Let me help those who are a bit confused by DNA test results. Here is a quick “how to” on properly interpreting DNA test results.
First, if you are a male, there are only two haplogroups you need to be directly interested in – the Y and X haplogroup results. And, if you are a female, you only need to be directly interested in one – the X haplogroup result. It is these very specific results that tell you who are genetically and, by the shared mutations, who your ancestors were and where they originated as a haplogroup from. The rest of the admixture data is just the fascinating results of humanity’s spread around this planet.
Second, you are not just your DNA haplogroups. So, you are as much by social identity the people who formed you by human lifestyle into the self-identified human that you are today. For example:
I am by my Y haplogroup a Middle Easterner (a Sephardic Jew, that enter the Iberian Peninsula 2,500 years ago) and by my X haplogroup I am a Sardinian (the First Peoples who settled Europe in Sardinia, Italy, and Ireland – well before the Gaelic conquest of Ireland). But, by my social identity of who I am – based in the communities that informed my youth this world – I am an Island Jew of the Polynesian islands of the Pacific.
So, when you take a DNA test and get interpreted results back, those percentages do not really mean much. They only mean that you share some similar DNA along the entire DNA chain of an individual with these people. And with each company’s update – whether it be algorithm, larger test subject set, or both – this is why the results you see keep changing, and can even be dramatically different between DNA test companies.
You are who you are in descent by haplogroup(s). But, more importantly, you are who you are by the socially identified group(s) who informed you through life of your beliefs and understandings of this world. For me, this was the Hawaiian lifestyle of the islands and the Jewish lifestyle and religion.
Sure, there is an admixture more to this – even socially – as one becomes identified as part of a group(s) through life that they initially were not a part. For example, today I am a Jewish-American and a Veteran of a military. I am politically an Independent, and will always be thorn in the side to both the Republican and Democratic political parties.
Of course, there is still a lot more to each of us – these social identity admixtures – kind of like the percentages of DNA test results. Only certain identities are going to be most predominant, whether genetically or social, and the rest are admixtures of varying degrees. And the percentages of these admixtures will always be changing over time.
Did this help any?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/63997-dna-ancestry-test-results-explained.html
I took 9 different DNA tests and here’s what I found
By Rafi Letzter
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Guess what time of the year it is! Anyone?!
After an intense lunar month of Elul, I think and hope that I am now ready – to embrace, having let go! Welcome יומא אריכא yoma aricha (one long double day)!
The “Book of Life” now “opens” for this coming Jewish year for Rosh Hashanah and will be “sealed,” as every year, on Yom Kippur. How will we decide our new year to be?!
“Rosh Hashanah sort of opens the period of intense retrospection that leads up to that moment of atonement [prepped for during the previous month]. But it’s also a joyous holiday in which people celebrate and hope for a sweet new year, a happier, an enriching New Year.” – Samira Mehta, the director of undergraduate studies in the program for Jewish studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Well succinctly said!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/09/02/rosh-hashanah-2021-dates-what-know-jewish-holiday/5669527001/
What is Rosh Hashanah? Here’s what you need to know about the Jewish New Year
Why do we blow the shofar prior to Tishrei, during the month of Elul? Ask me. 🙂
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A fascinating read, and appears to be accurate from my previous studies, even though a bit more dated. …. approximately a third of Portuguese Jews are G2a3b1b1 and a percentage of crypto-Jews there still carry this Y marker from the Caucasus (G2a3b1b1 haplogroup is northern Middle Eastern in origins, and spread primarily into Europe by Jews settling in the Iberian Peninsula, then admixturing with locals). This I already knew, but here’s where my curiosity stumbled upon another surprise.
Indigenous Sardinian women U5b3 off the coast of Etruria (modern Italy) have historical connections with Middle Eastern G2a3b1b1 males. Interesting (raises his Spock-like eyebrow!). … Interesting how, despite historical circumstances, I see myself reflected in older histories of human migrations and admixturing.
We’ll start here tonight – https://www.yellacatranch.com/haplogroup-g/
For I am an indigenous Levant originating Jew by all fathers before me, and indigenous Sardinian by all mothers before me – so says the genes of life that formed me into a human being that is breathing upon this planet. Half Middle Eastern and half First Peoples Europeans.
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A few will be pissed by this post. And I know some of my FB friends may deny the *reality* in this post, but I keep asking ALL for demonstrable proof – to “help” me see reality. Ginger Jews (red-haired, whether religious or not religious!) are NOT a European admixture development. We are Jews, Persian descended Jews!
Red-haired Jews with melanin-less skin (and we know who we are whether educated into our history or not!) that predates Ashekenazi and Sephardi Jewish families. The Mizrahi Jewish families (always Middle Eastern in geographic location, until recently historically expelled from Islamic nations!) had Ginger Jews among them (we are one percent of Middle Eastern families!) – including in Jerusalem, proper, as well. And, well *before* the Roman creation of gentile Christianity!
Esau was a Ginger Jew, full stop! And, Jewish tradition has it that King David was a Ginger Jew, too (though, I do agree that this one may be a conflation of multiple meanings to one Hebrew word, for a lack of enough written text here). But, at the same time, if Archaeology can demonstrably demonstate by a genetic study of tomb remains in 1st century CE Judea – specifically Jerusalem of all places – that red-haired Jews actually existed in this period (which has occurred, thanks to scientists!), then I’m in great *Persian* Jewish company (which is where Ginger-ness originates from – think Iran to Afghanistan, though we be, literally, the *entire* human population’s minority!).
Most of the world has been taught to believe that King David and (Jewish) Jesus are blonde-haired white European folk! Because of my European admixture, my super-thin hair on the head disguises the admitting adom color below and, if trimmed to the skin, on the chin that is basically now all white, trimmed or not! (Okay, too much information already, both above and unfortunately below!)
The point I’m making is this, BOTH “Arabs” of the Levant (meaning Jordanians and other Persians) and Jews (who originated among the Moabites, think Jordan again!) have their fair share of red-headed melanin-less children. And we Levantinians spread(ed) this into Europe in the early pre-written historical days, along with teaching them hunter-foragers how to farm. (I so apologize, for we should have kept this knowledge to ourselves!!!) But, back on point!
There will be some who are reading this post who are actually listening to me, but are too bought into human historical delusions about history. So, they will deny fact in favor of satisfying fantasy. I cannot help them! Revisionist history is SO seductive to humans!!! And I’m ALWAYS seeking to be disproved in my educated “beliefs.” When will someone, please, do so?! But, to those who will listen, know this:
Jews have traveled to every place of this planet and intermarried. What does this mean? Though *most* Jews may be Persian and Judean (USA “white”) by default, Jews come in ALL colors and physical features around this planet.
Jews of the United States are now the MOST genetically mixed of all Jewish families on this planet, thanks specifically to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s – which was forced upon the white Christian USA by Black folk and Jews and understanding Whites in this nation! Why?! Because, too many signs (literally!) after the Civil War in the USA said:
“Whites Only!,” “No Blacks!,” and “No Jews!” Also, “No Chinese” (aka Asians), either. Latinos, ignored and lumped into blacks, and same with the First Nation peoples of this *stolen* continent, for they were already contained and subjugated to “white”ness, anyhow. Have you studied United States history?! …
Just saying! Because, I’ve been needing to get this off my psychic chest ever since I moved to the USA! Again, just saying.
In the Middle East, thanks to the invention of Islam, brown fights against brown – *everywhere* – including Israel and Palestine. And, it was white-skinned Yasser Arafat who introduced to the Western world this politically *divisive* idea of Jews being colonizing whites in our own historical land, and the immigrating Arabs to Palestine as “brown” folk somehow being colonized.
Just saying that personal diligent *research* into historical (non-conspiratorial) sites is *SO* important, here! But, please, don’t take my word for it! Go study the world’s archives for yourself – and *TEACH* others the actual historical truths!
“Of course, whether Esau and even David actually existed is open to question, and the description of hair as red may have been more a literary device than actual reporting. Or not. In 2000, Dr. James Tabor entered a recently broken entrance to a first century tri-level tomb south of Jerusalem. Inside he found not only skeletal remains of a Jewish male, but a preserved sample of his hair. And the color of the hair was “reddish.” (For more, see here.) So the notion of red haired Jews during biblical times may not have been entirely fanciful.”
“The MC1R gene appears to be recessive. Typically, for an individual to be born with red hair, both parents must be carriers of an MC1R gene and the MC1R gene from both must combine in the fertilized egg.” … I remember a U.S. military ID issuing clerk in the USA, Oklahoma I believe, asking if I had been adopted (my parent’s firstborn child! – and this has stuck with me for life!!!). …
“MC1R operates on two pigments, eumelanin and pheomelanin, and, in general, the more of the latter, the redder the hair. But MC1R is also quite variable, and may be subject to being influenced by modifiers. In fact, according to University of Delaware Professor John H. McDonald in “Red hair color: The myth,” the genetics of hair color is “complicated.”
While human hair color varies enormously, from the lightest blonde to the darkness black, red hair manifests itself only in about 1% of humans worldwide.” Just like who is a Jew and who is not is *complicated* enough, but I do remember a New Yorker Italian in the Air Force remarking to me, upon seeing me do Jewish davenning in an Islamic country, that “someone must have married outside the family.” I looked at him with cold stone silence! Then turned our subject of conversation to something else. …
“A somewhat similar review occurred in New York City, the results of which were published in 1903 by Maurice Fishberg, a physician and anthropologist, in the American Anthropologist. Fishberg’s paper was titled “Physical Anthropology of the Jews.” With a sample size of almost 2300 Jews twenty years old and older, and reasonably split between males and females, Fishberg found that about 82% of Jews studied had dark hair, meaning black, brown or dark chestnut, while about 15% had fair hair, that is, light chestnut or blond, and about 3% had red hair. (Fishberg, at 92.) The precise percentage of male redheads was 2.53%, and the percentage for females was 3.69%. Fishberg characterized the percentage of red-haired Jews to be “high.” (At 97.) And he stated, without reference to any authority, that “erythrism [a prevalence of red pigmentation] has been regarded as characteristic of the European Jews.” (At 98.) Similarly, he contended that that the condition “appears not to be of recent origin,” referring to the biblical descriptions of Esau and David. (At 98.)
Fishberg also observed the color of beards on 587 Jews and found that 10.9% of them were red. From this, he concluded that “red hair is nearly three times as common in the beard as in the hair of the head.” His calculations are not clear. If the percentage of male redheads was 2.53%, then a 10.9% red beard observation would indicate that red beards are more than four times as common as red head hair. In any event, Fishberg characterized the frequency of red beards as “not at all surprising” because “any one who has observed Jews closely” would know that “the beard is quite frequently red . . . .” (At 99.)
What the percentage of red-headed Jews is today is not at all clear. What is clearer and more important is that Jews come in all shapes and all sizes and all shades, with different aptitudes, attitudes and orientations. Whether Jews started as one wandering family that settled in Egypt, grew over time, and was forged into a nation in the wilderness, or, alternatively, emerged from Canaanite tribes, the Jewish People today is truly a mixed multitude. Jews are a multi-national, multi-racial people whose members are bound together in different ways and to different extents by an uneven mix of religion and culture, language and literature, history and choice, and, yes, genetic material too. For some, that genetic material includes the MC1R gene that may make for redheads.”
Did I just discover why I’m the pintele yid of my family? Have I been duped by a false article?
“Red hair is not, however, a marker of Jewishness. Red hair is neither restricted to Jews, nor is it predominant among them. Natural hair grows on Jews in many colors, maybe not as many as the colors on Joseph’s coat (see Gen. 37:3), but more than enough to dispel unwarranted stereotypes. Literary and artistic conventions aside, the incidence of red hair among Jews evidences that Jews are just like everyone else.” … Just that we cling *deeply* to our ethno-religious community, like *all* Jews before us!
Judaism and Science, Ginger Jews
Thank goodness that I’m one of those plentiful number of Jews in this world who *don’t* believe that our imagined national god demands Rabbinic halacha upon our lives. BUT, I *AM* shomea halacha, *every day*, even when not fully Rabbinically shomer, like today! … I know, I’m momentary (please, hopefully!) reverting back into a troubled secular Jew.
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This this Elul has been my worst! Maybe it’s time to trust and relate “as is” presently.
#elulelevations I’m so not ready, again!
“Elul Elevation | 24 of Elul
Provided by Rich Orloff
Trust is an act of courage
At least that’s been my experience
To trust when one has known trust betrayed
Takes daring and strength
Betrayals by parents who were willing to demolish your dignity
And separate you from your holiness
By siblings who promised alliance
But who used you as a snack to feed their demons
By teachers who imparted lies under the guise of wisdom
And graded you harshly if you revealed the truth
By societies who refused to acknowledge their shadows
And threatened to banish those who questioned their delusions
By lovers who treated love as a disposable pleasure
Instead of a gift from the soul
And yes, even by deities who promised salvation
But who really only desired your submission
Like everyone I have ever met
I have ample reasons to distrust
(And have not always been trustworthy myself)
And yet I’ve discovered
Trust is a divine yearning woven into our soul
An act of willful surrender of skepticism and doubt
Recognizing we cannot expand
If we stay confined within our walls
Trust is a sacred medicine
To heal the wounds of the past
To permit the ecstasy of connection
To fulfill our role as a star in a tantalizing universe
And as I wrestle with the question
Of who and when to trust
I also ask
Should I trust myself
To my surprise I hear
Neither Yes nor No, but
There’s only one way to find out
Risk
Share your thoughts. #elulelevations “
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