• PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    Isn’t the Khazar hypothesis debunked long ago?

    There is proven Jew presence in Germany from like III century and even the term Ashkenazi was used not long after destruction of Khazar Khaganate while there was entire centuries old Jewish organisation in Western Europe. Eastern European Jews are descended from mostly German Jews who were fleeing from the mass oppression and pogroms in XIII-XIV century.

    Krymchaks and Karaites might be descendants of Khazar since last mentions of them are from Crimea and Krymchaks and Karaites do not speak Yiddish but a Turkic language, but it’s unclear.

    • Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      In terms of non-genetic evidence it’s always been on shaky ground. Not necessarily disproven so much as it wasn’t established as likely in the first place.

      In terms of comparative genetics analysis, the studies are fraught. The more typical hypothesis of origins near the Levant is the most popular and does have decent evidence. At the same time, some scientists, including Israeli ones, have reasonably entertained hypotheses of origins in the caucuses and have some amount of evidence. IMO there have not been good enough studies in general, they need to sample more populations, particularly different ethnic groups, and do proper work testing alternative hypotheses under different (appropriate) modeling methods. This research is also challenging because of the hypothesis being favored by antisemites. I probably wouldn’t work on the topic myself if I were in the field. There’s a lot of potential for negative outcomes without having rock-solid evidence and rock-solid evidence may be impossible.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        I generally don’t think genetic research of ethnicity is very useful, it smells of calipers for mile and entire history already showed us it’s basically completely irrelevant. Culture and language research is much more useful.

        • urshanabi [he/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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          5 months ago

          Yeah, I would not like the precedent it would set.

          The claim for this paper is that it is a necessary consequence of determining the medical nature of a condition which Ashkenazi Jewish people are at risk for. I read about the increased risk before, the author also lays it out well. In class we learned it was called a ‘founder effect’, when a population has it’s size greatly reduced and then there is less variation present.

          The issue is any existing conditions, say an increased risk for a disease, propagate as the population grows and can become ‘fixed’. It isn’t as much of an issue for a large population, since if like, 10 out of 10 000 000 have the increased risk then it’s not too bad. If it’s 1 out of 10 000, that is troubling. When that population grows more and more people will continue to have the condition :(

          Jewish people are discriminated against, that is rather obvious, finding out using diagnostic tools is helpful to anyone who might have an adverse condition and not know about it. Uh, unfortunately, medicine/research sucks and is chalkful of stuff like Tuskegee Syphillis Experiment, whenever ethnicity or specifically people from a given geographic region are focused on…

          Ashkenazi are a population which are studies a lot (there are a ton of population genetics papers, those are the ones I am familiar) because there is an established history and it is fairly accurate.

          Hope this stuff isn’t used by anti-semites (obv it will, I’m hoping the harm is kept at a minimum…)

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      well there’s two types of northern European Jews: Ashkenazi and Russian. I say this because Israel’s statistics counted them separately

      the Ashkenazi ones definitely have some influence from the Middle East, although they’re extremely mixed with Northern European, to the point they cluster with croatians/serbs rather than actual Mizrahi Jews

      the Russian ones idk, it doesn’t seem farfetched that they could be descended from the Khazars

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        Majority (huge majority i think) of Russian Jews were the same Ashkenazi that were running from pogroms in Germany, they ended up all over Poland, Lithuania, Russia, etc, but there were multitude of other, non- Ashkenazi Jewish groups in Russia too - abovementioned Krymchaks and Karaites plus Sephardi, Romaniotes (Jews from Greece), Juhuro (Jews from Caucasus), Georgian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Armenian Jews etc, so even just looking at sheer diversity of those people cultures and languages the Khazar hypothesis immediately fails.

        • mughaloid@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          6 months ago

          After so much pogroms and hatred towards them it’s natural for jews to have so much fixation over Israel. I think Tsar also did major pogroms against Jews isn’t? That’s why USSR had great sympathy for their project during 1945-48.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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            6 months ago

            Sure holocaust and creation of Israel did have huge impact on zionism popularity among Jews, but zionism itself is much older movement.

            In fact, Russia is place where zionists were multiple time revealed as what they are, bolsheviks and Soviets tried to accomodate and cooperate with them for decades but they always moved their goalposts and wrecked the movement.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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            6 months ago

            Krymchak and Karaites lived in Crimea, that’s why they are prime candidates for real Khazar descendants. Juhuro, no, they were living in Caucasus even before Khazar came. I didn’t mean no Jews are descendants of Khazar, but the theory that ALL of Jews in Russia (or even all Ashkenazi) being descended from Khazar is blatantly ridiculous and don’t hold to even most lax scrutiny.

    • mughaloid@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      6 months ago

      I just want to know a bit, jews are called children of Israel so Askenazi Jews are those who fled Israel after 70 AD after the 2nd temple destruction by romans? Or they existed before the 2nd temple period and so the period before existence of Torah?

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        That’s somewhat right, but it was gradual and did not happened in the next few centuries. Jewish diaspora existed even before 70AD, though indeed refugees fleeing from the Roman massacres speed up things. Most of Jews in diaspora lived in the Mediterranean shores, notably Egypt, but also in Italia, Iberia, Narbonensis, Greece, Dalmatia etc. where their presence is confirmed in I-II century already. Ashkenazi are decendant of those diaspora Jews that moved north together with romanisation (for example their first main community in Germany was in Cologne) and organising of states on that areas. Next was a period of opression in the kingdoms of Visigoths and Merovingian France where Jews were forced to convert or exiled, but after Charlemagne build his empire he gave Jews the merchant and financial privileges which stabilised their situation and allowed to develop into the medieval Ashkenazi in the next few centuries.

        • mughaloid@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          6 months ago

          Judaism and Jews are a fascinating case, I always thought jews are a particular race which had a common origin in the middle East or ancient cannan. It’s also amazing that Jews also lived in Arabia during Muhammed’s period. But they got converted or exiled too.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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            6 months ago

            Iirc there were also many judaistic Arabs in the time of Muhammad and before (even entire kingdoms, most notable of which was the Himyar kingdom in Yemen) and of course even after.