Yes, Ashkenazi Jews are indigenous to the Middle East

Take your historical revisionism someplace else

The Middle East is not exactly a place devoid of controversy. Actually, it seems as if the messes the Middle East finds itself in tend to bleed over into its diaspora communities across the world. So rather than having these issues be self-contained niche conflicts half a world away, Westerners in many circumstances feel almost compelled to say something about a conflict they might not happen to know a lot about. In no conflict is this more true than in the Israel-Palestine conflict. People who don’t much about Israel, Palestine, Jews, or Arabs, are very quick to comment on the situation, especially the Left. Jews have been on the receiving end of a lot of vitriolic abuse and cloaked antisemitism from the Left over the past few years. We often tend to hear something along these lines:

“Colonizers! You stole the land from the Palestinians! Go back to Europe where YOU belong!”

This has too often been hurled at Ashkenazi Jews in order to delegitimize their presence in Israel, or, more commonly, to delegitimize the Zionist movement as a whole. There is a very malicious overtone to this entire thing, and this specific argument has been co-opted equally by those who might be well-meaning yet, naive to very vocal antisemites. This narrative has become so widespread that most people happen to be very ignorant about the origins of Ashkenazi Jews, and the nature of Judaism as a whole. The narrative goes that Jews are made up of a fabric of ethnicities and races and that there is no common ancestry between Jews across the world. So, while Sefaradi and Mizrahi Jews might be of majority Middle Eastern descent, Ashkenazi Jews are just converted Northern and Eastern Europeans and do not have ANY connection to Palestine/Israel.

This assertion is blatantly incorrect. Yet, rarely in online spaces, can a refutation of this argument be made completely. So, that is what I have sought to do here, to lay out in its entirety, the case for Ashkenazi Jewish indigeneity to the Middle East and the genetic roots of most Jews (by most, I mean about 98% of the world’s Jewish population) to the Ancient Israelites. This article will be divided up into a few sections covering a brief history of the Jews, from their emergence in the Levant up until the Roman Conquest and Expulsion, genetic studies on Jews around the world, Judaism’s aim as a religion, and a final note on converts to Judaism. With all that being laid out, let us begin.

The Emergence of a People - A Short History of the Jews

The origins of the Iron Age people that would become the Hebrews and later the Israelites, is one of much scholarly debate. While a plethora of scholars have concluded that the Israelites emerged from nomadic and/or disaffected Canaanite populations sometime after the Bronze Age collapse¹, other more Maximalist Archaeologists and Biblical Scholars alike have accepted the Bible’s claim of the Israelites emerging from Egyptian servitude, making their way to the “Promised Land”.² Regardless, we have several peoples that speak a common language present in and around Canaan from at least the 14th century BCE.³ The first explicit mention of a people living in Canaan called “Israel” that is extra-biblical appears in the Merneptah Stele⁴ circa 1208 BCE. At this point in time, the Israelites were still a collection of tribes. They would not become a cohesive nation until the unification of the 12 Tribes of Israel under the Davidic Monarchy.⁵⁶

After the reign of Solomon, due to political and religious conflict, the United Monarchy split into the two Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. However, when the threat of Assyria arose from the East, the Levantine Kingdoms formed a military alliance to repel the threat of Assyrian dominance of the region. However, after a subsequent invasion by Assyria, and Judah’s capitulation to Assyria to become a vassal, the Kingdom of Israel was invaded, conquered, and depopulated.⁷⁸ Judah managed to keep its independence for about another 100 years, despite an eventual invasion by Assyria under Sennacherib. However, after an eventual revolt by the Judean King spurred on by the Egyptians, the Babylonians invaded, destroyed the Temple, blinded the King, Zedekiah, and sent a large number of the native Judean population into exile.⁹ After Cyrus the Great conquered the Babylonian Empire, he permitted the exiled Judeans to return to their native land.

The Judeans lived very peaceful lives under the Persian Empire. They were allowed to rebuild their Temple, practice their religion, and govern themselves (more or less). This did not change after Alexander came storming out of Macedonia and conquered the Persian Empire.¹⁰ After Alexander’s death, his expansive empire was divided among his generals. While Judea was originally governed by the Ptolemaic Kingdom whose center was in Egypt, the Levant was conquered by their rivals to the North, the Seleucids. Under Seleucid rule, Hellenization was enforced as a way to centralize the Empire. However, many Greek customs, such as the taboo against circumcision and building a gymnasium outside of the Jewish Temple where everyone who could afford was required to, and had to go naked, in violation of Jewish modesty laws. Other unprovoked attacks on Jewish religion and culture forced them to rebel against the Seleucids and proclaim their own state, the Second Jewish Commonwealth, or the Hasmonean Kingdom.¹¹ The Hasmonean Kingdom managed to remain independent, and even assert a certain amount of dominance in politics in the Levant until Rome barged its way in.

From the start, there was always tension between the Romans and the Judeans. Wherever Rome had set foot, it was glad to let the native peoples continue practicing their local customs and worshipping their local gods, as long as they paid fealty to the Empire by sacrificing an animal to Jupiter AND the Emperor. While most other cultures within the Roman world were fine to participate in this, seemingly insignificant, show of loyalty to Rome, it clashed headfirst with the vehemently monotheistic Judeans. Judeans refused these practices, which in turn, angered the Roman government. After further antagonization and alienation of Judea under the Romans, Judea revolted, beginning what is known as First Roman-Jewish War. The Jews, while managing to fend off the Romans at first, sufficiently angered the Roman legionaries, which called for backup from the Emperor, causing them to gain the upper hand. They sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple once again, as the Babylonians had done, and sent large swaths of the Judean population into exile.¹² A Second and Third Revolt against Roman rule brought the full weight of the Roman Military upon Judea. It was absolutely devasted which forced even more of the population to seek other options in different lands. After these revolts, as an extra sting to the Jews, their homeland was renamed after the name of two of their historical rivals, Assyria and the Philistines, and was called Syria-Palestina. ¹³¹⁴

The aftermath of the revolts caused most of the Jewish communities not forcibly deported by the Romans to flee to other lands in order to survive. The captives of the Roman-Jewish Wars were brought back to the frontier area of the Empire to serve as slaves to the soldiers who received new plots of land for their service during the rebellions. Due to the result of incursions and raids by Germanic tribes, Emperor Vespasian conquered some of that territory and allotted it to the soldiers and they and their Jewish slaves were relocated to this territory. In Hebrew, this area was known as “Ashkenaz”, and therefore the Jews living there became the first Ashkenazi Jews.¹⁵

Are Ashkenazi Jews still Middle Eastern?

What we’ve discussed so far is a short history of the Jewish people from their emergence as a people until their expulsion by the Romans. While the historical narrative might provide evidence that modern-day Ashkenazi Jews are descended from people who came from the Middle East thousands of years ago. But, who’s to say that modern-day Ashkenazim are not descended mostly from the offspring of Northern European converts? This is a very good question, so we must discuss a few factors to understand why this was NOT the case.

For one, after Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, and later of Europe as a whole, apostasy from Christianity was punishable by death¹⁶ The same thing was true of Islam later after it came to dominate the Middle East and North Africa.¹⁷ Now, this is not to say there was no genetic influx from local populations, however, the impact this had on Jewish genetics is overestimated by those not familiar with the data. So, the question remains, how Middle Eastern are Ashkenazi Jews, if they are at all? For that, we need to look at the genetic data. Luckily for us, there have been genetic studies on Jews going back at least 20 years, so there is a plethora of data on the subject.

Examining The Evidence

(A Short Note before we begin: I am by NO means a geneticist, and am making sense of the genetic studies as I have read them and are interpreted by others. ALL of my sources are widely available and I encourage those who doubt my assertions to go read them for themselves.)

Various studies regarding the genetic admixture of Ashkenazi Jews, their relation to other Jewish and Middle Eastern populations, have been published and are widely available to the public. However, most people, Jews included, tend to be very ignorant of them. The vast majority of the studies conducted have concluded one thing: Ashkenazi Jews, are in fact, Middle Eastern in genetic terms.

For example, a study conducted in 2000 by Harry Osterer, Professor of Pathology and Genetics and Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine determined that “Jews and Arabs are all really children of Abraham… all have preserved their Middle Eastern genetic roots over 4,000 years." Led by a team of researchers from all over the world Osterer’s study found that the Y-Chromosomal mutations found among Jews, showed that Jews worldwide did not genetically diverge to any significant degree among themselves, while the genetic variation between other non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations respectively, was much more pronounced, suggesting evidence of a common and recent Jewish origin in the Middle East. Jews, as a whole, also showed close genetic affinity with other non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations such as Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians.¹⁸¹⁹ Subsequent studies about the patrilineal genes of most Jews, have found that Jews are closer to non-Arab Middle Eastern Populations from the Fertile Crescent than they are to Arabs.²⁰

(Graph from Osterer’s study showing how Middle Easterners and Jews cluster together.)

The matrilineal descent of Ashkenazi Jews show that about half of all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from four women of Middle Eastern descent, and that these mtDNA lines underwent expansion in Europe.²¹ Ashkenazi Jews DO have Southern European admixture on their matrillineal lines, mostly from Greek and Italian converts during the Roman Era. However, the roots of Ashkenazi matrillineal lines remain Middle Eastern, with there being little to no influx from Northern and Eastern European populations to Jewish ones.²² Some studies have suggested that Ashkenazi Jewish mtDNA have roots primarily in Southern Europe²³, however, this claim has been contradicited by others.²⁴

Ashkenazi affinity to other Jewish and Levantine populations

We have know firmly established the Middle Eastern origin of Jews pretty conclusively. Both the patrillineal and matrillineal lines of Ashkenazi Jews have Middle Eastern origins, and the patrillineal DNA of Ashkenazi Jews cluster closely with other Middle Easterners. However, how does the composite of Ashkenazi Jewish DNA compare with other Jews and Levantines? Where do Jews fall in with Europeans, if they fall in at all?

We are going to see how Jewish communities worldwide are connected to one another. As a bit of a preface, I must say that while the studies I will be referring to in this subsection defintively tie Jewish communties across the world to each other, they may have contradictory results on some other minor issues of Jewish DNA.

Firstly, Ashkenazi Jews, in genome wide studies have been shown to contain high amounts of Levantine DNA.²⁵ When compared to other Jewish populations, all Jews tend to cluster very closely together, being as genetically distant to each other as fourth or fifth cousins are. Studies have also found that Jews have a distinct genetic profile from their non-Jewish neighbors.²⁶²⁷ Jews were found to have more in common with one another than with their non-Jewish neighbors, as well that Jews tended to plot very closely with other Middle Eastern populations as well some Southern Europeans, such as Greeks and Italians, which is the result of genetic inflow into Ashkenazi and some Sefaradi Jews during the Roman era.²⁸²⁹ While discussion about HOW Middle Eastern are Ashkenazi Jews is up for considerable debate, most geneticists place it at around 50-55%, with the rest being Southern European. However, Nicholas Wade, commenting on the close genetic affinity between Jews worldwide places the Middle Eastern component of Ashkenazi Jews at 70%.³⁰

In comparison to other Levantine populations, Ashkenazi Jews have been found to overlap with Syrians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Druze, and Samaritans to a significant degree. Some studies have even found that Ashkenazi Jews and Palestinians are closer to each other than either population are to Europeans or Africans.³¹ Druze have been found to be the closest Levantine population to Jews, as well as the Lebanese clustering closer to Jews than Syrians or Palestinians cluster to Jews.³² When compared to Samaritans, an Israelite group related to Jews that never left the Levant, a close affinity was found between the patrillineal descent of Samaritans and Jews worldwide.³³

(Graph from a study conducted by Marc Haber showing close affinity between Jews and other Levantines.³⁴)

Judaism as a religion - A Universal Message or a Tribal Mission?

Most people in the West and in the Middle East are familar with both an Islamic and Christian conception of religion generally speaking. Both are evangelical - meaning, that they are for covnerting as many people as possible in order to bring them to the “true” faith. Judaism is the opposite. Judaism does not view itself as a universal religion, rather it is a religion that was appointed for a specific tribe and people. This does not “damn” the rest of humanity however, as Judaism does not see itself as the sole path to G-d.³⁵ Christianity and Islam are seen as positive developments in human history, turning humanity away from paganism and to monotheism. Judaism was meant as a specific covenant formed between G-d and the Jewish people on Mount Sinai. While Jews are supposed to be a positive influence on the surrounding peoples and are meant to be an "Ohr LaGoyim" (Light unto the nations), we do not seek or encourage conversion. Judaism, much like Mandaeism, Druze, or Yazidis, are decidedly an ethnoreligion.

It is this reason why Jews have remained relatively genetically isolated from their neighbors for the past 2,000 years. There was Southern European input, as demonstrated earlier, by Greek and Roman converts. However, Jews did not seek to convert their host populations, and their host populations did not seek to convert. This leaves us now, however, with an interesting question. If Judaism does not seek out converts and is strictly speaking an ethnoreligion, where do converts fit into the fabric of the Jewish people?

Converts - Lost Jews

This is where things get a tad confusing. Judaism is largely an ethnoreligion and we do not encourage conversion. In fact, it’s encoded in Jewish law that a prospective convert to Judaism is to be turned down at least three times³⁶ and the conversion process is oftentimes prolonged and made intentionally difficult. But, converts have also been some of the most important people in Jewish history! Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses and the inventor of the Jewish legal system was a Midianite convert. Onkelos, the great translator of the Torah into Aramaic, was a Roman convert. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir two of the Rabbis responsible for the foundation of the Oral Tradition were descendants of converts to Judaism. Shamayah and Avtalyon, leaders of the Sanhedrin and links in the chain of the Oral Tradition, were Babylonian converts. To say that converts have played an important role in Jewish history is an understatement at best. They have shaped our history in a pretty major way.

So, how does this jive with what we said earlier that Judaism is an ethnoreligion that is meant exclusively for the Jewish people? If we accept converts, that seems to take a pretty considerable blow to that assertion. However, Judaism has an answer to this question. Yes, we are an ethnoreligion that doesn’t generally accept converts, but, we don’t view converts as “converts”, let me elaborate. The conversion process to Judaism is purposely drawn out, and made difficult. It can take years for a prospective convert to finalize his/her conversion, if they don’t drop out before then. It is engineered like this for the reasons I mentioned above. But there is another, very important reason. Converts to Judaism are seen as Jewish souls that accepted the Torah on Mount Sinai, but, for whatever reason, got lost somewhere along the way. Those souls long to return to their people. However, there must be a vetting process first. This is where the drawn-out conversion process stems from.

A lot of people have passing moments of religious fervor and passion. A surge of inspiration hits them and they have a desire to become more religious and more devout. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and it can be quite beautiful if pointed in the right direction. Oftentimes though, people who are spiritually motivated will make spur-of-the-moment decisions that will drastically impact them. This happens with a lot of prospective converts to Judaism. Therefore, in order to ensure that this person’s conversion is borne out of a real commitment to return to the Jewish people and not a rash decision based on hype and fervor, the conversion process is intentionally drawn out.³⁷

Epilogue - What’s the Point?

I’ve spent the past four to five days writing and putting this article together. So, the question might be asked, what was the point? The antisemites who deny Jewish belonging in the Middle East will continue to deny. I’m aware of that fact, and this article is not meant for them. The target audience of this article is to those Jews and non-Jews who might be well-intentioned, yet generally ignorant, about Jewish origins and history. This article is mainly for them, and to all others curious on the topic. However, this article is not meant to bring a definitive end to the Israel-Palestine debate (if such a thing were even possible) or to delegitimize Arab prescence in the Levant or Israel. Just to illustrate that to call Ashkenazi Jews “invaders” or “colonizers” shows a lack of historic and scientific knowledge. We would not call displaced Native Americans on their settlements “invaders of White America” so why should it be different here?

Thank you all for reading. If you have any questions you’d like to ask, I am available at ariyaari02@gmail.com. This article got fairly long and did not cover the full scope of what I wanted to discuss, and I had to make a few shortcuts in different places, so not everything might’ve come out clearly. Please feel free to email and ask any questions you wish (in good faith).

1. Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, Simon and Schuster 2002, p. 104.

2.

See Scholars such as Kenneth Kitchen in his book On The Reliability of the Old Testament and Amnon Bazak in To This Very Day (Ad Hayom HaZeh)

3.

This is blatant oversimplification on my part for the sake of brevity. In reality, Canaanites spoke this common language, centuries before the earliest mention of Israel was even made. Later successor kingdoms such as Edom, Israel and Judah, Ammon, and Moab all spoke offshoots of this language and continued perpetuating Canaanite culture (with the arguable exception of the Kingdom of Judah).

4.

https://armstronginstitute.org/122-merneptah-stele-proving-israels-3200-year-existence

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/world/middleeast/king-davids-palace-isfound-archaeologist-says.html

6. The historicity of the United Davidic Monarchy is a hotly contested topic among archaeologists and historians. While there is certainly a large stream within academic circles to say that the United Monarchy never existed, headed most notably by Israel Finkelstein, other scholars like Yosef Garfinkel have argued in favor of the Davidic Monarchy. This article will be siding with Garfinkel’s opinion.

7. Faust, Avraham (21 January 2021). The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest: Imperial Domination and Its Consequences. Oxford University Press. pp. 66, 75–88

8.

We will return to the issue of the depopulation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel later in the article, as not ALL of the Northern Kingdom’s population was sent away into captivity, and these people would later become the Samaritans, genetic cousins of the Jewish People.

9.

Faust, Avraham (2012). Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation. Society of Biblical Lit. pp. 140–143.

10. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/palestine-under-persian-rule/

11. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/827/the-maccabean-revolt/

12. https://web.archive.org/web/20181116065616/https://pace.webhosting.rug.nl/york/york/showText?book=6&chapter=9&textChunk=whistonSection&chunkId=3&up.x=&up.y=&text=wars&version=&direction=&tab=&layout=english

13. https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/Roman-Palestine

14. Ariel Lewin. The archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Getty Publications, 2005 p. 33. "It seems clear that by choosing a seemingly neutral name – one juxtaposing that of a neighboring province with the revived name of an ancient geographical entity (Palestine), already known from the writings of Herodotus – Hadrian was intending to suppress any connection between the Jewish people and that land."

15. Davies, William David; Finkelstein, Louis; Horbury, William; Sturdy, John; Katz, Steven T.; Hart, Mitchell B.; Michels, Tony; Karp, Jonathan; Sutcliffe, Adam; Chazan, Robert (1984). The Cambridge History of Judaism

16. Louise Nyholm Kallestrup; Raisa Maria Toivo (2017). Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft

17. Peters, Rudoh; Vries, Gert J. J. De (1976). "Apostasy in Islam". Die Welt des Islams. 17 (1/4): 1–25.

18. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC18733/

19. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/05/000509003653.htm

20. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1274378/

21. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380291/

22. https://www.nature.com/articles/5201764

23. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3806353/

24. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4046922/

25. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09103

26. https://www.science.org/content/article/tracing-roots-jewishness-rev2

27. https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.277

28. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032072/

29. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2012-08-08/ty-article/genetic-study-traces-jewish-roots/0000017f-f59c-d044-adff-f7fd68470000

30. https://archive.is/20170829235751/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10jews.html#selection-2037.97-2037.240

31. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004390000426

32. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Natur.466..238B/abstract

33. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/humu.20077

34. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3585000/

35. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/62221/jewish/The-7-Noahide-Laws-Universal-Morality.htm

36. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/248165/jewish/Why-Do-Rabbis-Discourage-Conversions.htm

37. There are other reasons for this as well, but the topic of conversion generally goes beyond the scope of this article.