Do you know about these websites that analyze your DNA and give you a genetical profile? N. was offered to do this kind of genetic testing at work for free and he agreed.
So what do you think the testing revealed? What I suspected from the start: he has Jewish ancestry. This will show some anti-Semitic relatives how stupid they are and how their deeply cherished hatreds can be rendered even more ridiculous through scientific advances.
Of course, we are both very happy. I always knew I’d end up marrying a good Jewish boy one day. I’ve been telling N. for years that I was convinced he was partly Jewish, and now I’m proven right.
Clarissa's Blog 
Wow. I wonder if they would find any Bantu elements in my genetics. I have the narrower calves that are often indicative of this.
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Welcome to the Tribe, N! 🙂
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Considering Judaism is a religion, how the hell do you get “jewish” DNA?? Next story will be about your “feminist” DNA, lmao. 🙂
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how the hell do you get “jewish” DNA??
You have a small number of Jews, for centuries they marry within the Jewish community in the same regions in the world, and they start to get a general genetic profile. One big group within Judaism are Ashkenazi Jews (most of the Jews in the world, with their origins in Eastern Europe and Germany). Then you have a different regional community, those living around the Mediterranean – the Sephardic Jews. Yes, Judaism is a religion and you can have converts to it from anywhere, but we’re not talking about “Jewish DNA” in terms of little menorahs dancing around the cytosine and guanine; we’re talking about regional communities held together by the practice of Judaism and marriages within the community.
(An example of an unfortunate genetic tendency of the Ashkenazi Jewish population – which is most Jews in the world – is that they’re significantly more likely to have incidences of the genetic mutation for Tay-Sachs… so young couples are recommended for screening.)
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hkatz
A slippery slope for sure. I can just imagine some radicals claiming you are not a “real” Jew if you dont have the proper genetic makeup.
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I don’t understand why this is causing a debate. Would you have the same problem if I told you the test also revealed he had Finnish ethnicity? Why is it so surprising that people belong to different ethnic groups?
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The only “slippery slope” in Judaism among the small group of radicals (by which I mean radical fundamentalists) is the increasingly stringent demands on practice and daily conduct in life. They don’t call on DNA for the exact reasons Clarissa states (within the same ethnic group there’s a wide range of practice, from not practicing Judaism at all to being extremely fundamentalist); the fundamentalists’ exclusionary viewpoint is based on how you behave and observe Judaism.
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Fundamentalists are scary in every religion. However, I want to repeat that all of the Soviet Jews who didn’t practice Judaism for generations did not stop being Jewish and turn Russian or Moldovan all of a sudden. And Hitler didn’t want to destroy people practicing a religion. It’s the ethnic group he wanted to exterminate. Which is why he killed many atheist Soviet Jews.
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Agreed. Anti-semitic people in general haven’t cared about how much a person adheres to Judaism – and when they implement anti-semitic campaigns they target everyone ethnically Jewish even if they don’t practice it.
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The Soviet Jews who had never seen a menorah in their life and hadn’t stepped inside of a synagogue in generations still suffered from intense persecution in the USSR between 1949 and 1991.
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One of my grandmothers and her family managed to get out of the Soviet Union in the 1930s and move to Israel (then Palestine), saving themselves from the Holocaust and from the decades-long Soviet persecution of Jews and crackdown on anything Jewish.
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Israel accepted millions of Soviet Jews, the absolute majority of whom knew nothing about Judaism, and never doubted or questioned their jewishness in any way. We have one such former Soviet Jew living in Israel commenting on this blog on a regular basis.
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Im curious, can you actually have a jewish ethnicity without the religion? I can understand the regional aspect but we dont typically use the jewish ethnicity idea with any of the other religions. Or at least not that I am aware of.
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“Im curious, can you actually have a jewish ethnicity without the religion?”
– What a bizarre question. You think ethnicities actually change if people convert? Like if I convert to Hinduism, I will stop being Slav? Seriously?
“I can understand the regional aspect but we dont typically use the jewish ethnicity idea with any of the other religions. Or at least not that I am aware of.”
– Do you realize that you are being insulting right now? And who the fuck is the royal “we” in this offensive statement? You remind me of this fundamentalist I used to know who once exclaimed, “How dare you say OUR Jesus was a Jew!”
The ignorance is daunting.
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Like if I convert to Hinduism, I will stop being Slav? Seriously?(Clarissa)
But you would no longer be a jew, right? The Slav and Finnish idea I get because it is talking about a region where people were born and raised. Take away the religion aspect and all you have left is that.
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“But you would no longer be a jew, right”
– Yes, I will be a Jew for as long as I live. Just like my father was a Jew and still is after converting to Christianity. We haven’t practice Judaism for over 100 years in my family, yet everybody’s birth certificate and passport has always said “a Jew.”
“The Slav and Finnish idea I get because it is talking about a region where people were born and raised.”
– N. was not born and raised in Finland. And if N and I have a child, that child will still be predominantly ethnically Slav, even if we move to Africa. You don;t change your ethnicity because you move. Like all the Irish and Italian people whose families have been living in the US for generations. Do you think they stopped being Irish and Italian because their grandparents moved to the US?
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Or take all those ethnic Germans who lived in Russia for generations. They only were repatriated back to Germany after 1991. Ethnically, though, they are all German and they will be German no matter where they live and what religion they practice.
There are many ethnic Germans in the area where I live now. Try telling them that immigration made them somehow less German. Most of them never even visited Germany. Many can’t find Germany on a map. But their ethnicity remains the same.
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“Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion; those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent); and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of the religion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews#Who_is_a_Jew.3F
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If the religion Judaism was never created would you still be a Jew?
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Of course.
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I did not say the test revealed he practiced Judaism. The test showed he was ethnically Jewish. There are crowds of Jews who don’t practice Judaism. My Jewish father, for instance, is a devout Christian.
It surprises me that there are still people who equate ethnicity and religion.
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