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| Berlusconi and Netanyahu |
Genetic research on the ancestry of Jewish populations tends to get politicized because of the sneaking suspicion that the average Palestinian may be more closely related to the Hebrews of 70 AD than is, say, Bibi Netanyahu.
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| Ringo Starr and Bibi |
Here's a new NYT article that validates what always seemed likely just from looking at European Jews: they're part-European.
Genes Suggest European Women at Root of Ashkenazi Family Tree
By NICHOLAS WADE
Over the last 15 years geneticists have identified links between the world’s Jewish communities that point to a common ancestry as well as a common religion. Still, the origin of one of the most important Jewish populations, the Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern Europe, has remained a mystery.
A new genetic analysis has now filled in another piece of the origins puzzle, pointing to European women as the principal female founders, and to the Jewish community of the early Roman empire as the possible source of the Ashkenazi ancestors.
The finding establishes that the women who founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Europe were not from the Near East, as previously supposed, and reinforces the idea that many Jewish communities outside Israel were founded by single men who married and converted local women.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, is based on a genetic analysis of maternal lineages. A team led by Martin B. Richards of the University of Huddersfield in England took a fresh look at Ashkenazi lineages by decoding the entire mitochondrial genomes of people from Europe and the Near East.
Earlier DNA studies showed that Jewish communities around the world had been founded by men whose Y chromosomes bore DNA patterns typically found in the Near East. But there was a surprise when geneticists turned to examine the women founders by analyzing mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element that is separate from the main human genome and inherited just through the female line.
... With the entire mitochondrial genome in hand, Dr. Richards could draw up family trees with a much finer resolution than before. His trees show that the four major Ashkenazi [maternal-line] lineages in fact form clusters within descent lines that were established in Europe some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The same is true of most of the minor lineages.
“Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed,” Dr. Richards and colleagues conclude in their paper. Overall, at least 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe, and 8 percent from the Near East, with the rest uncertain, the researchers estimate.
Dr. Richards estimates that the four major lineages became incorporated into the Ashkenazi community at least 2,000 years ago. A large Jewish community flourished in Rome at this time and included many converts. This community could have been the source of both the Ashkenazim of Europe and the Sephardim of Spain and Portugal, given that the two groups have considerable genetic commonality, Dr. Richards said.
Here is Greg Cochran's take on the new paper.
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110 comments:
A novel by Isaac Singer, "The King of the Fields", covers this theory: an enslaved Jew gets traded to 8th century Poland, and eventually marries a Tartar woman.
If you tell this stuff to an average American they'll call you a liar:
Israel refuses to recognize its own nationality
(...)
Israel’s population registry lists a slew of “nationalities” and ethnicities, among them Jew, Arab, Druse and more. But one word is conspicuously absent from the list: Israeli.
Residents cannot identify themselves as Israelis in the national registry because the move could have far-reaching consequences for the country’s Jewish character, the Israeli Supreme Court wrote in documents obtained Thursday.
(...)
Israel remains the only country on earth, as far as I am aware, that does not recognize its own nationality, does not recognize a major part of its citizenry, the indigenous Palestinian citizens of the state, as nationals of the state, but recognizes foreigners who share the majority’s religion as nationals!
Only decades of Israeli propaganda, mainly manufactured by complicit academia and propagated by pliant journalism serving Zionism, could have covered up this profound and blatant pillar of Israeli apartheid from world public opinion.
(...)
A couple of interesting points I've heard brought up on twitter and comment sections elsewhere...
1. What effect if any did the holocaust have in skewing the proportion of european ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews?
2. Someone said that the founding population was mostly jewish merchants and local roman women, and they were mostly endogamous after that.
Here's a lefty outfit talking about race whether facts about jewish genetics could affect jewish nationalism.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/10/invention-imagination-race-and-nation/
""""
These were all absent in Italy, whose small Jewish population was so assimilated that it had the highest intermarriage rate of any Jewish community in Europe (roughly thirty percent), hardly an indicator of deep-seated prejudice. Add to that the fact that, by the outbreak of World War I, Italy—alone in Europe—already had three prime ministers of Jewish origin (Sidney Sonnino, Alessandro Fortis, and Luigi Luzzatti), and it would be difficult to argue that somehow prior anti-Semitic history was an explanatory variable to account for Fascist Italy’s campaign against the Jews in 1938.
""""
http://www.telospress.com/telos-164-fall-2013-italian-jews-and-fascism/
Was italian jewish assimulation a function of genetic relatedness?
"because of the sneaking suspicion that the average Palestinian may be more closely related to the Hebrews of 70 AD than is, say, Bibi Netanyahu."
How genetically continuous are the muslim palestinians though?
It wasn't just Rome. Two thousand years ago Jews were scattered all over the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
Also, Jewish conversion of gentiles was not banned 2000 years ago. Jews actively proselytized.
And who better to convert than that hot Circassian babe down the street?
I'll bet they had a rap better than the one the Romans laid on the Sabine women.
So who is more indigenous? Algonquins or Whites? Jews or far more recent newcomers?
Palestinians? Who really cares or admires them? French, Russians, Japanese have all done great and horrible things but at least have greatness as do Jews and Israel. Palestians? Like Patrick Bergin said in Mountains of the Moon. A little people destined to be forgotten.
Here's another theory. The ancient Jews were one of the Sea People who originated in Europe, and were, er, constantly wandering.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
the best known of which were, ironically the Philistines, who appear first in Genesis and are constantly fighting the Israelites.
Could the Israelites have been a Sea People who arrived on what is after all a Mediterranean coast before Goliath and friends.
Of course like most theories off the top of the head its probably wrong.
Anyhow the Central Asian Khazars can sleep better now that no body should be calling them Jews.
Oh, so when it means Jews shouldn't have Israel they're white, but when it comes to white nationalism they're Semites? ;)
http://forward.com/articles/175912/jews-a-race-genetic-theory-comes-under-fierce-atta/?p=all
In case you didn't notice, the thesis is not that Ashkenazim are of exclusively European ancestry but that the founders of the Ashkenazi community were men of Near Eastern ancestry and indigenous European women. Nobody has ever contended that Ashkenazi Jews are of exclusively Near Eastern ancestry.
I really don't understand Steve's hang-up over Israel. If Israel disappeared tomorrow and were replaced by an Arab despotism of some sort, that would solve exactly none of the problems the US suffers from or inflicts on itself.
Sooo.... Butters, basically:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154235/repopulation-time
And who better to convert than that hot Circassian babe down the street?
Even if she has an 80 IQ?
Duh. All you ever had to do was look at European Jews to notice that they are a lot more European than they are Middle-Eastern. That's one piece of pattern recognition which a whole lot of people - including people in HBD land - have flunked.
Anon: Didn't Mussolini basically go after the Italian Jews to make Hitler happy? He wasn't anti-semitic--he was boinking a Jewish girl for a while--but he was an opportunist.
I remember the Italian and Jewish mafias actually worked together for a while in NYC in the mid-twentieth century, which is rather unusual for ethnic crime syndicates. Giuliani cleared the way for Bloomberg. In Long Island, plenty of people have 'pizzabagel' ancestry. The two groups actually look relatively similar, which may help matters somewhat.
Jon Entine on Jewish DNA - Genetic Research and The Origins of the Jewish People.
'If Israel disappeared tomorrow and was replaced by an Arab despotism of some sort, that would solve none of the problems the US suffers from or inflicts on itself."
WRONG!
1) There would be no more wars for Israel, since there would be no Israel. The insane and ruinous neo-con planned war on Iraq was largely designed by Jews and was intended to benefit Israel.
2) No more 3 billion dollars a year in an annual shakedown to Israel masquerading as "foreign aid".
3) A bone of contention removed between the USA and the Arab, and wider Muslim world.
4) AIPAC would be gone and its cancerous influence in Washington would be ended.
Even if she has an 80 IQ?
The early European Jews probably had an IQ of around 80 themselves. Now that we're admitting the blatantly obvious about Jews, perhaps we can admit that "Jewish genius" is restricted to European Jews of the last three centuries. Various different people were noted for their intellectual ability 1000 - 2000 years ago, but Jews were not among them.
I used to be an academic. I remember reading a great deal about laws forbidding Jews from converting their Christian concubines. That's where the Jewish maternal linage comes from. The main source is by Verlinden. It is in French.
Nobody has ever contended that Ashkenazi Jews are of exclusively Near Eastern ancestry.
But by looking at patrilineal genetic markers, Ashkenazi Jews have been made to seem much less European than they actually are.
They are smarter because God made them so. They are his chosen people.
No other significant people group has persisted, let alone thrived for 6,000 years.
They are unique among modern people groups.
Read the OT and also
"Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jew"
But for now the Anglosphere rules.
The 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is pretty clear about the mixed ancestry of most of the Palestinean popupulation. As it is on the population of contemporary Greece being pretty well different than the ancient Greeks.
http://www.theodora.com/encyclopedia/p/palestine.html
So by Halaka, nobody's Jewish?
"Jewish genius" is restricted to European Jews of the last three centuries
The European Jewish community could have possessed high average intelligence for centuries before that, but no one would have known. Strict traditional Jewish education gave hardly any time to any subjects other than Torah, Talmud and subsequent rabbinic writings. None of that would have interested most Europeans. It was only when Enlightenment values crept into European Jewish communities that large numbers of them began to pursue secular studies.
"All you ever had to do was look at European Jews to notice that they are a lot more European than they are Middle-Eastern."
Even so, you can often tell white Jews from other whites.
Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, Noam Chomsky, Trotsky, Kafka, Carole King, the guy in SOCIAL NETWORK, Henry Jaglom, Roman Polanski, Bob Dylan, Streisand, Bette Midler, Elena Kagan, Ruth Ginzburg, Serge Gainsborough, Philip Roth, and etc. are recognizable as Jewish from a mile away.
When I first met a lot of Jews when I moved in 7th grade, I could't what was different about them. But after some yrs, I got pretty good at telling who is and isn't Jewish. Even among Jews who look European, there are certain things that suggest Jewishness.
Compare Rachel Haywire and the woman in WORLD WAR Z. They look European but there are things... that spell Jewishness.
The original Ashkenazi population may have been joined by waves of later Jews who came from the Levant. Also, even if the origins of Ashkenazis were mixed, their descendants tended to marry one another, and so the Semitic element remained intact.
Suppose a bunch of people were created by black males humping white broads. If the mulatto population mostly keep to themselves and breed amongst themselves, they are gonna remain substantially black.
"Even so, you can often tell white Jews from other whites. "
True, but there will also be some false postives...
"The Jewiest looking non-Jew."
https://twitter.com/jasonbiggs
wikipedia: " "Biggs' father is of English and Italian descent and Biggs' mother is of Sicilian descent; his last name is derived from his English ancestry."
What's the Neanderthal content of Haplogroup K, one of the groups in question? As I recall the Northern Italians had a high Neanderthal content. It would be interesting if that also corresponded to that of the Jewish female converts.
>> ut recognizes foreigners who share the majority’s religion as nationals
not true. A person who arrives in israel, and who then convinces th bureaucracy at the Ministry of the Interior that s/he had one Jewish GRANDPARENT... is ==eligible== for naturalization (it takes like two months).
Ireland has the same rule. and Vatican is a country where ONLY RC's may become citizens. Are you upset about THAT?
I don't get upset when goyim claim that we rule the world.... it helps our scamming.... but at least get your facts straight about laws of Israeli citizenship.
The Israel Navy exists today because Mussolini allocated spots in the Italian Merchant Marine Academy for Yishuv Hebrew boys.
In antiquity the people that the ancient jews were more similar is the Phoenicians/Carthagians who are merchants and businessmen, If you read Cicero and the New Testament you going to understand that their Temple in Jerusalem was basically a Central Bank.
Also there was jewish lobby back to 1st century B.C. in Ancient Rome, read about Julius Caesar pro-jewish decrees, jews cried when he was assassinated.
"True, but there will also be some false postives..."
Pete Townshend.
What effect if any did the holocaust have in skewing the proportion of european ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews?
Probably none. The Jewish populations who suffered most were Polish Jews (in raw numbers and >90% decimated), Hungarian Jews (almost totally destroyed), and Soviet Jews (in raw numbers, although many survived). The majority of German and Austrian Jews actually escaped the Holocaust and had emigrated before 1939. Today's Ashkenazi population thus has a much higher percentage of German/Austrian Jewish ancestry than was the case 80 years ago. But since many German/Austrian Jews were themselves descended from fairly recent immigrants from Central Europe I doubt there was much genetic difference between the populations.
"Hungarian Jews (almost totally destroyed)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Hungary#Number_of_survivors
--It is estimated that from an original population of 861,000 people considered Jewish inside the borders of 1941–44, about 255,000 survived. This gives a 29.6% survival rate overall.--
"Also, Jewish conversion of gentiles was not banned 2000 years ago. Jews actively proselytized."
So, the likes of Ron Jeremy and Harry Reems were the founding fathers of the ashkenazi.
http://forward.com/articles/175912/jews-a-race-genetic-theory-comes-under-fierce-atta/?p=all
Haha. This guy is reviving Koestler's Khazar theory.
"politicized because of the sneaking suspicion that the average Palestinian may be more closely related to the Hebrews of 70 AD"
Or perhaps it's because some people really have a hard time accepting that Jews really are indigenous to the land in and around Israel.
"All you ever had to do was look at European Jews to notice that they are a lot more European than they are Middle-Eastern"
That's assuming that Middle Eastern populations from a couple thousand years ago were as dark as they are today.
I recall that King David was described as "adomi" -- having red hair.
" If Israel disappeared tomorrow and were replaced by an Arab despotism of some sort, that would solve exactly none of the problems the US suffers from or inflicts on itself."
Domestically yes it would actually get worse, but it would improve your foreign relations massively.
I don't get upset when goyim claim that we rule the world.... it helps our scamming.... but at least get your facts straight about laws of Israeli citizenship.
What you're complaining about is from a Jewish site-mondoweiss.net
Saying that Ashkenazi Jews are of Middle-Eastern ancestry is like saying that Henry Louis Gates is of Irish ancestry. There' a small smigen of truth to it, but overall it's a deception.
Even so, you can often tell white Jews from other whites.
No, you can't. I've lived in New York my whole life and I can't tell Jews from non-Jews. (Excepting the ones in religious garb of course)
Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, Noam Chomsky, Trotsky, Kafka, Carole King, the guy in SOCIAL NETWORK, Henry Jaglom, Roman Polanski, Bob Dylan, Streisand, Bette Midler, Elena Kagan, Ruth Ginzburg, Serge Gainsborough, Philip Roth, and etc. are recognizable as Jewish from a mile away.
No, they are not. In fact those people don't even look like one another! You know these people are Jewish and so you assign to them a physical commonality which does not exist.
The flip side of "pattern recognition" is "pattern imposition" - where the mind tries to see a pattern which is not there. You're engaging in pattern imposition, not pattern recognition.
Suppose a bunch of people were created by black males humping white broads. If the mulatto population mostly keep to themselves and breed amongst themselves, they are gonna remain substantially black.
Dear God ....
They're going to remain 50% white and 50% black. And the calculation does not depend on the sex involved.
Of course, Jews have not kept mostly to themselves thereafter, as you can tell just by looking at them. All those red haired and blue-eyed Jews did not spring into existence through some strange process of parallel evolution. They've been interbreeding with Europeans for thousands of years.
Romulus said...
It wasn't just Rome. Two thousand years ago Jews were scattered all over the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
Also, Jewish conversion of gentiles was not banned 2000 years ago. Jews actively proselytized.
One of the generals for the Greek kings of Asia had a wearisome time with Jewish regiments, who talked to him constantly of the lord in heaven and took Sabbaths off.
"And I," he said, "am your lord on earth, and bid you do the King's work."
The European Jewish community could have possessed high average intelligence for centuries before that, but no one would have known.
You might as well have written that African-Americans today could possess high average intelligence and we just don't know about it because African-American tradition is to emphasize physical over intellectual pursuits. Hey, it could be true.
Anonymous 7:51pm said...
I really don't understand Steve's hang-up over Israel. If Israel disappeared tomorrow and were replaced by an Arab despotism of some sort, that would solve exactly none of the problems the US suffers from or inflicts on itself.
Wars aren't cheap, buddy
They are smarter because God made them so. They are his chosen people.
No other significant people group has persisted, let alone thrived for 6,000 years.
They are unique among modern people groups.
Read the OT and also
"Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jew"
The Indo Europeans, the Chinese
But for now the Anglosphere rules.
May it ever be so.
ANGLOSPHERE ETERNAL
"All those red haired and blue-eyed Jews did not spring into existence through some strange process of parallel evolution. They've been interbreeding with Europeans for thousands of years."
But most Jews did marry other Jews. and Even blue-eyed and blonde Jews tend to look like Sarah Jessica Parker or Barbra Streisand.
"No, you can't. I've lived in New York my whole life and I can't tell Jews from non-Jews. (Excepting the ones in religious garb of course)"
You can't. I can. I'm usually right.
"No, they are not. In fact those people don't even look like one another! You know these people are Jewish and so you assign to them a physical commonality which does not exist."
You're telling me Berstein in CITIZEN KANE doesn't look Jewish?
Paul Newman was half-Jewish, but look closely and you can see something about him that's sort of Bob Dylanish.
Sunken eyes is another giveaway. Not all Jews have it but some have a distinct kind.
Paul Newman was half-Jewish, but look closely and you can see something about him that's sort of Bob Dylanish.
Pattern imposition. If you discovered that John Wayne or Brad Pitt or George Bush was half-Jewish, you'd say "You know, if I look closely, I definitely can see something about him that's Jewish, in a Bill Shatner sort of way".
"No, they are not. In fact those people don't even look like one another!"
There is no single Jewish type but there are several Jewish types and they are recognizable.
Compare Chomsky with Annie Lebovitz.
Compare Dick Morris with Elena Kagan.
Compare Lilian Hellman with Charlotte Gainsborough.
Compare Joan Rivers with Sarah Silverman.
Compare James Toback with Kubrick.
There were so many Jewish girls in college who looked like Jennifer Grey.
I wasn't aware that Harrison Ford is half Jewish. Recently, though, I watched The Conversation from 1974 in which he has a modest role. Then I happened to watch the Witness from 1986 where he's playing a Philadelphia ethnic (whose sister is Patti Lupone) and is contrasted to various actors playing Amish. So, I checked Wikipedia and sure enough he is half-Jewish.
"If you discovered that John Wayne or Brad Pitt or George Bush was half-Jewish, you'd say "You know, if I look closely, I definitely can see something about him that's Jewish, in a Bill Shatner sort of way"."
Pitt and Wayne, no way.
Dubya maybe.
It's true that some Jews don't look Jewish at all.
But I would never mistake Eastwood, Redford, Stewart, and Deneuve as Jewish... though I suppose some Jews could look totally goyim, just like some backs look very white.
Anouk Aimee and Simone Signoret were Jewish, and they could go either way.
But Streisand and Midler are Jewish from a light yr away.
You're telling me Berstein in CITIZEN KANE doesn't look Jewish?
Everett Sloane did not "look Jewish". He could have belonged to several different European ethnic groups. The same is true for most American Jews. I've been to Europe, as you evidently have not, and it's jam packed with people who "look Jewish". It's more accurate to say that Jews look like Europeans, especially central Europeans. Which, wonder of wonders, is exactly what they are. Take a wander around Poland, Germany, Romania, etc and you'll come across a whole lot of people who look like just Kafka and Einstein and Roth. And they're not Jewish.
But I see your point.
Not all Jews look like Art Garfunkel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fboXaOSY9LY
I wasn't aware that Harrison Ford is half Jewish.
That proves the point. It's only AFTER people discover that X is part Jewish that they take a second look at X and say "Oh, sure, now I see it". It's pattern imposition, not pattern recognition.
--Everett Sloane did not "look Jewish".--
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Clown.
@ Anonymous 10/9/13, 1:01 PM --
Saying that Ashkenazi Jews are of Middle-Eastern ancestry is like saying that Henry Louis Gates is of Irish ancestry. There' a small smigen of truth to it, but overall it's a deception.
This study deals only with mitochondrial DNA. The Y-chromosome data for Ashkenazim still looks very Middle Eastern. Put the mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome findings together, and the autosomal DNA findings make more sense. The study by Atzmon et al. from 2010 estimated that Ashkenazim possess 40-60% European admixture.
@ Anonymous 10/8/13, 11:18 PM --
What's the Neanderthal content of Haplogroup K
Haplogroup K is a mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. It tell much about the rest of the genome for anyone possessing it. I'd imagine you're interested in the total Neanderthal genomic content of people who possess mtDNA haplogroup K. It probably varies significantly by region since haplogroup K is so widespread. A person with haplogroup K will have a lot of ancestors who are not members of haplogroup K, and the proportion of Neanderthal-origin genes will depend more on the autosomal DNA inheritance.
No, Harrison Ford looked notably Jewish in 1974's "The Conversation." He's become less Jewish looking in movies since then. I presume some thought went into that process, but whether plastic surgery, makeup, lighting, hairstyle, or whatever is beyond me.
Good actors can even wear a look from the inside. For example, I saw Alec Baldwin do a Robert De Niro impression where the vocal impression was fine, but, in freeze frame, Baldwin's instant facial transformation into De Niro was stunning. I think if you just casually showed me the freeze frame, I would have assumed it was De Niro and wouldn't have thought twice.
I guess I'm wasting my time trying to reason with a racist jackass. Fine, you go right on believing in your sunken-eyed, hook-nosed, sallow-skinned "Jews" if that's what gets your rocks off.
Anouk Aimee and Simone Signoret were Jewish, and they could go either way.
Simone Signoret was and Anouk Aimee is half-Jewish by ancestry/ethnicity.
"How very convenient for you. So if I point out Jews who don't fit your "type" you can just say "There are several different Jewish types"."
But this is true of all groups.
Take the Japanese. There is no single Japanese look, but there are several traits that suggest difference from other Asian types.
Mishima had one kind of Jappish look. Mifune had another kind. Chiyonofuji another kind.
Some Japanese can't be told apart from other Asians, esp northern Chinese and Koreans, but some Japanese--esp those with bushy eyebrows--look distinctly Japanese.
Same with Brits. There is the classic Anglo look but also the Scotch-Irish peckerwood look.
One thing for sure, you may not be able to notice Jews, but Jews certainly notice goy boys and 'shikse' who are not Jewish.
When Jews see someone like Marilyn Monroe or Grace Kelly, they don't think, 'gee, maybe Jewish?'
Harrison Ford looks like a cross between Paul Simon and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Great star.
Harrison Ford in 1974:
http://i436.photobucket.com/albums/qq85/cornershop15/American%20Actors/HarrisonFordinTheConversation.jpg
A whole bunch of Hollywood stars in recent decades are part gentile and part Jewish. The Iron Man movies are a good example.
Even Ben Stiller is half Irish.
"I guess I'm wasting my time trying to reason with a racist jackass. Fine, you go right on believing in your sunken-eyed, hook-nosed, sallow-skinned "Jews" if that's what gets your rocks off."
Those are necessarily negative features.
I mean who can resist Paul Newman and Lauren Bacall?
And who can deny the Jewish beauty here?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkHfnwPKjHQ
No, they are not. In fact those people don't even look like one another! You know these people are Jewish and so you assign to them a physical commonality which does not exist.
The flip side of "pattern recognition" is "pattern imposition" - where the mind tries to see a pattern which is not there. You're engaging in pattern imposition, not pattern recognition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia
"Those are necessarily negative features."
I meant "Those are NOT necessarily negative features."
"That proves the point. It's only AFTER people discover that X is part Jewish that they take a second look at X and say "Oh, sure, now I see it". It's pattern imposition, not pattern recognition."
Not necessarily.
Some people have some Jewish features that are not prominent. But once you are told the person is Jewish or part-Jewish, you may actually recognize what is Jewish about him/her.
But if someone were to tell you that George Peppard or Keir Dullea is Jewish, you would really be flustered.
Suppose I add a little apple juice to orange juice, and the drinker doesn't notice it. I then tell him of the mix, and in the next sip, he sort of notices it.
But suppose I lie and tell him that I added a little tomato juice instead of the apple juice. He would have a very difficult time noticing it.
There are group differences among whites.
Pacino sort of passed as a Puerto Rican in Carlito's Way, but many had a hard time seeing him as an Anglo-American in REVOLUTION. I think I'm the only one who loved the movie.
This is an old theory. I read it years ago. Founding population was Men from the Middle East marrying local European women. IB Singer, strangely, seems to have intuited this - he has TWO novels stating it. The Slave, and the King of the Fields. But of course who cares. There are Ashkenazi Jews and they are pretty successful wherever they are, Israel or otherwise. Another one won a Nobel Prize in Physics yesterday, not to mention the one that won in Chemistry. As for the European blood, way back when, there are Israelis and they are not going anywhere - not back to Europe that is for sure. And the Palestinians - no one worries if they have Arabian or Egyptian blood, now do they?
Perhaps Harrison Ford developed a different way of holding his mouth after 1974? In "The Conversation" the lower part of his face looks stereotypically Jewish, but that's less true in later movies.
"Even so, you can often tell white Jews from other whites.
No, you can't. I've lived in New York my whole life and I can't tell Jews from non-Jews."
Then you lack a talent. Some people, by experience and background can make those distinctions with an uncanny accuracy. They manage to find something in the shape of the eyes, the cast of the jaw, the slant of the forehead, and/or the shape of the mouth, and fairly rarely make a mistake. It's a "family resemblance" of a very large family.
My wife, who was brought up among Jews but was gentile, and has an artist's eye, is remarkably good at making these distinctions.
Not that she's never wrong, but she will be genuinely and deservedly surprised to find out someone is completely Jewish when she had thought they weren't Jewish--and she is virtually never wrong in the other direction, in which she thinks someone is Jewish, but they are not. It's obvious that she has some kind of model, or set of models, in her mind of a Jewish face, and is good at making matches between actual faces and those models.
And I'm not sure why this should be remarkable. There certainly seems to be pretty standard kinds of faces for virtually all nationalities, even for people in certain regions of a nation.
I remember a few years back, I made a comment here about "Jewish-ish" actors; actors chosen for their Jewish looks. I used the Harry Potter kid as an example. Someone in the thread mentioned he's half-Jewish, which was news to me.
Henry Kissinger and Joe Kubert look alike. Sure, lots of people look alike; there are only so many words you can make with the alphabet (Hunt & Sobieski). But there seem to be many more Jews who look alike, which makes sense given their greater history of endogamy and ethnocentrism - a smaller alphabet. Once in a while you get a curve ball, a Jew who doesn't look stereotypically Jewish, but an awful lot of Jews do look stereotypically Jewish. I bet a lot of the ones who don't aren't as Jewish in terms of ancestry.
And as someone pointed out, there are some people whose looks scream "definitely not Jewish," mostly very Nordic-looking people.
Speaking for my own Jewdar's track record: it's pretty good.
No, you can't. I've lived in New York my whole life and I can't tell Jews from non-Jews. (Excepting the ones in religious garb of course)
Not everyone is the same as you. Some of us have no difficulty making this distinction.
The most salient example I can think of celebs who look kinda/could-be Jewish, but aren't AFAIK: the Penn brothers.
Perhaps Harrison Ford developed a different way of holding his mouth after 1974? In "The Conversation" the lower part of his face looks stereotypically Jewish, but that's less true in later movies.
Check out the old movie posters for the Indiana Jones movies for a laugh; Ford is depicted as rather more distinctly Jewish-looking than he was.
Saying that Jews can look like everybody from Paul Newman...
What's with using Paul Newman as an example? His mother was not a Jew. The same can be said of Gwyneth Paltrow. Of course it is going to be much harder to discern whether or not they are Jewish.
This is an old theory. I read it years ago. Founding population was Men from the Middle East marrying local European women.
This strategy is still being employed in places like Finland, which for obvious reasons has proven to be a particularly difficult place to colonize.
I remember attending a presentation on Muslim immigration to Europe sponsored by the AJC and another group of which I was a member. To my right (ha) sat a conservative young Jew from Fort Worth who didn't like paying to educate the children of illegals and didn't like the idea of importing anti-Jewish Muslims into Europe.
To my left (perfectly) sat an older Jew who thought it was good if Americans spoke a number of languages and could not communicate with one another. He reported that he had tried to colonize Finland by -- you guessed it -- going over there and finding a local woman to shack up with. He had managed to find a woman, but the project had been a failure, and he returned to the US.
Saying that Ashkenazi Jews are of Middle-Eastern ancestry is like saying that Henry Louis Gates is of Irish ancestry. There' a small smigen of truth to it, but overall it's a deception.
Last I checked, the genetic studies showed that their ancestry was a half to two-thirds Southwest Asian.
Everett Sloane did not "look Jewish". He could have belonged to several different European ethnic groups. The same is true for most American Jews.
No, almost all are identifiably Jewish in appearance. By the way, Sloan is a predominantly Jewish name in this country, so it shouldn't be surprising that Everett Sloane was Jewish.
Every Sloan I've known personally is Jewish, and then there are former MGM CEO Harry Sloan and (judging by appearances) former Ole Miss head football coach Steve Sloan and former NC State head basketball coach Norm Sloan. There's Scarlett Johansson's Jewish mother Melanie Sloan, and Dolores Sloan from the Bronx who wrote a book on the crypto-Jews of the American Southwest.
It's just a matter of paying attention and noticing things.
Did you know that Scarlett Johansen, Lisa Kudrow, Alicia Silverstone and Kate Hudson are all Jewish? No, you didn't, because they don't often speak about it and they don't fit the look.
Maybe we didn't know about it because Johansen, Silverstone and Hudson, like Paul Newman, are half Jews and might have taken on some physical attributes of their non-Jewish side.
Most white Americans, myself included, are mixtures of two or more European ethnicities. Thus we don't look as distinct as the various ethnic groups of Europe do. We are a mix. Ditto for many half and quarter Jews.
In Scarlett Johansen's latest movie, Don Jon, it's a recurrent question among the other characters in the movie whether she's Jewish or not Jewish.
"Maybe we didn't know about it because Johansen, Silverstone and Hudson, like Paul Newman, are half Jews and might have taken on some physical attributes of their non-Jewish side."
Whether someone is Jewish or not is determined by whether their mom is Jewish. The dad can be Christian or Muslim or whatever and the child is still 100% Jewish. That's how the religion works. If your mom is Jewish, so are you. So to say someone is half Jewish is just silly. A very large percentage of Jews have only one parent who is Jewish and they are just as Jewish as those who have two. And those who have two Jewish parents, like the celebrities you've mentioned, have surely had grandparents and many many direct ancestors who were not Jewish. So to say someone is half Jewish doesn't make sense, since pretty much all Jews come from one parent or grandparent or great grandparent who are not Jewish.
Steve Sailer said...
In Scarlett Johansen's latest movie, Don Jon, it's a recurrent question among the other characters in the movie whether she's Jewish or not Jewish.
Ever look up Wiki entries on various celebrities? Quite often one will find sentences like so and so's father's grandmother was Jewish or some variation thereof.
It seems in Hollywood and celebrity-dom in general, even being remotely Jewish is some sort of a status or tribal marker -- "Hey, I'm one of you!"
As a general comment, I would suspect that both of the below sentences may hold true:
1. Most Jews have greater genetic similarities with gentiles of their particular national origins than Jews from other nations.
2. Many Jews share founders (however distant) with other Jews, even from far distant nations.
This results in a curious situation in which an individual "Jew" or family of "Jews" can choose its own identity depending on circumstances and political conditions.
In today's post-modern Western celebrity-dom, proclaiming oneself Jewish-descended appears to be celebrated whereas in pre-modern Europe not so much.
And, yes, this can potentially result in a situation in which a group of people claiming to be Jews, but in fact being mostly gentiles in genetics displace people who do not claim to be Jews, but in fact may have a greater genetic propinquity to the "original" Jewish population as such.
Call it a quirk of history.
JN
" I grew up in a Jewish community. I'd say that only about 15-20% of ashkenazi Jews actually have any sort of Jewish look. Most ashkenazi Jews just look European, and often have blonde hair, blue eyes, round faces and small noses etc."
I would say 25% have very pronounced Jewish looks. About 50% have something that sort of gives them away. 25% might pass as just white, esp of Southern or Eastern European variety.
Mort Zuckerman certainly looks Jewish. He looks like Chico Marx.
Steven Pinker looks like Harpo.
But Kirk Douglas... I would have never guessed.
And this guy is Jewish from a mile away.
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/that-70s-show/images/don-stark-2.jpg
Whether someone is Jewish or not is determined by whether their mom is Jewish. The dad can be Christian or Muslim or whatever and the child is still 100% Jewish. That's how the religion works. If your mom is Jewish, so are you. So to say someone is half Jewish is just silly. A very large percentage of Jews have only one parent who is Jewish and they are just as Jewish as those who have two. And those who have two Jewish parents, like the celebrities you've mentioned, have surely had grandparents and many many direct ancestors who were not Jewish. So to say someone is half Jewish doesn't make sense, since pretty much all Jews come from one parent or grandparent or great grandparent who are not Jewish.
We are talking about the Jewish ethnicity, not the religion. If you mother is an Ashkenazi Jew and your father is not, you might technically consider yourself a 100 percent Jew, but you probably won't have the same physical attributes as a person who has an Ashkenazi mother and father.
Therefore it is no surprise that Johansen, Silverstone, Hudson, and Paul Newman don't readily appear as Jewish to most people as Alan Dershowitz or Alan Greenspan do.
Similarly if your father is Greek and your mother is Irish, you might not readily appear as Greek or Irish to a typical observer.
Keep in mind this post was about Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry which traced their DNA markers. Religion is not material to this discussion.
The proof is in the matzoball soup.
With her, it's the eyes.
With him, it's the mouth.
But okay, Beavis probably isn't Jewish.
This question shouldn't be hard to test. You would need a sample of pictures of people who are quite similar to each other in age and occupations. Their faces shouldn't be famous, but their ancestries should be available on the Internet. A large fraction should be Jewish. And they should be in lines of work where there isn't much selection for looks (i.e., not actors).
The best sample I can think of are pictures of Nobel Prize winning scientists, which are available on the Nobel Foundation's website. I have links to websites on the ethnic background of Laureates here:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/lynn-on-the-jews-yes-it-s-intelligence-but-there-s-something-else-too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xq5Nh2UqCc
Wasp and Jew.
So obvious.
Looks a bit like Paul Rudd there.
The ultimate example of a Jew who didn't look Jewish was the assassinated Israeli prime minister, Yitzchak Rabin. My mother calls him a "goy face".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTA9lTI6Bk
"Brillo pad head"
http://www.lewiswaynegallery.com/entertainment/20007.jpg
Guess which one is Jewish.
http://youtu.be/fOSuCsgJ26M?t=41s
Ford may or may not look Jewish, but next to Hauer, he does.
It's like grey looks white next to black, but it looks shady next to white.
Ford kinda looks like Mike Nichols.
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Chelsea Clinton looks Jewish.
I wonder if Clinton's real father was Jewish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xvOiEQNGbk
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2012/06/ronan_farrow_woody_allen.jpg
Allen may be the father but I find this weird.
Kid don't look Jewish at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EEl7uV6YQU
Aidan Quinn didn't strike me as Jewish.
The opening train scene in Stardust Memories shows Jews are mindful of the differences.
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http://www.geocities.ws/paulinekaelreviews/h2.html
Kael noticed the differences in Heartbreak Kid.
French may be most difficult to tell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKV9gCf6VvM
It's easy to spot the Jewish kid.
But Malle himself looked Jewish though he wasn't.
http://www.nndb.com/people/298/000044166/malle4-sized.jpg
But then, a lot of French are like that.
Jewish or not, I dunno:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Meurisse
Jewish or not, I dunno:
The guy on left:
http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Jules-et-Jim-1962-Henri-Serre-Oscar-Werner-pic-11.jpg
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Camus and Sartre could have passed as Jews. Resnais and Godard too.
Richard Bohringer, Philippe Léotard, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Vincent Cassel.
She certainly noticed the differences.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMUz2TNMvL0
http://www.historyofrecording.com/images/Janice_Ian_Mira_10.jpg
Seamus Heaney could pass for Jewish.
I've lived in New York my whole life and I can't tell Jews from non-Jews.
There's your problem.
"I'm Jewish (I just stumbled upon this blog). I grew up in a Jewish community. I'd say that only about 15-20% of ashkenazi Jews actually have any sort of Jewish look. Most ashkenazi Jews just look European, and often have blonde hair, blue eyes, round faces and small noses etc. '
I agree. Sometimes people who are obsessed with, or even just interested in, race and/or ethnicity (like me, and most of the people who frequent this blog) are very suggestible. It's a kind of mind game.
I have absolutely no doubt that people who claim to see "jewishness" in someone like, oh, Gwyneth Paltrow (her dad was Jewish), would not think she looked anything other than a northern blond type of European if they'd never been exposed to all this "jewish look" stuff. Even her dad wasn't all that Jewish. According to Gwyneth he had a big nose, but so do a lot of gentiles. That's not to say there isn't a "Jewish look." There's also an Irish look (I have it sort of, but sometimes they think I'm French or Bulgarian), a Russian look, an Indian look, a Polish look, blah de blah.
But the great majority of European Jews would meld with Euro gentiles seamlessly. Indeed, many have, without causing an IQ deficit, or a mestizo issue. The rest is psychological. And sometimes that's all it takes.
The best sample I can think of are pictures of Nobel Prize winning scientists, which are available on the Nobel Foundation's website. I have links to websites on the ethnic background of Laureates here:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/lynn-on-the-jews-yes-it-s-intelligence-but-there-s-something-else-too
I think this is a good test sample, Steve, but in casually looking through the pictures myself on the Nobel website, I find it hard not to be swayed in my guesses by obviously Jewish names (e.g., Saul).
Jews, 827 BC.
@ ben tillman -
Last I checked, the genetic studies showed that their ancestry was a half to two-thirds Southwest Asian.
No, the Atzmon et al. autosomal DNA study in 2010 estimated 40-60% European admixture for Ashkenazi Jews. Also, what do you mean by "southwest Asian?" There was a very large study of the genetics of the Levant published in the last year that showed that Levantines are significantly closer to Europeans genetically than other Middle Easterners. Both the Levant and the Arabian peninsula are located in what could be described as southwest Asia.
I have absolutely no doubt that people who claim to see "jewishness" in someone like, oh, Gwyneth Paltrow (her dad was Jewish), would not think she looked anything other than a northern blond type of European if they'd never been exposed to all this "jewish look" stuff.
LOL. You're saying that people wouldn't be able to identify Jews by appearance if they didn't know what Jews looked like? Wow - that's really insightful!
Among modern-day Assyrians geeen eyes and red hair aren't unknown.
http://www.last.fm/music/Mandy+Patinkin/+images/43616533
If this guy isn't Jewish-looking, no one is.
fnn: "If you tell this stuff to an average American they'll call you a liar..."
Which makes it unfortunate that the link to evidence is broken.
At the end of March 1969, Sir Charles (C.P.) Snow gave a lecture at Hebrew Union College in which had addressed candidly the possible biological foundations of high Jewish IQ. But after an initial local newspaper report, the talk was pretty much an "ear only" event. He appears to have touched upon the fact that during many pograms some rabbis had been willing to sire children with wives whose husbands had been taken away. But more importantly, he noted the very emphatic "us/them" dichotomy observed by Jews and the consequent within group marriage of an already bright population.
I have not yet seen a written summary of the talk that was given in 1969.
The Baldwin impression of De Niro is here, though with the wrong aspect ratio. 30 Rock S3 E14, 10:30.
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