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I have issues with the following sentences: "Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of other nations and faiths, while some Jews have also adopted children from other ethnic groups or parts of the world and raised them as Jews. Conversion to Judaism, rare for nearly 2,000 years, has become more common." Since the 20th century intermarriage with other peoples has dramatically increased comapared to before, but it still happened before and was not as uncommon as people believe. "Conversion to Judaism, rare for nearly 2,000 years" this is also completely false as is the case with the semi-Mongoloid Khazars about 1000 years ago converting to Judaism as documented in Misplaced Pages, as well as the Edomites also converting to Judaism as covered in Wikpedia - although the Edomites converted shortly before the time of Christ. The paragraph says citation needed - another reason to remove the conversion section and dramatically alter the preceding intermarriage section as per my comments above. The article also says: "Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas" without any citation. It is more likely that the majority of them migrated from the Pale of Settlements in Poland westward and became more Germanized and not the opposite way around.

 Not done. This may need consensus not a simple edit request.--Canoe1967 (talk) 06:33, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Blonde and red hair

The genetic section claims that the Ashkenazi have mostly Arabic and Mediterranean ancestry. Then, why do they have European features like hair color? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.23.200.140 (talk) 12:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Depends whether you're talking matrilines or patrilines. A Jew is defined as having a Jewish mother, and most of the Ashkenazim's matrilineal ancestry (and a fair proportion of the patrilineal) does indeed go back to the Middle East. But there were just enough rapes during pogroms that a significant proportion of patrilines are European. In the same way, if you analyse the genetic origins of Black Americans, quite a high proportion of patrilines are White European, from owners using their slaves as concubines. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 10:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

This explanation does not seem to be consistent with what the article states under "Genetic origins". Apparently, both Y-chromosomes (which come on the paternal line) and mitochondrial DNA (which comes on the maternal line) show quite a bit of intermixing with the local population. In fact, there would seem to be quite a bit more of the latter than of the former: compare the sections on paternal and maternal descent, and also see this: "A 2010 study by Bray et al, using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis, estimated that 35 to 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome may be of European origin, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome"."

The insistence on "Cossack rapes" as the main or only source of intermixing seems extremely stereotypical, as well as unsupported by what the current version of the article seems to say. Feketekave (talk) 11:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

(Quite incidentally, I am a bit surprised that the article mentions Koestler but not Renan. There's a new edition of Renan's late works on the matter; it is a very interesting early attempt to counter a traditional narrative of origins by a highly complex and tentative account based on the scientific knowledge available at the time. Koestler simply substitutes one facile narrative for another.) Feketekave (talk) 11:55, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Fair point. There were probably cases like the storyline of Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Slave, where a Jewish man married a Polish girl from a remote region and smuggled her into his community as Jewish, with or without some form of conversion taking place. This would have had to be highly hush-hush, given that for a Christian to convert to Judaism was generally a severely punishable form of heresy. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 16:01, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The Khazar study

I feel that this is a good addendum to the paragraph on the recent genetic study that found Khazar influence in Ashkenazi Jews. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/08/ashkenazi-jews-are-probably-not-descended-from-the-khazars/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.248.98.23 (talk) 19:51, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Why does the page claim the Khazar heritage is only advocated by racists and antisemites, while in the next paragraph there is a study that is in support of the same theory? I hope you are not implying that arXiv.org are antisemites. 178.191.46.89 (talk) 11:28, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Again it's a matter of degree. It is one thing to claim that many Ashkenazim have SOME Khazar descent. It's another to claim that the Ashkenazim ARE Khazars, i.e. have no Israelite descent at all. None of the studies supports the latter. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 16:36, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Because it usually does come from antisemitic (or maybe just anti-Ashkenazi, for whatever reason) sources who want to claim that they are "fake" Jews and thus have no real blood ties to Israel. More often than not, it's used as a political weapon. 69.248.98.23 (talk) 23:56, 11 September 2012 (UTC)evildoer187

Scholarly consensus. query

Although the historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.(ref name="Atzmon2010")

Yet, Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin "The origin of Eastern European Jews revealed by autosomal, sex chromosomal and mtDNA polymorphisms" at Biology Direct 6 October, 2010, writes:-

(1)The close genetic resemblance to Italians accords with the historical presumption that Ashkenazi Jews started their migrations across Europe in Italy and with historical evidence that conversion to Judaism was common in ancient Rome. The reasons for the discrepancy between the biparental markers and the uniparental markers are discussed.(Abtract)

(2)EEJ are the largest and most investigated Jewish community,yet their history as Franco-German Jewry is known to us only since their appearance in the 9th century,and their subsequent migration a few hundred years later to Eastern Europe . Where did these Jews come from? It seems that they came to Germany and France from Italy . It is also possible that some Jews migrated northward from the Italian colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea . All these Jews are likely the descendents of proselytes. Conversion to Judaism was common in Rome in the first centuries BC and AD. Judaism gained many followers among all ranks of Roman Society .p.1

(3)The autosomal genetic distances (table 1) do not show any particular resemblance between the Jewish populations. EEJ are closer to Italians in particular and to Europeans in general than to the other Jewish populations.p.2

(4)X-chromosomal haplogroups demonstrate the same relatedness of EEJ to Italians and other Europeans (table2, figure 3). In contrast, according to the Y-chromosomal haplogroups EEJ are closest to the non-Jewish populations of the Eastern Mediterranean p.

(5)In order to compare two competing theories regarding the origin of EEJ, their geographic

distances were computed as if they originated from Italy or Israel, i.e. the great circle distances for EEJ were calculated not between Warsaw and other capitals, but between Rome or Jerusalem and other capitals. The correlation

between the autosomal genetic distance matrix and geography was slightly higher, 0.804, for Rome but dropped to 0.694 for Jerusalem.p.4

(6)The autosomal genetic distance analysis presented here clearly demonstrates that the investigated Jewish populations do not share a common origin. The resemblance of EEJ to Italians and other European populations portrays them as an autochthonous European population.p.4

(7)Some previous studies based on classical autosomal markers concluded that EEJ are a Middle Eastern population with genetic affinities to other Jewish populations. The problems with these studies have been previously discussed in detail analysis , and the genetic distance analysis of Livshits et al. , which includes a single European Mediterranean population, Spain. Despite this when a genetic distance analysis was performed, the greater similarity of EEJ to Russians and to a lesser extent to Germans more than to Non-European Jews was evident . In fact Russians were more similar to EEJ than to any Non-Jewish European population in that analysis.p.8

(8)It is not possible at this stage to say what is the source of this resemblance, since we don’t know what is the origin of Sephardic Jews, but considering all the genetic affinities of both groups it likely stems from Sephardic Jews being the descendants of converts in the Mediterranean basin rather than from a common Jewish origin in the Land of Israel. When one compares the autosomal distances of EEJ (current study) or Ashkenazi

Jews (in Atzmon et al. and Behar et al. ) from the Jewish populations that were investigated in the current

study, Iraqi, Iranian, Moroccan, Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews, one finds perfect agreement. EEJ or Ashkenazi Jews are much closer to non-Jewish Europeans than to these Jewish populations in all three studies.p.11

(9) EEJ are Europeans probably of Roman descent who converted to Judaism at times, when Judaism was the first monotheistic religion that spread in the ancient world. Any other theory about their origin is not supported by the genetic data. Future studies will have to address their genetic affinities to various Italian populations andexamine the possibility of other components both European and Non-European in their gene pool.p.11 --Nishidani (talk) 14:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there a consensus? I am interested in this from the oddity of saying linguistic evidence can show geographic origins of an ethnic group. Paul Wexler, in his latest work writes:-

'the history and structure of some Jewish languages strongly suggest that the creators of some Jewish languages (an example is Yiddish) were not native Jews but rather non-Jews who had joined Jewish communities in Europe, Asia, and North Africa either through formal conversion to Judaism or through informal association with the community (e.g. through marriage with Jews)'. Paul Wexler, Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of "Jewish" Languages, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006 p.xvi.

I don't espouse these views, of course. I just note that several important scholars to my knowledge challenge the assertion in this section of the page. I'd appreciate some review of this.Nishidani (talk) 15:12, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Zoossmann-Diskin study findings are not supported by any of dozens of Y DNA, mtDNA, autosomal DNA findings regarding the origin of Ashkenazi and other Jewish groups, many of whom are not mentioned here. To name some of them: Hammer at al, Gerard Lucotte et al, Kopelman et al 2009, Moorjani et al 2011, Behar et al(2004,2006,2010) Dr. Harry Ostrer studies, Need et al, L. Hao et al, Bray at al, Bauchet et al, Seldin et al, Nebel et al(2004,2006) Karl Skorecki studies, Thomas at al, Shen et al and more recently Christopher L. Campbella and al. There is almost unanimous consensus among genetic scientists regarding the shared Middle Eastern origin of all Jewish population groups,(excluding Indian and Ethiopian Jewish population) including Ashkenazi Jews.

There can not be consensus for inclusion of unbalanced claims which are not considered mainstream opinion and are in many cases taken out of context in order to allude to something with political and not scientific meaning.--Tritomex (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Please provide me with the exact passage in Atzmon and co's paper where this generalization is derived from.--Nishidani (talk) 18:41, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Considering Atzmon, you have it here: "Previous genetic studies of blood group and serum markers suggested that Jewish groups had Middle Eastern origin with greater genetic similarity between paired Jewish populations...Here, genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and comparison with non-Jewish groups demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture." I suggest also Dr Hary Ostrer "Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People" It gives great summarizing of all genetic studies in Jewish population carried out in last 20 years.--Tritomex (talk) 21:33, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I repeat, on what specific passage in Atzmon is the sentence:'Although the historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.(ref name="Atzmon2010")'?

If you cannot find support for this formulation from Atzmon with a passage that shows it is a close paraphrase of the cited source, which is quoted for making these three combined claims, then it is inevitable to conclude that the claim is WP:OR. Nothing in what you cited above corresponds to that sentence.--Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I did not claimed that Prof Atzmon spoke about this issue, (I was not the editor of that section)although he indeed did. From the same source

"Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE and have maintained continuous genetic, cultural, and religious traditions since that time, despite a series of Diasporas" I think that the wording of this sentence was intended to avoid WP:COPY --Tritomex (talk) 23:33, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Source.

Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE and have maintained continuous genetic, cultural, and religious traditions since that time (Atzmon2010)

Misplaced Pages.

Although the historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.(ref name="Atzmon2010")

The bolded words are not in the source. Nishidani (talk) 07:21, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

• Atzmon et al.deny that there is a scholarly consensus:'Recent studies of Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA haplotypes have pointed to founder effects of both Middle Eastern and local origin, yet the issue of how to characterize Jewish people as mere coreligionists or as genetic isolates that may be closely or loosely related remains unresolved.
• Their paper providences evidence for one argument about all Jews in 2010. A few months later, Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin, taking in their paper, advanced a different conclusion specifically about Ashkenazi Jews. In your initial remarks you cited numerous papers predating both Atzmon and Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin's recent work, in order to assert that the latter's conclusions are not supported by geneticists who never read Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin's paper. That also is WP:OR.

The wiki phrasing is, frankly, stupid. One does not write of 'a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence for the simple reason that evidence does not have a consensus, as the sentence implies. Evidence provides the material basis for which, eventually, a consensus may be formed by the scholars who analyse it. It is the scholars who form the consensus, not the evidence.

Unless someone can justify the use here of 'scholarly consensus' from Atzmon's article, the thesis it maintains must be balanced by the thesis proposed by Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin, as per WP:NPOV. We must not take sides in what it a lively scholarly debate, but simply report the various positions. --Nishidani (talk) 08:02, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Since the passage is egregiously WP:OR, I'll provide a fix that reflects actual sources, and shows the range of theories. There is a problem in this section, which almost exclusively deals with Rabbinical developments in Babylonia, and hardly at all with the Ashkenazi world. That also needs fixing.--Nishidani (talk) 14:32, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

As I have said and showed above there are dozens of studies all confirming the shared and common Middle Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Jews and there is scholarly consensus regarding this issue. I can add all 21 genetic studies as references. Zoossmann-Diskin single study can not balance 21 opposite genetic studies carried out by world leading institutions and all showing the same result In fact with your proposal we would have a clear POV if something totally out of mainstream consensus would be presented as equal "fact" to the mainstream consensus. Prof Atzmon participated in many recent studies like the studies of Dr. Harry Ostrrer and he has reaffirmed his well known findings, so your assumption is wrong. Atzmon clearly referee in his findings to Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, as the study which was used here relates to Ashkenazi Jews and clearly shows their Middle Eastern genetic origin.--Tritomex (talk) 14:44, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Your recent POV edits Nishidani represents vandalization. You can not edit genetic studies in the place where they do not belong and you can not create POV by inserting one study which is totlay out of mainstream and present it as equal. I will always remove vandalization attempts from this site and I will report you if you continue to do this without consensus.--Tritomex (talk) 15:04, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Please familiarise yourself with the elementary protocols of wikipedia. What you say does not interest me. What sources say is what we write. You are making an assessment about one of several theses. It is indeed a very serious charge to characterize corrective work of an error on an article, after no adequate justification for the anomaly could be provided, as vandalism, and is reportable as uncooperative edit-warring to restore what you have failed to justify.

• (a) you are engaged in a conspicuous violation of WP:OR by citing 21 genetic studies, the majority of which were published before Zoossman-Diskin and Bray's study, both of which deny your personal conclusions. Bray et al even state that from 35-55% of the Jewish Ashkenazi has a local, non-middle eastern, european "admixture".
• (b) I have included Atzmon et al's position, which like Oestrer's, represents a scholarly point of view, in a rapidly developing field so complex there is still no "consensus".
• (c) if you actually read Zoossman-Diskin, he responds to Atzmon's work, appraises it, incorporates some of its results but uses different techniques to tweak some of their data and obtaining different results.
• (d) since you have failed for over a day to provide any textual justification for the statement in the article I challenged, it has failed WP:V and therefore must be regarded as WP:OR. By your irrational revert, whose edit summary is purely, wildly subjective, you are defending against policy what appears to be an incorrect, illogical and solecistic generalization without source-support here.

So could you please provide WP:RS justification for the words scholarly consensus regarding the ME origin of the Ashkenazi, and (b) please inform us what sources you rely on for holding that Zoossman-Diskin's study and results are unique. They are not. They are supported by Bray, as I noted. You elided both, and therefore are pushing one POV among several on the basis, apparently, of personal beliefs. The sensible thing would be to revert. I do not require your consent to improve a conspicuous error on a page. --Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

To begin with and to finish with: There is a section devoted to Genetic study in this article and you can not edit whatever you want, wherever you want. Bray et al is mentioned in this article in proper section.--Tritomex (talk) 15:38, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

No. That is, frankly, dictatorial and erratically irrational. The section deals with the origins of the Ashkenazi, and a claim was made that was false. Origins require (a) historical documentation and (b) genetic evidence. The reference I questioned is a paper on genetics, in this section, and your accusation that Atzmon's genetic evidence can be sourced, but genetic evidence contradicting it should go to 'the proper section' is absurd. Please calm down, and think the original problem through rationally and in terms of policy.--Nishidani (talk) 15:46, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

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