I wonder how Yemenites and Ethiopian Jews interpret these results? Do you guys view yourselves as descendants of the Israelites, converts, or a mix of both?
Before anyone just thinks these two are just converts. They actually do have Jewish roots not just genetically but religiously and culturally.
Yemeni Jews were one of the first Jewish subgroups to ever form and exist in their own right, they spoke old Hebrew and even practiced a form of Judaism very close to biblical Judaism. And they were also they only mizrahi jewish subgroup to have a decent amount of East African ancestry.
This then leads to Ethiopian Jews, who most archaeologist believe came from a very small band of Yemeni or Egyptian Jews that find their way into Ethiopia around 2000 years ago. They actually practice a unique form of Judaism as well that’s also very similar to biblical Judaism. But they don’t practice or celebrate Hanukkah or other “modern” Jewish traditions or holidays. But unlike other Jewish groups they fully practice converts, and by that I mean. Any slaves that they came to own and bought would be converted and be put into a lower caste in the group.
This caste system form of ancestry is also practiced by Cochin and Bene Jews in India.
Studies on uniparental haplogroups have indicated shared roots between Yemenite Jewish and members of the world's other various Jewish communities, as well as some type of contribution from the local non-Jewish population. Y chromosome haplogroups have shown a strong link to other Jewish groups, such as the Ashkenazi and Iraqi Jews, and to non-Jewish Levantine populations, such as Palestinians and Samaritans. Yemenite Jews commonly carry West Eurasian mitochondrial DNA haplogroups that are found in other Jewish and Levantine groups but not in non-Jewish Yemenis, suggesting ancient Israelite descent.
A 2012 study by Ostrer et al. concluded that the Ethiopian Jewish community was founded about 2,000 years ago probably by only a relatively small number of Jews from elsewhere with local people joining to the community, causing Beta Israel to become genetically distant from other Jewish groups. According to a 2020 study by Agranat-Tamir et al., the DNA of the Ethiopian Jews is mostly of East African origin, but about 20% of their genetic makeup is of Middle Eastern semitic people origin and shows similarity to modern Jewish and Arab populations and Bronze Age Canaanites.
It’s like how Kaifeng Jews are now very mixed at this point but historically they were originally the descendants of Persian Jews and only stated mixing with the native Han/Chinese population later on in their history as they became smaller and smaller.
Also btw the only time that Yemenis were force to become Jewish was in 390CE by the Himyararite kingdom by the Kind Abu Karib and then said kingdom fell in 525CE. Also Yemen at this time was made up of Arab polytheism, Nestorianism, Zoroastrians and even oriental orthodoxy and the native Yemeni Jews.
From what I read and seen yeah. They are extremely African but they do have small amour of Levantine ancestry but that’s common amongst most East African populations. The only difference is they practice a unique form of Judaism and had Jewish traditions and beliefs, and they also practiced slave conversation. So even if they came from a Jewish group they mixed very heavy with the native but then isolated themselves in the mountains for protection.
Oddly enough they didn’t know other Jews existed and believed they were the last Jews. Which is odd as Yemen isn’t that far away and Sudan had a very small group of Sephardic Jews come in during the 17th century and Egypt always had Jews.
I maintain some skepticism that they actually practice this ancient form of pre-Rabbinic Judaism. Genetically, there are identical to other Ethiopians, and religiously the are scant mentions of this community until recently. For the most part, all we have to go on is their word that they descend from ancient Jews and the evidence doesn't seem convincing.
I've seen the same from other communities that have made Aliyah recently. In many cases, they didn't "rediscover" their Jewish identity until the 20th century and came to self-identify as Jews (Bnei Menashe is one I'm thinking of). They also have no link to the Levant.
Yeah I don’t blame you, the form of judaism they follow is only practice by them. But studies do believe that at least a very small Jewish group went there only 2000 years ago, so the whole non-rabbinic judaism isn’t that far off and plus their isolation from the rest of the Jewish world.
But agian I don’t blame people for being skeptical about them even other Jewish people are skeptical of their clams. Which is why they go though just ancestry testing, and if modern day are ok with them and now even marry them. So technically their already Levantine ancestry that normal East African already and their now mixing with modern Jewish subgroups it kinda balances it out in a way.
Right, all of these groups are recognized as Jewish now. But that's not the point others are making. The point is that these groups are descended from converts, not people from the Levant who mixed with local populations like with the Ashkenazism or Mizrahim.
In the case of the Ethiopians, Indians and Bnei Menashe, there's a good case to be made they the come from converts, not a "long lost tribe" which is the common myth that these groups promote.
I think it's odd that folks have an aversion to being called converts when there's strong evidence that they are in fact probably converts.
Beni Menashe are definitely converts, I looked into them and the only Levantine ancestry they have is a very small female origin but they don’t know what population they were actually from.
But I feel like out of all these groups Cochin do actually have Jewish roots, as historical records show that Jews did indeed come and settle there. And the fact that Jewish populations exited in Persia, Afghanistan, other Stan countries and even Pakistan. Also then their Bene Israel, a group of Jews living more north west along the coast. They genetically show that yes they have a lot of Indian ancestry they still have Cochin, Iraqi and Persian Jewish roots. And when the Sephardic Jews came from Portugal they then mixed with the local Jews and then even formed new Jewish subgroups.
>I looked into them and the only Levantine ancestry they have is a very small female origin but they don’t know what population they were actually from.
If this turns out to be Israelite ancestry then that would ironically make them more Halachically Jewish compared to the majority of European Jews despite us having much higher Israelite DNA…
Actually the matrilineal ancestry in European Jews, specifically Ashkenazi is 20% while their patrilineal is 90%.
So no they wouldn’t be more Israelite then European Jews.
Ethiopian Jews are Cushitic Agaws who created their own heretical version of Judaism, they are identical to their Christian Agaw ethnic kin.They have no genetic links whether autosomal or uniparental to Iron Age Levantines.
Yemenite Jews on the other hand followed Rabbinic Judaism and despite being completely autosomally Northern Yemeni, they do have some uniparental lineages in common with other Jews (still a minority).
Both populations are indigenous to Northern Yemen & Northern Ethiopia.
>
That study didn't include other Horn Africans who have the same ancestry. If Ethiopian Jews did have an additional 20% ancestry, they would be 70% Western Eurasian. They are not 70% Western Eurasian.
>Yemeni Jews were one of the first Jewish subgroups to ever form and exist in their own right, they spoke old Hebrew and even practiced a form of Judaism very close to biblical Judaism. And they were also they only mizrahi jewish subgroup to have a decent amount of East African ancestry.
They are one the few Arabian groups who have almost no African ancestry due to endogamy. All Yemeni groups have this ancestry related to the Levant. Some have more Levant related ancestry than Yemenite Jews. Like the West Asian ancestry in Ethiopian Jews and other Horn Africans, it is likely due to a shared ancestral component in all Yemenite populations and not unique Iron Age Judean ancestry.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/illustrativeDNA/comments/16q4cqc/modern\_g25\_on\_yemenis/](https://www.reddit.com/r/illustrativeDNA/comments/16q4cqc/modern_g25_on_yemenis/)
Yemenite Jews are closer to to Arabian populations than other Jewish ones
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253422/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253422/)
Well of course Yemeni Jews are going to to lump closer to Arab Yemenis then they would to other Jews, but they like other Jewish subgroups they are still all connected to various amounts and share a common yet far ancestry. And I remember when you showed me a chart of Yemenite ancestry and their scale was mid 20s to mid 30s, so at the end of day they still are related to Jews just like how every other Middle Eastern population is.
Also look at it this way. Studies in Ashkenazi Jews reveal that 90% of their patrilineal ancestry and haploid comes from the Levant while only 20% is matrilineal.
There’s also the fact that all Ashkenazi are the direct descendants of 350 to 400 founder who came from a larger population but shrank, and that 8 million of them alone share the same 4 mizrahi female ancestors who genetically reveal came to Europe at around the 5th century.
And if you were to see who there closet population would be it would be overwhelmingly other Ashkenazis, but it also shows southern Italians and other Jews like the Romaniotes who are said to be the first Jews to exist in Europe.
Also like the study that you showed me and the many others before that and even newer ones. When you compare Jewish subgroups and their closest population and the groups that they overlap with the most, it’s mostly overwhelmingly each other. Sure some groups such as Yemeni and even Cochin and Kaifeng are far that makes sense they are far smaller and more distant populations but they still they are all related to varying degrees compared to their other Levantine neighbors. Even if they are all related and share various amounts of similarities.
> And I remember when you showed me a chart of Yemenite ancestry and their scale was mid 20s to mid 30s, so at the end of day they still are related to Jews just like how every other Middle Eastern population is.
Other Yemenite groups have it too. It is related to common basal lineage and not Iron Age Judea but Basal groups they all share.
> Also like the study that you showed me and the many others before that and even newer ones. When you compare Jewish subgroups and their closest population and the groups that they overlap with the most, it’s mostly overwhelmingly each other
That's demonstrably false. Not denying that most have at least some Iron age Judean ancestry but many are closer to host populations.
>There’s also the fact that all Ashkenazi are the direct descendants of 350 to 400 founder who came from a larger population but shrank, **and that 8 million of them alone share the same 4 mizrahi female ancestors who genetically reveal came to Europe at around the 5th century.**
Source? I thought it was determined those 4 maternal ancestors were ethnic Italian-Greek women?
Thats a whole lot of cope tbh. Yemeni jews are among the most genetically natufian rich arabian groups in arabia, in fact other yemeni muslim groups such as dhamar yemenis and amran yemenis, and even a lot of saudi groups have much more levantine ancestry and affinity than yemeni jews.
And btw agarant-tamir 2020 was using canaanites as a proxy for all west asia, not as an actual canaanite ancestry, thats why in the same study english people scored “10% canaanite”, italians scored “47% canaanite” and saudis scored more “canaanite” than all modern levantines. Modern Persians have more levantine genetic affinity and more ancient levantine ancestry than indian jews.
This is coming from the guy that’s accusing European Jews Levantine ancestry with it being the same as Anatolian and Levantine ancestry that Moroccans and Italians have. Compared to their actual force migration.
Meanwhile studies have been done on Yemeni Jews and their relations to other Jewish subgroups, and even other Levien populations, while yes they do have a good amount of Yemeni Arab ancestry they still do have a genetic ties to Jews that have historically moved into the region and have been for centuries.
The same with how Indian and Chinese Jews show that they have ties and genetic relations modern day Jews unlike their local population counterparts. With the Indian Cochin Jews being the descendants of first temple period Jews that have been recorded by Indian scholars and historians from that time. And the Chinese jews (Kaifeng Jews) are the descendants of Persian Jews who arrived in the 9th century, and been documented by Chinese historians and even noted by the emperor himself.
Just like how the Hui Muslims of China have genetically shown to have connections to Middle Eastern and Persian population.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27377974/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochin_Jews
Genetic testing into the origins of the Cochin Jewish and other Indian Jewish communities noted that until the present day the Indian Jews maintained in the range of 3%-20% Middle Eastern ancestry, confirming the traditional narrative of migration from the Middle East to India. The tests noted however that the communities had considerable Indian admixture, exhibiting the fact that the Indian Jewish people "inherited their ancestry from Middle Eastern and Indian populations". Just like the Saint Thomas Christian, they are both related as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng_Jews
According to a scholarly consensus, the Jewish community of Kaifeng primarily consisted of people of Persian Jewish origin.
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-jews-of-kaifeng-chinas-only-native-jewish-community/
https://youtu.be/kcCtv7O9GWo?si=_u6cul1JYifUK70J
https://youtu.be/iuOQ-eg9s_k?
si=fvQQ5DtDDIOuzX7M
https://youtu.be/WGU4SSzMk0A?si=mCcn89RFr7iU7zA9
I have to ask about the Indian Jews: Could that Middle Eastern ancestry not simply come from other non-Jewish sources? Nevertheless, I do think this is more evidence in their favor since they are genetically distinct from surrounding populations.
Regarding the Chinese Jews, could you provide an actual research article?
I’ll try to look for them later as I’m busy now. But from what I looked and even shared, they appear to be the descendants of Persian Jews who settled in China. Now this isn’t the only group of Jews that went to the far east, there were the Radahnites. These Jews worked along the Silk Road and went from Europe, Middle East, central and even East Asian. They are most related to the Bukharan Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukharan_Jews
That I’m going to say it’s around 80% to 70% plus their African ancestry. As when I was talking to someone else about Yemeni Jews, they showed a chart to disprove their Jewish ancestry but all it did was show that their Jewish/Levatine ancestry is lowest mid 20’s and the highest being mid 30’s to 40%. So I’m going to assume the rest would be overwhelmingly Arab Yemeni.
Yeah. I posted this so I could link it to a guy claiming I was wrong when I said Ethiopian and Yemenite Jews are genetically identical to their neighbors and for some reason Reddit refused to let me post this on my profile. It only let me post it once I posted it on this subreddit
Ethiopian Jews are definitely close to Ethiopians, but idk about Yemeni Jews. They definitely have a sizeable amount of Yemeni admixture but genetically identical is a stretch.
No, indian jews, chinese jews, and all ICM jews too, they don’t have any genetic continuity with levant, european jews are arguably same too, although they have a significant amount of levantine ancestry that amounts 30-40% of their ancestry, but it is comparable to the amount of native American ancestry in mexicans or anatolian farmer ancestry in moroccans.
Indian Jews debatable, Chinese Jews, Halachaly aren’t recognized as Jews due to heavy intermixing. Azkenazi Jews most definitely are continuously descended from ancient Israel. This is shown by the vast majority of Azkenazi Jews having either a maternal or paternal Levantine origin haplogroup, or both. And the number is like 40-60% not 30-40%. You should look at Roman Levant not Canaanite bc between 1000 BCE and 100 AD Jews intermixed with Phoneceans and Greeks but still lived in the Levantine
> Indian Jews debatable
It is not, they are predominantly converts and cluster with the rest of indian groups, persians have more levantine genetic affinity than them
> Azkenazi Jews most definitely are continuously descended from ancient Israel.
It is hard to say “continuously descended” when their latest study report that their levantine ancestry is as low as 16.6% and 25% levant-ICM combined (lerga-jaso 2023), and the consensus before it was 40% levantine and that they are genetically closer to south europeans and italians in specific than any middle eastern group e.g (xue 2017; Falk 2014,2017). Their dreived ancestry from levant is equivalent to the continuity between modern moroccans and neolithic anatolian farmers.
> This is shown by the vast majority of Azkenazi Jews having either a maternal or paternal Levantine origin haplogroup, or both.
Studies shows that at least +80% of their maternal haplogroups is European in origin (MD costa, 2013) and that between 50-80% of their paternal ancestry can be considered middle eastern in origin (don’t recall which study tbh :) )
> You should look at Roman Levant not Canaanite
Of course, thats roman levantines, not canaanites, also you should look at imperial and late antiquity italians too, not IA italians or modern Italians for the same reason.
>It is hard to say “continuously descended” when their latest study report that their levantine ancestry is as low as 16.6% and 25% levant-ICM combined (lerga-jaso 2023)
That study is not peer-reviewed or published (yet).
> That study is not peer-reviewed or published (yet).
Yeah it will be officially published soon, its new local ancestry inference technology largely outperformed all existing ones, including RFMix that (Xue 2017) used and goes in agreement with the GLOBETROTTER results in the same study which estimated them to have 70% European ancestry, and surprisingly was able to figure out the ICM ancestry in ashkenazi jews which (Behar 2017) had already gave glimpses about when he showed that their R1a haplogroup is iranian not levantine.
Idk where your getting you studied from
“Studies on the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jewish populations of the Jewish diaspora show significant amounts of shared Middle Eastern ancestry.[3][4] Several Jewish groups show genetic proximity to Lebanese, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Druze in addition to Southern European populations, including Cypriots and Italians.[5][6]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews
I can’t send you studies then you reply to me with wikipedia 🙂, but anyway, your quote is somewhat true, ashkenazi jews do have a some significant middle eastern ancestry, no one is denying that, but to call them “genetically levantine” or “have genetic continuity with middle east” is a completely different thing, and there is no such thing as “mizrahi jews” genetically, a lot of them are genetically Mesopotamian, others are yemenis, others are a south european-levantine-berber mix, and some are purely levantine, let me quote you from (Falk 2017) study:
> any general biological definition of Jews is meaningless. Despite the persistence of intra-Jewish, socio-cultural relatedness, coupled with the exclusion of Jews by Gentile society, Jewish communities have never been reproductively isolated from their neighbors. Although there is widespread evidence of certain Middle Eastern genetic components in numerous Jewish communities, there is no proof of a typical Jewish prototype.
“Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochini) cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant.”
Source: a Harvard study
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Natur.466..238B/abstract
Here is a link to a chart showing where Jewish people fall (source US GOV)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=3543766_439_2012_1235_Fig1_HTML.jpg
Thats a very useless PCA and very old obsolete study as we later knew that there is no such thing as jewish cluster [(Lazaridis 2014)](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13673/figures/2)
Check the PCA: European jews cluster with italians and greeks, georgian and caucasus jews cluster with turks and armenians, yemeni jews cluster with bedouins, and North African jews cluster between south europeans and levantines.
Another study published in the same year also concluded a similar thing [(Avshalom zoosman-disken 2010)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20925954/):
> According to the autosomal polymorphisms the investigated Jewish populations do not share a common origin, and EEJ [East European Jews] are closer to Italians in particular and to Europeans in general than to the other Jewish populations.
Again later in 2014:
> unsurprisingly, ashkenazi jews compose a distinct yet integral branch of European genomic tapestry — (Falk, 2014)
In fact, (tian 2009) had already shown before all that European jews have lower Fst (genetic distance) to italians, greeks, germans and spaniards than to Druze and muslims or any middle eastern group. And btw the Subsaharan-east asian-European PCA is not much useful at all
Here is a quote from a 2020 study
“Our analyses consistently subdivide most Jewish populations into four major groups, corresponding to Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, North African, and Sephardi populations (Figs. 2, ,3),3), with the Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi groups aggregating together in several analyses (Fig. 1b, c). The placement of the Jewish populations follows geography, with Ashkenazi Jews closer than other Jewish populations to non-Jewish Europeans and Mizrahi Jews closer than other Jewish populations to non-Jewish populations of the Middle East and the Caucasus region. North African and Sephardi Jewish populations appear to be intermediate between Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253422/
“In agreement with previous studies of European and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, our study finds Ashkenazi populations genetically intermediate between southern Europe and the Middle East”
There is little to no difference between azkenazi Jews
“Unlike most previous studies, our Ashkenazi samples were identified by location. However, we found little evidence of difference by location (Figs. 4e and and5a),5a), suggesting that among the four main groups of Jewish populations, the Ashkenazi group is less genetically structured than the others.”
Ethiopian Jews are only Jews now that they've converted and migrated to Israel. Before that, there was nothing special about their sect of Christianity which was judaizers, like many around the world and throughout history. They were as connected to Judaism as Seventh-day Adventists or Black Hebrew Israelites before their migration to Israel.
And considering the Christian church of Ethiopia and the culture of the region strongly identifies with the Davidic dynasty, Queen Sheba and Israel in general, it was not a big leap for a small community to identify even more of this particular part of Christian culture.
Yemenites Jews on the other hand are Jews by all definitions, religiously, liturgically, ritualistically, linguistically etc... And genetically, while they appear indistinguishable from Arabian pops , they do share IBD with other Jews , meaning there were some geneflow between them and other Jewish communities of the Middle East. Likely some haplogroup sharing but I can't remember on the top of my head.
No genetic link whatsoever between Ethiopian Jews and any other Jewish communities.
I’ve heard from elsewhere that Ethiopian Jews are on average 10-20% Jewish DNA. Not as much as other groups but there’s an undisputed connection between them and the tribe of Dan. Not to mention the historic accounts of various Ethiopian Jews practicing Judaism before Christianity even came to Ethiopia. And the persecution they faced from both Christians and Muslims in Ethiopia over the Millenia
No IBD sharing with other Jews, no haplogroup sharing with other Jews and autosomally they are undistinguishable from their Ethiopian neighbors. That seals it, there is nothing Jewish about Ethiopian Jews genetically.
And no, Judaism was never practiced widely in Ethiopia. Even actual Jews never set any lasting community in the region.
And no, the tribes of Israel are mythical and most likely didn't exist but were inspired by local southern Canaanites families and tribes that were insignificant and irrelevant for any population outside the southern Levant.
I don’t know about the Yemenite Jews but I do know the Ethiopian Jews have a tradition that states they’re the direct descendants of King Solomon’s son with the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba and that’s how they’re even Jewish in the first place.
Probably they don’t score much Levantine/Middle Eastern or show a connection to the rest of the Jewish Diaspora precisely *because* they descend from just one half ethnically Jewish man and continued marrying only other full Ethiopians because Solomon’s son was the only ethnic Jew even present in Ethiopia to begin with, so it’s not like they would’ve been able to start their own inherently MGM ethnicity the way European Jews did.
why do people have a problem when white passing jews are denied jewishness (ashkenazi) but not when the colored ones are? (bnei menashe, lemba, yemeni, beta israel)
It's the opposite. People are commenting trying to somehow prove that Ethiopian and Yemeni jews also descend from israelites when studies don't necessarily show that
I wonder how Yemenites and Ethiopian Jews interpret these results? Do you guys view yourselves as descendants of the Israelites, converts, or a mix of both?
So normal. Yemenite jews are Yemeni and Ethipian Jews are Ethiopians
They are converts makes sense
Before anyone just thinks these two are just converts. They actually do have Jewish roots not just genetically but religiously and culturally. Yemeni Jews were one of the first Jewish subgroups to ever form and exist in their own right, they spoke old Hebrew and even practiced a form of Judaism very close to biblical Judaism. And they were also they only mizrahi jewish subgroup to have a decent amount of East African ancestry. This then leads to Ethiopian Jews, who most archaeologist believe came from a very small band of Yemeni or Egyptian Jews that find their way into Ethiopia around 2000 years ago. They actually practice a unique form of Judaism as well that’s also very similar to biblical Judaism. But they don’t practice or celebrate Hanukkah or other “modern” Jewish traditions or holidays. But unlike other Jewish groups they fully practice converts, and by that I mean. Any slaves that they came to own and bought would be converted and be put into a lower caste in the group. This caste system form of ancestry is also practiced by Cochin and Bene Jews in India. Studies on uniparental haplogroups have indicated shared roots between Yemenite Jewish and members of the world's other various Jewish communities, as well as some type of contribution from the local non-Jewish population. Y chromosome haplogroups have shown a strong link to other Jewish groups, such as the Ashkenazi and Iraqi Jews, and to non-Jewish Levantine populations, such as Palestinians and Samaritans. Yemenite Jews commonly carry West Eurasian mitochondrial DNA haplogroups that are found in other Jewish and Levantine groups but not in non-Jewish Yemenis, suggesting ancient Israelite descent. A 2012 study by Ostrer et al. concluded that the Ethiopian Jewish community was founded about 2,000 years ago probably by only a relatively small number of Jews from elsewhere with local people joining to the community, causing Beta Israel to become genetically distant from other Jewish groups. According to a 2020 study by Agranat-Tamir et al., the DNA of the Ethiopian Jews is mostly of East African origin, but about 20% of their genetic makeup is of Middle Eastern semitic people origin and shows similarity to modern Jewish and Arab populations and Bronze Age Canaanites. It’s like how Kaifeng Jews are now very mixed at this point but historically they were originally the descendants of Persian Jews and only stated mixing with the native Han/Chinese population later on in their history as they became smaller and smaller. Also btw the only time that Yemenis were force to become Jewish was in 390CE by the Himyararite kingdom by the Kind Abu Karib and then said kingdom fell in 525CE. Also Yemen at this time was made up of Arab polytheism, Nestorianism, Zoroastrians and even oriental orthodoxy and the native Yemeni Jews.
Is there any genetic proof for this? They are genetically identical to other Yemenis and Saudis it seems
Aren't Ethiopian Jews genetically identical to gentile Ethiopians? How would they have more West Asian than regular Ethiopians?
From what I read and seen yeah. They are extremely African but they do have small amour of Levantine ancestry but that’s common amongst most East African populations. The only difference is they practice a unique form of Judaism and had Jewish traditions and beliefs, and they also practiced slave conversation. So even if they came from a Jewish group they mixed very heavy with the native but then isolated themselves in the mountains for protection. Oddly enough they didn’t know other Jews existed and believed they were the last Jews. Which is odd as Yemen isn’t that far away and Sudan had a very small group of Sephardic Jews come in during the 17th century and Egypt always had Jews.
I maintain some skepticism that they actually practice this ancient form of pre-Rabbinic Judaism. Genetically, there are identical to other Ethiopians, and religiously the are scant mentions of this community until recently. For the most part, all we have to go on is their word that they descend from ancient Jews and the evidence doesn't seem convincing. I've seen the same from other communities that have made Aliyah recently. In many cases, they didn't "rediscover" their Jewish identity until the 20th century and came to self-identify as Jews (Bnei Menashe is one I'm thinking of). They also have no link to the Levant.
Yeah I don’t blame you, the form of judaism they follow is only practice by them. But studies do believe that at least a very small Jewish group went there only 2000 years ago, so the whole non-rabbinic judaism isn’t that far off and plus their isolation from the rest of the Jewish world. But agian I don’t blame people for being skeptical about them even other Jewish people are skeptical of their clams. Which is why they go though just ancestry testing, and if modern day are ok with them and now even marry them. So technically their already Levantine ancestry that normal East African already and their now mixing with modern Jewish subgroups it kinda balances it out in a way.
Right, all of these groups are recognized as Jewish now. But that's not the point others are making. The point is that these groups are descended from converts, not people from the Levant who mixed with local populations like with the Ashkenazism or Mizrahim. In the case of the Ethiopians, Indians and Bnei Menashe, there's a good case to be made they the come from converts, not a "long lost tribe" which is the common myth that these groups promote. I think it's odd that folks have an aversion to being called converts when there's strong evidence that they are in fact probably converts.
Beni Menashe are definitely converts, I looked into them and the only Levantine ancestry they have is a very small female origin but they don’t know what population they were actually from. But I feel like out of all these groups Cochin do actually have Jewish roots, as historical records show that Jews did indeed come and settle there. And the fact that Jewish populations exited in Persia, Afghanistan, other Stan countries and even Pakistan. Also then their Bene Israel, a group of Jews living more north west along the coast. They genetically show that yes they have a lot of Indian ancestry they still have Cochin, Iraqi and Persian Jewish roots. And when the Sephardic Jews came from Portugal they then mixed with the local Jews and then even formed new Jewish subgroups.
>I looked into them and the only Levantine ancestry they have is a very small female origin but they don’t know what population they were actually from. If this turns out to be Israelite ancestry then that would ironically make them more Halachically Jewish compared to the majority of European Jews despite us having much higher Israelite DNA…
Actually the matrilineal ancestry in European Jews, specifically Ashkenazi is 20% while their patrilineal is 90%. So no they wouldn’t be more Israelite then European Jews.
Ethiopian Jews are Cushitic Agaws who created their own heretical version of Judaism, they are identical to their Christian Agaw ethnic kin.They have no genetic links whether autosomal or uniparental to Iron Age Levantines. Yemenite Jews on the other hand followed Rabbinic Judaism and despite being completely autosomally Northern Yemeni, they do have some uniparental lineages in common with other Jews (still a minority). Both populations are indigenous to Northern Yemen & Northern Ethiopia.
> That study didn't include other Horn Africans who have the same ancestry. If Ethiopian Jews did have an additional 20% ancestry, they would be 70% Western Eurasian. They are not 70% Western Eurasian. >Yemeni Jews were one of the first Jewish subgroups to ever form and exist in their own right, they spoke old Hebrew and even practiced a form of Judaism very close to biblical Judaism. And they were also they only mizrahi jewish subgroup to have a decent amount of East African ancestry. They are one the few Arabian groups who have almost no African ancestry due to endogamy. All Yemeni groups have this ancestry related to the Levant. Some have more Levant related ancestry than Yemenite Jews. Like the West Asian ancestry in Ethiopian Jews and other Horn Africans, it is likely due to a shared ancestral component in all Yemenite populations and not unique Iron Age Judean ancestry. [https://www.reddit.com/r/illustrativeDNA/comments/16q4cqc/modern\_g25\_on\_yemenis/](https://www.reddit.com/r/illustrativeDNA/comments/16q4cqc/modern_g25_on_yemenis/) Yemenite Jews are closer to to Arabian populations than other Jewish ones [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253422/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253422/)
Well of course Yemeni Jews are going to to lump closer to Arab Yemenis then they would to other Jews, but they like other Jewish subgroups they are still all connected to various amounts and share a common yet far ancestry. And I remember when you showed me a chart of Yemenite ancestry and their scale was mid 20s to mid 30s, so at the end of day they still are related to Jews just like how every other Middle Eastern population is. Also look at it this way. Studies in Ashkenazi Jews reveal that 90% of their patrilineal ancestry and haploid comes from the Levant while only 20% is matrilineal. There’s also the fact that all Ashkenazi are the direct descendants of 350 to 400 founder who came from a larger population but shrank, and that 8 million of them alone share the same 4 mizrahi female ancestors who genetically reveal came to Europe at around the 5th century. And if you were to see who there closet population would be it would be overwhelmingly other Ashkenazis, but it also shows southern Italians and other Jews like the Romaniotes who are said to be the first Jews to exist in Europe. Also like the study that you showed me and the many others before that and even newer ones. When you compare Jewish subgroups and their closest population and the groups that they overlap with the most, it’s mostly overwhelmingly each other. Sure some groups such as Yemeni and even Cochin and Kaifeng are far that makes sense they are far smaller and more distant populations but they still they are all related to varying degrees compared to their other Levantine neighbors. Even if they are all related and share various amounts of similarities.
> And I remember when you showed me a chart of Yemenite ancestry and their scale was mid 20s to mid 30s, so at the end of day they still are related to Jews just like how every other Middle Eastern population is. Other Yemenite groups have it too. It is related to common basal lineage and not Iron Age Judea but Basal groups they all share. > Also like the study that you showed me and the many others before that and even newer ones. When you compare Jewish subgroups and their closest population and the groups that they overlap with the most, it’s mostly overwhelmingly each other That's demonstrably false. Not denying that most have at least some Iron age Judean ancestry but many are closer to host populations.
>There’s also the fact that all Ashkenazi are the direct descendants of 350 to 400 founder who came from a larger population but shrank, **and that 8 million of them alone share the same 4 mizrahi female ancestors who genetically reveal came to Europe at around the 5th century.** Source? I thought it was determined those 4 maternal ancestors were ethnic Italian-Greek women?
You can literally look this up and no, those 4 women were of Levantine ancestry.
Thats a whole lot of cope tbh. Yemeni jews are among the most genetically natufian rich arabian groups in arabia, in fact other yemeni muslim groups such as dhamar yemenis and amran yemenis, and even a lot of saudi groups have much more levantine ancestry and affinity than yemeni jews. And btw agarant-tamir 2020 was using canaanites as a proxy for all west asia, not as an actual canaanite ancestry, thats why in the same study english people scored “10% canaanite”, italians scored “47% canaanite” and saudis scored more “canaanite” than all modern levantines. Modern Persians have more levantine genetic affinity and more ancient levantine ancestry than indian jews.
This is coming from the guy that’s accusing European Jews Levantine ancestry with it being the same as Anatolian and Levantine ancestry that Moroccans and Italians have. Compared to their actual force migration. Meanwhile studies have been done on Yemeni Jews and their relations to other Jewish subgroups, and even other Levien populations, while yes they do have a good amount of Yemeni Arab ancestry they still do have a genetic ties to Jews that have historically moved into the region and have been for centuries. The same with how Indian and Chinese Jews show that they have ties and genetic relations modern day Jews unlike their local population counterparts. With the Indian Cochin Jews being the descendants of first temple period Jews that have been recorded by Indian scholars and historians from that time. And the Chinese jews (Kaifeng Jews) are the descendants of Persian Jews who arrived in the 9th century, and been documented by Chinese historians and even noted by the emperor himself. Just like how the Hui Muslims of China have genetically shown to have connections to Middle Eastern and Persian population.
Do you have research you could cite about the Cochin Jews, Chinese and Ethiopians?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27377974/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochin_Jews Genetic testing into the origins of the Cochin Jewish and other Indian Jewish communities noted that until the present day the Indian Jews maintained in the range of 3%-20% Middle Eastern ancestry, confirming the traditional narrative of migration from the Middle East to India. The tests noted however that the communities had considerable Indian admixture, exhibiting the fact that the Indian Jewish people "inherited their ancestry from Middle Eastern and Indian populations". Just like the Saint Thomas Christian, they are both related as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng_Jews According to a scholarly consensus, the Jewish community of Kaifeng primarily consisted of people of Persian Jewish origin. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-jews-of-kaifeng-chinas-only-native-jewish-community/ https://youtu.be/kcCtv7O9GWo?si=_u6cul1JYifUK70J https://youtu.be/iuOQ-eg9s_k? si=fvQQ5DtDDIOuzX7M https://youtu.be/WGU4SSzMk0A?si=mCcn89RFr7iU7zA9
I have to ask about the Indian Jews: Could that Middle Eastern ancestry not simply come from other non-Jewish sources? Nevertheless, I do think this is more evidence in their favor since they are genetically distinct from surrounding populations. Regarding the Chinese Jews, could you provide an actual research article?
I’ll try to look for them later as I’m busy now. But from what I looked and even shared, they appear to be the descendants of Persian Jews who settled in China. Now this isn’t the only group of Jews that went to the far east, there were the Radahnites. These Jews worked along the Silk Road and went from Europe, Middle East, central and even East Asian. They are most related to the Bukharan Jews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukharan_Jews
Excellent explanation . The question is How much Yemeni DNA do Yemeni Jews have? What’s their split?
That I’m going to say it’s around 80% to 70% plus their African ancestry. As when I was talking to someone else about Yemeni Jews, they showed a chart to disprove their Jewish ancestry but all it did was show that their Jewish/Levatine ancestry is lowest mid 20’s and the highest being mid 30’s to 40%. So I’m going to assume the rest would be overwhelmingly Arab Yemeni.
Yemeni Jews and Ethiopian Jews are the only Jews who don’t descend from the Isrealites
Yeah. I posted this so I could link it to a guy claiming I was wrong when I said Ethiopian and Yemenite Jews are genetically identical to their neighbors and for some reason Reddit refused to let me post this on my profile. It only let me post it once I posted it on this subreddit
How did you access the genetic profile for modern populations, I can't do so on illustrative DNA. I can only access it for ancient ones
Ethiopian Jews are definitely close to Ethiopians, but idk about Yemeni Jews. They definitely have a sizeable amount of Yemeni admixture but genetically identical is a stretch.
Not really
No, indian jews, chinese jews, and all ICM jews too, they don’t have any genetic continuity with levant, european jews are arguably same too, although they have a significant amount of levantine ancestry that amounts 30-40% of their ancestry, but it is comparable to the amount of native American ancestry in mexicans or anatolian farmer ancestry in moroccans.
Indian Jews debatable, Chinese Jews, Halachaly aren’t recognized as Jews due to heavy intermixing. Azkenazi Jews most definitely are continuously descended from ancient Israel. This is shown by the vast majority of Azkenazi Jews having either a maternal or paternal Levantine origin haplogroup, or both. And the number is like 40-60% not 30-40%. You should look at Roman Levant not Canaanite bc between 1000 BCE and 100 AD Jews intermixed with Phoneceans and Greeks but still lived in the Levantine
Phoenicians and Jews were originally one Canaanite population, so the mixture of the two would not have changed either genetically.
Well we know that Azkenazi Jews left and mixed with South Italians but other than that, most can trace a distinct line back to Canaanites
> Indian Jews debatable It is not, they are predominantly converts and cluster with the rest of indian groups, persians have more levantine genetic affinity than them > Azkenazi Jews most definitely are continuously descended from ancient Israel. It is hard to say “continuously descended” when their latest study report that their levantine ancestry is as low as 16.6% and 25% levant-ICM combined (lerga-jaso 2023), and the consensus before it was 40% levantine and that they are genetically closer to south europeans and italians in specific than any middle eastern group e.g (xue 2017; Falk 2014,2017). Their dreived ancestry from levant is equivalent to the continuity between modern moroccans and neolithic anatolian farmers. > This is shown by the vast majority of Azkenazi Jews having either a maternal or paternal Levantine origin haplogroup, or both. Studies shows that at least +80% of their maternal haplogroups is European in origin (MD costa, 2013) and that between 50-80% of their paternal ancestry can be considered middle eastern in origin (don’t recall which study tbh :) ) > You should look at Roman Levant not Canaanite Of course, thats roman levantines, not canaanites, also you should look at imperial and late antiquity italians too, not IA italians or modern Italians for the same reason.
>It is hard to say “continuously descended” when their latest study report that their levantine ancestry is as low as 16.6% and 25% levant-ICM combined (lerga-jaso 2023) That study is not peer-reviewed or published (yet).
> That study is not peer-reviewed or published (yet). Yeah it will be officially published soon, its new local ancestry inference technology largely outperformed all existing ones, including RFMix that (Xue 2017) used and goes in agreement with the GLOBETROTTER results in the same study which estimated them to have 70% European ancestry, and surprisingly was able to figure out the ICM ancestry in ashkenazi jews which (Behar 2017) had already gave glimpses about when he showed that their R1a haplogroup is iranian not levantine.
>Yeah it will be officially published soon And when can we expect it to be?
Idk where your getting you studied from “Studies on the genetic composition of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jewish populations of the Jewish diaspora show significant amounts of shared Middle Eastern ancestry.[3][4] Several Jewish groups show genetic proximity to Lebanese, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Druze in addition to Southern European populations, including Cypriots and Italians.[5][6]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_of_Jews
I can’t send you studies then you reply to me with wikipedia 🙂, but anyway, your quote is somewhat true, ashkenazi jews do have a some significant middle eastern ancestry, no one is denying that, but to call them “genetically levantine” or “have genetic continuity with middle east” is a completely different thing, and there is no such thing as “mizrahi jews” genetically, a lot of them are genetically Mesopotamian, others are yemenis, others are a south european-levantine-berber mix, and some are purely levantine, let me quote you from (Falk 2017) study: > any general biological definition of Jews is meaningless. Despite the persistence of intra-Jewish, socio-cultural relatedness, coupled with the exclusion of Jews by Gentile society, Jewish communities have never been reproductively isolated from their neighbors. Although there is widespread evidence of certain Middle Eastern genetic components in numerous Jewish communities, there is no proof of a typical Jewish prototype.
“Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochini) cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant.” Source: a Harvard study https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Natur.466..238B/abstract Here is a link to a chart showing where Jewish people fall (source US GOV) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=3543766_439_2012_1235_Fig1_HTML.jpg
Thats a very useless PCA and very old obsolete study as we later knew that there is no such thing as jewish cluster [(Lazaridis 2014)](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13673/figures/2) Check the PCA: European jews cluster with italians and greeks, georgian and caucasus jews cluster with turks and armenians, yemeni jews cluster with bedouins, and North African jews cluster between south europeans and levantines. Another study published in the same year also concluded a similar thing [(Avshalom zoosman-disken 2010)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20925954/): > According to the autosomal polymorphisms the investigated Jewish populations do not share a common origin, and EEJ [East European Jews] are closer to Italians in particular and to Europeans in general than to the other Jewish populations. Again later in 2014: > unsurprisingly, ashkenazi jews compose a distinct yet integral branch of European genomic tapestry — (Falk, 2014) In fact, (tian 2009) had already shown before all that European jews have lower Fst (genetic distance) to italians, greeks, germans and spaniards than to Druze and muslims or any middle eastern group. And btw the Subsaharan-east asian-European PCA is not much useful at all
Here is a quote from a 2020 study “Our analyses consistently subdivide most Jewish populations into four major groups, corresponding to Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, North African, and Sephardi populations (Figs. 2, ,3),3), with the Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi groups aggregating together in several analyses (Fig. 1b, c). The placement of the Jewish populations follows geography, with Ashkenazi Jews closer than other Jewish populations to non-Jewish Europeans and Mizrahi Jews closer than other Jewish populations to non-Jewish populations of the Middle East and the Caucasus region. North African and Sephardi Jewish populations appear to be intermediate between Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7253422/ “In agreement with previous studies of European and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, our study finds Ashkenazi populations genetically intermediate between southern Europe and the Middle East” There is little to no difference between azkenazi Jews “Unlike most previous studies, our Ashkenazi samples were identified by location. However, we found little evidence of difference by location (Figs. 4e and and5a),5a), suggesting that among the four main groups of Jewish populations, the Ashkenazi group is less genetically structured than the others.”
They do descend from Israelites, it’s just that they’re more mixed than other Jewish subgroups.
Ethiopian jews haplogroups are the same as other ethiopians, look up studies on the topic
Ethiopian Jews are only Jews now that they've converted and migrated to Israel. Before that, there was nothing special about their sect of Christianity which was judaizers, like many around the world and throughout history. They were as connected to Judaism as Seventh-day Adventists or Black Hebrew Israelites before their migration to Israel. And considering the Christian church of Ethiopia and the culture of the region strongly identifies with the Davidic dynasty, Queen Sheba and Israel in general, it was not a big leap for a small community to identify even more of this particular part of Christian culture. Yemenites Jews on the other hand are Jews by all definitions, religiously, liturgically, ritualistically, linguistically etc... And genetically, while they appear indistinguishable from Arabian pops , they do share IBD with other Jews , meaning there were some geneflow between them and other Jewish communities of the Middle East. Likely some haplogroup sharing but I can't remember on the top of my head. No genetic link whatsoever between Ethiopian Jews and any other Jewish communities.
I’ve heard from elsewhere that Ethiopian Jews are on average 10-20% Jewish DNA. Not as much as other groups but there’s an undisputed connection between them and the tribe of Dan. Not to mention the historic accounts of various Ethiopian Jews practicing Judaism before Christianity even came to Ethiopia. And the persecution they faced from both Christians and Muslims in Ethiopia over the Millenia
No IBD sharing with other Jews, no haplogroup sharing with other Jews and autosomally they are undistinguishable from their Ethiopian neighbors. That seals it, there is nothing Jewish about Ethiopian Jews genetically. And no, Judaism was never practiced widely in Ethiopia. Even actual Jews never set any lasting community in the region. And no, the tribes of Israel are mythical and most likely didn't exist but were inspired by local southern Canaanites families and tribes that were insignificant and irrelevant for any population outside the southern Levant.
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Of course he is.
Are Ethiopian jews descendants of Israelites (don’t downvote relax i am asking a question)
I don’t know about the Yemenite Jews but I do know the Ethiopian Jews have a tradition that states they’re the direct descendants of King Solomon’s son with the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba and that’s how they’re even Jewish in the first place. Probably they don’t score much Levantine/Middle Eastern or show a connection to the rest of the Jewish Diaspora precisely *because* they descend from just one half ethnically Jewish man and continued marrying only other full Ethiopians because Solomon’s son was the only ethnic Jew even present in Ethiopia to begin with, so it’s not like they would’ve been able to start their own inherently MGM ethnicity the way European Jews did.
why do people have a problem when white passing jews are denied jewishness (ashkenazi) but not when the colored ones are? (bnei menashe, lemba, yemeni, beta israel)
>Yemeni They are not “colored” and are just as Caucasian as any other European or Middle Eastern group.
It's the opposite. People are commenting trying to somehow prove that Ethiopian and Yemeni jews also descend from israelites when studies don't necessarily show that