The Jewish "Race"?

the jewish nation is perhaps one of the most well-known but misunderstood groups of people on the planet i've talked about this long ago in the past but it is certainly terribly confusing to many how the jewish identity can be described as an ethnicity religion and a culture although you may have noticed that many people use the phrase jewish race or many people in the united states describe their race as jewish and even in the past on my annual demographic census for my channel audience i distinguished jews from any other group of people on the planet but does this actually make any sense is there a such thing as the jewish race i've discussed this before rather briefly but jewish people are not a typical ethnic group nor are they a typical religious group as judaism is more of an ethno-religious community meaning that those born in the tribe are generally de facto members for life even if they renounce the prevailing beliefs or traditions which may sound odd but countless other larger communities do this as well especially muslims mormons or catholics a large chunk of whom may not have stepped into a religious institution in years or even their entire life yet still identify with the label they were born into now the term semite most well known in the term anti-semitism the discrimination against or hatred of jewish people is actually not tied only with jews as the term originally referred to a collection of afro-asiatic peoples inhabiting the middle east including arabs assyrians sokotrans and even many groups in ethiopia and eritrea who migrated from southern arabia thousands of years ago and historically this also included the phoenicians babylonians and samaritans who actually still do exist by the way i've done an entire video on the austro-asiatic peoples and how they relate to one another and it is rather odd to think that people groups like the jews assyrians or arabs are related to ethiopians somalis or even those from northern nigeria but in the video i explained how the family spread to encompass such a vast geographic region having been impacted by many groups around them the oldest of the ancient jewish kingdoms israel and judah were both located in levant in the southeast quadrant of the mediterranean and hence the original inhabitants would have initially been very similar to the surrounding egyptians arabs and syrians in terms of genetics although their customs and traditions would eventually make them very easily distinguishable some have argued that judaism is de facto the world's oldest formalized religion as before this the vast majority of tribes on earth simply pass down the fluid pluralistic animistic practices of nature worship and or ancestor veneration of their forefathers and interestingly one of the consequences of this was a sharp increase in the rates of endogamous marriages meaning the vast majority of marriages were in group quickly leading to a number of distinct genetic markers to be widespread among nearly the entire jewish population due to genetic drift and isolation the jewish people were downtrodden by the egyptians and syrians but by far the biggest impact on the jewish nation was the conquest of the romans with the jews being very resistant to the imposition of roman laws and customs over that of the traditional jewish religious laws creating a series of revolts and rebellions this led to the sacking of jerusalem by the romans scattering the jewish people and the roman province was renamed from judea to palestine after the neighboring philistine tribe with the romans hoping that this would quickly extinguish the problem-causing jewish nation from existence once and for all the situation is extremely complicated by this diaspora event which saw the explosion of this formerly highly centralized endogamous ethno-religious community so even though they saw a synthesis with many different cultures around the world they still retain their original base the bulk of jews in the diaspora went to europe which is how they came to be the largest and most well-known group but there were many other branches that went as far as china india ethiopia with certain tales even suggesting that some made it even further than that when arriving in these different lands such as persia spain italy or morocco there were moderate amounts of intermixing with the native peoples with an especially high number of female converts marrying into the nation early on but gradually they formed into tight-knit exclusive communities that generally only married among themselves and this is even more true after the spread of christianity and islam so keep in mind although the quintessential abrahamic faith judaism did not spread in the same manner as the other two major religions which is why you have two christians from armenia and portugal or two muslims from senegal and pakistan who wouldn't really have all too much in common the jews even though those from highly disparate groups generally have a much higher sense of community and camaraderie and a lot of this has to do with the uniquely harsh nature of persecution and danger faced by the people worldwide throughout most of their history there are many many different jewish ethnic clusters across the world some of which i've discussed in the past but the main three are the ashkenazim named after a biblical jewish kingdom who were mostly located in northern and eastern europe as the result of countless explosions and pogroms leading to a migration further into the heartland of europe the sephardim named after spain who were mostly located in iberia however following the inquisition the bulk either converted to catholicism fled to north africa or other parts of europe or fled to the new world where the vast majority intermarried with the latino population and because of this a significant proportion some would estimate in the tens of millions of latinos have some significant degree of safari jewish heritage as i discussed in an earlier video and the last of the big three are the mizrahim meaning easterners referring to the jewish community of the middle east such as in persia arabia and egypt so whenever someone talks about a spanish jew or a german jew or a rocky jew you can generally distinguish which larger community they are part of which has a large impact on their genetics and culture even if they live in different countries or speak different languages one of the genetic links that binds all of these jewish peoples together is their paternal haplogroups which as i've discussed many times although not perfect is generally a pretty good indicator of shared heritage and genetic studies on european middle eastern and north african jews has shown that most share the same apple groups originating in the near east including j1 j2 t and e1b1 all typical of other semitic populations others in the worldwide interconnected web of jewish descendants include the beta israel or jews from ethiopia who are indeed genetically distinct from the surrounding horn african population although their actual semitic jewish ancestry in terms of dna is much smaller than many other groups and their paternal haplogroup distribution is also highly disparate when compared to the ashkenazis farty or misrahe which points to an actual case of mass conversion to judaism by a small founding population with limited genetic input from the middle east horned africans as a whole however are still related to jews genetically through the migration of ancient and more recent western eurasian peoples albeit with a northeast african or nilo saharan base related to the peoples of sudan and east africa other smallest jewish populations around the globe include the kosher jews in the southern indian state of kerala again a highly admixed population that by appearance alone certainly wouldn't stand out too much from the general indian population and similarly there is a small jewish community in kaifeng and china that are partially descended from persian jews from centuries prior and due to this they have largely assimilated into the local population both from a genetic linguistic and cultural perspective although there has been a bit of a cultural revival in recent years lastly there is a moderately sized group in south-central africa mostly in zimbabwe and south africa known as the lemba who by and large would appear indistinguishable from the other native banters of the region however they claim an ancient connection to the middle east similar to the swahili genetic studies in recent years have shown a large degree of ancestry from the middle east when compared to the surrounding bantu populations but whether this is specifically from the jewish diaspora or from early arab traders is currently unknown and many lemba have unofficially claimed jewish status although few have actually emigrated to the modern state of israel speaking of which israel is unique in having essentially united a wildly diverse diaspora from all around the world with the jewish population of israel coming from germany the ussr romania poland turkey iran the maghreb arab countries latin america and has even attracted some from the united states which has resulted in a religiously unified nation however in terms of ancestral linguistic and cultural background is extremely diverse there's a reason that israel is often regarded as the usa of the middle east and it isn't just due to the external socio-political policies but rather the diverse nature of settlement in the country i actually find the situation in israel to be quite intriguing as the eccentric pattern of migration and intermixing in the modern state has resulted in a rather unconventional situation for the region with the bulk of israeli jews being native born and a very high percentage around 20 to 40 percent having a mixed ancestry when it comes to the ethnogeographical origins of their jewish ancestors with ashkenazi safari and mizrahi having extremely high rates of inner marriage although the beta israel coaching jews and other more disparate groups still have a hard time in finding belonging and acceptance among the general population in total what we're seeing in modern israel among the jewish population is a fusion of these different groups which will definitely have an interesting outcome in the future with ashkenazi and safari jews having around 20 to 40 semitic jewish dna making many nearly identical to other european populations while the mizrahi have a much higher percentage especially those around 11. keep in mind most of the surrounding arab populations do have a bit of genetic divergence due to migrations from the arabian peninsula following the islamic expansion of the 6th and 7th centuries as well as the trans-saharan slave trade with the majority of egyptians palestinians jordanians and lebanese muslims having significant sub-saharan african dna from historic intermixing so most jews especially the ashkenazi represent their own unique genetic cluster somewhere in between that of southern europeans and southwest asians due to their endogamy and early cases of intermixing although other jewish groups may be more closely related to the surrounding populations so to claim that there is an all-encompassing jewish race is inaccurate but there is a very obvious substratum or genetic base among most of the peoples of the jewish diaspora which explains the socio-political cultural genetic and phenotypic similarities between them so in conclusion the jewish nation is one of the most interesting on the planet even though the modern state of israel and its future is such a controversial subject and despite being separated by generations close gene pools and genetic drift there are many connections to many different civilizations across the planet making them ironically a very centralized yet dispersed group of people with one of the most interesting histories so go ahead and let me know your thoughts on the jewish people and nation and for today's poll let me know which jewish macro ethnic division is of the most interest to you and as always this has been mason thanks for watching everyone and i'll see you next time

Channel: Masaman

Views: 909,575

Keywords: masaman, The Jewish Race, Jews, Jewish People, Judaism, Are Jews a Race, Jewish People Genetics, Genetics of Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews, Israel, Israeli Jews, History of Israel, History of the Jews, Jewish History, Migration of the Jews, Jewish DNA, Genetic Testing, Jewish 23andme, Indian Jews, Chinese Jews, European Jews, African Jews, Jewish ancestry, Are Jews an ethnicity or religion, Are Jews a race, Israelites, Israelis

Id: poNmKV9H0vE

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 06 2019