land of Israel and certainly holds to be true.  Many inventions have been rolling out of Israel, much of it being in the medical technologies benefiting all of mankind.  The philosopher Ahad Ha'am (1856-1927) maintained that Jewish cultural creativity would come about when we were speaking our own language and being masters of their own fate in our own land.

We have historic  evidence that Jews settled in many countries outside of  Israel and Judah before 70 CE, but certainly afterwards.  Slaves are bought and sold.  That's what the Jews had become.  They were taken to the many parts of the Roman Empire.

Population geneticists find through the Y chromosome haplotypes of males which show that ancestors of Ashkanazi Jews were Judeans or Israelites and show some European ancestry among them as well and some apparent central Asian and east Asian elements.

A paper published in 2000 by Harry Ostrer and Michael Hamamer, PhD's, showed that Ashkenazis, Italians, North Africans, Iraqi, Iranian, Kurdish and Yemenite Jews often share common Y-DNA haplotypes that are also found among many Arabs from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.  Only a small % of Jews Ydna originated outside of the Middle East.  The conclusion was that Jews hadn't intermarried with non-Judeans including converts to Judaism outside of the mother country of Judah.  They saw the close relationship between Ashkenazi Jews and Italian Jews concluding that the main ancestors of Ashkenazis were the ancient Jews of Rome.  That goes along with the history I had found about the scattering of Jews after 70 CE when Jerusalem was taken by the Romans and the Jews became slaves and were carted away, leaving just  Jews  that could not be rounded up.

Scientists see that Jews from Europe, NW Africa and the Near East look like each other more than they look like their gentile neighbors in Europe.

Now we'll look at the mtDNA carried by both men and women.  There we find results showing the same conclusions as the Ydna except that with the mtDNA, there was a larger degree of European ancestry along with some central Asian and east Asian elements.  There are basically 7 major haplogroups of mtDNA with just a few additional ones found, such as my grandmother's mtDNA (W).  mtDNA  does not mutate as quickly as Ydna.   While Jewish men, wherever they were, remained Jewish, they traveled a lot.  They became traders or peddlers going into unchartered places.  They would then take the native women for their wives.  When they created a stable environment with the women learning about Judaism,  they then considered both parties to be Jewish bearing Jewish children.  So the mtDNA would have picked up more DNA from outside sources.  African mtDNA was not very prevalent among modern Jewish populations.

In 2002's mtDNA study, the Bene Israel of India were very close to 2 mtDNA hapalotypes of Indian people and Ethiopian Jews whose mtDNA matches Ethiopians and Somalians.  A portion of the mtDNA comes from non-Jewish peoples where they had lived.  This also goes in testing Georgian Jews and Ashnkenazic Jews.  It goes to prove that men picked up their women where they were traveling.  The Ydna is usually Judean.  This is why Jews might resemble their neighbors more.  A 2004 study found the most prevalent mtDNA haplogroups among Ashkenazim are K with 32%, H with 21%, N1b with 10%, and J1 with 7%.  K is found in small numbers in Europe and the Middle East. N1b is Middle Eastern origin. K is a subbranch of U believed to have first appeared in the early stages of the Holocene Epoch when populations expanded into Europe after the last glacial maximum.  About 1/3 of people with Ashkenazi ancestry carry a subclade of this haplogroup.  Bryan Sykes calls K, Katrine with fair hair and greenish brown eyes and her clan flourished in northern Italy and beyond.  One of her descendants was "The Iceman."  Today, 6% of native Europeans are K's.  It is still frequent around the Mediterranean with descendants today all over Europe.  W was found in the western Ural Mountains and the eastern Baltic area, though it is also found in India.  My W paternal grandmother came from Poland/Lithuania in the Suwalki area and said she was a Litvak.  She was very short with black curly hair and brown eyes.

A January 2006 study by Doron Behar informed us that about 40% of Ashkenazic Jews descend from the mtDNA of one of 4 women.  One of the 4 women is also found genetically in some non-Jews in the Middle East.  I might add that we have had Assyrians and Babylonians steal our people from Israel in the past.  If they weren't eaten or slaved to death, their descendants would be today's Muslims in the Middle East.

 In one 2000 study, the only  Slavic population tested were Russians.  The only Turkic population tested were Anatolian Turks.  The Medieval empire of Khazaria would need people tested today from Turkics found in tribes from north Caucasus and central Asia.  That has yet to be done.  I note that my own line of Ydna is Q1b1a, said to originate from Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey about 24,000 years ago. Give a group 20,000 years, and they can migrate pretty far for many reasons.  That's what they must have done to wind up in Lithuania and be my family line.

In a 2001 study of Y-dna of 79 Jews, the Kurds were included along with Arabs. Comparisons  were made with data from Slavic Poles, Belarusians and Ukrainians, people who lived in the Pale of Settlement.  That was an area of 25 provinces set off for Jews to live in  starting in 1791 as they weren't allowed into Russia during Catherine II's reign.  By 1882 the May Laws were established keeping Jews out of rural areas.  The Pale didn't end until August of 1915 and legally until March 1917, the end of WWI.  In the early 1900's thousands of Jews immigrated to the USA including my Jewish Lithuanian grandfather with his Q1b1a genes.  Others immigrated to "Palestine" or England.  The scientists wrote that Kurdish and Sephardic (Spain, Portugal) Jews were indistinguishable from one another.  Both differed slightly but significantly from Ashkenazi Jews.  There had been a separation of the people for almost 2,000 years starting in 70 CE or even longer.  Babylonian Jews, kidnapped by Babylonia in 597 and 586 BCE were taken to Persia where we find Queen Esther and many Jews.  That would up the chances if their descendants were today's Sephardis.  The scientists explained the happening as "low-level gen flow from the European population and or genetic drift during isolation"...

Jews were more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent such as Kurds, Anatolian Turks and Armenians than to their Arab neighbors.  They identified haplogroup R1a1 as a European marker found in substantial frequencies among Hungarian, Sorbs, Poles, Belarusians and Ukrainians and less often among Macedonians, Udmurts (tribe in Russia), and Turkic Chuvashes along with some Kurds and Bedouins.  I might add that a recent DNA test on King Tut of Egypt surprised us all with a result of R1...My own son, whose father was from England is R1b1a2, non Jewish and is 1 point off of being the Atlantic Model Haplotype.  25% of his genes are from Jewish sources and according to Jewish law, having a Jewish mother makes him Jewish as well.  .  The report found 12.7% of Ashkenazic men studied showed R1a may be due to intermarriage with Khazars or eastern Europeans.  I believe they shouldn't ignore the possibilities of picking those up in Great Britain as well.  It's full of R1b's.  My mother's gentile father was R1b1a2a1a1b4.  Jews were in Britain sometime after 70 CE but were all expelled in 1290 CE.  Where did they go?  Possibly Germany or eastern Europe.

In 2005 a study by the same researchers studied 495 Ashkenazic men and R1a1 was found in 11.5% of them.  Kurds were among the closest paternal relatives of Jews.  Both Ashkenazic and Mizrakhi Jews (Egypt)  and Muslim Kurds shared several haplotypes and chromosomes more than Jews and Palestinian Arabs shared.  The mountains of  Turkey, Iran and Iraq have been home to the Kurds.  Our tradition says that the first Jewish settlers went to Kurdistan in the time of Ezra. in the 5th Century BCE. (400 BCE).  Ezra worked for the Persian government.  In 458 BCE he went to Jerusalem.  Jews had been in exile from Jerusalem.  Today's Kurds are Muslims.  This is the group that Iraq's Saddam Hussein killed by gas.  Jews also have a similar relationship with Armenians and Anatolian Turks.

My own study  in 2011 of a 90 year old Ashkenazi Jew in Portland who was a Cohen in the synagogue turns out to be a Cohen by Ydna as well.  His Ydna test was J1c3d, the Cohen gene.  His haplogroup is the same as an Iraqi Muslim with a branch on the Arab showing that connection.  The Cohen gene is found among 45% of Ashkenazic Kohens and 56% of Sephardic Kohens.  It is found in only 3-5% of non Kohen Jewish men from Ashkenazic and Sephardic branches and in the Bene Israel Jews of India.  All Kohens are descendants of the Israelite high priest Aaron, brother of Moses.

The Lembas in South Africa claim Jewish heritage and are thrilled to have it show up in their genes.  Italians in central and southern Italy carry it which is no surprise.  Kurds in Iraq, Armenians, Palestinian Arabs and Hungarians in Budapest also are J1's.  4 out of 5 Samaritans from Israel and Palestine are very closely related to J1 which shows they are descended paternally from the original Israelites.  Jews are either Cohens, Levites or Israelites.  Now, Levites are supposed to be from the tribe of Levi and should have the same DNA as Abraham and Moses.  They are the assistant priests  and 2nd to read the Torah after the Cohens.

52% of Ashkenazic Levites were R1a1.  It is found that 11% of Sorbs have the same dna and 8.5% of Belarusians.  Have the scientists also considered that we lost some Jews to conversion along the way?  Sephardic Levites do not have this dna.  Whoever the founder of R1a1 was probably lived around the year 1,000-1,014 after the separation of Sepharim and Ashkenazim in 70 CE.  Due to so many attacks on Jews, the Jews may have had to take another person  to fill this role.  A few Jews are R1a which is not the same thing as R1a1.  P-M45 Ydna  is found in people of central Siberia and central Asia like the Uzbeks.  5.2% of Ashkenazic men have the Q-P36 haplogroup of Q1b1a.  It's my grandfather's haplogroup.  American Indians are also Q's from farther back.  We broke off from them.  At first it was thought to be of Khazar origin but today it's thought that Hungarians are more likely.

Resource: Robert Gabel, here is the R1a project with all haplotypes assigned to the subclades: http://www.familytreedna.com/public/R1a/default.aspx?section=yresults
The Jews of Khazaria 2nd Edition by Kevin Alan Brook
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_people
The New Jewish Encyclopedia
The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koeestler
Abraham's Children by Jon Entine
The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/jewish-genes-what-haplogroup-could-they.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews