Dr. Eran Elhaik Confirms The Khazar Hypothesis

[Sunniforunity]

http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61.full

The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland the Khazarian Hypotheses

by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Geneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik, Ph.D.

http://eelhaik.aravindachakravartilab.org/ and http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-gZa-KkAAAAJ

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iJN90t2gN6hxGiFQuBv-gYQE060w?docId=CNG.52483183e4e0f60d963361c17572c848.81

Gene study settles debate over origin of European Jews

(AFP) – Jan 16, 2013

PARIS — Jews of European origin are a mix of ancestries, with many hailing from tribes in the Caucasus who converted to Judaism and created an empire that lasted half a millennium, according to a gene study.

The investigation, its author says, should settle a debate that has been roiling for more than two centuries.

Jews of European descent, often called Ashkenazis, account for some 90 percent of the more than 13 million Jews in the world today.

According to the so-called Rhineland Hypothesis, Ashkenazis descended from Jews who progressively fled Palestine after the Moslem conquest of 638 AD.

They settled in southern Europe and then, in the late Middle Ages, about 50,000 of them moved from the Rhineland in Germany into eastern Europe, according to the hypothesis.

But detractors say this idea is implausible.

Barring a miracle --which some supporters of the Rhineland Hypothesis have in fact suggested -- the scenario would have been demographically impossible.

It would mean that the population of Eastern European Jews leapt from 50,000 in the 15th century to around eight million at the start of the 20th century.

That birth rate would have been 10 times greater than that of the local non-Jewish population. And it would have occurred despite economic hardship, disease, wars and pogroms that ravaged Jewish communities.

Seeking new light in the argument, a study published in the British journal Genome Biology and Evolution, compares the genomes of 1,287 unrelated individuals who hail from eight Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations.

Geneticist Eran Elhaik of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, trawled through this small mountain of data in search of single changes in the DNA code that are linked to a group's geographical origins.

Such telltales have been used in past research to delve into the origins of the Basque people and the pygmy people of central Africa.

Among European Jews, Elhaik found ancestral signatures that pointed clearly to the Caucasus and also, but to a smaller degree, the Middle East.

The results, said Elhaik, give sound backing for the rival theory -- the "Khazarian Hypothesis."

Under this concept, eastern European Jews descended from the Khazars, a hotchpotch of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries AD and, influenced by Jews from Palestine, converted to Judaism in the 8th century.

The Judeo-Khazars built a flourishing empire, drawing in Jews from Mesopotamia and imperial Byzantium.

They became so successful that they sent offshoots into Hungary and Romania, planting the seeds of a great diaspora.

But Khazaria collapsed in the 13th century when it was attacked by the Mongols and became weakened by outbreaks of the Black Death.

The Judeo-Khazars fled westwards, settling in the rising Polish Kingdom and in Hungary, where their skills in finance, economics and politics were in demand, and eventually spread to central and western Europe, according to the "Khazarian Hypothesis."

"We conclude that the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaised Khazars, Greco-Roman Jews, Mesopotamian Jews and Judeans," says Elhaik.

"Their population structure was formed in the Caucasus and the banks of the Volga, with roots stretching to Canaan and the banks of the Jordan."

Many things are unknown about the Khazars, whose tribal confederation gathered Slavs, Scythians, Hunnic-Bulgars, Iranians, Alans and Turks.

But, argues Elhaik, the tale sketched in the genes is backed by archaeological findings, by Jewish literature that describes the Khazars' conversion to Judaism, and by language, too.

"Yiddish, the language of Central and Eastern European Jews, began as a Slavic language" before being reclassified as High German, he notes.

Another pointer is that European Jews and their ancestral groups in the Caucasus and Middle East share a relatively high risk of diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

The investigation should help fine-tune a fast-expanding branch of genomics, which looks at single-change DNA mutations that are linked with inherited disease, adds Elhaik.

Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved.

[Yoel]

"Yiddish, the language of Central and Eastern European Jews, began as a Slavic language" before being reclassified as High German, he notes.

If you read Dr. Elhaik actual paper, you'll see that he didn't really find anything new and his research has major flaws. He compares Jews to Armenians and assumes that Armenians are genetically close to Khazars. His conclusion is that Jews got mixed with all kinds of converts to Judaism throughout the world and that about 30% of their ancestry may be linked to Khazars.

Of course, Jews mixed with all sorts of people, because Judaism is a religion, not a race. Unfortunately, we don't know much about Khazars, but they were a Turkic Central Asian people. There is no reason to believe they were close to Armenians and there is every reason to suspect that they were close to someone like Kazakhs or Tatars. But there is no significant Central Asian impact on European Jewish genetics, culture or language.

On the other hand, there are a plenty of Jewish and Christian documents indicating a continuous influx of European converts to Judaism in France, Italy, Spain, Slavic countries etc. for hundreds of years. These documents match the fact that European Jews are genetically close to Europeans, particularly to French and Northern Italians with a significant admixture of Slavic ancestry.

Our Jewish language, Yiddish, belongs to the Germanic group and contains many Old French and Slavic elements. Yiddish is neither Slavic nor High German, but has strong similarities to both Western Germanic and Slavic. How exactly this synthesis came to existence is a matter of discussion among linguists, but nothing whatsoever suggests that its origin lies outside of Europe.

Note that I am a Jewish anti-Zionist and I don't care whatsoever if Jews are descendents of Khazars or Martians. I just don't like dubious and obscure ideas that don't add up streight. :)

[Sunniforunity]

If you read Dr. Elhaik actual paper, you'll see that he didn't really find anything new and his research has major flaws. He compares Jews to Armenians and assumes that Armenians are genetically close to Khazars. His conclusion is that Jews got mixed with all kinds of converts to Judaism throughout the world and that about 30% of their ancestry may be linked to Khazars.

Of course, Jews mixed with all sorts of people, because Judaism is a religion, not a race. Unfortunately, we don't know much about Khazars, but they were a Turkic Central Asian people. There is no reason to believe they were close to Armenians and there is every reason to suspect that they were close to someone like Kazakhs or Tatars. But there is no significant Central Asian impact on European Jewish genetics, culture or language.

On the other hand, there are a plenty of Jewish and Christian documents indicating a continuous influx of European converts to Judaism in France, Italy, Spain, Slavic countries etc. for hundreds of years. These documents match the fact that European Jews are genetically close to Europeans, particularly to French and Northern Italians with a significant admixture of Slavic ancestry.

Our Jewish language, Yiddish, belongs to the Germanic group and contains many Old French and Slavic elements. Yiddish is neither Slavic nor High German, but has strong similarities to both Western Germanic and Slavic. How exactly this synthesis came to existence is a matter of discussion among linguists, but nothing whatsoever suggests that its origin lies outside of Europe.

Note that I am a Jewish anti-Zionist and I don't care whatsoever if Jews are descendents of Khazars or Martians. I just don't like dubious and obscure ideas that don't add up streight. :)

To be frank Dr. Eran Elhaik is the scholar (a Johns Hopkins University geneticist) not you, so any laypeople on forums (like these) claiming that there are allegedly "errors" with Dr. Elhaik's study really have an uphill "case" to argue shall we say. There has also very noticeably been no even attempted actual academic "responses" to Dr. Elhaik's definitive final December 2012 peer-reviewed paper (as of yet at least) http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61.full. This has been such the case that people trying to "challenge" Dr. Elhaik have still been "resorting" to quoting old random blog (note: blogs aren't valid "sources" for anything) postings that attempted (and clearly failed) to challenge the preprint aka the rough draft of Dr. Elhaik's paper that was posted on the rough draft website arxiv back in August 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv and http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1092. A real scholarly review and analysis of Dr. Elhaik's final peer-reviewed December 5, 2012 paper http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61.full was done by the also peer-reviewed writer Danielle Venton on December 20, 2012 http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/75.full

As for the specific statements you made in your post here; other laypeople around the web are making these same statements on Dr. Elhaik's surrogate population choices (I'm assuming this came from the weak blog posting of Mr. Razib Khan back in August 2012 again attempting, and clearly failing, to "challenge" a rough draft of Dr. Elhaik's paper also again from August 2012 http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1092); Dr. Elhaik already responded to this in a professional setting; in Haaretz of December 28, 2012 mirrored for free here http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december302012/jewish-gene-oa.php

Elhaik - following a procedure commonly used by researchers in his field - relied on figures relating to populations that are genetically similar to the Khazars, such as Georgians, Armenians and Caucasians. Elhaik says "they have all emerged from the same genetic 'soup.'"

The Johns Hopkins University geneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik (http://eelhaik.aravindachakravartilab.org/) says they all emerged from the same genetic soup, and I'm going with him like the Oxford University Press peer-reviewed journal did in December 2012 http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61.full "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses" by Dr. Eran Elhaik, Ph.D.

Also Dr. Elhaik's own Johns Hopkins University webpage http://eelhaik.aravindachakravartilab.org/, contains a section with reviewer's comments on Dr. Elhaik's study and his (Elhaik's) responses back to them.

6. Page 10 Lines 21-23 "Armenians and Georgians diverged from Turks 600 generations ago (Schonberg et al. 2011)". Caucasus-Turkish history is complicated. There were numerous wars, invasions, rapes, periods of peace all resulted in much later gene flow.

Answer: We accept the reviewer’s comment and have actually indicated that in our discussion. However it does not conflict with them sharing common ancestry with the Khazars.

As for linguistics; Dr. Elhaik's cites and quotes (among others) the work of renowned Tel Aviv University (Al-Shaykh Muwannis, Palestine http://www.palestineremembered.com/Jaffa/al-Shaykh-Muwannis/) scholar and linguist Paul Wexler

http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Paul+Wexler%22

"The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past"

"Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars, and the Kiev-Polessian dialect"

"The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People In Search of a Jewish Identity"

etc. etc.

Dr. Eran Elhaik does say the European Jews (often referred to as Ashkenazis) are indeed a very mixed group descending mostly from different converts to the religion of Judaism (with Khazars being the largest slice).

http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61.full

Dr. Elhaik

We conclude that the genome of European Jews is a tapestry of ancient populations including Judaized Khazars, Greco–Roman Jews, Mesopotamian Jews, and Judeans and that their population structure was formed in the Caucasus and the banks of the Volga with roots stretching to Canaan and the banks of the Jordan.

Dr. Elhaik says all the different parts in a sense "melted together" in Khazaria (after the conversion of the Kingdom of Khazaria to the religion of Judaism by the Khazar Kagan aka King Bulan starting in the 8th century CE).

[Yoel]

To be frank Dr. Eran Elhaik is the scholar (a Johns Hopkins University geneticist) not you,

To be frank, I am a scholar of the Yiddish language and Jewish history, and I also published academic papers, but that's irrelevant here. One doesn't need to be a scholar in order to see an obvious flaw in someone's theory.

Of course, the Jewish genome is a tapestry of various populations who converted to Judaism. But Khazars were a Cenrtral Asian Turkic tribe. Elhaik, however, shows that about a third of Jewish ancestry comes from a source somewhat genetically close to Armenians. But Armenian language is Indo-European and they are related to Europeans, not Khazars.

Wexler's relexification theory is generally disregarded among Yiddish scholars, because many of his proposed "Slavic" etymologies are completely wrong. Very few Yiddish scholars take his theory seriously, although his contributions to the field are important. I personally don't disregard his basic idea, but I see many flaws in it. It needs much improvement and further research. In any case, Wexler tries to prove that Ashkenazi Jew are largely descedants of Central European Slavs, not Central Asian Khazars.

Elhaik's research reaffirmes the known fact that Jews were mixed with Europeans. If he would say just that, his paper would make perfect sense. But Khazars - a Turkic Asian people - simply don't fit into the picture he himself is portraying.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Yoel

[Sunniforunity]

To be frank, I am a scholar of the Yiddish language and Jewish history, and I also published academic papers, but that's irrelevant here. One doesn't need to be a scholar in order to see an obvious flaw in someone's theory.

Could you then provide your full name, academic credentials, and list of academic citations for us to compare? Because I can easily find all this information for Dr. Eran Elhaik http://eelhaik.aravindachakravartilab.org/ and http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-gZa-KkAAAAJ. If you have your own personal academic page to post I would love to see it.

As for you stating that there is allegedly an "obvious flaw" in Dr. Elhaik's theory; this peer-reviewed http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/gbe/for_authors/#Review%20of%20Manuscripts scholarly journal obviously didn't agree with you http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61

As of now I know of no peer-reviewed source that has even attempted to challenge Dr. Elhaik's December 2012 final paper. Here is one of the main peer-reviewed academic reports produced on Dr. Elhaik's final December 2012 paper:

http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/75.full Highlight: Out of Khazaria—Evidence for “Jewish Genome” Lacking by Danielle Venton

Accepted December 20, 2012

[Askari1]

http://gbe.oxfordjou...ent/5/1/61.full

The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland the Khazarian Hypotheses

by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Geneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik, Ph.D.

http://eelhaik.aravi...ravartilab.org/ and http://scholar.googl...er=-gZa-KkAAAAJ

http://www.google.co...61c17572c848.81

You may find some useful discussion on this subject at this link :donno: :donno:

http://www.shiachat....50#entry2556393

Edited April 20, 2013 by Askari1

[dfdfRandolphdfdf]

PLEASE DO NOT CALL KHAZARIANS EUROPEAN

KHAZARIA IS NOT IN EUROPE THEREFORE THEY ARE NOT EUROPEAN

THEY ARE CENTRAL ASIAN

Edited April 22, 2013 by dfdfRandolphdfdf

[lalamoosa]

^ The far-reaching implications of this hypothesis may explain the great caution exercised by historians in approaching this subject -- if they do not avoid it altogether.

Even though, the facts of non-semitic are obvious on their face, in their voice, and the color of their hairs and eyes.

Many years ago, I started my quest for this hypothesis based on these basic facts before I even knew the word "khazar" which was after 9-11, after iraq invasion, and after I knew Mr Benjamin Freedman's speech, ie after youtube emerged.

A lot of their FAMILY SECRETS have now come into open after their SPECIAL 9-11 falseflag.

Edited April 24, 2013 by lalamoosa

[lalamoosa]

PLEASE DO NOT CALL KHAZARIANS EUROPEAN

KHAZARIA IS NOT IN EUROPE THEREFORE THEY ARE NOT EUROPEAN

THEY ARE CENTRAL ASIAN

Hey, European Racist, the Khazars are EUROPEAN, and you ANTI-SEMITES should take them back.

http://www.presstv.i...fight-in-syria/

Opinion

Apr 24, 2013 1:11 PM

Most of these Arab kids who were born and raised in Europe could not assimilate in European countries are sent to Syria to fight after brain wash so that these kinds don't go to university for education but instead countinue with violence in Suria under the name European that's what I think otherwise nobody would kill their own people,this is due to limitation of multiculturalism in europe that immigrants are only labour force not a political force,in other words this is the only way that Europe wants to get rid of these patsy Arab kids.

Click to Rate ReplyRating6

VERY TRUE. A fascinating model for the EXPULSION of muslims by EUROPEAN RACIST oil and gas THEIVES. May Allah's CURSE be on Ibne-Sauds for selling oil DIRT cheap to the YANKEES and not EXERTING leverage when they could.

I urge the muslims to learn to FIGHT in the courts, share knowledge of business and manufacturing, and have large number of children and give them healthy foods to compete with other races and ESTABLISH as a SUCCESSFUL community in the USA like the EUROPEAN KHAZAR JEWS.

excellent cardiovascular exercise.

Edited April 24, 2013 by lalamoosa

[Yoel]

As of now I know of no peer-reviewed source that has even attempted to challenge Dr. Elhaik's December 2012 final paper. Here is one of the main peer-reviewed academic reports produced on Dr. Elhaik's final December 2012 paper:

I am not interested in this discussion any longer, because this thread is turning into an unreadable antisemitic trash can.

Frankly, I don't understand what this purely historical question, whether Jews are related to Europeans or Central Asians, has to do with Shiism or the Occupied Palestine.

But fine, let's assume that Jews are descendents of Khazars. Whatever, I don't really care.

Happy May Day! Death to capitalism, to Zionism, to all oppression!

Edited April 29, 2013 by Yoel

[Sunniforunity]

I am not interested in this discussion any longer, because this thread is turning into an unreadable antisemitic trash can.

Frankly, I don't understand what this purely historical question, whether Jews are related to Europeans or Central Asians, has to do with Shiism or the Occupied Palestine.

But fine, let's assume that Jews are descendents of Khazars. Whatever, I don't really care.

Happy May Day! Death to capitalism, to Zionism, to all oppression!

The story is related to the topic of Palestine, because of Zionist propaganda that makes claims about themselves supposedly being the "ancient Israelites", which Dr. Elhaik proves they are not. Of course this silly propaganda of the Zionist oppressors is meaningless anyway as far as the international law and human rights go (which are completely on the side of the indigenous Palestinians anyway http://books.google....th Kuma&f=false)

But not only is the Zionist propaganda retarded, it is now again demonstrably false and refuted, by individuals like Dr. Eran Elhaik, Dr. Shlomo Sand, etc.!! http://www.google.co...61c17572c848.81 Gene study settles debate over origin of European Jews (AFP) – Jan 16, 2013

http://gbe.oxfordjou.../content/5/1/61 Dr. Eran Elhaik "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses"

Dr. Elhaik quoted in a Haaretz interview: http://www.salem-new...ish-gene-oa.php

"The Jewish People's Ultimate Treasure Hunt"

by Ofer Aderet on December 28, 2012

"The various groups of Jews in the world today do not share a common genetic origin. We are talking here about groups that are very heterogeneous and which are connected solely by religion."

The bottom line, he (Elhaik) claims, is that the "genome of European Jews is a mosaic of ancient peoples and its origin is largely Khazar."

And to conclude as Iraqi-British rapper and activist Lowkey so correctly said: "Nothing is more anti-Semitic than Zionism"

Edited April 29, 2013 by Sunniforunity

[Yoel]

The story is related to the topic of Palestine, because of Zionist propaganda that makes claims about themselves supposedly being the "ancient Israelites", which Dr. Elhaik proves they are not. Of course this silly propaganda of the Zionist oppressors is meaningless anyway as far as the international law and human rights go

Of course I know Sand. I work in a related field and I am planning to write a book about my theory of Jewish European descent. In fact, I have Sand's another book, "The words and the land", right now on the bookshelf next to my computer. :)

If you read my post above and actually paid attention to what I was saying, I expressed my position that European Jews are mixed primarily with Romans, Celts, Slavs and other European people. But I don't buy Elhaik's peculiar version of Khazarian theory, because it make as little sense from historical perspective as the idiotic Zionist theory. Unlike Elhaik, Sand is a professional historian and also focuses on European Jewish ascestry. I also recommend you to read Raphael Patai's book "The myth of the Jewish race".

In any case, it's an interesting historical topic, but not very useful for the anti-Zionist cause. Israeli law views converts as potential Israeli citizens. By Zionist own definition, Khazars would be perfectly eligible to control Palestine. Every nationalist movement works like that, basing itself on its own circular definitions.

I personally think that serious anti-Zionist activity should be based, primarily, on these simple facts:

1. Traditional Judaism is totally incompatible with traditional Judaism. The Zionist state is not Jewish, it's anti-Jewish and self-contradictory. Real traditional religious Jews consider Zionism a grave heresy and don't recognize the Zionist entity.

2. There is no such a thing as single Jewish nation. Every Jewish ethnic group has its own unique background, culture and language. Modern Israeli culture doesn't represent any historical Jewish ethnic group. Zionists artificially created it by destroying real Jewish culture. Zionist ideology is the worst kind of anti-Semitism.

3. Israel started as a colonial state. Even if we assume that the Jews today are descendants of ancient Israel, they have no right to expel the local population.

Unfortunately. the international law is not really useful for anything, because it was originally created by the imperialist and colonial West to protect the capitalist system. We need to overthrow capitalism altogether in order to really liberate people from oppression.

SMASH THE STATE!

DEATH TO CAPITALISM!

MAY DAY 2013!

Edited April 29, 2013 by Yoel