Posted By admin on September 22, 2023
More:
Posted By admin on September 18, 2023
Background
The geographical origin of the Biblical Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews (AJs), and Yiddish, are among the longest standing questions in history, genetics, and linguistics.
Uncertainties concerning the meaning of Ashkenaz arose in the Eleventh century when the term shifted from a designation of the Iranian Scythians to become that of Slavs and Germans and finally of German (Ashkenazic) Jews in the Eleventh to Thirteenth centuries (Wexler, 1993). The first known discussion of the origin of German Jews and Yiddish surfaced in the writings of the Hebrew grammarian Elia Baxur in the first half of the Sixteenth century (Wexler, 1993).
It is well established that history is also reflected in the DNA through relationships between genetics, geography, and language (e.g., Cavalli-Sforza, 1997; Weinreich, 2008). Max Weinreich, the doyen of the field of modern Yiddish linguistics, has already emphasized the truism that the history of Yiddish mirrors the history of its speakers. These relationships prompted Das et al. (2016) to address the question of Yiddish origin by analyzing the genomes of Yiddish-speaking AJs, multilingual AJs, and Sephardic Jews using the Geographical Population Structure (GPS), which localizes genomes to where they experienced the last major admixture event. GPS traced nearly all AJs to major ancient trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to four primeval villages whose names resemble Ashkenaz: kenaz (or Ekenaz), Ekenez (or Ekens), Ahanas, and Aschuz. Evaluated in light of the Rhineland and Irano-Turko-Slavic hypotheses (Das et al., 2016, Table 1) the findings supported the latter, implying that Yiddish was created by Slavo-Iranian Jewish merchants plying the Silk Roads. We discuss these findings from historical, genetic, and linguistic perspectives and calculate the genetic similarity of AJs and Middle Eastern populations to ancient genomes from Anatolia, Iran, and the Levant. We lastly review briefly the advantages and limitation of bio-localization tools and their application in genetic research.
Table 1. Major open questions regarding the origin of the term Ashkenaz, AJs, and Yiddish as explained by two competing hypotheses.
Ashkenaz is one of the most disputed Biblical placenames. It appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name of one of Noah's descendants (Genesis 10:3) and as a reference to the kingdom of Ashkenaz, prophesied to be called together with Ararat and Minnai to wage war against Babylon (Jeremiah 51:27). In addition to tracing AJs to the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz and uncovering the villages whose names may derive from Ashkenaz, the partial Iranian origin of AJs, inferred by Das et al. (2016), was further supported by the genetic similarity of AJs to Sephardic Mountain Jews and Iranian Jews as well as their similarity to Near Eastern populations and simulated native Turkish and Caucasus populations.
There are good grounds, therefore, for inferring that Jews who considered themselves Ashkenazic adopted this name and spoke of their lands as Ashkenaz, since they perceived themselves as of Iranian origin. That we find varied evidence of the knowledge of Iranian language among Moroccan and Andalusian Jews and Karaites prior to the Eleventh century is a compelling point of reference to assess the shared Iranian origins of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews (Wexler, 1996). Moreover, Iranian-speaking Jews in the Caucasus (the so-called Juhuris) and Turkic-speaking Jews in the Crimea prior to World War II called themselves Ashkenazim (Weinreich, 2008).
The Rhineland hypothesis cannot explain why a name that denotes Scythians and was associated with the Near East became associated with German lands in the Eleventh to Thirteenth centuries (Wexler, 1993). Aptroot (2016) suggested that Jewish immigrants in Europe transferred Biblical names onto the regions in which they settled. This is unconvincing. Biblical names were used as place names only when they had similar sounds. Not only Germany and Ashkenaz do not share similar sounds, but Germany was already named Germana, or Germamja in the Iranian (Babylonian) Talmud (completed in the Fifth century A.D.) and, not surprisingly, was associated with Noah's grandson Gomer (Talmud, Yoma 10a). Name adoption also occurred when the exact place names were in doubt as in the case of Sefarad (Spain). This is not the case here, as Aptroot too notes, since Ashkenaz had a known and clear geographical affiliation (Table 1). Finally, Germany was known to French scholars like the RaDaK (11601235) as Almania (Sp. Alemania, Fr. Allemagne), after the Almani tribes, a term that was also adopted by Arab scholars. Had the French scholar Rashi (1040?-1105), interpreted akenaz as Germany, it would have been known to the RaDaK who used Rashi's symbols. Therefore, Wexler's proposal that Rashi used akenaz in the meaning of Slavic and that the term akenaz assumed the solitary meaning German lands only after the Eleventh century in Western Europe as a result of the rise of Yiddish, is more reasonable (Wexler, 2011). This is also supported by Das et al.'s major findings of the only known primeval villages whose names derive from the word Ashkenaz located in the ancient lands of Ashkenaz. Our inference is therefore supported by historical, linguistic, and genetic evidence, which has more weight as a simple origin that can be easily explained than a more complex scenario that involves multiple translocations.
AJs were localized to modern-day Turkey and found to be genetically closest to Turkic, southern Caucasian, and Iranian populations, suggesting a common origin in Iranian Ashkenaz lands (Das et al., 2016). These findings were more compatible with an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for AJs and a Slavic origin for Yiddish than with the Rhineland hypothesis, which lacks historical, genetic, and linguistic support (Table 1) (van Straten, 2004; Elhaik, 2013). The findings have also highlighted the strong social-cultural and genetic bonds of Ashkenazic and Iranian Judaism and their shared Iranian origins (Das et al., 2016).
Thus far, all analyses aimed to geo-localize AJs (Behar et al., 2013, Figure 2B; Elhaik, 2013, Figure 4; Das et al., 2016, Figure 4) identified Turkey as the predominant origin of AJs, although they used different approaches and datasets, in support of the Irano-Turko-Slavic hypothesis (Figure 1A, Table 1). The existence of both major Southern European and Near Eastern ancestries in AJ genomes are also strong indictors of the Irano-Turko-Slavic hypothesis provided the Greco-Roman history of the region southern to the Black Sea (Baron, 1937; Kraemer, 2010). Recently, Xue et al. (2017) applied GLOBETROTTER to a dataset of 2,540 AJs genotyped over 252,358 SNPs. The inferred ancestry profile for AJs was 5% Western Europe, 10% Eastern Europe, 30% Levant, and 55% Southern Europe (a Near East ancestry was not considered by the authors). Elhaik (2013) portrayed a similar profile for European Jews, consisting of 2530% Middle East and large Near EasternCaucasus (3238%) and West European (30%) ancestries. Remarkably, Xue et al. (2017) also inferred an admixture time of 9601,416 AD (2440 generations ago), which corresponds to the time AJs experienced major geographical shifts as the Judaized Khazar kingdom diminished and their trading networks collapsed forcing them to relocate to Europe (Das et al., 2016). The lower boundary of that date corresponds to the time Slavic Yiddish originated, to the best of our knowledge.
Figure 1. The localization of AJs and their ancient admixture proportions compared to neighboring populations. (A) Geographical predictions of individuals analyzed in three separate studies employing different tools: Elhaik (2013, Figure 4) (blue), Behar et al. (2013, Figure 2B) (red), and Das et al. (2016, Figure 4) (dark green for AJs who have four AJ grandparents and light green for the rest) are shown. Color matching mean and standard deviation (bars) of the longitude and latitude are shown for each cohort. Since we were unsuccessful in obtaining the data points of Behar et al. (2013, Figure 2B) from the corresponding author, we procured 78% of the data points from their figure. Due to the low quality of their figure we were unable to reliably extract the remaining data points. (B) Supervised ADMIXTURE results. For brevity, subpopulations were collapsed. The x axis represents individuals. Each individual is represented by a vertical stacked column of color-coded admixture proportions that reflect genetic contributions from ancient Hunter-Gatherer, Anatolian, Levantine, and Iranian individuals.
The non-Levantine origin of AJs is further supported by an ancient DNA analysis of six Natufians and a Levantine Neolithic (Lazaridis et al., 2016), some of the most likely Judaean progenitors (Finkelstein and Silberman, 2002; Frendo, 2004). In a principle component analysis (PCA), the ancient Levantines clustered predominantly with modern-day Palestinians and Bedouins and marginally overlapped with Arabian Jews, whereas AJs clustered away from Levantine individuals and adjacent to Neolithic Anatolians and Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Europeans. To evaluate these findings, we inferred the ancient ancestries of AJs using the admixture analysis described in Marshall et al. (2016). Briefly, we analyzed 18,757 autosomal SNPs genotyped in 46 Palestinians, 45 Bedouins, 16 Syrians, and eight Lebanese (Li et al., 2008) alongside 467 AJs [367 AJs previously analyzed and 100 individuals with AJ mother) (Das et al., 2016) that overlapped with both the GenoChip (Elhaik et al., 2013) and ancient DNA data (Lazaridis et al., 2016). We then carried out a supervised ADMIXTURE analysis (Alexander and Lange, 2011) using three East European Hunter Gatherers from Russia (EHGs) alongside six Epipaleolithic Levantines, 24 Neolithic Anatolians, and six Neolithic Iranians as reference populations (Table S0). Remarkably, AJs exhibit a dominant Iranian ( 88 % ~ ) and residual Levantine ( 3 % ~ ) ancestries, as opposed to Bedouins ( 14 % ~ and 68 % ~ , respectively) and Palestinians ( 18 % ~ and 58 % ~ , respectively). Only two AJs exhibit Levantine ancestries typical to Levantine populations (Figure 1B). Repeating the analysis with qpAdm (AdmixTools, version 4.1) (Patterson et al., 2012), we found that AJs admixture could be modeled using either three- (Neolithic Anatolians [46%], Neolithic Iranians [32%], and EHGs [22%]) or two-way (Neolithic Iranians [71%] and EHGs [29%]) migration waves (Supplementary Text). These findings should be reevaluated when Medieval DNA would become available. Overall, the combined results are in a strong agreement with the predictions of the Irano-Turko-Slavic hypothesis (Table 1) and rule out an ancient Levantine origin for AJs, which is predominant among modern-day Levantine populations (e.g., Bedouins and Palestinians). This is not surprising since Jews differed in cultural practices and norms (Sand, 2011) and tended to adopt local customs (Falk, 2006). Very little Palestinian Jewish culture survived outside of Palestine (Sand, 2009). For example, the folklore and folkways of the Jews in northern Europe is distinctly pre-Christian German (Patai, 1983) and Slavic in origin, which disappeared among the latter (Wexler, 1993, 2012).
The hypothesis that Yiddish has a German origin ignores the mechanics of relexification, the linguistic process which produced Yiddish and other Old Jewish languages (i.e., those created by the Ninth to Tenth century). Understanding how relexification operates is essential to understanding the evolution of languages. This argument has a similar context to that of the evolution of powered flight. Rejecting the theory of evolution may lead one to conclude that birds and bats are close relatives. By disregarding the literature on relexification and Jewish history in the early Middle Ages, authors (e.g., Aptroot, 2016; Flegontov et al., 2016) reach conclusions that have weak historical support. The advantage of a geo-localization analysis is that it allows us to infer the geographical origin of the speakers of Yiddish, where they resided and with whom they intermingled, independently of historical controversies, which provides a data driven view on the question of geographical origins. This allows an objective review of potential linguistic influences on Yiddish (Table 1), which exposes the dangers in adopting a linguistic creationism view in linguistics.
The historical evidence in favor of an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for Yiddish is paramount (e.g., Wexler, 1993, 2010). Jews played a major role on the Silk Roads in the Ninth to Eleventh century. In the mid-Ninth century, in roughly the same years, Jewish merchants in both Mainz and at Xi'an received special trading privileges from the Holy Roman Empire and the Tang dynasty court (Robert, 2014). These roads linked Xi'an to Mainz and Andalusia, and further to sub-Saharan Africa and across to the Arabian Peninsula and India-Pakistan. The Silk Roads provided the motivation for Jewish settlement in Afro-Eurasia in the Ninth to Eleventh centuries since the Jews played a dominant role on these routes as a neutral trading guild with no political agendas (Gil, 1974; Cansdale, 1996, 1998). Hence, the Jewish traders had contact with a wealth of languages in the areas that they traversed (Hadj-Sadok, 1949; Khordadhbeh, 1889; Hansen, 2012; Wexler TBD), which they brought back to their communities nested in major trading hubs (Rabinowitz, 1945, 1948; Das et al., 2016). The central Eurasian Silk Roads were controlled by Iranian polities, which provided opportunities for Iranian-speaking Jews, who constituted the overwhelming bulk of the world's Jews from the time of Christ to the Eleventh century (Baron, 1952). It should not come as a surprise to find that Yiddish (and other Old Jewish languages) contains components and rules from a large variety of languages, all of them spoken on the Silk Roads (Khordadhbeh, 1889; Wexler, 2011, 2012, 2017).
In addition to language contacts, the Silk Roads also provided the motivation for widespread conversion to Judaism by populations eager to participate in the extremely lucrative trade, which had become a Jewish quasi-monopoly along the trade routes (Rabinowitz, 1945, 1948; Baron, 1957). These conversions are discussed in Jewish literature between the Sixth and Eleventh centuries, both in Europe and Iraq (Sand, 2009; Kraemer, 2010). Yiddish and other Old Jewish languages were all created by the peripatetic merchants as secret languages that would isolate them from their customers and non-Jewish trading partners (Hadj-Sadok, 1949; Gil, 1974; Khordadhbeh, 1889; Cansdale, 1998; Robert, 2014). The study of Yiddish genesis, thereby, necessitates the study of all the Old Jewish languages of this time period.
There is also a quantifiable amount of Iranian and Turkic elements in Yiddish. The Babylonian Talmud, completed by the Sixth century A.D., is rich in Iranian linguistic, legalistic, and religious influences. From the Talmud, a large Iranian vocabulary has entered Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic, and from there spread to Yiddish. This corpus has been known since the 1930s and is common knowledge to Talmud scholars (Telegdi, 1933). In the Khazar Empire, the Eurasian Jews, plying the Silk Roads, became speakers of Slavican important language because of the trading activities of the Rus' (pre-Ukrainians) with whom the Jews were undoubtedly allied on the routes linking Baghdad and Bavaria. This is evident by the existence of newly invented Hebroidism, inspired by Slavic patterns of discourse in Yiddish (Wexler, 2010).
We advocate for implementing a more evolutionary understanding in linguistics. That includes giving more attention to the linguistic process that alter languages (e.g., relexification) and acquiring more competence in other languages and histories. When studying the origin of Ashkenazic Jews and Yiddish, such knowledge should include the history of the Silk Roads and Irano-Turkish languages.
Deciphering the origin of human populations is not a new challenge for geneticists, yet only in the past decade high-throughput genetic data were harnessed to answer these questions. Here, we briefly discuss the differences between the available tools based on identity by distance. Existing PCA or PCA-like approaches (e.g., Novembre et al., 2008; Yang et al., 2012) can localize Europeans to countries (understood as the last place where major admixture event took place or the place where the four ancestors of unmixed individuals came from) with less than 50% accuracy (Yang et al., 2012). The limitations of PCA (discussed in Novembre and Stephens, 2008) appear to be inherent in the framework where continental populations plotted along the two primary PCs cluster in the vertices of a triangle-like shape and the remaining populations cluster along or within the edges (e.g., Elhaik et al., 2013). There is therefore reason to question the applicability of ambitious PCA-based methods (Yang et al., 2012, 2014) aiming to infer multiple ancestral locations outside of Europe. Overall, accurate localization of worldwide individuals remains a significant challenge (Elhaik et al., 2014).
The GPS framework assumes that humans are mixed and that their genetic variation (admixture) can be modeled by the proportion of genotypes assigned to any number of fixed regional putative ancestral populations (Elhaik et al., 2014). GPS employs a supervised ADMIXTURE analysis where the admixture components are fixed, which allows evaluating both the test individuals and reference populations against the same putative ancestral populations. GPS infers the geographical coordinates of an individual by matching their admixture proportions with those of reference populations. Reference populations are populations known to reside in a certain geographical region for a substantial period of time in a time frame of hundreds to a thousand years and can be predicted to their geographical locations while absent from the reference population panel (Das et al., 2016). The final geographic location of a test individual is determined by converting the genetic distance of the individual to m reference populations into geographic distances (Elhaik et al., 2014). Intuitively, the reference populations can be thought of as pulling the individual in their direction with a strength proportional to their genetic similarity until a consensus is reached (Figure S1). Interpreting the results, particularly when the predicted location differs from the contemporary location of the studied population, demands cautious.
Population structure is affected by biological and demographic processes like genetic drift, which can act rapidly on small, relatively isolated populations, as opposed to large non-isolated populations, and migration, which occurs more frequently (Jobling et al., 2013). Understanding the geography-admixture relationships necessitates knowing how relative isolation and migration history affected the allele frequencies of populations. Unfortunately, oftentimes we lack information about both processes. GPS addresses this problem by analyzing the relative proportions of admixture in a global network of reference populations that provide us with different snapshots of historical admixture events. These global admixture events occurred at different times through different biological and demographic processes, and their long-lasting effect is related to our ability to associate an individual with their matching admixture event.
In relatively isolated populations the admixture event is likely old, and GPS would localize a test individual with their parental population more accurately. By contrast, if the admixture event was recent and the population did not maintain relative isolation, GPS prediction would be erroneous (Figure S2). This is the case of Caribbean populations, whose admixture proportions still reflect the massive Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries' mixture events involving Native Americans, West Europeans, and Africans (Elhaik et al., 2014). While the original level of isolation remains unknown, these two scenarios can be distinguished by comparing the admixture proportions of the test individual and adjacent populations. If this similarity is high, we can conclude that we have inferred the likely location of the admixture event that shaped the admixture proportion of the test individual. If the opposite is true, the individual is either mixed and thereby violates the assumptions of the GPS model or the parental populations do not exist either in GPS's reference panel or in reality. Most of the time (83%) GPS predicted unmixed individuals to their true locations with most of the remaining individuals predicted to neighboring countries (Elhaik et al., 2014).
To understand how migration modifies the admixture proportions of the migratory and host populations, we can consider two simple cases of point or massive migration followed by assimilation and a third case of migration followed by isolation. Point migration events have little effect on the admixture proportions of the host population, particularly when it absorbs a paucity of migrants, in which case the migrants' admixture proportions would resemble those of the host population within a few generations and their resting place would represent that of the host population. Massive demographic movements, such as large-scale invasion or migration that affect a large part of the population are rare and create temporal shifts in the admixture proportions of the host population. The host population would temporarily appear as a two-way mixed population, reflecting the components of the host and invading populations (e.g., European and Native American, in the case of Puerto Ricans) until the admixture proportions would homogenize population-wise. If this process is completed, the admixture signature of this region may be altered and the geographical placement of the host population would represent again the last place where the admixture event took place for both the host and invading populations. GPS would, thereby, predict the host population's location for both populations. Populations that migrate from A to B and maintain genetic isolation would be predicted to point A in the leave-one-out population analysis. While human migrations are not uncommon, maintaining a perfect genetic isolation over a long period of time is very difficult (e.g., Veeramah et al., 2011; Behar et al., 2012; Elhaik, 2016; Hellenthal et al., 2016), and GPS predictions for the vast majority of worldwide populations indicate that these cases are indeed exceptional (Elhaik et al., 2014). Despite of its advantages, GPS has several limitations. First, it yields the most accurate predictions for unmixed individuals. Second, using migratory or highly mixed populations (both are detectable through the leave-one-out population analysis) as reference populations may bias the predictions. Further developments are necessary to overcome these limitations and make GPS applicable to mixed population groups (e.g., African Americans).
The meaning of the term Ashkenaz and the geographical origins of AJs and Yiddish are some of the longest standing questions in history, genetics, and linguistics. In our previous work we have identified ancient Ashkenaz, a region in northeastern Turkey that harbors four primeval villages whose names resemble Ashkenaz. Here, we elaborate on the meaning of this term and argue that it acquired its modern meaning only after a critical mass of Ashkenazic Jews arrived in Germany. We show that all bio-localization analyses have localized AJs to Turkey and that the non-Levantine origins of AJs are supported by ancient genome analyses. Overall, these findings are compatible with the hypothesis of an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for AJs and a Slavic origin for Yiddish and contradict the predictions of Rhineland hypothesis that lacks historical, genetic, and linguistic support (Table 1).
EE conceived the paper. MP processed the ancient DNA data. RD and EE carried out the analyses. EE co-wrote it with PW and RD. All authors approved the paper.
EE is a consultant for DNA Diagnostic Centre. The other authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The reviewer PF declared a past co-authorship with one of the authors to the handling Editor, who ensured that the process nevertheless met the standards of a fair and objective review.
EE was partially supported by The Royal Society International Exchanges Award to EE and Michael Neely (IE140020), MRC Confidence in Concept Scheme award 2014-University of Sheffield to EE (Ref: MC_PC_14115), and a National Science Foundation grant DEB-1456634 to Tatiana Tatarinova and EE. We thank the many public participants for donating their DNA sequences for scientific studies and The Genographic Project's public database for providing us with their data.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fgene.2017.00087/full#supplementary-material
Atzmon, G., Hao, L., Pe'er, I., Velez, C., Pearlman, A., Palamara, P. F., et al. (2010). Abraham's children in the genome era: major Jewish diaspora populations comprise distinct genetic clusters with shared Middle Eastern ancestry. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 86, 850859. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Baron, S. W. (1937). Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 1. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Baron, S. W. (1952). Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 2. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Baron, S. W. (1957). Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 3. High Middle Ages: Heirs of Rome and Persia. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Behar, D. M., Harmant, C., Manry, J., van Oven, M., Haak, W., Martinez-Cruz, B., et al. (2012). The Basque paradigm: genetic evidence of a maternal continuity in the Franco-Cantabrian region since pre-Neolithic times. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 90, 486493. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.01.002
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Behar, D. M., Metspalu, M., Baran, Y., Kopelman, N. M., Yunusbayev, B., Gladstein, A., et al. (2013). No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews. Hum. Biol. 85, 859900. doi: 10.3378/027.085.0604
CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Ben-Sasson, H. H. (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Cansdale, L. (1996). The Radhanites: ninth century Jewish international traders. Aust. J. Jewish Stud. 10, 6577.
Cansdale, L. (1998). Jews on the Silk Road, in Worlds of the Silk Roads: Ancient and Modern, eds D. Christian and C. Benjamin (Turnhout: Brepols), 2330. doi: 10.1484/M.SRS-EB.4.00037
CrossRef Full Text
Das, R., Wexler, P., Pirooznia, M., and Elhaik, E. (2016). Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz. Genome Biol. Evol. 8, 11321149. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evw046
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Elhaik, E. (2016). In search of the jdische Typus: a proposed benchmark to test the genetic basis of Jewishness challenges notions of Jewish biomarkers. Front. Genet. 7:141. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2016.00141
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Elhaik, E., Greenspan, E., Staats, S., Krahn, T., Tyler-Smith, C., Xue, Y., et al. (2013). The GenoChip: a new tool for genetic anthropology. Genome Biol. Evol. 5, 10211031. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evt066
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Elhaik, E., Tatarinova, T., Chebotarev, D., Piras, I. S., Maria Cal, C., De Montis, A., et al. (2014). Geographic population structure analysis of worldwide human populations infers their biogeographical origins. Nat. Commun. 5:3513. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4513
CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Falk, R. (2006). Zionism and the Biology of Jews (Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Resling.
Finkelstein, I., and Silberman, N. A. (2002). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Flegontov, P., Kassian, A., Thomas, M. G., Fedchenko, V., Changmai, P., Starostin, G., et al. (2016). Pitfalls of the geographic population structure (GPS) approach applied to human genetic history: a case study of Ashkenazi Jews. Genome Biol. Evol. 8, 22592265. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evw162
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Frendo, A. J. (2004). Back to basics: a holistic approach to the problem of the emergence of ancient Israel, in Search of Pre-Exilic Israel, ed J. Day (New York, NY: T&T Clark International), 4164. doi: 10.1097/00152193-200410000-00004
CrossRef Full Text
Gil, M. (1974). The Rdhnite merchants and the land of Rdhn. J. Econ. Soc. Hist. Orient. 17, 299328.
Hadj-Sadok, M. (1949). Description du Maghreb et de l'Europe au IIIe-IXe siecle. Algiers: Carbonel.
Google Scholar
Hammer, M. F., Redd, A. J., Wood, E. T., Bonner, M. R., Jarjanazi, H., Karafet, T., et al. (2000). Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 97, 67696774. doi: 10.1073/pnas.100115997
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Hansen, V. (2012). The Silk Road: A New History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Hellenthal, G., Myers, S., Reich, D., Busby, G. B. J., Lipson, M., Capelli, C., et al. (2016). The Kalash genetic isolate? the evidence for recent admixture. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 98, 396397. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.12.025
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Jobling, M., Hurles, M. E., and Tyler-Smith, C. (2013). Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, Peoples and Disease. New York, NY: Garland Science.
Google Scholar
Khordadhbeh, I. (1889). The Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik Wa-'al-Mamalik), p. 114 in Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, Edited by de Goeje. Leiden: Brill.
King, R. D. (2001). The paradox of creativity in diaspora: the Yiddish language and Jewish identity. Stud. Ling. Sci. 31, 213229.
Google Scholar
Kraemer, R. S. (2010). Unreliable Witnesses: Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743186.001.0001
CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Lazaridis, I., Nadel, D., Rollefson, G., Merrett, D. C., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., et al. (2016). Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East. Nature 536, 419424. doi: 10.1038/nature19310
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Li, J. Z., Absher, D. M., Tang, H., Southwick, A. M., Casto, A. M., Ramachandran, S., et al. (2008). Worldwide human relationships inferred from genome-wide patterns of variation. Science 319, 11001104. doi: 10.1126/science.1153717
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Novembre, J., Johnson, T., Bryc, K., Kutalik, Z., Boyko, A. R., Auton, A., et al. (2008). Genes mirror geography within Europe. Nature 456, 98101. doi: 10.1038/nature07331
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Novembre, J., and Stephens, M. (2008). Interpreting principal component analyses of spatial population genetic variation. Nat. Genet. 40, 646649. doi: 10.1038/ng.139
CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Ostrer, H. (2012). Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Patai, R. (1983). On Jewish Folklore. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Patterson, N. J., Moorjani, P., Luo, Y., Mallick, S., Rohland, N., Zhan, Y., et al. (2012). Ancient admixture in Human history. Genetics 192, 10651093. doi: 10.1534/genetics.112.145037
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, L. I. (1948). Jewish Merchant Adventurers: A Study of the Radanites. London: Goldston.
Robert, J. N. (2014). De Rome la Chine. Sur les Routes de la soie au Temps des Csars. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Sand, S. (2009). The Invention of the Jewish People. London: Verso.
Sand, S. (2011). The Words and the Land: Israeli Intellectuals and the Nationalist Myth. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).
Google Scholar
Telegdi, Z. (1933). A Talmudi Irodalom irni Klcsnszavainak Hangtana. Budapest: Kertsz Jzsef Ny.
van Straten, J. (2004). Jewish migrations from Germany to Poland: the Rhineland hypothesis revisited. Mankind Q. 44, 367384.
Google Scholar
van Straten, J. (2007). Early modern Polish Jewry the Rhineland hypothesis revisited. Hist. Methods 40, 3950. doi: 10.3200/HMTS.40.1.39-50
CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
van Straten, J., and Snel, H. (2006). The Jewish demographic miracle in nineteenth-century Europe fact or fiction? Hist. Methods 39, 123131. doi: 10.3200/HMTS.39.3.123-131
CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Veeramah, K. R., Tnjes, A., Kovacs, P., Gross, A., Wegmann, D., Geary, P., et al. (2011). Genetic variation in the Sorbs of eastern Germany in the context of broader European genetic diversity. Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 19, 9951001. doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2011.65
PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar
Weinreich, M. (2008). History of the Yiddish Language. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Here is the original post:
Posted By admin on September 18, 2023
Two Brothers Organic Farms Taps Indian Diaspora In The USA, Targets 50 Cr Revenue In US Market By 2025 Free Press Journal
Read more from the original source:
Posted By admin on September 18, 2023
Read more from the original source:
Posted By admin on September 14, 2023
Thirty years after the Palestinian Liberation Organisation signed the Oslo Accords, officially recognising Israel, the Palestinian people appear to be no closer to an independent state, and the occupation of their land looks even more entrenched.
Palestinians under the age of 30 have only known life under the US-brokered deal, which left them with a provisional, self-governing authority the Palestinian Authority (PA).
But the supposedly interim government has failed to address major concerns about territory, illegal Jewish settlements, the status of Jerusalem the eastern half of which remains occupied by Israel as well as Palestinian refugees and the right of return.
On the 30th anniversary of the signing of the accords, Al Jazeera spoke to seven Palestinians to get their thoughts on the deal, and whether they think their life would have been different without it.
Ola Anebtawi, 32, Nablus, occupied West Bank
Growing up, the topic of the Oslo Accords would always come up because of its controversial nature. I always felt lost and I didnt understand how to form my own opinion.
But with time, I saw how it was translated on the ground and realised it was a major setback for our country and for our leadership.
When, as a Palestinian, you become aware of the cause, you start thinking, How can I play a role in whatever capacity in resisting the occupation?
But Oslo prevented us from reaching our mission as a people. It failed to unite us and to bring back the entirety of the land that was taken, and to facilitate the return of refugees.
By saying, I recognise Israel as a state, youre normalising. Today, were blaming the UAE for doing it, but we were the first people who recognised Israel as a state with defined borders.
It was a huge mistake.
The accords have also impacted our lives economically and socially, and restricted our freedom of movement because of the [illegal] settlements.
Its truly hurtful. When you dont have freedom, you have nothing. They robbed us of this.
Bahaa, 26, occupied East Jerusalem
Oslo was a complete disaster. It divided Palestinian areas into three sections: A, B, and C, and gave the occupation the power and legitimacy to control and administer these areas.
It intertwined the Palestinian and Israeli economies, making us dependent on it for survival.
The accords also had a massive impact on the youth in Jerusalem as it basically gave Israel complete control over the eastern part of the city.
We see this demonstrated in different ways on the ground most recently in our education policies and the war waged against it.
We also see how it has created an obstacle and divide between us and Palestinians in the West Bank, and elsewhere [in historical Palestine].
Tasami Ramadan, 25, Nablus, occupied West Bank
When I think of the Oslo Accords, I think of two words: hope and disappointment.
At the beginning, the accords were a chance for Palestinians to establish their own independent state and free themselves from occupation. But the reality on the ground turned this hope into disappointment.
The state that we were promised was never delivered. In fact, all of the promises that are in the agreement were never implemented. It was an unjust and unfair agreement.
If the accords never existed, I believe we would have had a stronger sense of Palestinian unity.
Oslo really helped bring out divisions among Palestinian factions. The effects of these internal disputes has had a massive impact on Palestinian unity and were suffering from the consequences to this very day.
These accords have also greatly diminished the importance of resistance and forced people to lose faith in the power of resistance. If it werent for these accords, I think we would have had stronger and more organised resistance groups, and the idea of resistance would have been a main unifying factor.
The accords have also shut the door on any other avenues that could have helped end the occupation. It basically said: We signed this agreement, and nothing else can be done.
Hossam, 30, occupied East Jerusalem
What we see happening on a daily basis from assaults and violations on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and the effort to divide and destroy it are all products of the Oslo Accords.
These accords have only brought tragedy and heartbreak upon the Palestinian people.
The agreement excluded Jerusalem from being given a final status and historical Palestine remains under occupation. In my opinion, it has got to be denounced.
This agreement fragmented the Palestinian people and separated them through the [separation] wall and settlements. I believe that liberation will never come through agreements signed with the occupation.
Saif Aqel, 30, Ramallah, occupied West Bank
I think signing the Oslo Accords was a historic mistake.
Even with my current understanding of the regional and international circumstances that prompted the Palestine Liberation Organisation at the time, I think it was a mistake.
Instead of keeping the PA as a temporary body within its specified time frame of five years, these agreements have become a permanent reference for the relationship between the Palestinians and the occupation.
Even 30 years after signing them, the accords have become a benchmark for the PA when putting forward proposals and demands, instead of them being the bare minimum. The evidence for this is that the Palestinian leadership is still demanding that Israel abide by the signed accords.
Meanwhile, successive Israeli governments have backtracked on the agreements and their responsibilities as an occupying power towards the Palestinian people. They went ahead and created a new reality for dealing with the Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza.
This cannot lead to a peaceful solution based on so-called negotiation with the occupation.
Jehan, 33, Hebron, occupied West Bank
The Oslo Accords are not peace accords, they are accords containing our defeat.
There can never be peace with the presence of a brutal occupation that controls Palestinian lands.
The accords essentially fragmented and divided Palestine. It gave us a form of self-determination, but the overarching power remains in the hand of Israel. There is coercive Israeli sovereignty that has control over all Palestinian land, and this is what were witnessing on the ground.
In areas including Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, and others which are supposedly under the Palestinian Authoritys control we see near-daily incursions and killings carried out by Israeli forces, yet there is zero interference by the PA to stop this.
The accords also denied refugees the right of return and left many integral topics unresolved, such as the status of Jerusalem and the settlement expansion project. How can peace be achieved by postponing such issues?
In my opinion, what was taken by force can only be returned by force and by the resistance.
Abubaker Qurt, 33, Ramallah, occupied West Bank
The Oslo Accords have set a dangerous precedent in our history, not only because it gave up Palestinian land to the occupation, but also because it acquired a legal character in the form of an international agreement.
This legitimises the compromising of rights of an entire population.
The Palestinian leadership was hasty and was taken by the idea of establishing a state at any cost and in whatever form.
Instead, it found itself shackled to severe political, security and economic restrictions that put it in direct conflict with the idea of liberation.
If the accords were never signed, I would have existed in a normal state that occupied people live in one where I am engaged in a revolution, not in false dreams offered to an occupied people in exchange for their silence.
Even the idea of a two-state solution has become a fantasy because the settlements ate up so much land on which a Palestinian state could be built.
Ghazi Al-Majdalawi, 26, occupied Gaza Strip
Before Oslo, the Israeli occupation was ruling all of our affairs and our lives. Despite this, people were able to express their constant rejection of it [the occupation], but after our transition to autonomous authority, the Palestinian Authority became a protector of the occupations presence.
One of the worst outcomes of the accords was that 78 percent of Palestine was given up in exchange for false promises such as establishing an airport, a seaport, an autonomous authority, and stopping settlement activity.
A few years later, the airport in Gaza was completely destroyed, the port was not completed, and settlements continue to eat away at the West Bank to this day.
Because of Oslo, my generation is deprived of visiting the West Bank, the 1948 territories [Israel], Jerusalem, and the rest of the Palestinian territories because of the borders that were demarcated in the agreement.
Today, if I decide to travel, I am forced to go and endure the hardship of travel and inspection through the Rafah border crossing, which is run by Egypt and is infamous for the difficulty of moving through it.
Now, we do not even govern 10 percent of Palestine. Gaza has no future, even after decades. Today we live in a prison and an area full of cement blocks with never-ending crises including poverty, unemployment, a siege, power outages, and on top of that we have endless Israeli assaults.
Read the original:
Growing up Palestinian after the Oslo Accords | Israel-Palestine ...
Posted By admin on September 14, 2023
I. Introduction
Hebrew Language [is a] Semitic language originally adopted by the 'ibhri, or Israelites, when they took possession of the land of Canaan west of the Jordan River in Palestine. The language has also been called the speech of Canaan, and Judean, after the kingdom of Judah. Ancient Hebrew, the language of the Bible, was succeeded by an intermediary form, Mishnaic Hebrew, about the 3rd century BC. Modern Hebrew, the only vernacular tongue based on an ancient written form, was developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
II. Biblical Hebrew
The language in which most of the Old Testament was written dates, as a living language, from the 12th to the 2nd century BC, at the latest. The territory of Phoenicia adjoined Canaan, and it is probable that Hebrew in its earliest form was almost identical to Phoenician; of the closely related Hebrew and Phoenician language groups, however, Hebrew is decidedly the more important. From about the 3rd century BC the Jews in Palestine came to use Aramaic in both speech and secular writings. Jews outside Palestine spoke in the language of the countries in which they had settled. Hebrew was preserved, however, as the language of ritual and sacred writing and through the centuries has undergone periodic literary revivals.
The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants vowel signs and pronunciation currently accepted for biblical Hebrew were created by scholars known as Masoretes after the 5th century AD. These scholars are thought also to have standardized various dialectal differences.
The vocabulary of biblical Hebrew is small. Concrete adjectives are used for abstract nouns. The paucity of particles, which connect and relate ideas, and the limitation to two verb tenses (perfect and imperfect) cause an ambiguity regarding time concepts; various syntactic devices were employed to clarify relations of time. A past action was indicated by the first in a series of verbs being in the perfect tense and all following verbs in the imperfect; for present or future action the first verb is in the imperfect tense and all subsequent ones in the perfect.
III. Postbiblical Hebrew
Mishnaic or rabbinic Hebrew, dating from about AD200, was the language of the Mishnah. It was solely a written language but was more adaptable to practical use than biblical Hebrew. The vocabulary and syntactic innovations were strongly Aramaic, and words were borrowed from Greek, Latin, and Persian. New meanings and forms were given to biblical Hebrew words, and the expressions of time were clarified. Hebrew vocabulary was further augmented in the Middle Ages by the Arabic influence on philosophic writing and through translations of Arabic philosophical and scientific works. From the 9th century on, the use of Hebrew declined.
IV. Modern Hebrew
When Jews moved to Palestine in the 19th century, Hebrew was revived as a spoken language. Modern Hebrew, Ivrit, was declared the official language of Israel in 1948. The language is written from right to left and employs an alphabet of 22 characters; the vocabulary is based on biblical Hebrew and the syntax on Mishnaic Hebrew. Long vowels are generally expressed in writing by unpronounced consonant sounds. Scriptures, children's books, and poetry use the Masoretic points, which are dots or dashes to indicate vowels. Pronunciation is modeled on that of the Sephardic Jews who live mainly in Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria. A great number of new words, particularly scientific terms, were needed in order to adapt the ancient written language to contemporary use; the Lithuanian-born scholar Eliezer ben Yehuda single-handedly coined 4000 new words from biblical Hebrew roots. The national languages of Israeli immigrants and Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi, or Eastern European Jews, have also influenced modern Hebrew.
"Hebrew Language," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000 (http:// encarta.msn.com 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)
Read more:
Posted By admin on September 14, 2023
Renovation forces Hebrew Academy girls to start year at Wiley Middle School Cleveland Jewish News
See the article here:
Renovation forces Hebrew Academy girls to start year at Wiley Middle School - Cleveland Jewish News
Posted By admin on September 12, 2023
See the original post:
Posted By admin on September 12, 2023
Visit link:
Israeli delegation makes first open visit to Saudi Arabia - FRANCE 24 English
Posted By admin on September 12, 2023
Israel on edge as Supreme Court convenes for historic, crucial overhaul hearing The Times of Israel
Read the rest here:
Proudly Powered by WordPress | Theme by The Cloisters | Entries RSS Comments RSS
