Genetic studies on Jews and Related Topics

Ashkenazi Jews

Ashkenazi Jews (יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, ; אַשכּנזישע ייִדן), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim, are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at its greatest extent.

Jews from Worms (Germany) wearing the mandatory yellow badge.

The example of the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society, Prague, 1772

Genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews—researching both their paternal and maternal lineages as well as autosomal DNA—indicate that they are of mixed Levantine and European (mainly western European and southern European) ancestry.

Jewish ethnic divisions

Jewish ethnic divisions refer to many distinctive communities within the world's ethnically Jewish population.

Painting of a Jewish man from the Ottoman Empire, 1779

The Suleiman ben Pinchas Cohen family of Yemen, circa 1944

Sephardi Jewish family descendants of Spanish expellees in Bosnia, 19th century

An Eastern Ashkenazic family living in the Shtetl of Romanivka, circa 1905

Yemenite Jews in Sa'dah, smoking Nargile.

Ethiopian Jewish women at Jerusalem's Western Wall, 2006

Bukharan Jewish teacher and students in Samarkand, modern-day Uzbekistan, circa 1910

Berber Jews from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, circa 1900

Chinese Jews from the city of Kaifeng, China, circa 1900

Kurdish Jews in Rawanduz, Iraqi Kurdistan, 1905

Juhur Imuni (Mountain Jews) girls of the Caucasus, 1913

Bnei Menashe Jews from Northern India, celebrating Purim, in Karmiel, Israel.

An Malabar Jewish family in Cochin, India, circa 1900

Chief Karaite rabbi, Moshe Fairouz (left) and vice chairman, Eli Eltahan. Jerusalem, Israel.

Today, the manifestation of these differences among the Jews can be observed in Jewish cultural expressions of each community, including Jewish linguistic diversity, culinary preferences, liturgical practices, religious interpretations, and degrees and sources of genetic admixture.

Jews

Ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah.

Egyptian depiction of the visit of Western Asiatics in colorful garments, labeled as Aamu. The painting is from the tomb of a 12th dynasty official Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, and dated to c. 1900 BCE. Their nearest Biblical contemporaries were the earliest of Hebrews, such as Abraham and Joseph.

Depiction of King Jehu, tenth king of the northern Kingdom of Israel, on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 841–840 BCE. This is "the only portrayal we have in ancient Near Eastern art of an Israelite or Judaean monarch".

Tombstone of the Maharal in the Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague. The tombstones are inscribed in Hebrew.

Bible manuscript in Hebrew, 14th century. Hebrew language and alphabet were the cornerstones of the Jewish national identity in antiquity.

Ashkenazi Jews of late-19th-century Eastern Europe portrayed in Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur (1878), by Maurycy Gottlieb

Sephardi Jewish couple from Sarajevo in traditional clothing. Photo taken in 1900.

New York City is home to 1.1 million Jews, making it the largest Jewish community outside of Israel.

In this Rosh Hashana greeting card from the early 1900s, Russian Jews, packs in hand, gaze at the American relatives beckoning them to the United States. Over two million Jews fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire to the safety of the U.S. between 1881 and 1924.

A menorah dominating the main square in Birobidzhan. An estimated 70,000 Jews live in Siberia.

The Jewish Zionist Youth Movement in Tallinn, Estonia on 1 September 1933.

The Roman Emperor Nero sends Vespasian with an army to destroy the Jews, 69 CE.

World War I poster showing a soldier cutting the bonds from a Jewish man, who says, "You have cut my bonds and set me free—now let me help you set others free!"

Jews in Minsk, 1941. Before World War II some 40 percent of the population was Jewish. By the time the Red Army retook the city on 3 July 1944, there were only a few Jewish survivors.

Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600

Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt in 1614. The text says: "1380 persons old and young were counted at the exit of the gate".

Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East, and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent.

Mountain Jews

Mountain Jews or Caucasus Jews also known as Juhuro, Juvuro, Juhuri, Juwuri, Juhurim, Kavkazi Jews or Gorsky Jews (יהודי קווקז Yehudey Kavkaz or Yehudey he-Harim; Горские евреи, Dağ Yəhudiləri) are Jews of the eastern and northern Caucasus, mainly Azerbaijan, and various republics in the Russian Federation: Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.

Synagogue in Gilaki quarter of Qırmızı Qəsəbə which was reopened in 1941 after initially being closed by Bolsheviks.

Mountain Jew Eric Sireni and his family with chokha resting after a day of work.

Class held at a primary Mountain Jewish school in Quba. Early 1920s.

Mountain Jewish woman, painted by Max Tilke in the early 20th century.

Mountain Jew Eric Sireni wearing a chokha and a papakha on his head. Circa 1898.

Jewish Girls of the Caucasus in Dagestan (1913).

Mountain Jewish delegates with Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland (1897).

Mountain Jewish woman from Dagestan. 1870-1880.

Mountain Jewish woman and her children. Circa 1900.

Mountain Jews of the Caucasus. Circa 1900.

In addition, Y-DNA testing of Mountain Jews has shown they have Y-DNA haplotypes related to those of other Jewish communities.

The Merneptah Stele, widely believed to comprise the earliest known appearance of the name Israel

Israelites

For the citizens of the modern State of Israel, see Israelis.

Mid-20th century mosaic of the 12 Tribes of Israel, from the Etz Yosef synagogue wall in Givat Mordechai,
Jerusalem

Map of the Holy Land, Pietro Vesconte, 1321, showing the allotments of the tribes of Israel. Described by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld as "the first non-Ptolemaic map of a definite country"

Map of the twelve tribes of Israel (before the move of Dan to the north), based on the Book of Joshua

Model of the Tabernacle constructed under the auspices of Moses, in Timna Park, Israel

The Mount Ebal structure, seen by many archeologists as an early Israelite cultic site

Series of depictions of the historical Israelites between the 13th and 7th century BCE

Part of the gift-bearing Israelite delegation of King Jehu, Black Obelisk, 841-840 BCE.

"To Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, king of Judah" - royal seal found at the Ophel excavations in Jerusalem

In 2000, M. Hammer, et al. conducted a study on 1371 men and definitively established that part of the paternal gene pool of Jewish communities in Europe, North Africa and Middle East came from a common Middle East ancestral population.

Yiddish

West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews.

The calligraphic segment in the Worms Machzor. The Yiddish text is in red.

A page from the Shemot Devarim, a Yiddish–Hebrew–Latin–German dictionary and thesaurus, published by Elia Levita in 1542

American World War I-era poster in Yiddish. Translated caption: "Food will win the war – You came here seeking freedom, now you must help to preserve it – We must supply the Allies with wheat – Let nothing go to waste". Colour lithograph, 1917. Digitally restored.

1917. 100 karbovanets of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Revers. Three languages: Ukrainian, Polish and Yiddish.

Map of the Yiddish dialects between the 15th and the 19th centuries (Western dialects in orange / Eastern dialects in green)

An example of graffiti in Yiddish, Tel Aviv, Washington Avenue (און איר זאלט ליב האבן דעם פרעמדען, ווארום פרעמדע זייט איר געווען אין לאנד מצרים Un ir zolt lib hobn dem fremdn varum fremde seit ir geven in land mitsrayim). "You shall have love for the stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10:19)

NEP-era Soviet Yiddish poster "Come to us at the Kolkhoz!"

State emblem of the Byelorussian SSR with the motto Workers of the world, unite! in Yiddish (lower left part of the ribbon): ״פראָלעטאריער פון אלע לענדער, פאראייניקט זיך!״, Proletarier fun ale lender, fareynikt zikh! The same slogan is written in Belarusian, Russian and Polish.

Banner from the first issue of the Yidishe Folksshtime ("Yiddish People's Voice"), published in Stockholm, January 12, 1917

1917 multilingual poster in Yiddish, English, Italian, Hungarian, Slovene, and Polish, advertising English classes for new immigrants in Cleveland

Women surrounded by posters in English and Yiddish supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman, and the American Labor Party teach other women how to vote, 1936.

A typical poster-hung wall in Jewish Brooklyn, New York

A road sign in Yiddish (except for the word "sidewalk") at an official construction site in the Monsey hamlet, a community with thousands of Yiddish speakers, in Ramapo, New York.

Das et al. (2016, co-authored by Wexler) use human genetics in support of the hypothesis of "a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata".

History of the Jews in Georgia

Georgian Jews (ქართველი ებრაელები) are a community of Jews who migrated to Georgia during the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE.

The location of Georgia (dark and light green) in Eurasia

The ancient Georgian capital of Mtskheta, where Jews lived for thousands of years

A Judeo-Aramaic inscription of Abraham, son of Sarah, from Mtskheta from the 4th to 6th centuries

Georgian Jews of Tbilisi probably around 1900

Old Synagogue (20th century) in Bandza, Martvili Municipality

Feast of Sukkot, Shalom Koboshvili, 1938

Israel's 60th independence day celebration in Tbilisi, Georgia attended by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili

Genetic studies carried out on Georgian Jews as part of a wider survey showed close genetic links with other Jews, and in particular with Iraqi and Persian Jews.

Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry

Largely abandoned historical hypothesis.

Genetic studies on Jews have found no substantive evidence of a Khazar origin among Ashkenazi Jews.

Persian Jews

Iran.

Cyrus the Great allowing Hebrew pilgrims to return to the Land of Israel and rebuild Jerusalem, painting by Jean Fouquet circa 1470

Hebrew version of Nizami's "Khosrow va Shirin"

Synagogue in Tehran. A postcard from the Qajar (1794–1925) period.

A Jewish gathering celebrates the second anniversary of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in Tehran.

A Persian Jew prays in a synagogue in Shiraz, Iran, 1999.

Rita Jahanforuz, an Israeli pop star of Persian descent

Mandana Dayani, activist and entrepreneur

The Tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Hamadan

Peyghambarieh ("the place of the prophets"), Qazvin: Here, four Jewish prophets are said to be buried. Their Arabic names are Salam, Solum, al-Qiya, and Sohuli.

Genetic studies show that Persian and Iraqi Jews form a distinct cluster amongst the Jewish People and that the MtDNA of Persian Jews and Bukharan Jews descend from a small number of female ancestors.

Map of the twelve tribes of Israel according to the Book of Joshua

Ten Lost Tribes

The ten lost tribes were the ten of the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been exiled from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire circa 722 BCE.

Delegation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, bearing gifts to the Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser III, circa 840 BCE, on the Black Obelisk, British Museum.

A depiction of either King Jehu, or Jehu's ambassador, kneeling at the feet of Shalmaneser III on the Black Obelisk.

A number of genetic studies on Jews refute the possibility of a connection, whereas others maintain a link.