Science confirms history
Holy Discovery
NATIONAL POST
An expert has found evidence to support claims that modern-day Jewish priests, Cohanim, are descended from Aaron, the older brother of Moses. Menahem Kahana, AFP, Getty Images Files Ultra-Orthodox Jews pray near the tomb of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, in the West Bank. An expert has found evidence to support claims that modern-day Jewish priests, Cohanim, are descended from Aaron, …
Dr. Karl Skorecki works on the cutting edge of molecular science, revolutionizing medicine through genetics and the use of stem cells to test anti-cancer therapies.
But as a sideline, the former University of Toronto professor has become world famous for applying genetics to genealogy and transforming history. He has found evidence to support traditional claims that modern-day Jewish priests, Cohanim, are descended from a single common male ancestor — biblically said to be Aaron, the older brother of Moses.
Among the other intriguing findings he has uncovered: that 40% of Ashkenazi Jews can trace their descent to four “founding mothers” who lived in Europe 1,000 years ago, evidence that all Jewish communities share a common paternal origin in the Near East, and genetic evidence supporting claims southern Africa’s Lemba tribe may be Africa’s “Black Jews.”
“It began as a hobby, but it took on a life of its own,” Dr. Skorecki says. “I didn’t think anyone would really be that interested. I’m a nephrologist and a physician but I’ve always been interested in the genetic predisposition to disease.”
Fifteen years ago, as he attended Shabbat services at his Toronto synagogue, Dr. Skorecki says his mind wandered during the reading of the Torah.
“A Cohen [Jewish priest] of North African, Sephardic, non-Ashkanazi origin was called up to read the Torah and it just got me to thinking what we have in common,” he says.
“I myself am also a Cohen, but of recent European ancestry. It struck me as interesting that, on one hand, our paternal genealogies have been geographically separated for at least a thousand years. Yet, on the other hand, we share a Biblical oral tradition of common male ancestry dating back more than 100 generations.”
According to tradition, the status of priest (Cohen) was conferred on Aaron and his sons, and has been passed on from father to son ever since the Exodus from Egypt.
As he sat in his Toronto synagogue, Dr. Skorecki says, “I realized if that were true, then it was a scientific hypothesis that was testable.”
He reasoned the Cohanim should all have a common set of genetic markers at a higher frequency than the general Jewish population. After consulting Dr. Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona and a pioneer in studying the Y chromosome,
the two men developed an experiment to test his thesis.
Besides determining maleness, the Y chromosome consists almost entirely of non-coding DNA, which is passed from father to son without recombination. Therefore the genetic information on a Y chromosome of a man living today is basically the same as that of his ancient male ancestors, with rare mutations that occur along hereditary lines.
By tracking those neutral mutations or genetic markers scientists can come up with the genetic signature of a man’s male ancestry.
Dr. Skorecki’s test found an array of six common chromosomal markers in 97 of the 106 Cohens he tested. Calculations based on variations of the mutations rooted the men’s shared ancestry 106 generations in the past — 3,300 years ago, or the approximate time of Exodus.
He also discovered the common set of genetic markers in both Ashkenazi (European) and Sephardic (North African) Cohens, indicating they shared the same ancestry before their communities were separated more than 1,000 years ago.
“It’s amazing,” Dr. Skorecki says. “It’s like an archeological finding. But instead of digging up in the sand, we dig in contemporary DNA.”
His findings triggered a storm of interest in Jewish genealogy and the application of DNA analysis to the study of history.
The only child of Holocaust survivors, Dr. Skorecki was born and raised in Toronto. He took his medical degree at the University of Toronto, where he taught for 11 years before moving to Israel in 1995.
He is now director of the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in Medical Sciences and a researcher at the Rambam-Technion University Medical Center in Haifa, Israel’s largest medical centre. After moving to Israel, Dr. Skorecki continued to dabble in genetic genealogy and conducted studies that suggest there is genetic evidence to support a common paternal origin for all Jewish communities.
In yet another study, Dr. Skorecki discoveredan unusual genetic signature, thought to have originated in Central Asia, in more than half the Levites of Ashkenazi descent.
“They seem to be the descendants of one man who lived about 1,000 years ago somewhere between the Caspian and the Black Sea,” he says. “Whether his ancestors originated there or he migrated from the Near East is unclear. We can’t tell. But that is also the time and location of the mythical Khazar kingdom.”
Dr. Skorecki says one of the most surprising discoveries of his genetic analysis of Jewish genealogy involves claims by the Lemba tribe of southern Africa to have Jewish origins.
The Bantu-speaking tribe of roughly 70,000, now mostly Christians, are spread across South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. But the tribe’s oral history claims Jewish ancestry, saying their founding fathers were Jews, led by a man named “Buba” who sailed to East Africa.
Unlike any of their surrounding neighbours, the Lemba observe many Jewish traditions, such as kosher-like dietary restrictions and slaughter practices, male circumcision and one holy day a week.
“Most historians were skeptical,” Dr. Skorecki says. “But the genetic evidence is one of the most surprising stories we’ve encountered.
It is not clear whether the genetic origin was Jewish or Arab or a mixture. But a strikingly high number of Lemba males also carry the same genetic signature markers Dr. Skorecki discovered in modern-day Jewish Cohanim.
More remains to be done, but Dr. Skorecki is convinced genetic research is a powerful tool for historical study.
“It’s not perfect. It’s not physics. But it is not less reliable than lets say fossil records, archaeology, liturgy or oral histories,” he says.
“In the larger context it adds further insight.”
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Jewish genes:
The Torah says that G-d gave us “physical signs” and “spiritual symbols” to prove the truth of Judaism and its unbroken continuity. The main symbol is Shabbes, where we inject holiness into one day each week (there is no indication that the rule of Shabbes has ever been broken, and that our current “Saturday” is the same Saturday observed by our Jewish ancestors in the desert).
The physical signs included the Holy Ark and its contents: the stone tablets of the ten Commandments and Aaron’s staff.
These have all been lost, but according to the new genetic studies, Aaron’s staff has been internalized by his descendants in the form of their Y chromosomes.
The four founding mothers of Ashkenazi Jews:
Ashkenazi Jews are noticeable for their high IQ and their high incidence of certain genetic diseases. More and more, it looks like these are linked by the shared genetic inheritance from a small group of “founders”.
The European Jews started out in Spain, France, and Germany (the opposite end of the Roman Empire from Israel), but ended up in Poland and the Ukraine. They moved from west to east in response to horrible persecutions by the western european goyim, as they became more and more Jew-hating Catholics. These Catholics slaughtered western european Jews during the crusades and the Black Death (they blamed the Jews for this, as well as for killing their man-god). They killed many Jews, forcibly converted others, and expelled the rest eastwards.
It took a very determined, smart, and stubborn Jewish man and Jewish woman to walk thousands of miles east, found new homes, survive in the new environment, and still maintain their Jewishness to the highest standards.
Those are my nameless ancestors, and those of my fellow Ashkenazi Jews. Think of them each morning, when you daven: Thank You HaShem, Who did not make me a goy.
Comment by Samuel Fistel — October 29, 2009 @ 3:26 pm
Is this to say that most Ashkenazi are not genetically Jewish? That they are in fact descendents of Jewish converts?
Comment by Laura — October 29, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
Why do you assume that the 1000 year old man was not the ancient equivalent of the Frisco Kid?
Comment by Shy Guy — October 29, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
I’m not assuming anything, just wondering.
Comment by Laura — October 29, 2009 @ 10:28 pm
hey, we want to know about ‘buba’!!!
it could’ve been ‘bubbeh’ but that would’ve been the gramma.
unless ‘bubbeh’ was an affectionate shortening of ‘bubbeleh’…
Comment by bugsy — October 30, 2009 @ 12:00 am
Most are. Why are you surprized? And since Jacob’s daughter Dinah has no recorded children, there is no real Israelite blood in Jews on the female side — only on the male side, in a minority of Jews.
The “Cohanim” claims, by the way are bogus. The yDNA of about half the Cohanim indeed indicates COMMON descent, but it’s ludicrous to assume that that common ancestor had to be Aaron. Aaron, after all, was only some five generations removed from Jacob; so the common ancestor of those cohanim could just as well have been Jacob, Avraham or even Noach. The evidence is strongly suggestive, and supports the claims of these cohanim in their purported Aaronic ancestry; but mere possession of the “Cohen Modal Haplotype” does not establish Aaronic ancestry.
On the other hand, having yDNA from some haploGROUP other than the cohenic group of J1, absolutely proves that the one with such DNA is NOT a male-line descendant of Jacob, and has no blood-tie right to inheritance in eretz Israel. Even if a Jew who IS properly descended from Jacob died with only daughters, those daughters were obligated to marry male-line kinsmen (i.e. those having Hg J1) in order to inherit their father’s portion. At least 3/4 of Jews of all kinds are NOT J1, and therefore not TRIBAL Jews (even though their female connection to those “founding mothers” makes them halichic “Jews”.
Concerning those “founding mothers”, they are of diverse origins and cannot be definitely be located in the Middle East, much less Israel. And of course, even in Israel they were converts through marriage to Jewish men.
Comment by BlandOatmeal — October 31, 2009 @ 8:44 am
I know a medrash you don’t know!
Comment by Shy Guy — October 31, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
Shy Guy,
Thank you for reading what I wrote.
Concerning the midrash, this would hardly be called a “record” in the genealogical sense, since it was, at best, hearsay over dozens of generations. Even if Dinah did have children, on the other hand, it is probable that Jacob’s sons did not violate the mitzvot and marry her children; and even if they did, there is no promise of any covenant passing from Jacob through the female line — ESPECIALLY inheritance, which even the rabbis of today agree is passed from father to son or (in the case of a father leaving only daughters) kinsman to son.
The bottom line is that only about a quarter of Jews have a male line that can even remotely be considered Israelite in the male line (haplogroup J1, which is more prevalent among Arabs than Jews); and since Ashkenazi Jews have FOUR “founding mothers”, each with widely disparate haplogroups, no more than a quarter of Ashkenazi Jews can even guess at a remote connection to a single ancestoress such as Dinah.
Ashkenazi Levites, by the way, are predominantly R1a, which reflects Khazar origins. The Khazars represent about 20% or the total Ashkenazi gene pool.
None of this should be surprizing to Jews, unless they had some notion that Jews are of pure blood.
Comment by BlandOatmeal — October 31, 2009 @ 9:03 pm
Who were Jacob’s daughters and granddaughters? Several verses in the Torah indicate that Jacob had not only sons and grandsons, but also daughters and granddaughters.
Rashbam:
How could it be that the patriarch Jacob had only one daughter but twelve sons, and how could it be that among all his offspring in general there would be only two females? Although it is within the power of the Holy One, blessed be He, to make exceptional cases, there is no hint of this in the biblical account, nor is it clear why the Holy One, blessed be He, should have made such an exceptional case. Rashi’s approach can be similarly refuted: how could it be that all the women died before the descent to Egypt, as maintained by Rabbi Judah.
Therefore, Rabbi Samuel David Luzzato explains the verse as follows:
My mentor, Rabbi Abraham Grigo says that other daughters were born to Jacob, but only Dinah was mentioned because of the affair concerning her; for everywhere in recounting the history of our early generations Scripture mentions only the males and those females to whom some noteworthy event occurred or who were themselves famous in one way or another. It seems to me that Jacob and his sons undoubtedly had other daughters, but they were not included in the count of seventy persons because they married their nephews and cousins, just as Jocheved married Amram; and it says, “aside from the wives of Jacob’s sons” (Gen. 46:26). Hence they were not counted [since they were all included in the "wives of Jacob's sons who were not included in the tally], save for Dinah and Serah, who apparently were mentioned because they were single.
According to Shadal, following Rabbi Abraham Grigo, Jacob and his sons had daughters, as would necessarily follow from the plain sense of the text coupled with the laws of nature, but they were not included in the reckoning of seventy persons because they married Jacob’s offspring, and Scripture states explicitly that the wives of Jacob’s sons were not included. Dinah was mentioned because of the affair with Shechem, and Asher’s daughter Serah was mentioned because she was famous.
The Bible does not speak of this, but the midrash enlightens us in this matter. Both were counted because they did not marry offspring of Jacob, rather remained single. According to Shadal’s interpretation, the words “his daughters” and “his granddaughters” should be taken at face value.
Comment by yamit82 — October 31, 2009 @ 9:45 pm
Oat I have always found that mongrel dogs were smarter and generally healthier than pure bred. You are proof that it works in reverse among humans. You could be the poster child for syphilitic mutations as an example of what results from too large a gene pool in ones genealogical ancestry.
K. E. von Baer and Ernst Heinrich Haeckel Ontology recapitulates phylogeny must have had you in mind.
Comment by yamit82 — October 31, 2009 @ 10:10 pm
Yamit, I think you will find that, even with my deep American roots, I am more “pure-booded” than your shiksa mother.
Comment by BlandOatmeal — November 1, 2009 @ 10:28 am
Yamit, because of your confirmed stupidity, I can’t help but rub this in. 90% of typical Ashkenazi Jews have the following 12 haplogroups on their mother’s side:
K1, K2, U (non-K), H, V, J1, J2, T, N1b, I, X, W
If you knew ANYTHING about genetics, which you obviously don’t, you would notice that these haplogroups contain ALL the major haplogroups of Western Eurasia, from Ireland to Pakistan. So much for “pure-blooded” Jews! On the other hand, my Yankee and Dutch female DNA is almost entirely H and V, my Slovenian (Jewish) is of a type found primarily in the Middle East, and even my Native American mtDNA, thanks to Scotch-Irish admixture, is also V.
If you are a typical Ashkenazi Jew, then, Yamit, the mtDNA in your various lines pretty much represents the United Nations. Of course, you probably don’t even KNOW what haplogroups are in your family, if you even know who your mother is.
cf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2706816/
Comment by BlandOatmeal — November 1, 2009 @ 10:51 am
Sounds right.
Comment by Shy Guy — November 1, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
Yamit, because of your confirmed stupidity, I can’t help but rub this in. 90% of typical Ashkenazi Jews have the following 12 haplogroups on their mother’s side:
Oat
Herr Schickelgruber; The Torah is completely unconcerned about mothers: “God of your father” is an idiom, but not “of your mother.” Hebrew tribes descended even from slave women, such as Jacob’s concubines, whom he did not bother to marry. They were “given him” by his wives.
All foremothers were originally pagan; none has formally converted. Rachel practiced idolatry after marriage: she stole Lavan’s idols. The explanation that she took them away from Lavan to stop his idolatrous practice is mistaken: why would she risk hiding the idols instead of burning them?
Rabbis try to read conversion into the words of Ruth, King David’s grandmother, who said, “Your God is my God,” but that is self-defeating position. For if Ruth the widow converted thus in front of Naomi, then she had not converted before, and had been pagan when she married Naomi’s son.
Talmud establishes no specific giyur procedure for a reason: no one cared to ask the woman. She was married to a Jew in a Jewish ceremony and led a Jewish life. She had a pre-marital mikveh immersion—and she is Jewish.
Rabbis invented female giyur about a century ago when secular families became common, and marriage to a Jew ceased to automatically mean a Jewish life. Nominal conversion did not change the facts: those families were not Jewish and their grandchildren rarely identify with Jewish people.
Since you are so hot over genealogy, try this My Family name is originally MAGAN DAVID and my family hailed from Lithuania and before that Spain, Pick it up from there and tell me about my linage. .
Comment by yamit82 — November 1, 2009 @ 11:02 pm
Fistel: States- The Torah says that G-d gave us “physical signs” and “spiritual symbols” to prove the truth of Judaism and its unbroken continuity. The main symbol is Shabbes, where we inject holiness into one day each week (there is no indication that the rule of Shabbes has ever been broken, and that our current “Saturday” is the same Saturday observed by our Jewish ancestors in the desert).
Comment by h peskin — November 2, 2009 @ 5:20 am
This statement reminds me of a euphemism used used to quote as kids: Kill a schmuck for Buddha or just for the hell of it.
Now I feel better.
Comment by yamit82 — November 3, 2009 @ 12:41 am
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