Since the Jews are considered an ethnicity, is there such thing as a Jew gene?

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Hamad is T.C. in fooling

the white phosphor gene
anyway, Genetic disorders are common between jews especially Ashkenazis - just pick any text book about genetic disorders and you'll find this sentence "Common between Ashkenazi jews" in every paragraph!!!!
so if there is a jew gene it would be corrupted !

Mobius

Levi's, obviously.

fiero86

Being jewish is a religion not an ethnicity. So unless there is a muslim gene or a Christian gene I highly doubt there is a jewish gene.

Kevin S

There are genes that are more commonly found in Jews then in other ethnicities like the Cohen gene. Other than that, the "Jew Gene" stops here from my genetic understanding. The Cohen gene is found amongst Sicilians, Greeks and Arabs as well but under 10%, but it is found in over 50% of modern Cohanim. Another thing to consider is that both Sephardi and Ashkenazim Jews are Mediterranean. Therefore, if you would look at a DNA sequence of either and compare with other Mediterranean populations, you would need to know a lot just to distinguish them. You would need to know a lot to even distinguish them from African or Asian populations. What does this mean? We are all extremely related.

dandyl

Judaism can be thought of as being simultaneously a religion, a nationality and a culture.

Throughout the middle ages and into the 20th century, most of the European world agreed that Jews constituted a distinct nation. This concept of nation does not require that a nation have either a territory nor a government, but rather, it identifies, as a nation any distinct group of people with a common language and culture. Only in the 19th century did it become common to assume that each nation should have its own distinct government; this is the political philosophy of nationalism. In fact, Jews had a remarkable degree of self-government until the 19th century. So long as Jews lived in their ghettos, they were allowed to collect their own taxes, run their own courts, and otherwise behave as citizens of a landless and distinctly second-class Jewish nation.

Of course, Judaism is a religion, and it is this religion that forms the central element of the Jewish culture that binds Jews together as a nation. It is the religion that defines foods as being kosher and non-kosher, and this underlies Jewish cuisine. It is the religion that sets the calendar of Jewish feast and fast days, and it is the religion that has preserved the Hebrew language.

If Judaism an ethnicity? In short, not any more. Although Judaism arose out of a single ethnicity in the Middle East, there have always been conversions into and out of the religion. Thus, there are those who may have been ethnically part of the original group who are no longer part of Judaism, and those of other ethnic groups who have converted into Judaism.

If you are referring to a nation in the sense of race, Judaism is not a nation. People are free to convert into Judaism; once converted, they are considered the same as if they were born Jewish. This is not true for a race.

Annt Hu DeShalit

First, you should learn the difference between the noun "Jew" and the adjective "Jewish."

In fact, Jewish populations of the various Diaspora communities have retained their genetic identity throughout the exile. Despite large geographic distances between the communities and the passage of thousands of years, far removed Jewish communities share a similar genetic profile. This research confirms the common ancestry and common geographical origin of world Jewry.

Jewish men from communities which developed in the Near East -- Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Yemen -- and European Jews have very similar, almost identical genetic profiles.

"Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora."

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mama_pajama_1

People related to one another share genetic markers. Jews began as a family, then as a small group of tribes and has remained tribal in nature. However, Jews are NOT considered an ethnicity. There is simply NO single Jewish ethnicity.

Jews are a nation people, Israel (tribal origin) bound by an eternal covenant of the faith (religion) of Judaism. We are like a huge family and only the family can determine who is a member of it. It is the laws of Judaism, given to the covenant nation, Israel, in the Torah, that determine Jewish identity. It is not a matter of â€œbloodâ€ but of self-determination through the laws of the Jewish people.

The Jewish people are considered both a nation and a religion. Our connection is primarily one of faith (religion) through the covenant of Israel, yet membership is also conferred by birth, through matrilineal descent .One may also become a part of the nation Israel by adoption of the faith of Judaism and formal procedures of conversion.

One who converts to Judaism is considered as FULLY Jewish as one born Jewish and their children are Jews. This has been the case since the times of the Torah.

However one can be a Jew and not belong to both. One may technically be a Jew if their mother is a Jew, but apostate to the covenant of Israel and no longer considered a member of the nation if they leave it for the covenant of faith of another religion.

We are Klal Yisrael, the community of Israel. . **MANY** different and distinctly Jewish cultures and ethnicities have developed over the millennia in Diaspora lands. The Diaspora to the Jewish presence outside of Israel after the destruction of the First and Second Temple periods and the Bar Kochba revolt.

There is no ONE Jewish ethnicity, but a great many ethnicities that are distinctly Jewish. There are the Mizrahi (from the Middle East and North Africa).The Sephardi (Spanish) and the Ashkenazi, (German, Polish, Russian and other Eastern European)that are all slightly different, even within those three designations as to cultural practices and foods, but it is the faith and covenant that binds them all together as Klal Yisrael.

The Jewish nation began as a group of tribes and our connection to one another is still from the perspective of a tribal nation. (example: as the Lakota nation has tribal procedure and law to determine who is a member of their tribe, who is not, who is expelled and who is adopted, so does Judaism)
One born a member of the tribal covenant nation Israel (Jewish) may not be observant or even believe in God and theyâ€™re still a full member, a Jew. They may not be a good member or an active member but theyâ€™ve not renounced membership by following something ELSE instead of Judaism. An atheist or a secular Jew is not trying to call something ELSE Judaism. That is how one may be an "atheist Jew", they still may live Jewish ethics and identify with their people, but they did not take on foreign beliefs contradictory to monotheism or Torah
Now if one born into the covenant becomes apostate to it through rejection of the covenant by adoption of another belief contradictory to the covenant, they are still be considered a Jew, but for all intents and purposes, they're not given the status of a member. According to Jewish law they're not counted in a minyan,( the minimum number of adults required for certain prayers and other mitzvot), they can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery, they cannot be given honors to go up to read Torah at a synagogue, and they may not be allowed to speak for the Jewish people. They CAN however, return without formal conversion should they so desire and then be embraced again as full members. One who has left the Jewish people for the foreign faith of another people must undergo the steps of TESHUVAH , which means repentance and return to the God of Israel. Some groups may require that the individual also requires immersion in the mikveh before being accepted back, but they do not require the formal steps of conversion should the person wish to return.
Jews are in NO way a RACE..other than as members of the human race. It is Jewish law alone, not Christianity or any other entity that determines the status of who and what is Jewish. When a Jew adopts a belief that is in conflict with the Jewish religion, the belief does NOT become a " Jewish belief" just because a Jew chooses to believe in it. THAT is the conflict Jews have with the Christians who call themselves Jews if deceptively try to present their Christian belief AS Judaism. A Jew who converts to Hare Krishna is just as apostate, but there exists no Jews for Hare Krishna or Hare Krishna Judaism evangelic groups spending millions of dollars a year in campaigns to convert secular Jews by convincing them it is a form of Judaism.
You can become a member of a tribe or nation if you meet the criteria of citizenship. And the covenant people, Klal Yisrael, remain as in the earliest days of the covenant..a nation. It hasn't changed. IMHO I hink that the common misunderstandings of Jewish identity has many reasons. In addition to adopting a false notion of Jews as race, began in the 19th century with pseudo-scientific concepts that were spread by the Nazis, people using the criteria for identification of other religions on Judaism combined with the often mistaken confusion of the definition of nation with nation state makes this an issue that often requires more than one simple explanation to clear it up.

Even people who are not consciously bigoted or biased in their views of others have often unwittingly adopted definitions that were born in antisemitism. Hitler did not create that notion as it began in the late 1800's, but he did use it and many other things against Jewish law in order to discredit and persecute Jews. Both the concept that the dogma of a contradictory religion to Judaism or the pseudo scientific ideas of antisemites(Nazis) have authority to determine Jewish identity OVER the right of the laws of the people in question , reveals utter disregard and disrespect of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination according to Jewish law with regard to who is or is not a Jew.

It is against Jewish law for any Jew to discriminate against a convert to Judaism. Since the time of the Torah converts have been accepted as fully Jewish, and this is the case in all branches. We are not even supposed to refer to the fact that they are converts! It is up to them if they wish to identify themselves as such. They are Jews, period.

The covenant people, Israel have been MULTIRACIAL since the days of Torah, Moses' wife, Zipporah was a black woman. There have been Ethiopian Beta Yisrael since the days of Solomon! And I repeat, one cannot convert to a race. One may convert and become fully Jewish.

Jewish law is the determining factor of Jewish identity.

Biology and genetics are determining factors of studying biological kinsip. While one may help to support the other, Biology does not take precedence over, or even have relevance to the covenant of Torah that Jews have rightfully used for more than 3500 years for self-determination.

The Jewish Bible ( Tanakh ) tells from the beginning book to the end that the righteous of all nations ( Jew or Gentile ) have the capacity to connect directly to God, merit blessing and a place in the world to come. Every human is equal before God according to the Jewish religion. Atonement is directly from God. Shalom

Noor

if anyone will consider this as a "fact", then there should be a "Muslim" gene and a "Christian" gene and a "Hindu" gene etc...etc....

and if that is true, you wont find any converter from Jews, but that is not the case, yes?

read
Rabbi of Makhachkala Synagogue embraced Islam
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/rabbi_of_makhachkala_synagogue.htm

there is even more here
http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:sP6Howp9wYAJ:www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/+a+rabbi+convert+to+islam&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=qa

Telephone Datings Operator

Nope thats a myth.

nikki

it's not an ethnicity.. its a religion! People convert from other religions to Judaism so how could they have a certain gene? All people are people! Jews could have the same genes as christians, muslims, atheists, etc!

DANIEL W

Not as such, your biology needs some studying, a decent dictionary will give you the meaning of "gene". However, DNA studies have revealed that most Jews no matter where they reside have sequences that originate from the Middle East. This in one stoke demolishes the myth that all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars.

Of course where entire populations have converted there is less Middle Eastern DNA but over time if they marry Jews from other regions then their descendants will have more and more Middle Eastern DNA.

A Jew in the UK or USA will have more DNA in common with a "Palestinian" than with their gentile neighbours despite resembling the gentile more.

BTW - Most Western nations consider the Jews as a "race" as well as a religion and in the UK have been covered by the Race Relations Act since 1976, laws banning discrimination on religious grounds only came in the last few years.

Arieh

Yes there is:

http://www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/Jewish_Genes.asp

http://www.cohen-levi.org/jewish_genes_and_genealogy/jewish_genes_-_dna_evidence.htm

L'Chaim!

We are a religion! There is nothing physical that makes someone Jewish and to say so is racist. Anyone can convert in and out of Judaism. You can't to that with race. I think alot of people confuse it because Judaism is a religion that is extremely influential in our daily life and culture.

kismet

Judaism is both an ethnicity and a religion.
Ethnicity is cultural, not physical; we Jews come in all colors!

I think it's just you that thinks that way.

Bey$on back home

Judaism is a religion, no scientific research found a difference between a Jew and others in their genes.
Once, a smart guy thought that he can create a chemical bomb that can kill all non jews, but it was impossible to do, because they couldn't differentiate between a jew and a non jew.

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