Talk:Ashkenazi Jews: Difference between revisions

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Archives

Archive 1

DNA Haplogroup R-M17 and Khazars:

There is virtually no evidence that R-M17 comes from Khazars rather than interaction with host populations in Eastern Europe. The Khazar theory in general has been widely discredited by Doron Behar and other genetic genealogists who have studied Ashkenazi populations. Furthermore, R-M17 may also in some instances be a Middle Eastern lineage that is not attributable to admixture. For example Sephardic Jews carry the lineage R-M17 at a rate 1/3 that of the Ashkenazis, also Kurds and Persians carry this lineage. Therefore I suggest a significant revision of the unfounded "Khazar" component of the Ashkenazi DNA section, which is generally used as fuel for New Anti-Semitism and racist forms of Anti-Zionism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.64.153.30 (talk) 22:48, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Last talk edit was over a month ago. See Archive 1 for info on Ashkenazi intelligence. Daniel^C/_T+ 19:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This entire article is filled with bias promoting one view point trying to pass it off as truth. I am going to be doing some serious rewriting to this article promoting a second view point (without bias). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.23.207.66 (talk • contribs)

You are welcome to (and encouraged to) edit the page in any way that you feel contributes to the article. Please read Wikipedia guidelines Wikipedia:Verifiability, [Wikipedia:No original research]] and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, to understand what kind of article Wikipedia strives to create. While you are permitted to edit the page, I would strongly recommend that you first talk about your prospective changes here on the talk page to prevent any disputes with other editors. It can be very frustrating to work hard on an article only to have your edits rejected. Jon513 00:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed your edits ("The second states that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a Turkic tribe that converted to Judaism in the 8th century in Southern Russia (See Khazars" etc) pending a discussion here on the talk page. I have kept your criticisms of the article ("NOTE TO READERS: This article is currently heavily biased...", "[citation needed for entire paragraph]") but changed it to a templates made for that purpose.

The reason I removed your additions it is because you do not cite any sources that Ashkenzi Jews are descended from a Turkic tribe. There had been significant talk about this subject in the archive. You are welcome to read them and add any insight here which has not already been said. Jon513 00:18, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will rewrite parts of this article to include the alternative theory on the origins of Jews in Eastern Europe (See the Wikipedia page on Khazars). This article deals only with the popular theory (commonly excepted as fact) that the Jews who were expelled from Jerusalem in the year 70 ended up in Germany and then in Eastern Europe. The second theory should be included as well.

Also, the article is biased in terms of the DNA evidence. It only talks about the Middle Eastern contributions to the genetics of Ashkenazi Jews, but there is evidence linking them to other groups. There has also been heavy criticism of current genetic studies linking Ashkenazi Jews to the Middle East as well as to other Jewish groups.

I think the article should include sources for both theories for linguistic, historic, cultural, and genetic evidence.

I do believe in the alternative theory, and will include credible sources in the rewrite. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.107.117.237 (talk) 17:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Prior to starting a rewrite, you should examine the talk page archives, where this subject has come up quite a few times. See [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] for a few of the specific discussions.

You should know that previous editors trying to insert the material that you refer to into this article have had little to no success. Most of the regular editors here are very well-versed in the details of both arguments and haven't found much reliable modern scholarly support to the Koestler theory. Of course you're very welcome to contribute anything that you can on the subject that's rigorously supported by neutral sources, but it would be unfortunate for you to put a lot of work into a rewrite when it would include a lot of material that's been found by editorial consensus to have little merit.

Maybe to save conflict and wasted effort it would be better to discuss the subject and any changes you'd like to introduce here on the talk page before editing the article? I'm sure there are plenty of others who would be happy to contribute to an examination of any new evidence you could bring. Daniel^C/_T+ 19:12, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I only find 70.107.117.237 to be highly uncivil and biased for himself, it is both funny and sad in the same time that no one notice it till now. What kind of evidence does he have for his firm claims against the extensive body of genetic evidence which isolated the Ashkenazi Jews from the gentile Europeans...absolutely non! more than that-what kind of evidence he have for the theory of link between the Kazhars, an empire that been ruined by the Vikings, and the Ashkenazi Jews? again, non-only pseudo scientific evidence, at best. It is disrupting for him that Ashkenazi Jews are linked to Jerusalem-meaning to Israel (no body assumes that all the Jews came from the same city in Israel)-if he have Anti-Zionist agenda it's his own matter, but if he will continue to fit this article to his own POV than this is a pure vandalism and will be treated as such. He didn't even recognized himself by user name-and it is highly unaccepted. More, being familiar with genetic studies I can tell that "heavy criticism" wasn't there at least not for the vast majority of dozens of up to date articles that been published by many independent research groups, from all around the world, in A-class journals ( Like: New England Journal of Medicine, Human Genetics, Nature, Science, JAMA and etc) not only that, but even the variety of genetic diseases that Ashkenazim have are unique for them only, at most, having specific alleles for them and many times connect them with Jews from the Middle East and North Africa which suffer from the same illnesses for smaller extents - there is also one allele which explains why Jews are not good at Alcohol drinking while non Jewish Europeans only rarely have it- it is actually non Ashkenazi Jews (Ethiopians and too much smaller extent Yamani's, Georgians and Libyans) that have significant amount of non Jewish markers. There is no place for changes as 70.107.117.237 suggest- hence I remove the POV tag.--Gilisa (talk) 15:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This section actually reads like propaganda. I tagged the statements that needs to be checked; if no sources can be found to support the claims, I suggest the entire (yet small) section gets deleted, or thoroughly rewritten. And the link to the so-called "Main article": Ashkenazi intelligence ? A controversial theory, indeed... Facts please, neutrality please. --Protagon (talk) 05:20, 23 December 2007 (UTC), signing off.[reply]

the article Ashkenazi intelligence has a huge amount of references. There is a great difference between unsourced, and unverifiable. Tagging the section as unsourced, then trying to delete it is inappropriate when there are so many references just an article away. :This section is not controversial at all. Unlike Ashkenazi intelligence which cite academic sources theorizing a link between Ashkenazim and intelligence, this section only notes achievements. Do seriously believe that Jews haven't won a disproportionate amount of noble prises?! Also the link isn't a "main article" it is a "more article" (as in this is a related issue).

I have sourced it myself and removed the "disputed tag". Jon513 (talk) 11:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What I (or you) believe or not is not of significance - only verifiable facts are. Very good you've sourced it, but please assume good faith here; I did not try to delete it, I merely tagged the section. Well, since the so-called "Main article": Ashkenazi intelligence handles a controversial theory (as that article describes it as), this small section might be controversial as well, and this needs to be addressed. Don't worry, I will read the entire (single) source you have referred to, and I will get back here and address the matters. In the meantime, I recommend renaming the "Main article" to "More", and I thus do so. --Protagon (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2007 (UTC), signing off.[reply]

I think we basically agree. The {{disputed}} is used when "The neutrality and factual accuracy of this section are disputed" which does not now seem to be the case. I agree the sourcing can be better. In the references to Ashkenazi intelligence there were plenty of sources but one just had better quotes. Jon513 (talk) 17:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First, I "fixed" the population section of the infobox. The bloated EU figure has gone long enough without citation that I blew it away in favor of a far more reasonable guesstimate. Yay. That brings me to the images. This image nonsense has been carried to its logical conclusion. In the process, the infobox has been rendered almost completely worthless. Pick one image (a family or group at a festival or something) or two images of individuals (no more collages), and stick with them. The infobox is not an image gallery. I think one week is long enough for whoëver's baby this image fetish is to fix the mess they've created. You know who you are. If you haven't, I'll be back with my bandsaw on Silvester. Ciao! 68.117.102.237 (talk) 01:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had to revert your edit. Guesstimates are not allowed. Y'know, for somebody who just started editing wikipedia yesterday, you seem very adept at using edit summaries and referencing wikipedia guidelines. You're not a sockpuppet are you?--Dr who1975 (talk) 13:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm not a sockpuppet (do you even know what a sockpuppet is?), nor do I feel particularly inclined to log in. Your revert was silly, since you reverted my guesstimates in favor of clearly incorrect figures. Way to try to obfuscate the issue by talking about me tho (btw, where do you come up with the bizarre assertion that I started editing WP "yesterday"?), instead of the issues at hand: the incorrect population figures and the photofetish outrage. 71.87.23.22 (talk) 04:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the following images from the infobox Image:Anne Frank.jpg, Image:milton-hand.jpg, and Image:Grouchomarxpromophoto.jpg. All of them are copyrighted, and I don't think we can claim fair use (replacability). Puchiko (Talk-email) 11:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I really think the use on this page falls under fair use. All three images are being used to illustrate the subject in question and they cannot be reproduced through any other means.--Dr who1975 (talk) 16:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• The subject in question is Ashkenazi Jews, not Ashkenazi celebrities. Funkynusayri (talk) 17:19, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK... I removed all the images. I'm glad we could come to a conclusion on this copyright issue without getting sidetracked into something completely unrelated.--Dr who1975 (talk) 19:50, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Back on topic I went ahead and put the images back because use on this page counts as fair use of images. They are being used to illustrate the subject in question and they cannot be reproduced through any other means.--Dr who1975 (talk) 19:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes, but what is the subject in question? Ashkenazi Jews. This means that any image of Ashkenazi Jews could be used, and free images of such certainly exist. Therefore, the copyrighted images are hardly irreplaceable. 04:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Funkynusayri (talk • contribs)

I agree with Funkynusayri, there are other images of Ashkenazi Jews that could be used to illustrate the article (such as the other ones). It would be best if we could get a high quality and full colour photograph, preferably one that would show the whole body as opposed to a head shot. For example, I recently peer reviewed the article Hazara people. The image, Image:Boy in Mazar-e Sharif - 06-16-2005.jpg, gave me a good impression of the physical features of the Hazaras. Is there any chance of obtaining a similar photo of an Ashkenazi Jew?
However, I still believe that we can't claim fair use for the copyrighted images, will anyone mind if I remove them again? Puchiko (Talk-email) 23:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Funkynusayri is correct. There is no justification for fair use here, as it is not impossible to find or create a freely licensed photograph or illustration of an Ashkenazi Jew. -- Schaefer (talk) 23:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK...Funkynusayri make a good point (now that he's on topic)... I'll remove the 3 copyrighted images.--Dr who1975 (talk) 23:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New image

As it has been pointed out in the above sections, a collage isn't a desirable way of illustrating the subject. Here's my vision of a perfect photo:

• Free licence
• Full body shot
• Good light, high quality
• Not taken sporadically, the subject was looking into the camera
• One or two people

I did a flickr search for the word "ashkenazi". I quickly sorted through them, looking for those that portray people (as opposed to synagogues and food). [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], I didn't make any judgements about quality or suitability. This is just a list of flickr photos of Ashkenazi Jews. It isn't even complete, it's just a quick draft. Most of them are copyrighted, but flickr users usually don't mind changing the licensing. So review the ones above, and let's pick some good ones. Puchiko (Talk-email) 18:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose If you look at other ethnicity pages in wikipedia such as Irish people, African American, Italian American, or French people, the standard is to show head shots of notable figures from that ethnicity. If you wish to change this standard then start there.--Dr who1975 (talk) 21:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it becomes a little Darwin esq (in the bad way) for us to start debating what a Jewish person should look like. Somebody will say something like "but those people's noses aren't big enough".. after that we my as well put up a picture of a guy with horns and just get it over with.--Dr who1975 (talk) 21:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're right, I didn't see those examples. So scrap my idea. Puchiko (Talk-email) 11:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Attempt to avoid an edit war over the genetic studies

I want to reach a consensus over the genetic studies on Ashkenazi maternal ancestry rather than reverting back and forth. I feel that the wikipedia article as written before was misleading as to the results of the study on Ashkenazi maternal ancestry, because it described the academic pov prior to the research described in the article. The article explicitly contests that view, so I want to know why my description of the article was reverted.--Lastexpofan (talk) 00:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From the article: "Ashkenaz is the Medieval Hebrew name for the region which later formed the country of Germany." I think it is more accurate simply to say "Ashkenaz is the Medieval Hebrew name for Germany," although perhaps the link for "Germany" should go elsewhere. Ashkenaz in that time meant pretty much what Germany meant in that time: a slightly vague region defined by language. We are, after all, referring to a period before the rise of nation states. - Jmabel | Talk 00:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In Jewish genealogy and genetics, finding evidence of the Khazars is a bit like sighting Elvis Presley in a shopping mall. It is certain to get attention.

The existence of the Khazars, and the conversion of their King Bulan to Judaism around 740 CE, is verifiable, by a letter written by the Khazar king that survives to the present day. Whether all of the Khazars actually converted to Judaism is debated. Whatever the case, the Khazars had been conquered by other peoples and had vanished from history long before a significant number of Jews migrated to eastern Europe after 1200 CE, and to southern Russia much later.

The popularity of the Khazar story owes much to a mystical and philosophical book by Yehuda Halevi, written about 1100 in Muslim Spain: Kuzari: The Book of Proof and Argument in Defense of the Despised Faith. Halevi's book is structured as a moral tale, a dialog with the king of the Khazars, in which the king examines and accepts the philosophical truth of Judaism. But Yehuda Halevi's book was actually written well over a century after the Khazars had vanished, and Halevi lived thousand of miles away from where the Khazars once lived. Yehuda Halevi and people living in his time had no actual contact with the Khazars.

According to Diana Lobel, Halevi's book is actually noteworthy for its use of Sufi Islamic religious concepts. Think of the Khazar story as being analogous to the fascination that many Jews had with eastern religions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ever since Halevi's time, Jews have had a romantic infatuation with the Khazars. Halevi's fictionalized account of how the king examined three monotheistic religions and chose Judaism has been turned into children's books for religious Jewish children. In other words, this is about 1 part reality and 99 parts fairy tale!

Nobody actually knows what genetic markers were common amongst the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived on the steppes of Ukraine and Russia around 700-950 CE. Presumably, they shared a number of markers, some of which are shared with other central Asian or Middle Eastern peoples. There is no way to reconstruct the Khazars and test them.

The M126 marker is the marker that defines the haplogroup R1B1c, which is common at different frequencies in populations throughout Europe, and is also present in central Asia and the Middle East. It is the most common subclade of Haplogroup R, which is the dominant through much of Europe. See Wikipedia's article on Haplogroup R (Y-DNA). There is no evidence of what frequency this marker had among the Khazars, a people who ceased to be identifiable as an ethnic group before 1000 CE. A more likely explanation of the presense of M126 and other R1a and R1b markers in Ashkenazi Jewish populations is that a small but not insignificant number of male Europeans converted to Judaism over the centuries, and for that there is historical evidence. (See David Max Eichhorn, editor and author. Conversion to Judaism: A History and Analysis, published by Ktav Press in 1965).

It wasn't until hundreds of years after the Khazars vanished that significant numbers of Ashkenazi Jews migrated to southern Russia and the Ukraine. The brief paragraph in the Nebel article is wildly speculative at best, and makes no scientific or varifiable claims at all. The authors of that paper must have known that such a speculation would be a good way to get their paper read. Would anybody object if I removed this chazerei about the Khazars from this article? This stuff is barely above the level of legend and myth, and is truly not encyclopedic. --Metzenberg (talk) 07:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Khazars "vanished" huh? why don't you explain that further. and then why dont you admit that the reason you try to deny ashkenazim's true heritage is part of a conspiracy to resettle european jews in the middle east. Anything to give them legitimacy huh? Anything to make them "authentically middle eastern." I got news for you, son. No matter how many "holyglops" and "polipops" you lie about, it doesnt change the fact that you dont need a microscope or genitic studies to tell that european jews have no middle eastern heritage. They exhibit all the traits of a frequently intermarried turkic-eastern european group, and you know it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.83.120.99 (talk) 20:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • and what makes you think the ancient greeks have something to do with today's greek people? if they don't, does this mean greece shouldn't exist anymore? Yuvn86 (talk) 14:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'll tell you what. If you think that Joseph Lieberman and Alan Greenspan are related to most Arabs, fine, I won't argue that point. Barkmoss (talk) 03:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article seems slightly POV towards the view that Ashkenazim are of middle eastern origin. This is far from clear, a quick google search gave me this result. http://download.ajhg.org/AJHG/pdf/PIIS000292970763626X.pdf