Nature Genetics: A Genetic View of Jewish History
- From: "Abraham'sChild" <runjonrun@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 13:32:12 -0500 (EST)
The February Nature Genetics, out today, has a very interesting/nice
review of "Abraham's Children". The fact that it was so positive is
especially noteworthy as it was written by Harry Ostrer of NYU, who is
awaiting publication of his more scholarly book on the same subject,
due out later this year. I had interviewed Harry while preparing the
book. I emailed about his single critical comment in the review... He
wrote back that he thought it could have focused more on the genetics
of Jewish diseases--which just so happens to be the focus of his book,
which those of us writing on this subject are eagerly awaiting. That
of course was not my purpose. I was trying to bring the flowering
story of genetic anthropology and the renewed focus on human
differences to a broader, popular audience, while respecting the
complex science.
I continue to welcome feedback/comments from those of you on this list
who may have soiled your hands by reading Abraham's Children. And I
stand by my offer of a refund for those of you who can legitimately
suggest why you believe the book is racist--which to this point, NO
reviewer has yet suggested.
Regards,
Jon Entine
http://www.abrahamschildren.net
****
NATURE GENETICS
February 2008
Book Review
A Genetic View of Jewish History [PDF OFf review posted at:
http://www.abrahamschildren.net/entine/nature-genetics/NGreview.pdf]
Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People
(http://www.abrahamschildren.net)
By Jon Entine
Reviewed by Harry Ostrer
Who is a Jew? Jon Entine is the latest entrant in a discussion that,
over the past century, has included Mark Twain, Maurice Fishberg,
Joseph Jacobs, the German eugenicists, Albert Einstein, and a pack of
contemporary geneticists, including me. The rabbis that created the
Talmudic canon of Jewish law solved this issue long ago: they declared
that a Jewish child of a Jewish mother. If male, he would be
circumcised to continue the biblical covenant that God created with
Abraham. This formula was shaken up in 1983 by the Central Conference
of American Rabbis, which declared that the child of a Jewish father
is also presumed to be of Jewish descent. Others hold that, in lieu of
Jewish birth, a Jewish someone who has agreed to follow the precepts
of Judaism before a rabbinical court (beit din) and under gone
submersion in a ritual bath (mikvah) and circumcision (brit milah), if
male. Yet, to the public and the geneticist alike, the Jewish people
are something more--an ethnic group that has maintained its social and
genetic cohesiveness over 2,500 years despite geographic dispersion to
all regions of the globe.
A century ago, popular wisdom held that Jews were a race with a
distinctive build and physiognomy. The New York University physician
and physical anthropologist Maurice Fishberg wrote: "One can pick out
a Jew from among a thousand non-Jews without difficulty." Joseph
Jacobs, a physical anthropologist and folklorist, expanded on this
viewpoint by noting that "The remarkable unity of resemblance among
Jews, even in different climes, seems to imply a common descent." This
concept was embraced by Einstein. But amid the tumult of the twentieth
century, in which race science run amok led to the Nazi-led Holocaust
of Jews, new constructs using the discoveries of population genetics
emerged.
In his book, Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the
Chosen People, Jon Entine maps some of these discoveries onto the span
of Jewish history from ancient times through the Jewish Diaspora. In
the process, he tries to respond to Mark Twain's observation and
question: "All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass,
but he remains...What is the secret of his immortality?" Entine's
response "good breeding." To trace the patterns of good breeding, he
pays special attention to the discovery of the 'Cohan modal
haplotype,' a Y chromosomal marker defined by a series of
microsatellites that is found in a high proportion of Jewish men who
claim descent from Aaron the Priest, the brother of Exodus leader
Moses. He also pays special attention to the discovery of the BRCA1
185delAG mutation that arose in ancient Palestine and that was
transmitted through Jewish populations and some of their converso
successors. By drawing on many studies, including some unpublished,
Entine pulls many groups in from the margins of contemporary Judaism,
including the Jewish Communities of India and Ethiopia and the
Hispanic communities of the American Southwest. However, there are
many other genetic strands that link Jews--Y-chromosomal and
mitochondrial haplotypes that point to founding mothers and fathers
and genetic bottlenecks in Jewish Diaspora groups, other disease
mutations that arose during the course of Jewish history and that
point to shared ancestry as well as founder effects and founding of
Diaspora groups, and autosomal ancestry informative markers that are
just starting to be discovered.
Entine is no stranger to controversy. His earlier book was Taboo: Why
Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It.
As he and his predecessors in the field of Jewish genetics have
pointed out, the stakes in these genetic discoveries about Jews are
high--a genetic demonstration of Middle Eastern origins that would
favor claims for a Jewish homeland in Israel, glorious lineages with
potential lines of descent from a priest or a king, even a Messianic
line, absolution from Christ-killing, a genetic stake in a long
intellectual tradition of learning and scholarship, and duties and
curses are all on the line. In my own case, the discovery of my
patrilineal E3b haplotype has pointed to a line of descent originating
in southern Africa with migration through the Middle East and Eastern
Europe, and a previously unknown 18th-century ancestor, Eliezer Der
Gutter, who 'blessed' his descendants "to live in poverty until the
10th generation," believing that poverty would make them more pious!
The study of the genetics of the Jewish Diaspora is in a golden age
right now, but golden ages are prone to end. Historically endogamous
Jewish populations are admixing in the melting pot of Israel.
Admixture rates between Jews and non-Jews are high. Heterozygote
testing programs have led to selective mating practices that are
influencing allele frequencies. So, the genetics of Jewish populations
as currently discerned will change.
For the generation of geneticists who avidly read Richard Goodman's
series of books on Jewish genetics, and its predecessors by Raphael
Patai and Jennifer Patai-Wing, Elisabeth Goldschmidt and Arthur
Mourant, J on Entine's book is a welcome addition. His understanding
of the genetics is limited and uncritical, but his broad, well-
documented sweep of Jewish history will inform even the most
knowledgeable of readers.
Harry Ostrer is in the Human Genetics Program, New York University
School of Medicine, E-mail: harry.ostrer@xxxxxxxxxxx
.
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