The prevalent myth or, more honestly, outright lie about Jews:
“Jews are a single people with a single place of origin, and even centuries of diaspora have resulted in only minor differences in appearance.”
Absolutely wrong! Ahistorical, as every ethnic Jew of color around this world will attest.
I remember many long years ago, while I was in Saudi Arabia on a U.S. airbase, an Italian Airman seeing me doing my morning rituals (this was back when I still was a theistic Jew). He told me how he knows I’m Jewish, because the Jews of his neighborhood do these rituals. Then, with a smirk on his face he asked matter of factly, “Someone married outside the tribe, no?”
He was deliberately looking for a sign of embarrassment, because it is the North American assumption that all Jews look like Europe-immigrated New York Jews. I didn’t answer, just stared hard at him for a moment. Then, I went about my business, but I never forgot that!
What Jews around the world actually look like!
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Let this photo album put to rest the Western racist lie that all Jews look alike and are white! It is obvious that if what a Jew looks like is this diverse within the insular religious Jewish communities, then in the halakhically more liberal Jewish communities ….
Prior to the European Jewish decision approximately 200 years ago that Jews are just a religion – which nearly ended ethnic Judaism in Europe – Jews in Europe, like all around the world were ethno-religious Jews or secular ethnic Jews. Very few Jewish families in Europe and the U.S. today can make the claim of being ethnically Jewish by remaining insular in marriage practices. These ethnic Jewish families came from the Middle East and are closest related genetically to the Samaritans of Israel. They are Arab Jews, essentially. Around the world, there are Spanish Jews, North African Jews, Near Eastern and Middle Eastern Jews, one community of Chinese Jews, and an Ethiopian community of Jews that can all make this ethnically Jewish claim, like the Askenazi insular Jewish families.
The rest of the Jewish population are Jews by assimilation, adoption, and religious conversion. You cannot look at demographic stats of Jews and have a clear understanding of where these Jews come from – especially after WWII and the reestablishment of Israel. There is a sizable Arab Jewish community in Canada and the U.S. and in Israel due to expulsion from Middle Eastern countries after WWII. They had lived there in the Middle East long before Jews established a strong foothold in Europe. Yet, the presumption by Western Jews is to assume all Jews of Europe and North America are white Jews. And, to assume that all Jews look alike (never been the case!). Jews who are white by ancestry are not ethnic Jews, but Jews by primarily religious conversion.
Most people don’t know this (even most Jews in the West!), but the Cochin Jews are the oldest, continuously living in one place (nearly unchanged!) Jewish community in the world.
The Cochin Jews are Jews that arrived to the Malabar Coast of India from Judea 2,500 years ago, around 562 BCE (after destruction of the 1st Temple), settling as traders. Because of interaction with expelled Spanish Jews, the Sephardi, and immigration of Arab Baghdadi Jews, they are now somewhat familiar with Talmudic laws along with being a Torah observant Jewish community.
Despite the unintentional introduction of white racism into the European-North American Jewish communities, isn’t it about time that all Western Jews got on the forefront of addressing racist stereotypes of what a Jew looks like in this world? Is it Holy to question the Jewishness of Jews of color based on their skin color and features?
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“Among Ashkenazi Jews overall, about 10% are in haplogroup G, including about 8% in G2c and 2% in G2a, along with small numbers in G1. About 20% of Moroccan Jews are in Haplogroup G.”
A percentage of 10% is not surprising to a Jew like me. That’s due to assimilation through marriage, adoption, and conversion. Ashkenazi Jewish families are intermingled into Hungarian Jewish from all the immigration after the Arab Ottoman Empire rule, during which Sephardi Jewish tradition reigned in Eastern Europe.
It is a simple fact of life, genetic research will never truly define down who is a Jew by ancestry. Though Jews are an ethno-religion – thus, inherently animus towards religious converts (except among “liberal”ly halakhic Jews) – we do mix the genes with the people’s we reside among. Therefore, not all Jews will be Y-haplotype J, E, Q, and R – the standard markers among insular Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Indian, and Ethiopian Jews (meaning they marry predominantly within the Jewish family only). At least 10% of Ashkenazi Jews are like me, Y-haplotype G.
Thus, one is not a Jew by genetics alone, and genetics alone cannot tell you who is a Jew (and who is not!). No genetic story is complete, until you include the real life history of individuals and their choices/associations. That’s why only a legitimate Jewish community can say who is a Jew and who is not. Genetics is only a indicator of keeping it in the families and nothing more.
“Other groups with a significant G frequency include Catalan-speaking northern Sardinians and the Druze, who are about 18% G2a. About one-third of Haplogroup G in Iran is in sub-group G1. The founder of haplogroup G is thought to have lived about 30,000 years ago, probably in the northern part of the Middle East.”
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A page from YIVO on Jewish history in Hungary. My great-grandparents were from Budapest.
“Another measure with far-reaching consequences was the 23 July 1787 decree ordering Jews to adopt personal and family names. Only personal names had to be German, but most chose German family names as well, though a few elected typical Hungarian ones that became identified as Jewish, such as Farkas. While the intention of the decree was to acculturate and standardize, paradoxically a new ghetto of names came into being. The personal names adopted by Jews soon came to be identified as Jewish no matter how Teutonic in origin and were rapidly abandoned by non-Jews, only to have Jews shift to the new onomastic “neighborhood” in the next generation and repeat the process. Likewise, toward the end of the nineteenth century the peculiar constellation of German family names—colors, animals, occupations—usually identified their bearers as Jews. This transparency was made somewhat opaque by the presence of Calvinists with their share of Old Testament names and of German Schwabs who also had some family names in common with Jews, including Gross or Klein. Even when Jews began to Magyarize their names, a trend (exaggerated by historians) that began in earnest in the 1880s and was brought to a near standstill in Trianon Hungary, there was a tendency to cluster in the choice of names, thus vitiating the assimilatory intent.”
– https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Hungary/Hungary_before_1918