What Is It With Jews and DNA?

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If you prick us do we not bleed?
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (Act III Scene I)


I don't know why, but it seems there are an awful lot of people out there who are out for our blood--for purely scientific reasons of course.

One of the most recent cases is from The Economist: Natural genius? The high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be a result of their persecuted past:

The sphingolipid-storage diseases, Tay-Sachs, Gaucher's and Niemann-Pick, all involve extra growth and branching of the protuberances that connect nerve cells together. Too much of this (as caused in those with double copies) is clearly pathological. But it may be that those with single copies experience a more limited, but still enhanced, protuberance growth. That would yield better linkage between brain cells, and might thus lead to increased intelligence.

Why a failure of the DNA-repair system should boost intelligence is unclear—and is, perhaps, the weakest part of the thesis, although evidence is emerging that one of the genes in question is involved in regulating the early growth of the brain. But the thesis also has a strong point: it makes a clear and testable prediction. This is that people with a single copy of the gene for Tay-Sachs, or that for Gaucher's, or that for Niemann-Pick should be more intelligent than average.

A different case of Jewish DNA came up in 2002:

Indian 'Jews' resist DNA tests to prove they are a lost tribe

Members of a remote community of Indians who claim to be descendants of one of the 10 lost tribes of ancient Israel are resisting plans to carry out genetic tests to prove their Jewishness.

The group, which calls itself the Bnei Menashe (or children of the biblical tribe of Manasseh), fears that the plan by a group of American and Israeli scientists to carry out DNA tests may undermine its claims to Jewish ancestry.

Apparently the DNA issue was 'resolved' just last year, according to Brothers Judd in September of last year:

DNA studies at the Central Forensic Institute in Calcutta conclude that while the tribe's males show no links to Israel, the females share a family relationship to the genetic profile of Middle-Eastern people.

A third case has to do with tracing Cohanim:

Dr. Skorecki considered, "According to tradition, this Sephardi Cohen and I have a common ancestor. Could this line have been maintained since Sinai, and throughout the long exile of the Jewish people?" As a scientist, he wondered, could such a claim be tested?

...In the first study, as reported in the prestigious British science journal, Nature (January 2, 1997), 188 Jewish males were asked to contribute some cheek cells from which their DNA was extracted for study. Participants from Israel, England and North America were asked to identify whether they were a Cohen, Levi or Israelite, and to identify their family background.

The results of the analysis of the Y chromosome markers of the Cohanim and non-Cohanim were indeed significant. A particular marker, (YAP-) was detected in 98.5 percent of the Cohanim, and in a significantly lower percentage of non-Cohanim.

According to the article, there are further possibilities and ramifications for this use of DNA:

Using the CMH as a DNA signature of the ancient Hebrews, researchers are pursuing a hunt for Jewish genes around the world.

This could have ramifications in the search for the Biblical Ten Lost Tribes.

Speaking of the Ten Lost Tribes, a fourth example comes from an article in Thursday's LA Times which refers to:

DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East.

This is in reference to certain principles of the Book of Mormon which supposedly are contradicted by those findings.

However, an article by Jeff Lindsay that defends the Book of Mormon refers to some interesting articles:

Dr. Robert Pollack, a professor of biological sciences and director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion at Columbia University, makes the following important observation in his online article, "The Fallacy of Biological Judaism" (Pollack, 2003):

At a recent meeting of the Association of Orthodox Jewish scientists and the Columbia Center for the Study of Science and Religion, it became clear that Jewish curiosity has provided sufficient genetic material to give a perfectly clear negative answer: There is no support in the genomes of today's Jews for the calumnious and calamitous model of biological Judaism. Though there are many deleterious versions of genes shared within the Ashkenazic community, there are no DNA sequences common to all Jews and absent from all non-Jews. There is nothing in the human genome that makes or diagnoses a person as a Jew.

But Lindsay also refers to another article, this one by

Nicholas Wade, "Geneticists Report Finding Central Asian Link to Levites," New York Times, September 27, 2003:

A team of geneticists studying the ancestry of Jewish communities has found an unusual genetic signature that occurs in more than half the Levites of Ashkenazi descent. The signature is thought to have originated in Central Asia, not the Near East, which is the ancestral home of Jews. The finding raises the question of how the signature became so widespread among the Levites, an ancient caste of hereditary Jewish priests.

...They say that 52 percent of Levites of Ashkenazi origin have a particular genetic signature that originated in Central Asia, although it is also found less frequently in the Middle East. The ancestor who introduced it into the Ashkenazi Levites could perhaps have been from the Khazars, a Turkic tribe whose king converted to Judaism in the eighth or ninth century, the researchers suggest.

That's us--we've confused and confounded kings, politicians, historians, philosophers, and even the scientists.

See also: Is There Such A Thing as Jewish DNA?

Technorati Tag: Jews and DNA and Genealogy and Ten Lost Tribes.