The Greeks Really do Have Near Mythical Origins, Ancient DNA Reveals

[Konstantinos]

I don't know about the study but G25 models for Cretans show that, they have much more near eastern than Myceneans or Minoans had and despite that they have more Steppe, meaning that they must have good amount of ancestry from north of Greece and from the Near East.

We lack a lot of relevant samples, especially samples from the Archaic Age after the Bronze Age collapse will be key to show if any migrations happened then.

[Rabbit Hole]

We lack a lot of relevant samples, especially samples from the Archaic Age after the Bronze Age collapse will be key to show if any migrations happened then.

No we don't lack samples

You have ancient relatives! (you share identified DNA segments)
Info
Mycenaean Peloponnese
1350 BC
I9041
mtDNA: [Upgrade to see]Y-DNA: [Upgrade to see]
Shared DNA: (Sample Quality: 15)
2 SNP chains (min. 60 SNPs) / 8.4 cM
Largest segment=106 SNPs / 5.98 cM

Your raw DNA is 30 % closer than other matching users


Chr. 1

106 SNPs






Chr. 11

102 SNPs

[Rabbit Hole]

@Rabbit Hole you remind me of some Sappho conceptions, I can see the Greco-Anatolian in you.

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/sappho.jpg

Beautiful woman if i look like that lol

[Konstantinos]

No we don't lack samples

You have ancient relatives! (you share identified DNA segments)
Info
Mycenaean Peloponnese
1350 BC
I9041
mtDNA: [Upgrade to see]Y-DNA: [Upgrade to see]
Shared DNA: (Sample Quality: 15)
2 SNP chains (min. 60 SNPs) / 8.4 cM
Largest segment=106 SNPs / 5.98 cM

Your raw DNA is 30 % closer than other matching users


Chr. 1

106 SNPs






Chr. 11

102 SNPs

Yes we do. We know modern Greeks are close to the ancient ones, we need more to figure out how much and how certain admixtures happened.

[Konstantinos]

Beautiful woman if i look like that lol

Do you look like that?

[Rabbit Hole]

I'm not an expert on Y-DNA, but I think there are multiple events that can be argued to be the source for the increase in steppe like Dorians(if they were different), internal migration in the 2 millennia in between, resettlement of Slavs etc.

Please print them here if you have any additional information There are a lot of branches of ancient Greeks Y chromosones but the matches for the Mycenaeans people have founded are J2b samples at least on the papers that I have read. I don't know the Dorians, but I would be curious to see.

[Rabbit Hole]

Yes we do. We know modern Greeks are close to the ancient ones, we need more to figure out how much and how certain admixtures happened.

You would have to look at every single accurance throughout history there is no ''Greek ethnicity'' all Greeks are mixed according to regions if you want to tell me about the difference between modern Mycenaean admixture against literal Mycenaean dna period

[Rabbit Hole]

Do you look like that?

If I did would you care? I am curious to see how you look as you are unusually defensive I can't tell if you're arrogant or if you genuinely know nothing about history

[Rabbit Hole]

I knew a blonde greek girl with primitive looking and kinda olive skin however she was naturally blonde and curly hair as a negro

F off.

[Voskos]

Nice thread.The conclusion of the study looks pretty clear to me:

https://i.imgur.com/T5yxpq3.png

[Konstantinos]

You would have to look at every single accurance throughout history there is no ''Greek ethnicity'' all Greeks are mixed according to regions if you want to tell me about the difference between modern Mycenaean admixture against literal Mycenaean dna period

Dorians, Bronze Age collapse, Thracians, Slavic invasions, origins of the Vlachs those are the answers we need to have a complete picture.

[Tauromachos]

I knew a blonde greek girl with primitive looking and kinda olive skin however she was naturally blonde and curly hair as a negro

Sounds more like a local Lousiana phenotype

[Konstantinos]

If I did would you care? I am curious to see how you look as you are unusually defensive I can't tell if you're arrogant or if you genuinely know nothing about history

I'm curious because we don't know your exact ancestry.

The only thing I care about is truth and how it unfolds so I will defend myself and my people from assumptions based on almost nothing driven by ridiculous agendas.

PS: I don't know anything about history? You are the one who claims Greeks came from the Fertile Crescent.

We wuz Sumerians.

[Rabbit Hole]

Sounds more like a local Lousiana phenotype

But Italian mixed in with it though lol?

[Renekton]

Greeks are not MENAS. This is absurd

[Tauromachos]

Nice thread.The conclusion of the study looks pretty clear to me:


This is what i have already before one year or earlier been posting here closest of today peoples to Mycanaeans
are Greeks ,Italians,Albos and Cypriot

And then people come here with Dorian invadors or Slavs and shit

[Rabbit Hole]

I'm curious because we don't know your exact ancestry.

The only thing I care about is truth and how it unfolds so I will defend myself and my people from assumptions based on almost nothing driven by ridiculous agendas.

PS: I don't know anything about history? You are the one who claims Greeks came from the Fertile Crescent.

We wuz Sumerians.

Because I don't have to justify it to you my end result was closed to Lebanese Muslims and Cypriots probably just Phoenician ( which is Mycenaean hittite ) you said it was Palestinian you can't even read Ged match averages here I will help you.
1. Cyprian_Greek (6.107)
2. Lebanese_Muslim (7.833)
3. Samaritan (9.683)
4. Syrian (10.05)
5. Tunisian_Jewish (10.28)
6. Lebanese_Christian (10.48)
7. Samaritan_Ephraim_Tribe (11.41)
8. Sephardic_Jewish (11.60)

You don't even know the truth you just want to compare the ancient Greek dna to the modern one which is bullshit and will never check out especially since Peloponnese has more Mycenaean samples than Crete which is more Minoan

P.S you don't know that people of the North Levant and Greek Cypriots have more in common with ancient Greeks who were Greco Anatolian rather than Greco Roman mainlanders no, you really don't know that

We wuz delusional

[Rabbit Hole]

Greeks are not MENAS. This is absurd

This is the ancient Greeks not the modern one. It's aburd that you claim ancient dna is close to modern. I guess you can't read the title?

[Renekton]

Brown Power

[Konstantinos]

Greeks are not MENAS. This is absurd

It seems Greeks are anything but Greeks but somehow the linguistic and cultural continuity is extraordinary.

[Renekton]

It seems Greeks are anything but Greeks but somehow the linguistic and cultural continuity is extraordinary.True

[Renekton]

This is the ancient Greeks not the modern one. It's aburd that you claim ancient dna is close to modern. I guess you can't read the title?Greek Mainlanders are genetically same with the Balkanites especially their Neighbors Bulgarians and Albanians

[Rabbit Hole]

Brown Power

Slavic power

[Rabbit Hole]

Greek Mainlanders are genetically same with the Balkanites especially their Neighbors Bulgarians and Albanians

True and South Italians

[Rabbit Hole]

Greek Mainlanders are genetically same with the Balkanites especially their Neighbors Bulgarians and Albanians

True and South Italians

[Rabbit Hole]

True

Not true. Again

Greek Cypriots more to do with the Levant aka ancient Greek dna

Pontian Greeks more to do with Georgian Laz and Armenian

Mainland Greeks same with North Central Italians Romans

North Greeks same as Romans but also Bulgarians Serbs etc

[Tauromachos]

It seems Greeks are anything but Greeks but somehow the linguistic and cultural continuity is extraordinary.

Majority of Greeks ancestry about 70% is still Mycanaean like according to the reviewed papers published so far
all the gossip trash talk about Mainland Greeks are Balkanites ,Greek Islanders and Cypriots are Levantine
how different how diverse Greeks are its all bullshit.

Which Balkanites are close to Mainland Greeks ?

Its Albanians

Which people are most similar to Greeks as a whole?

Italians

As is said in the studies on Mycanaean genetics the ethnicities of today which are closest to Mycanaeans are Greeks,Albos,Italians and Cypriots

End of Story!

[Renekton]

Slavic powerWhite power

[Renekton]

True and South ItaliansMore Central Italy

[Rabbit Hole]

White power

Less civil power

[Tauromachos]

True and South Italians

They are not the same with Balkanites

They are in between some Southern Balkan populations and South Italians/Greek Islanders before the Middle Ages
when Greeks received some influx from neighbouring Balkan people they would have even be more like South Italians and Greek Islanders
according to the Sarno study

[Rabbit Hole]

Majority of Greeks ancestry about 70% is still Mycanaean like according to the reviewed papers published so far
all the gossip trash talk about Mainland Greeks are Balkanites ,Greek Islanders and Cypriots are Levantine
how different how diverse Greeks are its all bullshit.

Which Balkanites are close to Mainland Greeks ?

Its Albanians

Which people are most similar to Greeks as a whole?

Italians

As is said in the studies on Mycanaean genetics the ethnicities of today which are closest to Mycanaeans are Greeks,Albos,Italians and Cypriots

End of Story!

They have different admixtures according to region that's why i say they have different dna not ''they don't exist''. I would never say that anyone exist I spend almost a day trying to explain to this ''dimiriti'' that Jews exist he seems to think they don't or that their dna isn't Jewish

[Konstantinos]

Majority of Greeks ancestry about 70% is still Mycanaean like according to the reviewed papers published so far
all the gossip trash talk about Mainland Greeks are Balkanites ,Greek Islanders and Cypriots are Levantine
how different how diverse Greeks are its all bullshit.

Which Balkanites are close to Mainland Greeks ?

Its Albanians

Which people are most similar to Greeks as a whole?

Italians

As is said in the studies on Mycanaean genetics the ethnicities of today which are closest to Mycanaeans are Greeks,Albos,Italians and Cypriots

End of Story!

70% is the low end, it can rise higher. If Maniots are maybe representatives of the ancient Greeks, it's higher everywhere.

[Rabbit Hole]

More Central Italy

No that would be Tuscany Romans didn't all come from Tuscany some actually came from Rome

[Rabbit Hole]

They are not the same with Balkanites

They are in between some Southern Balkan populations and South Italians/Greek Islanders before the Middle Ages
when Greeks received some influx from neighbouring Balkan people they would have even be more like South Italians and Greek Islanders
according to the Sarno study
What about Greeks from Thessaloniki? You know Serbs immigrated there during the Byzantine rule right? That of course does not make North Greeks Serbs or close to Serbs but still

[Tauromachos]

No that would be Tuscany Romans didn't all come from Tuscany some actually came from Rome


Mainland Greeks cluster from Tuscans,Central Italians till Southern Italy

Greek Islanders are more like South Italians

[Rabbit Hole]

They are not the same with Balkanites

They are in between some Southern Balkan populations and South Italians/Greek Islanders before the Middle Ages
when Greeks received some influx from neighbouring Balkan people they would have even be more like South Italians and Greek Islanders
according to the Sarno study
What about Greeks from Thessaloniki? You know Serbs immigrated there during the Byzantine rule right? That of course does not make North Greeks Serbs or close to Serbs but still

[Konstantinos]

They have different admixtures according to region that's why i say they have different dna not ''they don't exist''. I would never say that anyone exist I spend almost a day trying to explain to this ''dimiriti'' that Jews exist he seems to think they don't or that their dna isn't Jewish

It's Dimitris aka Jim every true Greek knows that.

[Rabbit Hole]

Mainland Greeks cluster from Tuscans,Central Italians till Southern Italy

Greek Islanders are more like South Italians

Yes they do but that's Ged match averages and PCA charts the original Roman province was North Central

[Renekton]

What about Greeks from Thessaloniki? You know Serbs immigrated there during the Byzantine rule right? That of course does not make North Greeks Serbs or close to Serbs but stillSerbs didn't reach as far south, in the other hand Bulgarians do and stayed for a long time

[Tauromachos]

It's Dimitris aka Jim every true Greek knows that.

Giannis?

[Rabbit Hole]

It's Dimitris aka Jim every true Greek knows that.

Yes and your ''true Greek'' was making unfounded claims about Jews being related to Greeks...Where is the evidence on PCA charts or mytrueancestry evidence for that? What kind of a Greek would claim that knowing the difference between mainland Greek genetic and your average Jew who is part Samaritan ( a type of Semitic Bedioun Arabic tribe ) and mainland Greeks are a mix between Greeks and Romans lol?

[Tauromachos]

Serbs didn't reach as far south, in the other hand Bulgarians do and stayed for a long time

Bulgarians were kicked out of Greek Macedonia last time they tried to

[Renekton]

Bulgarians were kicked out of Greek Macedonia last time they tried toIt's not about history, they stayed for centuries its logical to mix with the local population

[Konstantinos]

Giannis?

;; Πετσόκοψε το όνομα Δημήτρης παρόλο που είναι ευγενής απόγονος των "Ελληνοχετταίων".

[Rabbit Hole]

Serbs didn't reach as far south, in the other hand Bulgarians do and stayed for a long time

What generally are during Byzantine rule? I would of thought Bulgarians are more South in general than Serbs ( just my two cents ) anyway Croats are just above Serbs on Ged there is hardly anything at all North worth mentioning even.

I haven't checked Bulgarian averages

[Rabbit Hole]

Serbs didn't reach as far south, in the other hand Bulgarians do and stayed for a long time

What generally are during Byzantine rule? I would of thought Bulgarians are more South in general than Serbs ( just my two cents ) anyway Croats are just above Serbs on Ged there is hardly anything at all North worth mentioning even.

I haven't checked Bulgarian averages

[Tauromachos]

What generally are during Byzantine rule? I would of thought Bulgarians are more South in general than Serbs ( just my two cents ) anyway Croats are just above Serbs on Ged there is hardly anything at all North worth mentioning even.

I haven't checked Bulgarian averages

Bulgarians are more South shifted than Serbs

Serbs don't overlapp with Greeks ,Bulgarians do

[Renekton]

What generally are during Byzantine rule? I would of thought Bulgarians are more South in general than Serbs ( just my two cents ) anyway Croats are just above Serbs on Ged there is hardly anything at all North worth mentioning even.

I haven't checked Bulgarian averagesCheck it to see.

[Tauromachos]

It's not about history, they stayed for centuries its logical to mix with the local population

In Northern Greece and Thrace

[Rabbit Hole]

Bulgarians are more South shifted than Serbs

Serbs don't overlapp with Greeks ,Bulgarians do

On Ged Croats are just above Serbs just there's hardly anything in it I wouldn't even define that as being above them

[Tauromachos]

On Ged Croats are just above Serbs just there's hardly anything in it I wouldn't even define that as being above them

Don't know what you mean

As far Balkans ,Mainland Greeks as a whole are most Southern shifted population and they don't overlapp or cluster
neither with Serbs nor Croats



The overlapp in Balkans is with Albanians,Bulgarians and Fyromskis who are basicly a Bulgarian descended population

[Rabbit Hole]

Don't know what you mean

As far Balkans ,Mainland Greeks as a whole are most Southern shifted population and they don't overlapp or cluster
neither with Serbs nor Croats



The overlapp in Balkans is with Albanians,Bulgarians and Fyromskis who are basicly a Bulgarian descended population

No it's now Bulgarians. Yes I agree that Bulgarians are closer to North Greeks than Serbs. Serbs cluster close to Croats so they're like Croats

[Tauromachos]

No it's now Bulgarians.

??? not sure what that means^



Yes I agree that Bulgarians are closer to North Greeks than Serbs.

Serbs don't cluster with any Greeks except maybe a few outliers some Greeks with high Slavic
or some atypically southshifted Serbs possibly Vlach or Albanian descended




Serbs cluster close to Croats so they're like Croats

Ok maybe you will have to settle this with Est_1992 though

[Rabbit Hole]

Anyway when someone finds a decent paper on Dorian haplogroups let us know. Don't seem to be listed on mytrueheritage

[Dimitri159]

It's Dimitris aka Jim every true Greek knows that.

Either of you mention my name one more time without my knowledge you’re both getting hacked.

[Dimitri159]

Not true. Again

Greek Cypriots more to do with the Levant aka ancient Greek dna

Pontian Greeks more to do with Georgian Laz and Armenian

Mainland Greeks same with North Central Italians Romans

North Greeks same as Romans but also Bulgarians Serbs etc

You just mentioned before that South Italians are are closer to Greeks. Now on this it’s central Italians... which one is it why can’t anyone make up their minds here?

[Dimitri159]

More Central Italy

No it’s southern Italy, Greeks colonized that area not central Italy. Now show me where you found that central Italy is closer I’d love to see that dumb shit. Lol central Italy shifts toward France.

[Rabbit Hole]

You just mentioned that South Italians are are closest to Greek. Now on this it’s central Italians... which one is it why can’t anyone make up their minds here?

South Italians have Greco Roman ancestors South Italians probably match up to South Greeks or whatever. I don't sit down with South Italian men and ask them where their Greek matches were from because I simply don't give a fuck. This is a history forum I am talking about general history!

[Rabbit Hole]

No it’s southern Italy, Greeks colonized that area not central Italy. Now show me where you found that central Italy is closer I’d love to see that dumb shit. Lol central Italy shifts toward France.

No it doesn't unless you mean South France but anyway, still no it doesn't.

[Rabbit Hole]

No it’s southern Italy, Greeks colonized that area not central Italy. Now show me where you found that central Italy is closer I’d love to see that dumb shit. Lol central Italy shifts toward France.

No it doesn't unless you mean South France but anyway, still no it doesn't.

[Renekton]

No it’s southern Italy, Greeks colonized that area not central Italy. Now show me where you found that central Italy is closer I’d love to see that dumb shit. Lol central Italy shifts toward France.Don't quote me again

[Renekton]

South Italians have Greco Roman ancestors South Italians probably match up to South Greeks or whatever. I don't sit down with South Italian men and ask them where their Greek matches were from because i simply don't give a fuck. This is a history forum I am talking about general history!South Italians and Sicilians have more Levantine admixture than to mainland Greeks. Only the Dodecanese and Cypriots cluster to South Italians according to user Sikeliot

[Dimitri159]

South Italians have Greco Roman ancestors South Italians probably match up to South Greeks or whatever. I don't sit down with South Italian men and ask them where their Greek matches were from because I simply don't give a fuck. This is a history forum I am talking about general history!

Well it’s easy to find out given that there is research out there. Based on research mainland Greeks are closer to South Italians still. Once again the Greek islanders are that different from mainland Greece, especially Peloponnesians!!!

[Rabbit Hole]

South Italians and Sicilians have more Levantine admixture than to mainland Greeks. Only the Dodecanese and Cypriots cluster to South Italians according to user Sikeliot

I don't know who that person is but i have printed out where Cypriots plot racially and probably a couple of times about mainland Greeks too

[Dimitri159]

Don't quote me again

I’ll do what I want hill billy.

[Rabbit Hole]

South Italians and Sicilians have more Levantine admixture than to mainland Greeks. Only the Dodecanese and Cypriots cluster to South Italians according to user Sikeliot

I don't know who that person is but i have printed out where Cypriots plot racially and probably a couple of times about mainland Greeks too

[Dimitri159]

I don't know who that person is but i have printed out where Cypriots plot racially and probably a couple of times about mainland Greeks too

Can you show again? I never seen it.

[Dimitri159]

I don't know who that person is but i have printed out where Cypriots plot racially and probably a couple of times about mainland Greeks too

Can you show again? I never seen it.

[Renekton]

I don't know who that person is but i have printed out where Cypriots plot racially and probably a couple of times about mainland Greeks too

He was a former user here.

[Tauromachos]

South Italians and Sicilians have more Levantine admixture than to mainland Greeks.

Not all South Italians do there is South Italians fairly close to Mainland Greece and not all Mainland Greeks are extremely Slav
admixed or shifted like you Slavophone Macedonians

There is Mainland Greeks fairly similar to Sicilians even



Only the Dodecanese and Cypriots cluster to South Italians according to user Sikeliot

According to Sikeliot Mainland Greece is Poland,almost

[Rabbit Hole]

Can you show again? I never seen it.

1. Cyprian_Greek (6.107) ( Mycenaean Anatolian Bronze Age Levantine )
2. Lebanese_Muslim (7.833) ( Mycenaean Anatolian Bronze Age Levantine )
3. Samaritan (9.683) ( Iron Age Levantine )
4. Syrian (10.05) ( ? )
5. Tunisian_Jewish (10.28) ( North African Jewish mixed )
6. Lebanese_Christian (10.48) ( Mycenean Anatolian Bronze Age Minor Samartian )
7. Samaritan_Ephraim_Tribe (11.41) ( the 13 tribes of Israelites that both Sephardics and Ashkenazis belong to in their Y chromosones )
8. Sephardic_Jewish (11.60) ( same Ashkenazis-see above )
Info

I will edit it so you understand what it means

[Rabbit Hole]

1. East_Sicilian (4.290) ( East Sicilian Neolithic )
2. Central_Greek (4.788) ( Central Greece )
3. Greek_Islands (6.961) ( Crete? )
4. Italian_Jewish (7.304) ( Jewish plus Italian )
5. Italian_Abruzzo (7.498) ( Central South Italy )
6. Greek_Crete (7.816) ( Crete )
7. West_Sicilian (7.828) ( don't know )
8. Ashkenazi (8.437) ( see Sephardics )

[Rgvgjhvv]

1. East_Sicilian (4.290) ( East Sicilian Neolithic )
2. Central_Greek (4.788) ( Central Greece )
3. Greek_Islands (6.961) ( Crete? )
4. Italian_Jewish (7.304) ( Jewish plus Italian )
5. Italian_Abruzzo (7.498) ( Central South Italy )
6. Greek_Crete (7.816) ( Crete )
7. West_Sicilian (7.828) ( don't know )
8. Ashkenazi (8.437) ( see Sephardics )

Central_Greek is an island plot. The name is wrong

[Rabbit Hole]

Central_Greek is an island plot. The name is wrong

Fair enough I was guessing Crete as one of the ''major islands'' but i guess it could be any of them.

[Dimitri159]

1. East_Sicilian (4.290) ( East Sicilian Neolithic )
2. Central_Greek (4.788) ( Central Greece )
3. Greek_Islands (6.961) ( Crete? )
4. Italian_Jewish (7.304) ( Jewish plus Italian )
5. Italian_Abruzzo (7.498) ( Central South Italy )
6. Greek_Crete (7.816) ( Crete )
7. West_Sicilian (7.828) ( don't know )
8. Ashkenazi (8.437) ( see Sephardics )

And how exactly does this show that mainland Greeks are closer to central Italians than to the south? These are all South Italians as well as Jews.

[Dimitri159]

South Italians have Greco Roman ancestors South Italians probably match up to South Greeks or whatever. I don't sit down with South Italian men and ask them where their Greek matches were from because I simply don't give a fuck. This is a history forum I am talking about general history!

South Greeks sure but some of the Greek mainland is south too. The Peloponnese is far closer genetically to South Italians than to central Italians.

[Dimitri159]

Not all South Italians do there is South Italians fairly close to Mainland Greece and not all Mainland Greeks are extremely Slav
admixed or shifted like you Slavophone Macedonians

There is Mainland Greeks fairly similar to Sicilians even



According to Sikeliot Mainland Greece is Poland,almost

This fucking guy is like Sikeliot reincarted! He’s trying to scar people away from South Italians and using the stupid Greek division theory.

[Rabbit Hole]

And how exactly does this show that mainland Greeks are closer to central Italians than to the south? These are all South Italians as well as Jews.

I claimed that South Italians are similar to Greeks. It seems they are similar to Central Greeks not South but whatever.

[Rabbit Hole]

This fucking guy is like Sikeliot reincarted! He’s trying to scar people away from South Italians and using the stupid Greek division theory.

He has his picture in his icon I am guessing it's not the same person.

[Tauromachos]

This fucking guy is like Sikeliot reincarted! He’s trying to scar people away from South Italians and using the stupid Greek division theory.

Most people here think or want to claim that Mainland Greeks cluster or overlapp exclusivly with Tuscans and Central Italians

In reality Mainland Greeks plot with Central and South Italian populations mainly and the more North shifted Mainland Greeks with Tuscans

Also Central and South Italians are not strictly separated by genetics there is a cline or gradient just as there is in Greeks

[Dimitri159]

I claimed that South Italians are similar to Greeks. It seems they are similar to Central Greeks not South but whatever.

Exactly. Which is exactly why this Hahns guy needs to stfu unless he posts reasonable answers. I’d ignore if he didn’t start with me in the beginning though.

[Tauromachos]

He has his picture in his icon I am guessing it's not the same person.

Sikeliot's?

Who does?

[Dimitri159]

He has his picture in his icon I am guessing it's not the same person.

Wasn’t saying it was him exactly, just comparing his way of thinking. It was an analogy.

[Rabbit Hole]

Sikeliot's?

Who does?

You do. I assume that's you in your pic and I assume this ''Siikeliot''doesn't as any back handed comment is refered to as ''you must be Sikeliot'' lol.

[Rabbit Hole]

Wasn’t saying it was him exactly, just comparing his way of thinking. It was an analogy.

Of? He has not said anything unusual or out of the ordinary he said it how it is . East Sicilians and general Italians plot next to ( apparently ) Central Greeks. The mytrueancestry reports show that East Sicilians plot next to and are like Central Greeks.

[wvwvw]

You are new here I see, lol. I am 100% Greek with roots from Samos.

Born in Korea.
greek are arab is a troll.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best basketball player in the world, lol. Born and raised in Greece he represents Greece in all facets of his life.

This little freak is Gianni's son :D

https://mag.sigmalive.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_cover_w867/public/fdgdfgdgdf.jpg?itok=-eHBhueg

[Tauromachos]

You do. I assume that's you in your pic and I assume this ''Siikeliot''doesn't as any back handed comment is refered to as ''you must be Sikeliot'' lol.

WUTTTTTTTTTTT???????????????

:crazy:

[Rabbit Hole]

Wasn’t saying it was him exactly, just comparing his way of thinking. It was an analogy.

Of? He has not said anything unusual or out of the ordinary he said it how it is . East Sicilians and general Italians plot next to ( apparently ) Central Greeks. The mytrueancestry reports show that East Sicilians plot next to and are like Central Greeks.

[Rabbit Hole]

WUTTTTTTTTTTT???????????????

:crazy:

Just tell Dimitri you are not Sikeliot. I am sure this Dimitri is ''Sikeliot'' if anything.

[Tauromachos]

wut??????

What the fk is going ooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnn?

[Dimitri159]

Of? He has not said anything unusual or out of the ordinary he said it how it is . East Sicilians and general Italians plot next to ( apparently ) Central Greeks. The mytrueancestry reports show that East Sicilians plot next to and are like Central Greeks.

Have you been paying attention? Lol. 1. He uses the Greek divisions theory (exaggerating the small difference between island Greeks and mainland Greeks) and 2. He’s subtly trying to scar people away from South Italians as if they are Arabs or something.

[Dimitri159]

Just tell Dimitri you are not Sikeliot. I am sure this Dimitri is ''Sikeliot'' if anything.

I’m not talking about SuperDorian I’m talking about Hahns. My goodness do you pay any attention??

[Tauromachos]

I’m not talking about SuperDorian I’m talking about Hahns. My goodness do you pay any attention??

:thumb001:

[Rabbit Hole]

Have you been paying attention? Lol. 1. He uses the Greek divisions theory (exaggerating the small difference between island Greeks and mainland Greeks) and 2. He’s subtly trying to scar people away from South Italians as if they are Arabs or something.

Have not seen him doing that all i see is you calling Greeks Jews if you want to talk about Jews. Jews are Arabs.

[Dimitri159]

Just tell Dimitri you are not Sikeliot. I am sure this Dimitri is ''Sikeliot'' if anything.

And again I never said that Hahns actuallh is Sikeliot! I used an analogy because they have a similar dumb way of trolling.

[Rabbit Hole]

And again I never said that Hahns actuallh is Sikeliot! I used an analogy because they have a similar dumb way of trolling.

You were talking to Superdorian now you're talking about that guy. Tomorrow it will be someone else. The only divison here is people talking about silly stuff unrelated to the original topic.

The topic started as ''the ancient Greeks really do have mystical origins'' it's now finishing with this

[Tauromachos]

Have you been paying attention? Lol. 1. He uses the Greek divisions theory (exaggerating the small difference between island Greeks and mainland Greeks) and 2. He’s subtly trying to scar people away from South Italians as if they are Arabs or something.


He is self proclaimed Slavophone from North Greece

[Dimitri159]

Just tell Dimitri you are not Sikeliot. I am sure this Dimitri is ''Sikeliot'' if anything.


Have not seen him doing that all i see is you calling Greeks Jews if you want to talk about Jews. Jews are Arabs.

The guy is trying to distance Greeks and South Itlians. [B]How could you support this? I understand we have our differences but that doesn’t mean there are other trolls out there [B] (but I’m not a troll still).

And hmmm speaking of “Jews”. Lol here’s something you posted, I see Jews in there twice, Greeks, Italians and Jews cluster clearly. I’m not wrong after all. Obviously their not the closest but in comparison to all of Europe they are close.

1. East_Sicilian (4.290) ( East Sicilian Neolithic )
2. Central_Greek (4.788) ( Central Greece )
3. Greek_Islands (6.961) ( Crete? )
4. Italian_Jewish (7.304) ( Jewish plus Italian )
5. Italian_Abruzzo (7.498) ( Central South Italy )
6. Greek_Crete (7.816) ( Crete )
7. West_Sicilian (7.828) ( don't know )
8. Ashkenazi (8.437) ( see Sephardics )

[Tauromachos]

You were talking to Superdorian now you're talking about that guy. Tomorrow it will be someone else. The only divison here is people talking about silly stuff unrelated to the original topic.

The topic started as ''the ancient Greeks really do have mystical origins'' it's now finishing with this

Its your fault

Why you so obsessed with me to begin with?

You seem to hate me

Or maybe you are a troll

Someones agent or sock?

Maybe Raines?

[Dimitri159]

Its your fault

Why you so obsessed with me to begin with?

You seem to hate me

Or maybe you are a troll

Someones agent or sock?

Maybe Raines?

She’s another troll idiot. She claims Jews are so different from Greeks and Italians yet she sets her self up by posting a genetic cluster proximity with Jews in the midst of Greeks and Italians twice.

[Rabbit Hole]

The guy is trying to distance Greeks and South Itlians. [B]How could you support this? I understand we have our differences but that doesn’t mean there are other trolls out there [B] (but I’m not a troll still).

And hmmm speaking of “Jews”. Lol here’s something you posted, I see Jews in there twice, Greeks, Italians and Jews cluster clearly. I’m not wrong after all. Obviously their not the closest but in comparison to all of Europe they are close.

1. East_Sicilian (4.290) ( East Sicilian Neolithic )
2. Central_Greek (4.788) ( Central Greece )
3. Greek_Islands (6.961) ( Crete? )
4. Italian_Jewish (7.304) ( Jewish plus Italian )
5. Italian_Abruzzo (7.498) ( Central South Italy )
6. Greek_Crete (7.816) ( Crete )
7. West_Sicilian (7.828) ( don't know )
8. Ashkenazi (8.437) ( see Sephardics )

They don't cluster together Ashkenazis cluster with Sephardics. They don't have the same mix with k36 on Ged.
I explained the admixtures through k36 that is the result this is why i placed description .
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/sephardic-ashkenazic-mizrahi-jews-jewish-ethnic-diversity/

Take it from the Hebes themselves. Both Sephardics and Ashkenazis descend from the 13 tribes both Ashkenazis and Sephardics are directly related other Jewish groups like Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews have their own branches.

[Dimitri159]

Its your fault

Why you so obsessed with me to begin with?

You seem to hate me

Or maybe you are a troll

Someones agent or sock?

Maybe Raines?


You were talking to Superdorian now you're talking about that guy. Tomorrow it will be someone else. The only divison here is people talking about silly stuff unrelated to the original topic.

The topic started as ''the ancient Greeks really do have mystical origins'' it's now finishing with this

Trying to instigate.... maybe she’s the true “oil skin Jew” lmaooo.

[Rabbit Hole]

She’s another troll idiot. She claims Jews are so different from Greeks and Italians yet she sets her self up by posting a genetic cluster proximity with Jews in the midst of Greeks and Italians twice.

Because you don't understand what the 13 tribes are you are an idiot. You don't understand how Jews descend from the same root of their genetics and ancestry and broke apart in different directions that's why they call it the 13 tribes. Because there are 13 types of Jewish roots. Their root through their Y chromosone.

[Tauromachos]

She’s another troll idiot. She claims Jews are so different from Greeks and Italians yet she sets her self up by posting a genetic cluster proximity with Jews in the midst of Greeks and Italians twice.

I think there is a gang of crooks active here who posts possibly with multiple accounts/personalities who wants to troll,ridicule
and descredit posters they don't like or who post things they don't aggree with


By dumb sarcastic parodyzing and imitating and spreading false rumors

[Rabbit Hole]

Trying to instigate.... maybe she’s the true “oil skin Jew” lmaooo.

You're Jewish if you call Greeks Jewish.

[Rabbit Hole]

I think there is a gang of crooks active here who posts possibly with multiple accounts/personalities who wants to troll,ridicule
and descredit posters they don't like or who post things they don't aggree with


By dumb sarcastic parodyzing and imitating and spreading false rumors

No he was talking to you. he was directing the comment at you, scroll back and see what he says. I am not obsessed with anyone here I am trying to talk about ancient Greek genetics.

[Tauromachos]

No he was talking to you. he was directing the comment at you, scroll back and see what he says. I am not obsessed with anyone here I am trying to talk about ancient Greek genetics.

I know he was talking to me therefore i replied to him

Troll!

[Dimitri159]

You're Jewish if you call Greeks Jewish.

Hey dummy I didn’t say Greeks are Jews I said they cluster together. Thank for proving that with your little genetic cluster percentage. Lmao you also said “they don’t cluster with Ashkenazi they cluster with Sephardi”. Well number 8 said Ashkenazi, did it not?

[Rabbit Hole]

I know he was talking to me therefore i replied to him

Troll!

Then don't attack me if he is grabbing you in a comment troll! If anything I was trying to defend you.

[Tauromachos]

Then don't attack me if he is grabbing you in a comment troll! If anything I was trying to defend you.


Your trolling is very transparent to me

Its at a very low level

Basicly like highscool bullying between 16 year old teenagers

[Tauromachos]

Then don't attack me if he is grabbing you in a comment troll! If anything I was trying to defend you.


Your trolling is very transparent to me

Its at a very low level

Basicly like highscool bullying between 16 year old teenagers

[Dimitri159]

I know he was talking to me therefore i replied to him

Troll!

Lol bro I wasn’t talking about you though. She’s instigating.

It all started when I bashed on Hahns for resembling Sikeliot. I was talking about Hahns to you, remember? Now this troll (RabbitHole) is trying to twist things around and claiming that I was talking about you being like Sikeliot. Literally just go look back lmao.

[Dimitri159]

I know he was talking to me therefore i replied to him

Troll!

Lol bro I wasn’t talking about you though. She’s instigating.

It all started when I bashed on Hahns for resembling Sikeliot. I was talking about Hahns to you, remember? Now this troll (RabbitHole) is trying to twist things around and claiming that I was talking about you being like Sikeliot. Literally just go look back lmao.

[Rabbit Hole]

https://forward.com/opinion/world/387971/many-sephardic-jews-arent-actually-sephardic/

[Rabbit Hole]

Lol bro I wasn’t talking about you though. She’s instigating.

It all started when I bashed on Hahns for resembling Sikeliot. I was talking about Hahns to you, remember? Now this troll (RabbitHole) is trying to twist things around and claiming that I was talking about you being like Sikeliot. Literally just go look back lmao.

You are Sikelot the troll. I was trying to defend him if he can't see that i can't convince him.

[Rgvgjhvv]

This little freak is Gianni's son :D

https://mag.sigmalive.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_cover_w867/public/fdgdfgdgdf.jpg?itok=-eHBhueg

Okay

[Rabbit Hole]

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/actually-a-significant-number-of-ashkenazim-are-descended-from-sephardim/

Actually, a Significant Number of Ashkenazim are Descended from Sephardim
MAY 16, 2019, 9:41 AM
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In an interview that I conducted in the Tel Aviv home of the renowned Israeli historian of the Hasidic movement Dr. Isaac Alfasi , the latter recounted to me an exchange he once had with Israeli Prime Minister David ben Gurion. Alfasi, who served as President of the Israeli branch of Bnai Brith in the 1950s, was asked by the elder statesman, “Are you a Sephardi or an Ashkenazi?”

“I am a Sephardic Jew from Poland,” came Alfasi’s reply.

Ben Gurion was incredulous, Alfasi recalls. “How can one be a Sephardi from Poland?” Alfasi then explained to the man that indeed Sephardim had settled in various parts of Poland and that he happened to be descended from one of those families. (Secondary source: “Sippurei Chassidim” by Hanani Bleich, Shevii, Kav Itonut Newspaper 12/19/12)

In an article posted on the Israeli online news site YNET (March 13, 2007), the genealogist Orit Lavie explores the roots of her Alfasi forbears from Krakow, Poland. According to Lavie (translation mine):

My connection to the Sephardic diaspora begins in the second half of the 19th century…[my ancestor] Yaakov Alfos was a descendant of Rabbi Avraham Alfos-Alfasi of Opoczno, Poland. The surname Alfasi denotes origins in Fez, Morocco and the reader might ask what connection could there possibly be between Alfasi and Poland? One of the most-well known members of this family was the famed Talmudist Rabbi Isaac Alfasi, known also by the acronym “RIF.” He was born in Algeria and eventually relocated to Fez, Morocco. At the end of his life, he resided in Spain and one of his descendants apparently ended up in Poland.

Lavie pointedly concludes her piece:

The saga of this family indicates that the perceived divide between Ashkenazim and Sephardim is not as wide as it seems and the distance between these two Jewish Diasporas is a lot closer than is commonly thought.

I was reminded of these tidbits when I read Alexander Beider’s article on “faux” Sephardim entitled Many ‘Sephardic’ Jews Aren’t Actually Sephardic

Far be it from me to engage in debate with one of the world’s most renowned experts on Ashkenazi surnames. However, I must stridently disagree with several of his statements and assessments and take issue with what I perceive to be several errors of commission and omission.

Beider writes:

“But most of all, we did not know what many people don’t know: that no group of Sephardic Jews ever migrated to Germany, with the exception of a single Sephardic community that made its way to Hamburg.

That just isn’t accurate. Sephardic Jewish communities sprung up and flourished in several other parts of Germany such as Berlin, Altona, Glückstadt, Leipzig, Poznan and Offenbach/Frankfurt among other places. Additionally, there were 3 Sephardic Temples in Copenhagen and they also established communities in other large cities in Western and Central Europe such as Prague and Vienna (see also this and this). In 1662 a converso turncoat testified before the Spanish inquisition as to the existence of a community of Portuguese returnees to the Jewish faith in Danzig/Gdansk in Poland (which had a majority German population) among other places.

(Source: Archivo Historico Nacional de Esapagne, Inquisition archives, Liber 1127. I am indebted to the Dutch researcher Ton Tielen for this particular piece of information).

In Poland, the city of Zamosc, midway between Lvov and Lublin, is perhaps the foremost place that comes to mind when speaking of Sephardim in Poland itself. The famous writer Y.L. Peretz (to whom I will return later) hailed from that city.

According to Beider, “The mistaken belief that many European Jews are Sephardic is based almost invariably on surnames borne by members of their families.” But this is simply not true. While many Eastern European Jewish families with Sephardic-sounding family names stake a claim to Sephardic ancestry, many, if not most, who make this claim, do not in fact have Sephardic surnames (this is a good time to note many names that do “sound Sephardic,” are of Latin/Romance origin – and often are not Sephardic at all. Examples include Alemani, Morpurgo, Luzzato, Delmedigo et al). Often the claim is that the name had undergone “Ashkenazification” (typical of these would be the German equivalent to a prior Spanish surname, ex: Belmonte>Schoenberg).

While surnames can often be misleading , at other times they are clear indicators of a lost Sephardic past. According to the Israeli writer and historian Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon-Fischman, the patriarch of his family, namely his grandfather, Rabbi Mordechai Hacohen of Satanov, Ukraine was the first to utilize the name Maimon. This was allegedly done because when the Czarist Russian authorities made it mandatory for Jews to choose surnames, the aforementioned Rabbi Mordechai-whose wife Malka maintained a tradition of descent from the famed Maimonides-chose a name that would reflect that particular family tradition.

(Source: Geula bat Yehuda, Harav Maimon Bedorotav, p.34)

Will the Real Sephardi Please Stand Up?

The most reasonable thing to do is to divide all Ashkenazi claimants to Sephardic ancestry into three categories: the first are those who clearly have no connection to Sephardim. The second are families whose descent has yet to be verified, and finally there are the Ashkenazim of certain Sephardic descent.

The reasons for the existence of the first category are many and varied. The first is a sincere belief borne out of a misunderstood cultural or onomastic indicator. For instance, I have seen all to often Jews who initially research their Eastern Europeans forbears exclaim in excitement that their forebears were most assuredly Sephardim. The proof? A particular ancestor was a member of a congregation called “Anshei Sephard,” which literally translates to the “People of Sepharad.” In reality of course, this term was used by people who prayed in the Chassidic rite, as the Chassidic rite of Eastern Europe was based on the modified Sephardic rite of the master Kabbalist, Isaac Luria

Another reason why someone would make this sort of claim is financial. Recently the governments of Spain and Portugal have guaranteed citizenship to any Jew who can provide documentation that one of his ancestors was expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492.

Additionally, there was a time in the US when Sephardim were potential beneficiaries of government policies meant to benefit minorities. One somewhat bizarre episode is mentioned in Ian Ayre’s book Pervasive Prejudice? Unconventional Evidence of Race and Gender Discrimination (p.400):

two much publicized (but nonrepresentative) instances of “whites” seeking to pass as minorities in order to qualify for affirmative action benefits…The status of the Lieberman family (which claimed Hispanic status as Sephardic Jews to qualify for an FCC affirmative action program) stands however on a much firmer footing. While the FCC’s finding that the Lieberman’s qualified as Hispanic has been decried as a racial hoax by commentators and judges, see Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547, 633 n.1 (1990) (Kennedy,J., dissenting) (“The [FCC], for example, has found it necessary to trace an applicant’s history to 1492 to conclude that the applicant was “Hispanic” for purposes of a minority tax certificate policy.”); Ronald D. Rotunda, Modern Constitutional Law 544 (4th ed. 1993) (The Lieberman family “qualified as Hispanic because they traced their family to Jews whom the King had expelled from Spain in 1492. If you assume 20 years to a generation, there were over 24 generations from 1492 to the [present]. That means that Mr. Lieberman was as closely related to 16,777,216 ancestors.”), the FCC found that Adolfo Lieberman and is sons Jose, Elias, and Julio were “regarded by both themselves and their community as being Hispanic.” Their native language was Spanish which “they still speak a majority of the time.” The family members had lived together in Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica before coming to the United States and becoming naturalized citizens”.

Another reason to claim Sephardic descent is the subject of John Efron’s excellent book German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. According to Efron, when the German Jews embarked upon the quest for legal emancipation and social acceptance, they also undertook a program of cultural renewal. Part of this renewal was the casting off of an unwanted identity and the taking on of what they deemed to be a superior Jewish identity. In the mind of many an enlightened German Jew, Ashkenazim represented insularity, backwardness and moral -and even physical degeneracy. By contrast, the Sephardim of old Andalucía were seen as worldly, morally superior and intellectually and physically superior. Efron provides numerous examples in his book of Ashkenazi public figures who laid a claim to this legacy for the reasons enumerated above. Just one example would suffice for now.

Efron:

No one better exemplifies the romantic tendency to venerate the Sephardim…than Theodore Herzl. With his vivid imagination and highly developed theatrical sense, this Budapest-born resident of Vienna construed for himself an imaginary lineage, wherein he claimed to be descended of Sephardic Jews. In one…his paternal great-grandfather, A Rabbi named Loebl, had been forcibly converted to Catholicism. After fleeing the Iberian Peninsula, Loebl emerged in Constantinople, whereupon he openly returned to Judaism…for his own sense of self and his own self-image Herzl concocted this fantasy wherein Loebl was no longer the Slovenian Jew of reality but the Spanish Jew of Herzl’s desires…Herzl longed to be anything but an Ashkenazic Jew from Central Europe.

Instructively, Efron notes,” Lest one think that Herzl’s invention reflects a decidedly 19th century sentiment, in the course of writing this book, I had conversations with a surprising number of Ashkenazi Jews who declared to me that their families had originally come from Spain.” Efron dismisses this out of hand. Although in a personal correspondence he does concede that some Sephardim did make their way to Eastern Europe but overall the claims of Sephardic descent are, in his words, “a desperate cry for Jewish yikhus” [noble descent].

Oddly enough, at a recent conference on the famous Sephardic Halakhist and mystic, Rabbi Joseph Caro, the Israeli researcher, Dr. Mor Altschuler, author of a biography on Caro, mentioned in passing that Theodore Herzl was a “Sephardi from a Sephardi family.” Altschuler then added – amid expressions of incredulity from the audience – “And there is a tradition-although it has yet to be verified-that he was a direct descendant of the Sephardic Kabbalist Joseph Taitazak of Salonika (a close rabbinic colleague of Caro)”.

This tradition was apparently first recorded by the Hasidic historian and Zionist Aharon Marcus. Marcus claimed that he heard this from Herzl’s mouth himself. It was again repeated by the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook in his writings (see שיחות הרצי”ה, עיטורי כהנים, 126, וכן לנתיבות ישראל חלק ב’, מאמר “להצדיק צדיקים).

It should be noted, however, that in the Hebrew Encyclopedia, Paul Diamant (a cousin of Theodore Herzl) wrote:

“בין אבותיו הספרדיים הקדומים יותר של הר’ מציינים את יהודה ירוחם, ישראל טאיטאצאק ויהודה אמיגו, אלא שעדיין לא נמצאו מסמכים לאישורן של קביעות אלו.”

“Among the earlier Sepharadic Herzl’s ancestors, are mentioned Yehuda Yerucham, Israel Taitachek and Yehuda Amigo, but meanwhile no supporting documents have been found to substantiate it”. Meir Amigo was indeed the community leader of the Sephardic Jewish community in Timisoara in the second half of the 18th century. His son was Abraham Amigo who later took on his father’s name, Meir or Mayer as the family surname. As mentioned, there has been no substantiation so far for this linkage.

Even more intriguing is the fact that the name Taitaczak (the surname of the alleged ancestor of Herzl) appears in Hungary (chiefly in Timisoara) (!), see for instance, Dictionary of Sephardic Surnames by Guilherme Faiguenboim, Paulo Valadares and Anna Rosa Campagnano.

Efron rightly points out, many Ashkenazim in the 18th and 19th centuries looked to the Sephardim of “Golden Age” Andalucía as the ideal archetypal Jews worthy of emulation. Claiming ancestry from Sephardim became in vogue.

There was a trend among some Ashkenazim to claim “exotic” ancestry. This was not necessarily always a desire to claim a linkage with Sepharad specifically (one charlatan that comes to mind is the Belarusian Zusia Zussman [a.k.a. Shlomo Yehuda Friedlander], the infamous forger of the Jerusalem Talmud; calling himself “Friedlander-Algazi” he claimed to be a member of a respected scholarly Sephardic family from Turkey-and gained the short-lived respect of many Eastern European Orthodox Jews). Others desired to link themselves to Karaites (this seems to be the case with the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin who claimed Crimean Karaite ancestry on his maternal line). One Eastern European Jewish family even claimed descent from a “lost tribe of Israel!

The Abarbanel (or Barbanel) family from Eastern Europe is another interesting case. It is worth mentioning that quite a few eastern European Ashkenazim maintain a tradition of descent from the famed Spanish statesman and Rabbi Don Isaac Abarbanel. Aside from the many Jews in Poland and Russia with the surname Abarbanel, there are others who claim indirect descent; in personal correspondence to me, the noted expert on American-Jewish history, Dr. Jonathan Sarna – whose family hails from Lithuania – wrote that his family maintained such a tradition (“my father proudly spoke of his descent from Don Isaac Abarbanel” [Dr. Jonathan Sarna to Joel Davidi Weisberger-December, 7, 2008]) .

Boris Pasternak, author of Dr. Zhivago, hailed from a family of Odessa Jewish intellectuals who claimed descent from Abarbanel. His Sephardic lineage may have been claimed via his maternal grandmother who carried the Sephardi surname “Camondo.”

The famous Zionist activist, Hungarian-born Dr. Max Nordau was so taken with this particular family tradition that, according to his biographer, Jakub Zineman, his father, a nominally Orthodox Hungarian Jew with the surname “Siedfeld” kept the tradition of Sephardic ancestry alive by teaching his children Ladino and holding on to an over-sized house key which had allegedly been passed from father-to-son for generations -since the family’s expulsion from Spain in 1492. Nordau himself records in his diary the overwhelming emotional experience of returning to visit his ancestral home in Iberia.

Whether all of these traditions and stories are 100% true is impossible to prove at this point with certainty, what we do need however is more nuance and open-mindedness. Some of these claims are most assuredly bunk while others are very much legitimate.

Beider:

Then you have several sources which claim that the famous Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz is said to have Sephardic ancestors, likely due to numerous Sephardic Jews called Perez or Peres

This is no mere rumor or hearsay; Y.L. Peretz’s Sephardic ancestry has been the subject of much discussion over the years. The respected Yiddish literary critic, S. Niger Charney in a tribute article to Peretz published in the 1952 Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science devotes considerable space to this particular family tradition. While Charney does calls call his Sephardic ancestry “a theory” and wishes there was documentary substantiation, he notes:

Though it has to this date not been definitely substantiated, Rosa Peretz Laaks, a close relative of the poet, tells in her memoirs that “the Peretz family possessed a genealogical document which states that the family originally came from Spain.”

Charney cites two other prominent Yiddishists who speak of Peretz’s Sephardic heritage including Zalman Reyzen and the playwright Aaron Zeitlin who himself quotes the respected Jewish historian Dr. Ignac (Yitzhak) Schipper to the effect that “there was a definite tradition in Peretz’s family regarding their Sephardic ancestry.”

Charney seems convinced enough of the veracity of this claim and writes:

The two great currents of the last two thousand years of Jewish history- the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic- thus converged and became one in the person of Peretz…Peretz- a Sephardic-Ashkenazic Jew! What unity this would provide to the duality of his person! To his aristocratic intellectualism on the one hand and to his deep democratic attachment to the masses on the other. Peretz, a great grandson of the Jews who brought forth Samuel Hanagid, Ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi, the Ibn Ezras and Maimonides; and Peretz, the typical representative of Polish Jewry before it was liquidated- what meaning such duality of origin would give to his role as one of the creators of a new Yiddish folk literature and to his continues aspiration to raise it to the level of a truly national literature!

Likewise, J. Bielinsky in an article entitled “Historical Curiosities; On the Oriental-Hispano origin of certain Russian Jews” published in the French-Jewish Periodical Le Judaisme Sepharade in 1936 writes, “Some people do not know that the greatest Yiddish writer Y. L. Peretz was born Sephardic. He was born in 1857 in Russian Poland to a Judeo-Spanish family, and before adopting the Yiddish vernacular, he wrote in Hebrew. But it was he who created in Poland in 1905 the first Yiddish daily Der Weg. He died in the midst of war in 1915, and if the Yiddish press in Paris wants to commemorate the anniversary of his death, Pariser Haint [a Yiddish daily that was published in Paris geared toward Polish Yiddish-speaking immigrants-J.D.W.] might remind its readers of a seemingly paradoxical fact that it was a Sephardic Jew who founded the first Yiddish daily in Eastern Europe”.

The Sephardic Community of Amsterdam sends Sephardim to…Poland

During the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam (its governing body was referred to as the mahamad), considered one of the wealthiest Sephardic Jewish communities in Europe (if not the world) would often hand over some money to poor indigent Sephardim and send them to settle far away (these were referred to in Portuguese as despachos).

Although most of these people were sent to places that had well-established Sephardic communities, some of them were also sent to overwhelmingly Ashkenazic Poland.

I thank Ton Tielen for extracting from the archives of the Spanish and Portuguese community in Amsterdam the names and details of five persons who were dispatched to Poland in the manner described above.

What follows is the Hebrew year, the names and the destinations of five such despachos(which they all have in common, namely Poland):

5448, Merari Belogrado Polonia

5455, Nieto de H.H. Usiel Polonia

5461, Mordehay Cohen Polonia

5462, Rahel Cuna Polonia

5474, Abraham Israel Guer Polonia (apparently a proselyte to Judaism).

One of the names, Usiel is of particular interest. He is referred to as a descendant of Hakham Uziel. This, according to Tielen, must be Hakham Isaac Uziel who died and was buried in Amsterdam in 1622. Uziel went to Poland in 1752 according to the archival document cited above. From another archival document, this time a list of Sephardim who migrated to Zamosc , Poland in the years 1588-1650, we come across one Abraham Uziel (whose name appears in the official documentation in the polonized form, “Uzelowicz”).

It is more than tempting to ponder whether the Uziel family – now well established in Zamosc – would not on occasion experience the arrival of family members. This would indicate that the Sephardic community in Zamosc did not die out soon after it was established – as many historians claim – but it rather continued to exist well into the 18th century. It would otherwise be difficult to understand why the mahamad would for all practical purposes dump a member of a prominent Sephardic family in middle of Poland.

This becomes even more apparent when we recall that the mahamad strictly proscribed Ashkenazic-Sephardic intermarriage and even expelled not a few members for violating this clause. One rightfully wonders, why why they would send a prominent member of their community to a locale where the end result would be certain assimilation into the Ashkenazi majority population. This may be solid proof that Sephardic communities – albeit small – did exist in Poland with occasional boosters in the form of financial help and human material from larger and more established communities.

Above all, we must recall, as I did in my opening passage citing from Ms. Lavie, the distance between Sepharad and Ashkenaz is not all that vast in the grand scheme of things.

Lavie mentions her Alfasi antecedents arriving in Poland from the Sephardic diaspora at some point in the distant past. One must recall that Jewish Diasporas were rarely stagnant; there were constants comings and goings from Sephardic centers to Ashkenazic centers and vice versa. As early as the 11th century, there was travel by Spanish scholars to Germany as well as by German and French scholars to Iberia . One of the most famous Ashkenazi scholars to settle in Spain was Rabbi Asher ben Jechiel who relocated from Germany to Toledo in the 14th century (see for instance “Relations Between Spanish and Ashkenazi Jewry in the Middle Ages” by Avraham Grossman in The Sephardic Legacy by Haim Beinart).

One of the most surprising things (to me at least), were the DNA results of what was thought to have been one of the oldest Ashkenazic clans, namely the Katznellenbogen family from Italy. The results suggest that the “ashkenazification” of some Sephardim began much earlier than previously thought-and again hammers home the point that the differences between Sephardim and Ashkenazim are somewhat artificial.

Interesting to note as well, as late as the 19th century, a Jewish girl from Lodz, Poland journeyed to the Jewish Mellah of Marrakech, Morocco to wed her fiancée. The girl’s name was Rina Lutzki and the groom was David Aldaudi, the scion of a prominent local family that claimed Davidic descent through the Exilarchs of ancient Babylonia and Spain. The match came about as a result of the mercantile activities of the Lutzki family. The latter ran a successful clothing and furniture business and were commissioned by the Sultan of Morocco to furnish his palace. It was due to these travels that the Lutzki brothers were made aware of the eligible Aldaudi bachelor and before long they proposed their sister as a suitable match. Rina relocated to Marrakech where she experienced some difficulty acclimating to her new surroundings. Before long however, the Moroccan-Polish couple decided to immigrate to the Land of Israel where they gave birth to a son. The product of this union would later grow up to be the prominent Rabbi Makhlouf Aldaudi (1825-1909) who served as the Hakham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) of the Jewish communities of Acre, Safed and Tiberias from 1889 to 1909.

Jewish history is replete with these types of migrations. Few Jewish Diasporas were “pure bred”; most Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities are a result of a mishmash of ethnicities – not to mention rites and customs.

A large prominent Sephardic clan from North Africa surnamed Sarfati maintains descent from the preeminent Ashkenazi sage, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, better known as Rashi who was born in Troyes, France. This is due to the fact that when the Jews were expelled from France in the 13th century, many of his descendants relocated to Spain and North Africa where they soon became Sephardicized.

Other Jews in Poland have maintained very interesting traditions of Sephardic descent. Rabbi Yosef Wallis who heads the Israeli Orthodox Arakhim organization recently led a delegation back to the home of his tragic direct ancestor Rafael Valls on the Spanish island of Majorca. Valls was one of 37 secret Jews burned at the stake there in 1691 for refusing to renounce their Jewishness.

According to a profile in the New York Times:

Rabbi Wallis, 64, who was born in Israel and raised in New York, is the son of two Holocaust survivors from the Dachau camp. His father [a scion of Hasidim of the Gerrer sect from Pabianice, Poland], he said, remembered an old family Bible, lost during World War II, with the name of Rafael Valls at the top of the list of ancestors with birth and death dates that listed him as burned at the stake.

One finds it difficult to believe that Wallis invented this ancestry out of whole cloth.

Quite famously, in 1588, the Polish count Jan Zamoyski published his charter of rights for the Spanish and Portuguese Jews that he invited in his newly built city of Zamosc. The document is still extant in the Latin original (in the archives of Krasnistow) and in its Polish translation. Similar documents were granted to Sephardim in Troppau (Polish: Opawa) and Karniow in Silesia in 1612. The first recorded Jew in Zamosc was Moses de Mosso Cohen. He was the son of the merchant Abraham de Mosso who was, in turn, an agent of the prominent Sephardic merchant and diplomat Don Joseph Nassi. Among the dozens of names that has come down to us from Zamosc, a Sephardic Rabbi referred to as Doktor and a prominent community head named Shmuel Barzel are noteworthy.

From a letter dated 1587 by de Mosso Cohen we learn that “the councilor only wants frenkim to settle there and does not desire the local Jews.” This discrimination in favor of imported Sephardim continued under Zamoyski’s successor who extended the 1588 injunction for newly arrived Sephardic settlers from Holland and Flanders. The Jewish cemetery in Zamosc is still extant and much research still remains to be done.

The Wooden Sephardic Synagogues of Lithuania

Dr. Rose Lerer Cohen, formerly of South Africa and now Jerusalem, has been researching Sephardim in Lithuania. Her interest in the topic was stirred when she says she met a man who referred to himself as a “litvishe frank,” a Litvak Sephardi.

In Lithuania authentic Sephardic congregations seem to have existed. Shlomo Katzav in a booklet Hasefardim be’eretz Lita lists Sephardic congregations in places like Otian, Biraz, Dolhinov, Heidozishok, Vilkomir and Kopishok. Katzav lists several congregations with the name Alsheikh (in Horodna and Shavel). There are also two Alfas congregations, one in Tabarig and and the other in Lida.

Arthur Menton in The Book of Destiny: Toledot Charlap recounts the saga of his Sephardic forbears, the Don-Yichye and Charlap families who arrived from Spain and settled in the Baltic states. He also mentions one Lithuanian town whose Jewish community was said to have been founded by Sephardic emigres, namely Vilkaviskis (Vilkovishk). The community kept accurate records and as recently as 1920, a massive tome containing information about 400 years of Jewish life in Vilkaviskis was cited by several researchers. The book is now housed in Israel’s National Library but has never been transcribed to my knowledge.

According to Menton, “The book indicated that a Jewish settlement existed there at the beginning of the 16th century…Princess Bora Sforges made a gift of lumber to the community to build prayer houses and the copper domed synagogue known to its last days as “the old shul”. Its ark… housed the profusely embellished Sefer Torahs which originated in Spain”.

Image may contain: 4 people
From a pre-war Polish Yiddish newspaper. The caption reads, “The Sephardic Golden Chain in Latvia”. It features photos of members of the renowned Rabbinical Don-Yichye family.


The Sephardic Baal Shem from Poland

One of the more curious Jewish figures that came out of Podolia, the Polish-Ukrainian province (that was under Ottoman-Turkish rule from 1672-1699) , was Samuel Jacob Hayyim Falk (1710-1782). His portrait is often mistaken for that of the Baal Shem Tov (himself from Podolia). Falk was, according to Rabbi Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, a Kabbalist and a suspected Sabbatean. Most interesting to us is the likelihood that he was a Sephardic Jew. In the formers’ biographical sketch of Falk in Transactions of the Historical Society of England, Adler writes that Falk who was a miracle worker and known as the “Baal Shem of London” (where he later immigrated) referred to himself in his personal book as the “son of Refael the Sephardi.” While initially exercising caution and theorizing that Falk was perhaps referring to the fact that his father prayed in the Hassidic rite, he eventually concedes that he was in fact the son of a Sephardic Jew (the conflation between the Sephardic rite and the so-called Nusakh Sefard is a subject that deserves further research). Moreover, the fact that he prayed in the Sephardic pronunciation, ate Sephardic food, and recorded his name as “Laniado” lends further credence to this.

It is worth noting here that the Early Modern Period saw a reshuffling of large parts of the “Jewish world”. As Dr. Elisheva Carlebach put it, “pieces of a cultural mosaic that had been placed precisely and not moved for centuries were suddenly shaken up and scattered about in entirely new combinations”.

The “shaking up” was chiefly a result of wars, massacres and mass expulsions. The expulsions of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century and the massacres of Jews in mid 17th century Poland brought many Jews from different backgrounds into contact with each other for the first time.
Jacob Katz in his Tradition and Crisis postulates that “it is doubtful there ever was a time since the decline of the Roman Empire when Jewry’s political organization was still centralized in which contacts between Jewish groups was as intense as in this period”.
Back to Podolia, another figure of note with Sephardic ancestry from that region was the writer Karl Emil Franzos
It was Podolia, as well, that the infamous Sabbatean Jacob Frank stemmed from. A good indication of the close ties between Sephardim and Ahskenazim of that period is the fact that the Frank family frequently shuttled between Poland and Turkey and spoke Ladino fluently.
In a recent DNA study of the Hassidic Twersky Rabbinical dynasty from Ukraine, the Sephardic ancestry of that clan is claimed to have been established with certainty.

Sephardim in Hungary, Romania and Transylvania

As we move further south in Eastern Europe, the preponderance of evidence for Sephardic settlement increases. In Hungary, some Sephardim arrived almost immediately after the expulsion. As late as the 19th century the Synagogue of the frenkim (a term that derives from the Turkish, meaning “Western faringi/frengi”, a loanword from frank, etc.) was located in Budapest. According to Kinga Frojimovics and Géza Komoróczy in Jewish Budapest; Monuments, Rites, History Isaac Almuslin who lived in Pest in the last decades of the 18th century was a frenk too. Adolf Agai (1836-1916, a Hungarian writer, journalist and editor reminisced about his Sephardic grandfather. “My late grandfather [Agai refers to him as Don Yitzhak in other places], founded the frenk Synagogue in Budapest in the 30s [1830]. These Sephardi Jews dispersed from Spain all over the world, retained their mother tongue, Spanish, with great love and care. The older generation still speaks it at home. Old Castilian and ancient Andalusian chants and zemirot sounded at my grandfather’s table on holidays, where we used to eat an ethnic pastry filled with spinach.”

Adolf Agai, “About my great-grandfather”, 1907 as cited in Jewish Budapest p. 33

Ancient records also indicate that Buda at one time had a “Syrian community” (kehilla siriatike) which probably maintained its own Synagogue (Ibid, p. 33).

The last traces of real Sephardi Jews in Budapest were found in 1944. The Spanish ambassador’s deputy (Angel Sanz-Briz), leaving Hungary, reported to his government on December 14, 1944:
“The undersigned managed to establish the fact that there were a limited number of Sephardi people living in Budapest. They had migrated there from the former Ottoman Empire and had preserved their Spanish language. They number 45. We issued a regular (Spanish) passport for them, in which we recorded the 45 persons mentioned above. (…) I expounded to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry that the protection of the Sephardim had always been the traditional policy of the Spanish authorities and that this had always been respected by the countries in which the Jewish question was raised”

According to The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a Sephardic presence was also documented in Eger, an important trade center that attracted Turkish Jews after 1569 as well as Gyongyos, Jaszbereny, and Vac in the north. Szekesfehervar in the northwest had an important Jewish community between 1544 and 1688; many Sephardic Jews came from the Ottoman Empire as well as from Buda. In central and southern Hungary, Sephardic settlements were attested in the 16th century in Kecsemet, Paks, Tolna and Mako. In Porumbacul de Sus near Fagaras in southern Transylvania, Sephardic Jews are credited with introducing glass manufacturing to the region. In Targu-Mures, Sephardim are mentioned from 1582; a permanent community was founded in the nearby village of Naznan-Falva. The first known communal leader was Moshe Aizik Frankel, heir to a Converso family (Yivo, “Sephardim” p. 1689).

A word about the Frankel family. Some have posited that it is a toponym and it denotes the family’s origin from German region of Franconia. No large-scale DNA tests have yet been undertaken and it is possible that there are several different unrelated Frankel families. Many members of the Frankel family- who were prominent Rabbinic personalities in Hungary from the 18th century and on- would append (some still do!) to their surname 2 or 3 letters ב”ח or מב”ח which stands for: מבית חלפון literally, “From the House of Halfon”. Nobody seemed to know who this apparent ancestor named Halfon was but the onomastic data suggests that this name was used by Jews in Spain and later in Provence (later also in North Africa). Combined with the fact that Frankel is said by some researchers to derive from the term frenk, a once common-term used for (and also used by) Sephardim, it is logical to conclude that this family is indeed of Sephardic origin.

Alexander Scheiber in his Jewish Inscription In Hungary cites Sephardic inscriptions as well as Sephardic tombstone epitaphs from Hungary under the Ottomans.

In Transylvania, the old Jewish cemeteries of Alba Iulia (Karlsburg) and Timisoara (Temeshvar) contain the names of Sephardic sages and laymen who settled these territories. Bucharest, Romania had a functioning Sephardic community up until World War II (the scholar Jacob Geller wrote an excellent hebrew monograph on Romanian Sephardim; The Sephardic Jews in Romania; the Flourishing and Decline of a Community (Tel Aviv University, 1983) [Hebrew]). For Transylvania, see “The Decline of a Sephardic Community in Transylvania” in Studies in Honor of M.J. Bernadette.

Rabbi Yechezkel Paneth served as the Chief Rabbi of Karlsburg (Alba Iulia) from 1823 until his passing in 1845. Paneth’s grandson, Yissachar Dov Friedman wrote a biography of his grandfather entitled Toldot Mareh Yechezkel.

In the book Friedman records several interviews he conducted with several elderly Sephardic members of the community who recalled Rabbi Paneth with great reverence and fondness (Rabbi Paneth, though a staunch haredi Ashkenazi conservative, would make it a point to pray every other Shabbat at the Sephardic Synagogue). Friedman recalls how with tears in their eyes, the elderly Sephardic men reminisced about their departed Rabbi, “we are not worthy of mentioning his holy name, there has never been and there never will be one like him. All Jews-Sephardim and Ashkenazim-alike were equal in his eyes. He would pray in our Synagogue every other Shabbat and give a sermon. He would also attend services by us on the first two nights of Passover because we recite Hallel after the evening prayers [Rabbi Paneth, though originally a practitioner of the Ashkenazic rite, took on Chassidic customs]. He also prayed by us on the eve of Shemini Atzeret because we conduct Hakafot then. His face shone like an angel from heaven as he danced with the Torah scrolls. The community raised both him and the Torah and danced with them around the Bima [Tebha] 7 times”. See תולדות מראה יחזקאל בהקדמה לשו”ת דרך יבחר

The recently deceased Skulener Rebbe who was surnamed Portugal also maintained a tradition of Sephardic descent. His own father would append to his signature the hebrew legend “from the exiles of Portugal”. The family originated from the Bessarabian town of Sculeni which had once been under Ottoman Turkish rule. Interestingly enough, in that region of Romania, the surnames Portugal and Portugali were quite common, lending further credence to the theory regarding their ancestry (it is also interesting to note that quite a few other Chassidic Rebbes had Sephardic surnames and or traditions of Sephardic descent, see for instance here and here)

In the former Yugoslavia, the existence of Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities side-by-side is well known. Zemun, Serbia is where Herzl’s paternal family came from. It was Theodore’s grandfather, Simon Loeb who was close with the Serbian Sephardic Rabbi Judah Alkalai (although Herzl himself may not have been Sephardic –as mentioned above, however it is more than interesting to note the often intimate relations between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in that region). In fact, the Balkans experienced several waves of migrations of Jews from Hungary and Poland fleeing persecution. These Jews often assimilated among the Sephardic population, although they did manage to form and maintain a separate communal existence in large cities such as Istanbul and in Salonika. In places like Bulgaria there was such significant mixing between equal parts Ashkenazim and Sephardim that the name of the community was officially hyphenated and called “the holy community of Ashkenazim-Sephardim.” See Dr. Shimon Marcus’s article, “Al Ashkenazim-Sephardim v’al Ashkenazim Stam b’Bulgaria” (I am indebted to my friend Dr. Gabriel Wasserman for this information).

One can perhaps draw an analogy between Sephardim in eastern Europe and ethnic Armenians who arrived en masse to Poland where they were heavily engaged in commerce. In Lviv (Lemberg) for instance they constituted a significant percentage of the city by the 16th century. However, by the 17th century, they had begun to adopt Catholicism and rapidly assimilated among the overall Polish population. They would eventually lose their dominant position in international trade to Jewish merchants.

The Sephardim of Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe came at the invitation of several powerful local leaders. Sometimes they followed their Ottoman patrons to newly acquired Ottoman territories in Eastern Europe. The Ottomans would eventually retreat but they would often choose to stay. Eventually, some would return to their points of origin while others would assimilate among the Ashkenazic majority. Some would “ashkenazify” their names while others would choose to retain their original surnames.

Beider decisively concludes that “very few” Sephardim made it to Eastern Europe, I contend, in light of the evidence-only some of which I have presented above- that a significant number of Sephardic Jews did indeed make it to Eastern Europe. I further believe that their history deserves thorough examination and study (to his credit, Alex Beider has since come around to an extent and readily admitted that that he was too hasty and dismissive in some instances, see here )

Most importantly, many of the descendants of those Sephardic immigrants in Eastern Europe are aware of their background and have expressed a desire to reconnect to the heritage and identity of their Iberian-Jewish forbears. They should not be subjected to expressions of incredulity or derision.


ABOUT THE AUTHORJoel is an independent scholar of Jewish History and translator of Hebrew text. He is also the founder of Channeling Jewish History, a popular social media groups that daily disseminate information about Jewish history and culture.RELATED TOPICS
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“May this coming year come upon us in peace”; The Ancient 1st of Nisan Celebration
MAR 23, 2020, 3:17 AM
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It is late March and the weather is still cold. The sounds of mizrahi music and exuberant conversation emanate from an elegant ballroom in Brooklyn, New York. No, it’s not a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah. A Torah is unfurled and the cantor begins to read from Exodus 12:1, “And God spoke to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.’” The reading is followed by the chanting of liturgical poetry based on this Torah portion, “Rishon Hu Lakhem L’khodshei Hashanah”… Yom Nisan Mevorakh….” “The first month shall it be for you for the months of the year… the month of Nisan is blessed.” As they leave the event, men and women wish each other “Shana tova,” happy new year.

Something seems off; Rosh Hashanah, the traditional Jewish new year, is still six months away. Why the celebration and talk of a new year? This ritual is very familiar, however, to the members of Congregation Ahaba Veahva, a Synagogue that follows the Egyptian-Jewish rite. It is a vestige of a very ancient, almost extinct Jewish custom called Seder Al-Tawhid (Arabic, Seder Ha-Yikhud in Hebrew, the ritual of the unity).

The ritual takes place annually on the closing of the Sabbath which falls out closest to the the first day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. The name “tawhid” denotes a celebration of the unity of God and the miracles that he wrought during this month surrounding the Exodus from Egypt. The way the congregation celebrates it and how this custom survived illuminates important dynamics of how Jewish ritual has been standardized over time.

Ahba Veahva’s members celebrate Rosh Hashanah in September like other rabbinic Jews. The Seder al-Tahwid, however, is a remnant of an ancient custom of the Jews of the near East (variably referred to as Mustaribun or Shamim) to commemorate the first day of the Jewish month of Nisan as a minor Rosh Hashanah as per Exodus 12:1. On their website, Congregation Ahaba Veahva explains the celebration as follows:

On Rosh Chodesh, the children of Israel heard the miracle that they were going to be redeemed on the night of the 15th, Passover, later in that very month. We hold this evening to remember the miracles and the kindness that God does for His nation.
“In Nisan we were redeemed in the past, and in Nisan we are destined to be redeemed again.” [a midrashic quote from Exodus Rabbah 15:2], asserting that just as the Exodus from Egypt took place in Nisan, so too will the ultimate messianic redemption. We hold this evening to put everyone in the correct spiritual mindset: to realize with all their might that this could be the month of the messianic redemption.

The only printed version of the Seder al-Tahwid liturgy is found in an anonymous ten page pamphlet printed in Alexandria. The prayers focus on many themes found in the Rosh Hashana prayers such as blessing, sustenance and messianic redemption in the year to come. The liturgy is found in a somewhat longer form in a tenth century manuscript fragment from the Cairo Geniza, the repository of documents found in the late nineteenth century in the Ben Ezra Synagogue, see here.

The celebration of al-Tahwid begins with special liturgy on the closest Sabbath prior to the day. On the day itself, the community refrains from unnecessary labor similar to intermediate days of Jewish holidays. They also recite a Kiddush (a prayer that sanctifies a day, recited over a cup of wine) followed by a festive meal and the recitation of liturgical poetry. One such poem presents a debate among the twelve months to determine which one will have primacy. In one stanza, for example, Nisan argues that the following month of Iyyar cannot be chosen since its zodiacal sign is Taurus, the same species as the golden calf that Israel made in the wilderness. The concluding stanza is a triumphal declaration from Nisan: שליט אנא וריש על כול”ן”
literally, I am the ruler and the head of all of you.
תקיפה עבדי פרוק לעמיה ובי הוא עתיד למפרוק יתהון

“A deliverance of slavery did I [Nisan] impart upon the nation and in me [Nisan] is he [God] destined to deliver them [again]” (as per the Talmud in BT Rosh Hashanah 10B). Other prayers more explicitly cast the day as the beginning of the new year. One liturgical poem begins: יהי רצון מלפניך ה אלוהינו ואלוהי אבותינו…שתהיה השנה הזאת הבאה עלינו לשלום, translated as, “May it be your will Lord our God and the God of our fathers…that this coming year should come upon us in peace.”

The celebration of the first of Nisan as the beginning of the new year is rooted both in Biblical, extra-Biblical and Talmudic sources. Exodus 12:1-2 states that Nisan is the first month in the setting of the new year. The book of Ezekiel (45:18-19) says: “Thus saith the Lord God: In the first month, in the first day of the month, thou shalt take a young bullock without blemish; and thou shalt purify the sanctuary.”

Ezekiel contains many laws and festivals that are not found in the Pentateuch. Many interpret these as being meant for a future (third) Temple. Ezekiel does not explicitly describe the first of Nissan as a celebration of the new year per se but this description is nonetheless the earliest evidence of the day having special significance.

We find a similar reference in the Temple Scroll (11Q19) of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Temple Scroll describes the ideal Temple of the Qumran sectarians. The Festival of the first day of the first month (Nissan) is one of three additional extra-biblical festivals that are mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

“On the first day of the [first] month [the months (of the
year) shall start; it shall be the first month] of the year [for you. You shall
do no] work.”

File:The Temple Scroll (11Q20) - Google Art Project.jpg
Portion of the Temple Scroll. Israel Museum / Public domain
The Mishnah in Tractate Rosh Hashanah 1:1 describes the First of Nisan as one of the four beginnings of the Jewish New Year:

“There are four new years. On the first of Nisan is the new year for kings and for festivals. On the first of Elul is the new year for the tithe of cattle. … On the first of Tishrei is the new year for years, for release and jubilee years, for plantation and for [tithe of] vegetables…. On the first of Shevat is the new year for trees…”

In an article on the Seder al-Tahwid liturgy, liturgical scholar Ezra Fleischer postulates that the Kiddush ceremony on the holiday was based on an earlier Mishnaic-era institution. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah 2:7 describes how the Sanhedrin, the high religious court of Talmudic-era Israel, consecrated the new month by declaring “it is sanctified.” at which point the entire assemblage would respond in kind, “it is sanctified, it is sanctified.” This declaration was performed with pomp and publicity in order to make it clear that the final word in setting the Jewish calendar belonged to the rabbis of Eretz Yisrael and no one else. In the context of the Seder al-Tahwid this ritual serves to highlight Nisan’s role as the first month of the Jewish lunar year, the beginning of this process of sanctifying the new moon.

If the first of Nisan is such an important date to both the Bible and Talmud then, why is the day celebrated today only by this small Jewish community? To answer this question we must look to the Geonic period of Jewish history, corresponding roughly to the second half of the first millennium. Over the past decade, historians increasingly see this period as one in which a number of variations of Judaism were vying for supremacy. These included several schools of Jewish jurisprudence based in different geographic regions across the Mediterranean Diaspora. Two of the most prominent schools were the Babylonian (Minhag Babhel, based in Baghdad) and Palestinian (Minhag Eretz Yisrael) rites, as well as Karaite Jews who did not follow the Rabbis at all but formed their own, non-rabbinic madhab.

The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem was abolished in the 5th century by Byzantine decree. Its various successors could not recapture its prestige and the Rabbis of Eretz Yisrael gradually lost their power to sanction the new moon. The Karaites developed their own system for setting the calendar. But within the rabbinic tradition, in the absence of the Sanhedrin, the Babylonians and Eretz Israelis often found themselves at odds.

The most notorious controversy between the two schools involved Saadiah ben Joseph Al-Faumi, the head of the Babylonian Academy better known as Saadiah Gaon, and Aharon ben Meir, the head of the Eretz Israel Academy. In 921-923, the two engaged in an extended and very public argument regarding the sanctification of the Hebrew year 4682 (921/22). While the core of this debate surrounded the complicated methods of calculating the Jewish calendar, it became a referendum on which academy, and by extension rite, would become authoritative in the diaspora. Saadiah emerged victorious (historians Marina Rustow and Sacha Stern argue that his authority on these matters may have resulted from his mastery of Abbasid advances in astronomy).

In Eretz Israel, however, the Jewish community, based in Jerusalem, continued to follow the Minhag Eretz Yisrael, which also exerted influence on other Near Eastern Jewish communities such as Egypt. The heads of the Jerusalem academy still often insisted that the right to set the calendar rested solely with them. As late as the 11th century, Rabbi Evyatar Ha-Kohen, the head of the Palestinian Academy (partially in exile in Cairo) would declare:

The land of Israel is not part of the exile such that it would be subject to an Exilarch (a title often applied to the head of the Babylonian Academy) and furthermore one may not contradict the authority of the Prince (a title at times applied to the head of the Palestinian Academy), on the word of whom [alone] may leap years be declared and the holiday dates set according to the order imposed by God before the creation of the world. For this is what we are taught in the secrets of setting a leap year.

All in all, the competition between Babylonia and Eretz Israel ended in a decisive Babylonian victory. This was due to several factors which I will discuss later.

The Waning of the Custom

Already during the period following the end of the first millennium, the celebration of the first of Nisan as the Jewish new year, became the domain of a very small minority of Jews. Whereas during the Geonic Period this festival was celebrated among the Jews of The Land of Israel -as well as their satellite communities across the Middle East- (including a small “Palestinian-rite” contingent in Iraq), by the time of the great Jewish Rabbi and philosopher Maimonides (who was a proponent of the Babylonian rite) this unique rite would become rarer and rarer until becoming nearly extinct.

Let us return for a moment to the issue of the long standing disagreements between the two great Jewish centers of the world during the better part of the first millennium: The Land of Israel and Iraq/Babylonia. The discord between the Babylonians and the Palestinians was not limited to calendrical matters- as previously expanded upon. Another issue which found the two at loggerheads was the liberal nature and the non-standardization of Jewish liturgical texts among the Palestinians. For instance, the Babylonians looked askance at the Palestinian custom of introducing fresh liturgical poetry and inserting them into the fixed prayers during the annual festivals. These and other customs like the celebration for the first of Nisan were deemed exotic at best and incompatible with normative Halakha at worst

As the scholar Steven Reif points out in his article on prayer and liturgy when for instance, in the 8th century, the Andalucian Jewish community sought guidance in liturgical matters, they contacted the Babylonian Gaonim, Natronay and Amram who provided instructions that, of course, followed the ancestral rites of Babylonia. Eventually these texts were recorded and later compiled to form what we now call a “siddur”. As the centralization and standardization of Jewish liturgy took off across the Diaspora, this left the Jews who followed the Palestinian rite-and who were fast becoming a minority-to feel more isolated and entrenched. As mentioned before, the Jews of Eretz Israel had long felt that they maintained in primacy in matters of religious ritual. The Palestinians sought to establish their power bases in their own satellite communities. There is also evidence of correspondence and cross cultural fertilization between the center of Byzantine Eretz Yisrael and those in Christian Europe. The Cairo Genizah, for instance, produced responsa from the proto-Ashkenazic Rabbis of the German city of Mainz to the “lions of Jerusalem” as the Rabbis of the Palestinians Academy were euphemistically referred to, see here. There is also evidence from a medieval scroll called Megillat Ahimaaz that the Palestinian Academy maintained ties with the Jews of Italy.

Post Babylonia and Eretz Israel

The great competition between Babylonia and Eretz Yisrael ended in a decisive Babylonian victory. This was due to several factors not least of which is the fact that Babylonian Jewry experienced much more stability under Sassanian and later Islamic rule while its Eretz Israel counterpart was constantly experiencing persecution and uprooting. The final death knell for Minhag Eretz Yisrael was delivered in July of 1099 when an army of Crusaders broke through the walls of Jerusalem and massacred the city’s Jewish inhabitants, the Babylonian-rite and the Palestinian-rite communities; as well as the Karaites were put to the sword. One of the unfortunate consequences of the Babylonian victory was the gradual decline and eventual disappearance of many unique Eretz Yisrael customs. It is only due to the discovery of the Cairo Genizah that scholars have become aware of many of those long-lost traditions and customs.

But although Babylon did achieve victory, its status as a center of world Jewry began to change and it in fact began to experience a precipitous decline as the Sephardic communities of the Iberian Peninsula and the Ashkenazic communities of France and Germany were increasingly on the ascendancy. Both of the aforementioned communities maintained traditions that came out of Babylonia (although as the scholar Israel Ta Shma points out in his book on early Ashkenazic prayer, both the Sephardic and Ashkenazic rites and customs are an amalgamation of both schools, although the influence of Eretz Yisrael was perhaps more evident in the Ashkenazi rite, probably due to the old ties between the proto Ashkenazim in Christian Europe and the Academy in Byzantine Eretz Yisrael see for instance here.

The latest evidence of the celebration of the first of Nisan comes to us from the 13th century and it would seem that even by this time it was all but stamped out by those who were determined to establish the primacy of the Babylonian school. This period coincides with the increased activism of Rabbi Abraham Maimonides, the son of Moses Maimonides, the great Spanish codifier of Jewish law. Rabbi Abraham, who championed standardization based on his father’s codification, exerted great pressure against the Synagogue of the Palestinians in Fustat, Old Cairo to bring their ritual into line with Babylonian standards. He was for the most part successful but, as we have already seen, this unique custom was retained (albeit in diminished form) among Egyptian Jews to this very day.

In an April 20, 1906 article for the English Jewish Chronicle, Herbert Loewe provides an eyewitness account of an Al-Tawhid ceremony in the fashionable Abbasiya neighborhood of Cairo. Two years later, a more detailed description was recorded by the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, Refael Aharon ben Shimon in his book Nehar Misrayim.

After extolling this “beautiful custom,” ben Shimon laments how the custom had become so weakened and how so many had become lax in keeping it. He states that this is largely due to the fact that the city had experienced such large scale expansion and many members of the Jewish community had relocated to the suburbs. He concludes on an optimistic note with the hope that the custom will experience a renaissance in the near future.

I reproduce it here (courtesy of Hebrewbooks.org):





Two other North African Jewish communities retain more pared-down versions of the celebration of the first of Nisan. In the communities of Tunisia and Libya, the ceremony is referred to as bsisa (and also maluhia). Bsisa is also the name given to a special dish that is prepared for this day which is made of wheat and barley flour mixed with olive oil, fruits and spices. Several prayers for the new year are recited whereupon the celebrants exchange new year greetings with each other. Many of these prayers contain similar themes to the Egyptian-Jewish Tahwid prayers discussed above. (For example: “Shower down upon us from your bounty and we shall give it over to others. That we shall never experience want– and may this year be better than the previous year.”)

As in the Egyptian community, however, the new year aspect of the celebration is not especially stressed. As the eminent historian and expert on North African Jewry Nahum Slouschz points out in an article in Davar (April 7, 1944), “It is impossible not to see in these customs the footprints of an ancient Rosh Hashanah which was abandoned with the passage of time because of the tediousness of the Passover holiday and in favor of the holiness of the traditional [Tishrei] Rosh Hashana.” (For more on the roots and contemporary practice of bsisa and maluhia see here, here, here, and here. For videos of the bsisa/maluhia ceremony see here, here, and here.)

Although the observance of the First of Nissan is no longer as prominent as it once was in rabbinic Judaism, the two most prominent non-rabbinic Jewish communities, the Karaites and the Samaritans, have maintained the holiday into recent times. The Cairo Genizah contains leaves from a Karaite prayer book containing a service for the first of Nisan. This custom eventually fell out of the Karaite textual record as Karaite traditions fell in line with Rabbanite ones over the later middle ages. In his monumental study of the now extinct European Karaite community, historian Mikhail Kizilov discusses how Eastern-European Karaites underwent a gradual process of “dejudaidization” and “turkification” in the 1910s-20s. This was largely due to the work of their spiritual and political head, Seraya Shapshal, who, aware of growing Anti-Semitism in Europe, was determined to present his flock as genetically unrelated to the Jews (claiming instead that they were descendants of Turkic and Mongol tribes). He likewise sought to recast Karaism as a syncretistic Jewish-Christian-Muslim-pagan creed. Among the reforms instituted by Shapshal was the changing of the Karaite calendar. Although the Karaites of old began the calendar year on Nisan, as per Exodus, they had long assimilated the Rabbinic custom of beginning the year in Tishrei. Shapshal sought to avoid a lining up of the Karaite and Rabbanite new years which is why he switched the Karaite new year to March-April, thereby ironically reverting back to the ancient Karaite custom. This particular reform never took off and the community continued to celebrate the new in year in Tishrei. Even the official Karaite calendars printed that date (which like the Rabbanites they called “Rosh Hashanah”). Currently, Karaites do not actually celebrate this day or recite any special liturgy, however they do nominally recognize this day as Rosh Hashanah and they will exchange new year tidings.


Siddur Eretz Yisrael, published by modern scholars (and proponents) of the Eretz Israel rite. BenTzadoq / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
The tiny community of Samaritans in Israel preserve the most extensive observance of this day. According to the Samaritan elder and scholar Benyamim Sedaka, the Samaritans celebrate the evening of the first day of the first Month – The Month of Aviv – as the actual Hebrew New Year. They engage in extended prayers on the day followed by festive family gatherings. They likewise bless one another with the traditional new year greeting “Shana Tova” and begin the observance, as the followers of the Palestinian rite once did, on the Sabbath preceding the day. The entire liturgy for the holiday is found in A. E. Cowley’s “The Samaritan Liturgy.” The fact that the Samaritans, who have functioned as a distinct religious community from Jews since at least the second century BCE, observe this tradition is the greatest indicator of its antiquity. The antiquity of this custom is also suggested by the fact that the springtime new year is likewise celebrated by many other ethnic communities from the Middle East including the Persians and Kurds (who call it Nowruz) and also, much closer to Jews linguistically and culturally, the Arameans and Chaldeans/Assyrians who call their New Year Kha (or Khada) B’nissan (the first of Nissan).

Minhag Eretz Israel is now effectively extinct. Today, however, there is a small community of predominantly Ashkenazic Jews in Israel who seek to reconstruct this rite. Using the work of scholars who have labored to piece the Palestinian rite together based on the Cairo Genizah, this community endeavors to put it back into practical usage. Among many other customs, they celebrate the First of Nisan. The flagship institution of this movement is called Machon Shiloh and its founder and leader is an Australian-Israeli Rabbi named David bar Hayyim. In private correspondence, Yoel Keren, a member of Machon Shilo, stated that his community observes the festival in the manner prescribed by the Geniza fragments. On the eve of the first of Nissan, the community waits outside to sight the new moon, then recites the kiddush prayer and finally sits down to a festive meal. The community has also recently published a prayer book called Siddur Eretz Yisrael, which is based on the ancient rite. You can listen to some prayers recited in this rite here, here, and here.
For an interesting interview with Rabbi Bar-Hayyim about the rite and its contemporary usage see here.

This year, as the the pubic celebrations of Tawhid have been canceled due to the worldwide pandemic, the following words from the Tawhid prayer ring more relevant than ever:

כֵּן, יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ וֵאלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, עֲצוֹר וּמְנַע מַגֵּפָה מִנַחֲלָתְךָ וְהָסֵר מִמֶּנּוּ כׇּל־מִינֵי מַשְׁחִית וְכׇל־מִינֵי עֲנִיּוּת.

May it be your will our G-d and the G-d of out fathers, cease and prevent the epidemic from upon your inheritance. And remove from upon us all manners of destruction and poverty.
Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Tribe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Ephraim

[Rabbit Hole]

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/actually-a-significant-number-of-ashkenazim-are-descended-from-sephardim/

Actually, a Significant Number of Ashkenazim are Descended from Sephardim
MAY 16, 2019, 9:41 AM
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In an interview that I conducted in the Tel Aviv home of the renowned Israeli historian of the Hasidic movement Dr. Isaac Alfasi , the latter recounted to me an exchange he once had with Israeli Prime Minister David ben Gurion. Alfasi, who served as President of the Israeli branch of Bnai Brith in the 1950s, was asked by the elder statesman, “Are you a Sephardi or an Ashkenazi?”

“I am a Sephardic Jew from Poland,” came Alfasi’s reply.

Ben Gurion was incredulous, Alfasi recalls. “How can one be a Sephardi from Poland?” Alfasi then explained to the man that indeed Sephardim had settled in various parts of Poland and that he happened to be descended from one of those families. (Secondary source: “Sippurei Chassidim” by Hanani Bleich, Shevii, Kav Itonut Newspaper 12/19/12)

In an article posted on the Israeli online news site YNET (March 13, 2007), the genealogist Orit Lavie explores the roots of her Alfasi forbears from Krakow, Poland. According to Lavie (translation mine):

My connection to the Sephardic diaspora begins in the second half of the 19th century…[my ancestor] Yaakov Alfos was a descendant of Rabbi Avraham Alfos-Alfasi of Opoczno, Poland. The surname Alfasi denotes origins in Fez, Morocco and the reader might ask what connection could there possibly be between Alfasi and Poland? One of the most-well known members of this family was the famed Talmudist Rabbi Isaac Alfasi, known also by the acronym “RIF.” He was born in Algeria and eventually relocated to Fez, Morocco. At the end of his life, he resided in Spain and one of his descendants apparently ended up in Poland.

Lavie pointedly concludes her piece:

The saga of this family indicates that the perceived divide between Ashkenazim and Sephardim is not as wide as it seems and the distance between these two Jewish Diasporas is a lot closer than is commonly thought.

I was reminded of these tidbits when I read Alexander Beider’s article on “faux” Sephardim entitled Many ‘Sephardic’ Jews Aren’t Actually Sephardic

Far be it from me to engage in debate with one of the world’s most renowned experts on Ashkenazi surnames. However, I must stridently disagree with several of his statements and assessments and take issue with what I perceive to be several errors of commission and omission.

Beider writes:

“But most of all, we did not know what many people don’t know: that no group of Sephardic Jews ever migrated to Germany, with the exception of a single Sephardic community that made its way to Hamburg.

That just isn’t accurate. Sephardic Jewish communities sprung up and flourished in several other parts of Germany such as Berlin, Altona, Glückstadt, Leipzig, Poznan and Offenbach/Frankfurt among other places. Additionally, there were 3 Sephardic Temples in Copenhagen and they also established communities in other large cities in Western and Central Europe such as Prague and Vienna (see also this and this). In 1662 a converso turncoat testified before the Spanish inquisition as to the existence of a community of Portuguese returnees to the Jewish faith in Danzig/Gdansk in Poland (which had a majority German population) among other places.

(Source: Archivo Historico Nacional de Esapagne, Inquisition archives, Liber 1127. I am indebted to the Dutch researcher Ton Tielen for this particular piece of information).

In Poland, the city of Zamosc, midway between Lvov and Lublin, is perhaps the foremost place that comes to mind when speaking of Sephardim in Poland itself. The famous writer Y.L. Peretz (to whom I will return later) hailed from that city.

According to Beider, “The mistaken belief that many European Jews are Sephardic is based almost invariably on surnames borne by members of their families.” But this is simply not true. While many Eastern European Jewish families with Sephardic-sounding family names stake a claim to Sephardic ancestry, many, if not most, who make this claim, do not in fact have Sephardic surnames (this is a good time to note many names that do “sound Sephardic,” are of Latin/Romance origin – and often are not Sephardic at all. Examples include Alemani, Morpurgo, Luzzato, Delmedigo et al). Often the claim is that the name had undergone “Ashkenazification” (typical of these would be the German equivalent to a prior Spanish surname, ex: Belmonte>Schoenberg).

While surnames can often be misleading , at other times they are clear indicators of a lost Sephardic past. According to the Israeli writer and historian Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon-Fischman, the patriarch of his family, namely his grandfather, Rabbi Mordechai Hacohen of Satanov, Ukraine was the first to utilize the name Maimon. This was allegedly done because when the Czarist Russian authorities made it mandatory for Jews to choose surnames, the aforementioned Rabbi Mordechai-whose wife Malka maintained a tradition of descent from the famed Maimonides-chose a name that would reflect that particular family tradition.

(Source: Geula bat Yehuda, Harav Maimon Bedorotav, p.34)

Will the Real Sephardi Please Stand Up?

The most reasonable thing to do is to divide all Ashkenazi claimants to Sephardic ancestry into three categories: the first are those who clearly have no connection to Sephardim. The second are families whose descent has yet to be verified, and finally there are the Ashkenazim of certain Sephardic descent.

The reasons for the existence of the first category are many and varied. The first is a sincere belief borne out of a misunderstood cultural or onomastic indicator. For instance, I have seen all to often Jews who initially research their Eastern Europeans forbears exclaim in excitement that their forebears were most assuredly Sephardim. The proof? A particular ancestor was a member of a congregation called “Anshei Sephard,” which literally translates to the “People of Sepharad.” In reality of course, this term was used by people who prayed in the Chassidic rite, as the Chassidic rite of Eastern Europe was based on the modified Sephardic rite of the master Kabbalist, Isaac Luria

Another reason why someone would make this sort of claim is financial. Recently the governments of Spain and Portugal have guaranteed citizenship to any Jew who can provide documentation that one of his ancestors was expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492.

Additionally, there was a time in the US when Sephardim were potential beneficiaries of government policies meant to benefit minorities. One somewhat bizarre episode is mentioned in Ian Ayre’s book Pervasive Prejudice? Unconventional Evidence of Race and Gender Discrimination (p.400):

two much publicized (but nonrepresentative) instances of “whites” seeking to pass as minorities in order to qualify for affirmative action benefits…The status of the Lieberman family (which claimed Hispanic status as Sephardic Jews to qualify for an FCC affirmative action program) stands however on a much firmer footing. While the FCC’s finding that the Lieberman’s qualified as Hispanic has been decried as a racial hoax by commentators and judges, see Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547, 633 n.1 (1990) (Kennedy,J., dissenting) (“The [FCC], for example, has found it necessary to trace an applicant’s history to 1492 to conclude that the applicant was “Hispanic” for purposes of a minority tax certificate policy.”); Ronald D. Rotunda, Modern Constitutional Law 544 (4th ed. 1993) (The Lieberman family “qualified as Hispanic because they traced their family to Jews whom the King had expelled from Spain in 1492. If you assume 20 years to a generation, there were over 24 generations from 1492 to the [present]. That means that Mr. Lieberman was as closely related to 16,777,216 ancestors.”), the FCC found that Adolfo Lieberman and is sons Jose, Elias, and Julio were “regarded by both themselves and their community as being Hispanic.” Their native language was Spanish which “they still speak a majority of the time.” The family members had lived together in Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica before coming to the United States and becoming naturalized citizens”.

Another reason to claim Sephardic descent is the subject of John Efron’s excellent book German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. According to Efron, when the German Jews embarked upon the quest for legal emancipation and social acceptance, they also undertook a program of cultural renewal. Part of this renewal was the casting off of an unwanted identity and the taking on of what they deemed to be a superior Jewish identity. In the mind of many an enlightened German Jew, Ashkenazim represented insularity, backwardness and moral -and even physical degeneracy. By contrast, the Sephardim of old Andalucía were seen as worldly, morally superior and intellectually and physically superior. Efron provides numerous examples in his book of Ashkenazi public figures who laid a claim to this legacy for the reasons enumerated above. Just one example would suffice for now.

Efron:

No one better exemplifies the romantic tendency to venerate the Sephardim…than Theodore Herzl. With his vivid imagination and highly developed theatrical sense, this Budapest-born resident of Vienna construed for himself an imaginary lineage, wherein he claimed to be descended of Sephardic Jews. In one…his paternal great-grandfather, A Rabbi named Loebl, had been forcibly converted to Catholicism. After fleeing the Iberian Peninsula, Loebl emerged in Constantinople, whereupon he openly returned to Judaism…for his own sense of self and his own self-image Herzl concocted this fantasy wherein Loebl was no longer the Slovenian Jew of reality but the Spanish Jew of Herzl’s desires…Herzl longed to be anything but an Ashkenazic Jew from Central Europe.

Instructively, Efron notes,” Lest one think that Herzl’s invention reflects a decidedly 19th century sentiment, in the course of writing this book, I had conversations with a surprising number of Ashkenazi Jews who declared to me that their families had originally come from Spain.” Efron dismisses this out of hand. Although in a personal correspondence he does concede that some Sephardim did make their way to Eastern Europe but overall the claims of Sephardic descent are, in his words, “a desperate cry for Jewish yikhus” [noble descent].

Oddly enough, at a recent conference on the famous Sephardic Halakhist and mystic, Rabbi Joseph Caro, the Israeli researcher, Dr. Mor Altschuler, author of a biography on Caro, mentioned in passing that Theodore Herzl was a “Sephardi from a Sephardi family.” Altschuler then added – amid expressions of incredulity from the audience – “And there is a tradition-although it has yet to be verified-that he was a direct descendant of the Sephardic Kabbalist Joseph Taitazak of Salonika (a close rabbinic colleague of Caro)”.

This tradition was apparently first recorded by the Hasidic historian and Zionist Aharon Marcus. Marcus claimed that he heard this from Herzl’s mouth himself. It was again repeated by the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook in his writings (see שיחות הרצי”ה, עיטורי כהנים, 126, וכן לנתיבות ישראל חלק ב’, מאמר “להצדיק צדיקים).

It should be noted, however, that in the Hebrew Encyclopedia, Paul Diamant (a cousin of Theodore Herzl) wrote:

“בין אבותיו הספרדיים הקדומים יותר של הר’ מציינים את יהודה ירוחם, ישראל טאיטאצאק ויהודה אמיגו, אלא שעדיין לא נמצאו מסמכים לאישורן של קביעות אלו.”

“Among the earlier Sepharadic Herzl’s ancestors, are mentioned Yehuda Yerucham, Israel Taitachek and Yehuda Amigo, but meanwhile no supporting documents have been found to substantiate it”. Meir Amigo was indeed the community leader of the Sephardic Jewish community in Timisoara in the second half of the 18th century. His son was Abraham Amigo who later took on his father’s name, Meir or Mayer as the family surname. As mentioned, there has been no substantiation so far for this linkage.

Even more intriguing is the fact that the name Taitaczak (the surname of the alleged ancestor of Herzl) appears in Hungary (chiefly in Timisoara) (!), see for instance, Dictionary of Sephardic Surnames by Guilherme Faiguenboim, Paulo Valadares and Anna Rosa Campagnano.

Efron rightly points out, many Ashkenazim in the 18th and 19th centuries looked to the Sephardim of “Golden Age” Andalucía as the ideal archetypal Jews worthy of emulation. Claiming ancestry from Sephardim became in vogue.

There was a trend among some Ashkenazim to claim “exotic” ancestry. This was not necessarily always a desire to claim a linkage with Sepharad specifically (one charlatan that comes to mind is the Belarusian Zusia Zussman [a.k.a. Shlomo Yehuda Friedlander], the infamous forger of the Jerusalem Talmud; calling himself “Friedlander-Algazi” he claimed to be a member of a respected scholarly Sephardic family from Turkey-and gained the short-lived respect of many Eastern European Orthodox Jews). Others desired to link themselves to Karaites (this seems to be the case with the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin who claimed Crimean Karaite ancestry on his maternal line). One Eastern European Jewish family even claimed descent from a “lost tribe of Israel!

The Abarbanel (or Barbanel) family from Eastern Europe is another interesting case. It is worth mentioning that quite a few eastern European Ashkenazim maintain a tradition of descent from the famed Spanish statesman and Rabbi Don Isaac Abarbanel. Aside from the many Jews in Poland and Russia with the surname Abarbanel, there are others who claim indirect descent; in personal correspondence to me, the noted expert on American-Jewish history, Dr. Jonathan Sarna – whose family hails from Lithuania – wrote that his family maintained such a tradition (“my father proudly spoke of his descent from Don Isaac Abarbanel” [Dr. Jonathan Sarna to Joel Davidi Weisberger-December, 7, 2008]) .

Boris Pasternak, author of Dr. Zhivago, hailed from a family of Odessa Jewish intellectuals who claimed descent from Abarbanel. His Sephardic lineage may have been claimed via his maternal grandmother who carried the Sephardi surname “Camondo.”

The famous Zionist activist, Hungarian-born Dr. Max Nordau was so taken with this particular family tradition that, according to his biographer, Jakub Zineman, his father, a nominally Orthodox Hungarian Jew with the surname “Siedfeld” kept the tradition of Sephardic ancestry alive by teaching his children Ladino and holding on to an over-sized house key which had allegedly been passed from father-to-son for generations -since the family’s expulsion from Spain in 1492. Nordau himself records in his diary the overwhelming emotional experience of returning to visit his ancestral home in Iberia.

Whether all of these traditions and stories are 100% true is impossible to prove at this point with certainty, what we do need however is more nuance and open-mindedness. Some of these claims are most assuredly bunk while others are very much legitimate.

Beider:

Then you have several sources which claim that the famous Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz is said to have Sephardic ancestors, likely due to numerous Sephardic Jews called Perez or Peres

This is no mere rumor or hearsay; Y.L. Peretz’s Sephardic ancestry has been the subject of much discussion over the years. The respected Yiddish literary critic, S. Niger Charney in a tribute article to Peretz published in the 1952 Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science devotes considerable space to this particular family tradition. While Charney does calls call his Sephardic ancestry “a theory” and wishes there was documentary substantiation, he notes:

Though it has to this date not been definitely substantiated, Rosa Peretz Laaks, a close relative of the poet, tells in her memoirs that “the Peretz family possessed a genealogical document which states that the family originally came from Spain.”

Charney cites two other prominent Yiddishists who speak of Peretz’s Sephardic heritage including Zalman Reyzen and the playwright Aaron Zeitlin who himself quotes the respected Jewish historian Dr. Ignac (Yitzhak) Schipper to the effect that “there was a definite tradition in Peretz’s family regarding their Sephardic ancestry.”

Charney seems convinced enough of the veracity of this claim and writes:

The two great currents of the last two thousand years of Jewish history- the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic- thus converged and became one in the person of Peretz…Peretz- a Sephardic-Ashkenazic Jew! What unity this would provide to the duality of his person! To his aristocratic intellectualism on the one hand and to his deep democratic attachment to the masses on the other. Peretz, a great grandson of the Jews who brought forth Samuel Hanagid, Ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi, the Ibn Ezras and Maimonides; and Peretz, the typical representative of Polish Jewry before it was liquidated- what meaning such duality of origin would give to his role as one of the creators of a new Yiddish folk literature and to his continues aspiration to raise it to the level of a truly national literature!

Likewise, J. Bielinsky in an article entitled “Historical Curiosities; On the Oriental-Hispano origin of certain Russian Jews” published in the French-Jewish Periodical Le Judaisme Sepharade in 1936 writes, “Some people do not know that the greatest Yiddish writer Y. L. Peretz was born Sephardic. He was born in 1857 in Russian Poland to a Judeo-Spanish family, and before adopting the Yiddish vernacular, he wrote in Hebrew. But it was he who created in Poland in 1905 the first Yiddish daily Der Weg. He died in the midst of war in 1915, and if the Yiddish press in Paris wants to commemorate the anniversary of his death, Pariser Haint [a Yiddish daily that was published in Paris geared toward Polish Yiddish-speaking immigrants-J.D.W.] might remind its readers of a seemingly paradoxical fact that it was a Sephardic Jew who founded the first Yiddish daily in Eastern Europe”.

The Sephardic Community of Amsterdam sends Sephardim to…Poland

During the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam (its governing body was referred to as the mahamad), considered one of the wealthiest Sephardic Jewish communities in Europe (if not the world) would often hand over some money to poor indigent Sephardim and send them to settle far away (these were referred to in Portuguese as despachos).

Although most of these people were sent to places that had well-established Sephardic communities, some of them were also sent to overwhelmingly Ashkenazic Poland.

I thank Ton Tielen for extracting from the archives of the Spanish and Portuguese community in Amsterdam the names and details of five persons who were dispatched to Poland in the manner described above.

What follows is the Hebrew year, the names and the destinations of five such despachos(which they all have in common, namely Poland):

5448, Merari Belogrado Polonia

5455, Nieto de H.H. Usiel Polonia

5461, Mordehay Cohen Polonia

5462, Rahel Cuna Polonia

5474, Abraham Israel Guer Polonia (apparently a proselyte to Judaism).

One of the names, Usiel is of particular interest. He is referred to as a descendant of Hakham Uziel. This, according to Tielen, must be Hakham Isaac Uziel who died and was buried in Amsterdam in 1622. Uziel went to Poland in 1752 according to the archival document cited above. From another archival document, this time a list of Sephardim who migrated to Zamosc , Poland in the years 1588-1650, we come across one Abraham Uziel (whose name appears in the official documentation in the polonized form, “Uzelowicz”).

It is more than tempting to ponder whether the Uziel family – now well established in Zamosc – would not on occasion experience the arrival of family members. This would indicate that the Sephardic community in Zamosc did not die out soon after it was established – as many historians claim – but it rather continued to exist well into the 18th century. It would otherwise be difficult to understand why the mahamad would for all practical purposes dump a member of a prominent Sephardic family in middle of Poland.

This becomes even more apparent when we recall that the mahamad strictly proscribed Ashkenazic-Sephardic intermarriage and even expelled not a few members for violating this clause. One rightfully wonders, why why they would send a prominent member of their community to a locale where the end result would be certain assimilation into the Ashkenazi majority population. This may be solid proof that Sephardic communities – albeit small – did exist in Poland with occasional boosters in the form of financial help and human material from larger and more established communities.

Above all, we must recall, as I did in my opening passage citing from Ms. Lavie, the distance between Sepharad and Ashkenaz is not all that vast in the grand scheme of things.

Lavie mentions her Alfasi antecedents arriving in Poland from the Sephardic diaspora at some point in the distant past. One must recall that Jewish Diasporas were rarely stagnant; there were constants comings and goings from Sephardic centers to Ashkenazic centers and vice versa. As early as the 11th century, there was travel by Spanish scholars to Germany as well as by German and French scholars to Iberia . One of the most famous Ashkenazi scholars to settle in Spain was Rabbi Asher ben Jechiel who relocated from Germany to Toledo in the 14th century (see for instance “Relations Between Spanish and Ashkenazi Jewry in the Middle Ages” by Avraham Grossman in The Sephardic Legacy by Haim Beinart).

One of the most surprising things (to me at least), were the DNA results of what was thought to have been one of the oldest Ashkenazic clans, namely the Katznellenbogen family from Italy. The results suggest that the “ashkenazification” of some Sephardim began much earlier than previously thought-and again hammers home the point that the differences between Sephardim and Ashkenazim are somewhat artificial.

Interesting to note as well, as late as the 19th century, a Jewish girl from Lodz, Poland journeyed to the Jewish Mellah of Marrakech, Morocco to wed her fiancée. The girl’s name was Rina Lutzki and the groom was David Aldaudi, the scion of a prominent local family that claimed Davidic descent through the Exilarchs of ancient Babylonia and Spain. The match came about as a result of the mercantile activities of the Lutzki family. The latter ran a successful clothing and furniture business and were commissioned by the Sultan of Morocco to furnish his palace. It was due to these travels that the Lutzki brothers were made aware of the eligible Aldaudi bachelor and before long they proposed their sister as a suitable match. Rina relocated to Marrakech where she experienced some difficulty acclimating to her new surroundings. Before long however, the Moroccan-Polish couple decided to immigrate to the Land of Israel where they gave birth to a son. The product of this union would later grow up to be the prominent Rabbi Makhlouf Aldaudi (1825-1909) who served as the Hakham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) of the Jewish communities of Acre, Safed and Tiberias from 1889 to 1909.

Jewish history is replete with these types of migrations. Few Jewish Diasporas were “pure bred”; most Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities are a result of a mishmash of ethnicities – not to mention rites and customs.

A large prominent Sephardic clan from North Africa surnamed Sarfati maintains descent from the preeminent Ashkenazi sage, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, better known as Rashi who was born in Troyes, France. This is due to the fact that when the Jews were expelled from France in the 13th century, many of his descendants relocated to Spain and North Africa where they soon became Sephardicized.

Other Jews in Poland have maintained very interesting traditions of Sephardic descent. Rabbi Yosef Wallis who heads the Israeli Orthodox Arakhim organization recently led a delegation back to the home of his tragic direct ancestor Rafael Valls on the Spanish island of Majorca. Valls was one of 37 secret Jews burned at the stake there in 1691 for refusing to renounce their Jewishness.

According to a profile in the New York Times:

Rabbi Wallis, 64, who was born in Israel and raised in New York, is the son of two Holocaust survivors from the Dachau camp. His father [a scion of Hasidim of the Gerrer sect from Pabianice, Poland], he said, remembered an old family Bible, lost during World War II, with the name of Rafael Valls at the top of the list of ancestors with birth and death dates that listed him as burned at the stake.

One finds it difficult to believe that Wallis invented this ancestry out of whole cloth.

Quite famously, in 1588, the Polish count Jan Zamoyski published his charter of rights for the Spanish and Portuguese Jews that he invited in his newly built city of Zamosc. The document is still extant in the Latin original (in the archives of Krasnistow) and in its Polish translation. Similar documents were granted to Sephardim in Troppau (Polish: Opawa) and Karniow in Silesia in 1612. The first recorded Jew in Zamosc was Moses de Mosso Cohen. He was the son of the merchant Abraham de Mosso who was, in turn, an agent of the prominent Sephardic merchant and diplomat Don Joseph Nassi. Among the dozens of names that has come down to us from Zamosc, a Sephardic Rabbi referred to as Doktor and a prominent community head named Shmuel Barzel are noteworthy.

From a letter dated 1587 by de Mosso Cohen we learn that “the councilor only wants frenkim to settle there and does not desire the local Jews.” This discrimination in favor of imported Sephardim continued under Zamoyski’s successor who extended the 1588 injunction for newly arrived Sephardic settlers from Holland and Flanders. The Jewish cemetery in Zamosc is still extant and much research still remains to be done.

The Wooden Sephardic Synagogues of Lithuania

Dr. Rose Lerer Cohen, formerly of South Africa and now Jerusalem, has been researching Sephardim in Lithuania. Her interest in the topic was stirred when she says she met a man who referred to himself as a “litvishe frank,” a Litvak Sephardi.

In Lithuania authentic Sephardic congregations seem to have existed. Shlomo Katzav in a booklet Hasefardim be’eretz Lita lists Sephardic congregations in places like Otian, Biraz, Dolhinov, Heidozishok, Vilkomir and Kopishok. Katzav lists several congregations with the name Alsheikh (in Horodna and Shavel). There are also two Alfas congregations, one in Tabarig and and the other in Lida.

Arthur Menton in The Book of Destiny: Toledot Charlap recounts the saga of his Sephardic forbears, the Don-Yichye and Charlap families who arrived from Spain and settled in the Baltic states. He also mentions one Lithuanian town whose Jewish community was said to have been founded by Sephardic emigres, namely Vilkaviskis (Vilkovishk). The community kept accurate records and as recently as 1920, a massive tome containing information about 400 years of Jewish life in Vilkaviskis was cited by several researchers. The book is now housed in Israel’s National Library but has never been transcribed to my knowledge.

According to Menton, “The book indicated that a Jewish settlement existed there at the beginning of the 16th century…Princess Bora Sforges made a gift of lumber to the community to build prayer houses and the copper domed synagogue known to its last days as “the old shul”. Its ark… housed the profusely embellished Sefer Torahs which originated in Spain”.

Image may contain: 4 people
From a pre-war Polish Yiddish newspaper. The caption reads, “The Sephardic Golden Chain in Latvia”. It features photos of members of the renowned Rabbinical Don-Yichye family.


The Sephardic Baal Shem from Poland

One of the more curious Jewish figures that came out of Podolia, the Polish-Ukrainian province (that was under Ottoman-Turkish rule from 1672-1699) , was Samuel Jacob Hayyim Falk (1710-1782). His portrait is often mistaken for that of the Baal Shem Tov (himself from Podolia). Falk was, according to Rabbi Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, a Kabbalist and a suspected Sabbatean. Most interesting to us is the likelihood that he was a Sephardic Jew. In the formers’ biographical sketch of Falk in Transactions of the Historical Society of England, Adler writes that Falk who was a miracle worker and known as the “Baal Shem of London” (where he later immigrated) referred to himself in his personal book as the “son of Refael the Sephardi.” While initially exercising caution and theorizing that Falk was perhaps referring to the fact that his father prayed in the Hassidic rite, he eventually concedes that he was in fact the son of a Sephardic Jew (the conflation between the Sephardic rite and the so-called Nusakh Sefard is a subject that deserves further research). Moreover, the fact that he prayed in the Sephardic pronunciation, ate Sephardic food, and recorded his name as “Laniado” lends further credence to this.

It is worth noting here that the Early Modern Period saw a reshuffling of large parts of the “Jewish world”. As Dr. Elisheva Carlebach put it, “pieces of a cultural mosaic that had been placed precisely and not moved for centuries were suddenly shaken up and scattered about in entirely new combinations”.

The “shaking up” was chiefly a result of wars, massacres and mass expulsions. The expulsions of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century and the massacres of Jews in mid 17th century Poland brought many Jews from different backgrounds into contact with each other for the first time.
Jacob Katz in his Tradition and Crisis postulates that “it is doubtful there ever was a time since the decline of the Roman Empire when Jewry’s political organization was still centralized in which contacts between Jewish groups was as intense as in this period”.
Back to Podolia, another figure of note with Sephardic ancestry from that region was the writer Karl Emil Franzos
It was Podolia, as well, that the infamous Sabbatean Jacob Frank stemmed from. A good indication of the close ties between Sephardim and Ahskenazim of that period is the fact that the Frank family frequently shuttled between Poland and Turkey and spoke Ladino fluently.
In a recent DNA study of the Hassidic Twersky Rabbinical dynasty from Ukraine, the Sephardic ancestry of that clan is claimed to have been established with certainty.

Sephardim in Hungary, Romania and Transylvania

As we move further south in Eastern Europe, the preponderance of evidence for Sephardic settlement increases. In Hungary, some Sephardim arrived almost immediately after the expulsion. As late as the 19th century the Synagogue of the frenkim (a term that derives from the Turkish, meaning “Western faringi/frengi”, a loanword from frank, etc.) was located in Budapest. According to Kinga Frojimovics and Géza Komoróczy in Jewish Budapest; Monuments, Rites, History Isaac Almuslin who lived in Pest in the last decades of the 18th century was a frenk too. Adolf Agai (1836-1916, a Hungarian writer, journalist and editor reminisced about his Sephardic grandfather. “My late grandfather [Agai refers to him as Don Yitzhak in other places], founded the frenk Synagogue in Budapest in the 30s [1830]. These Sephardi Jews dispersed from Spain all over the world, retained their mother tongue, Spanish, with great love and care. The older generation still speaks it at home. Old Castilian and ancient Andalusian chants and zemirot sounded at my grandfather’s table on holidays, where we used to eat an ethnic pastry filled with spinach.”

Adolf Agai, “About my great-grandfather”, 1907 as cited in Jewish Budapest p. 33

Ancient records also indicate that Buda at one time had a “Syrian community” (kehilla siriatike) which probably maintained its own Synagogue (Ibid, p. 33).

The last traces of real Sephardi Jews in Budapest were found in 1944. The Spanish ambassador’s deputy (Angel Sanz-Briz), leaving Hungary, reported to his government on December 14, 1944:
“The undersigned managed to establish the fact that there were a limited number of Sephardi people living in Budapest. They had migrated there from the former Ottoman Empire and had preserved their Spanish language. They number 45. We issued a regular (Spanish) passport for them, in which we recorded the 45 persons mentioned above. (…) I expounded to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry that the protection of the Sephardim had always been the traditional policy of the Spanish authorities and that this had always been respected by the countries in which the Jewish question was raised”

According to The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a Sephardic presence was also documented in Eger, an important trade center that attracted Turkish Jews after 1569 as well as Gyongyos, Jaszbereny, and Vac in the north. Szekesfehervar in the northwest had an important Jewish community between 1544 and 1688; many Sephardic Jews came from the Ottoman Empire as well as from Buda. In central and southern Hungary, Sephardic settlements were attested in the 16th century in Kecsemet, Paks, Tolna and Mako. In Porumbacul de Sus near Fagaras in southern Transylvania, Sephardic Jews are credited with introducing glass manufacturing to the region. In Targu-Mures, Sephardim are mentioned from 1582; a permanent community was founded in the nearby village of Naznan-Falva. The first known communal leader was Moshe Aizik Frankel, heir to a Converso family (Yivo, “Sephardim” p. 1689).

A word about the Frankel family. Some have posited that it is a toponym and it denotes the family’s origin from German region of Franconia. No large-scale DNA tests have yet been undertaken and it is possible that there are several different unrelated Frankel families. Many members of the Frankel family- who were prominent Rabbinic personalities in Hungary from the 18th century and on- would append (some still do!) to their surname 2 or 3 letters ב”ח or מב”ח which stands for: מבית חלפון literally, “From the House of Halfon”. Nobody seemed to know who this apparent ancestor named Halfon was but the onomastic data suggests that this name was used by Jews in Spain and later in Provence (later also in North Africa). Combined with the fact that Frankel is said by some researchers to derive from the term frenk, a once common-term used for (and also used by) Sephardim, it is logical to conclude that this family is indeed of Sephardic origin.

Alexander Scheiber in his Jewish Inscription In Hungary cites Sephardic inscriptions as well as Sephardic tombstone epitaphs from Hungary under the Ottomans.

In Transylvania, the old Jewish cemeteries of Alba Iulia (Karlsburg) and Timisoara (Temeshvar) contain the names of Sephardic sages and laymen who settled these territories. Bucharest, Romania had a functioning Sephardic community up until World War II (the scholar Jacob Geller wrote an excellent hebrew monograph on Romanian Sephardim; The Sephardic Jews in Romania; the Flourishing and Decline of a Community (Tel Aviv University, 1983) [Hebrew]). For Transylvania, see “The Decline of a Sephardic Community in Transylvania” in Studies in Honor of M.J. Bernadette.

Rabbi Yechezkel Paneth served as the Chief Rabbi of Karlsburg (Alba Iulia) from 1823 until his passing in 1845. Paneth’s grandson, Yissachar Dov Friedman wrote a biography of his grandfather entitled Toldot Mareh Yechezkel.

In the book Friedman records several interviews he conducted with several elderly Sephardic members of the community who recalled Rabbi Paneth with great reverence and fondness (Rabbi Paneth, though a staunch haredi Ashkenazi conservative, would make it a point to pray every other Shabbat at the Sephardic Synagogue). Friedman recalls how with tears in their eyes, the elderly Sephardic men reminisced about their departed Rabbi, “we are not worthy of mentioning his holy name, there has never been and there never will be one like him. All Jews-Sephardim and Ashkenazim-alike were equal in his eyes. He would pray in our Synagogue every other Shabbat and give a sermon. He would also attend services by us on the first two nights of Passover because we recite Hallel after the evening prayers [Rabbi Paneth, though originally a practitioner of the Ashkenazic rite, took on Chassidic customs]. He also prayed by us on the eve of Shemini Atzeret because we conduct Hakafot then. His face shone like an angel from heaven as he danced with the Torah scrolls. The community raised both him and the Torah and danced with them around the Bima [Tebha] 7 times”. See תולדות מראה יחזקאל בהקדמה לשו”ת דרך יבחר

The recently deceased Skulener Rebbe who was surnamed Portugal also maintained a tradition of Sephardic descent. His own father would append to his signature the hebrew legend “from the exiles of Portugal”. The family originated from the Bessarabian town of Sculeni which had once been under Ottoman Turkish rule. Interestingly enough, in that region of Romania, the surnames Portugal and Portugali were quite common, lending further credence to the theory regarding their ancestry (it is also interesting to note that quite a few other Chassidic Rebbes had Sephardic surnames and or traditions of Sephardic descent, see for instance here and here)

In the former Yugoslavia, the existence of Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities side-by-side is well known. Zemun, Serbia is where Herzl’s paternal family came from. It was Theodore’s grandfather, Simon Loeb who was close with the Serbian Sephardic Rabbi Judah Alkalai (although Herzl himself may not have been Sephardic –as mentioned above, however it is more than interesting to note the often intimate relations between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in that region). In fact, the Balkans experienced several waves of migrations of Jews from Hungary and Poland fleeing persecution. These Jews often assimilated among the Sephardic population, although they did manage to form and maintain a separate communal existence in large cities such as Istanbul and in Salonika. In places like Bulgaria there was such significant mixing between equal parts Ashkenazim and Sephardim that the name of the community was officially hyphenated and called “the holy community of Ashkenazim-Sephardim.” See Dr. Shimon Marcus’s article, “Al Ashkenazim-Sephardim v’al Ashkenazim Stam b’Bulgaria” (I am indebted to my friend Dr. Gabriel Wasserman for this information).

One can perhaps draw an analogy between Sephardim in eastern Europe and ethnic Armenians who arrived en masse to Poland where they were heavily engaged in commerce. In Lviv (Lemberg) for instance they constituted a significant percentage of the city by the 16th century. However, by the 17th century, they had begun to adopt Catholicism and rapidly assimilated among the overall Polish population. They would eventually lose their dominant position in international trade to Jewish merchants.

The Sephardim of Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe came at the invitation of several powerful local leaders. Sometimes they followed their Ottoman patrons to newly acquired Ottoman territories in Eastern Europe. The Ottomans would eventually retreat but they would often choose to stay. Eventually, some would return to their points of origin while others would assimilate among the Ashkenazic majority. Some would “ashkenazify” their names while others would choose to retain their original surnames.

Beider decisively concludes that “very few” Sephardim made it to Eastern Europe, I contend, in light of the evidence-only some of which I have presented above- that a significant number of Sephardic Jews did indeed make it to Eastern Europe. I further believe that their history deserves thorough examination and study (to his credit, Alex Beider has since come around to an extent and readily admitted that that he was too hasty and dismissive in some instances, see here )

Most importantly, many of the descendants of those Sephardic immigrants in Eastern Europe are aware of their background and have expressed a desire to reconnect to the heritage and identity of their Iberian-Jewish forbears. They should not be subjected to expressions of incredulity or derision.


ABOUT THE AUTHORJoel is an independent scholar of Jewish History and translator of Hebrew text. He is also the founder of Channeling Jewish History, a popular social media groups that daily disseminate information about Jewish history and culture.RELATED TOPICS
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“May this coming year come upon us in peace”; The Ancient 1st of Nisan Celebration
MAR 23, 2020, 3:17 AM
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It is late March and the weather is still cold. The sounds of mizrahi music and exuberant conversation emanate from an elegant ballroom in Brooklyn, New York. No, it’s not a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah. A Torah is unfurled and the cantor begins to read from Exodus 12:1, “And God spoke to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.’” The reading is followed by the chanting of liturgical poetry based on this Torah portion, “Rishon Hu Lakhem L’khodshei Hashanah”… Yom Nisan Mevorakh….” “The first month shall it be for you for the months of the year… the month of Nisan is blessed.” As they leave the event, men and women wish each other “Shana tova,” happy new year.

Something seems off; Rosh Hashanah, the traditional Jewish new year, is still six months away. Why the celebration and talk of a new year? This ritual is very familiar, however, to the members of Congregation Ahaba Veahva, a Synagogue that follows the Egyptian-Jewish rite. It is a vestige of a very ancient, almost extinct Jewish custom called Seder Al-Tawhid (Arabic, Seder Ha-Yikhud in Hebrew, the ritual of the unity).

The ritual takes place annually on the closing of the Sabbath which falls out closest to the the first day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. The name “tawhid” denotes a celebration of the unity of God and the miracles that he wrought during this month surrounding the Exodus from Egypt. The way the congregation celebrates it and how this custom survived illuminates important dynamics of how Jewish ritual has been standardized over time.

Ahba Veahva’s members celebrate Rosh Hashanah in September like other rabbinic Jews. The Seder al-Tahwid, however, is a remnant of an ancient custom of the Jews of the near East (variably referred to as Mustaribun or Shamim) to commemorate the first day of the Jewish month of Nisan as a minor Rosh Hashanah as per Exodus 12:1. On their website, Congregation Ahaba Veahva explains the celebration as follows:

On Rosh Chodesh, the children of Israel heard the miracle that they were going to be redeemed on the night of the 15th, Passover, later in that very month. We hold this evening to remember the miracles and the kindness that God does for His nation.
“In Nisan we were redeemed in the past, and in Nisan we are destined to be redeemed again.” [a midrashic quote from Exodus Rabbah 15:2], asserting that just as the Exodus from Egypt took place in Nisan, so too will the ultimate messianic redemption. We hold this evening to put everyone in the correct spiritual mindset: to realize with all their might that this could be the month of the messianic redemption.

The only printed version of the Seder al-Tahwid liturgy is found in an anonymous ten page pamphlet printed in Alexandria. The prayers focus on many themes found in the Rosh Hashana prayers such as blessing, sustenance and messianic redemption in the year to come. The liturgy is found in a somewhat longer form in a tenth century manuscript fragment from the Cairo Geniza, the repository of documents found in the late nineteenth century in the Ben Ezra Synagogue, see here.

The celebration of al-Tahwid begins with special liturgy on the closest Sabbath prior to the day. On the day itself, the community refrains from unnecessary labor similar to intermediate days of Jewish holidays. They also recite a Kiddush (a prayer that sanctifies a day, recited over a cup of wine) followed by a festive meal and the recitation of liturgical poetry. One such poem presents a debate among the twelve months to determine which one will have primacy. In one stanza, for example, Nisan argues that the following month of Iyyar cannot be chosen since its zodiacal sign is Taurus, the same species as the golden calf that Israel made in the wilderness. The concluding stanza is a triumphal declaration from Nisan: שליט אנא וריש על כול”ן”
literally, I am the ruler and the head of all of you.
תקיפה עבדי פרוק לעמיה ובי הוא עתיד למפרוק יתהון

“A deliverance of slavery did I [Nisan] impart upon the nation and in me [Nisan] is he [God] destined to deliver them [again]” (as per the Talmud in BT Rosh Hashanah 10B). Other prayers more explicitly cast the day as the beginning of the new year. One liturgical poem begins: יהי רצון מלפניך ה אלוהינו ואלוהי אבותינו…שתהיה השנה הזאת הבאה עלינו לשלום, translated as, “May it be your will Lord our God and the God of our fathers…that this coming year should come upon us in peace.”

The celebration of the first of Nisan as the beginning of the new year is rooted both in Biblical, extra-Biblical and Talmudic sources. Exodus 12:1-2 states that Nisan is the first month in the setting of the new year. The book of Ezekiel (45:18-19) says: “Thus saith the Lord God: In the first month, in the first day of the month, thou shalt take a young bullock without blemish; and thou shalt purify the sanctuary.”

Ezekiel contains many laws and festivals that are not found in the Pentateuch. Many interpret these as being meant for a future (third) Temple. Ezekiel does not explicitly describe the first of Nissan as a celebration of the new year per se but this description is nonetheless the earliest evidence of the day having special significance.

We find a similar reference in the Temple Scroll (11Q19) of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Temple Scroll describes the ideal Temple of the Qumran sectarians. The Festival of the first day of the first month (Nissan) is one of three additional extra-biblical festivals that are mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls:

“On the first day of the [first] month [the months (of the
year) shall start; it shall be the first month] of the year [for you. You shall
do no] work.”

File:The Temple Scroll (11Q20) - Google Art Project.jpg
Portion of the Temple Scroll. Israel Museum / Public domain
The Mishnah in Tractate Rosh Hashanah 1:1 describes the First of Nisan as one of the four beginnings of the Jewish New Year:

“There are four new years. On the first of Nisan is the new year for kings and for festivals. On the first of Elul is the new year for the tithe of cattle. … On the first of Tishrei is the new year for years, for release and jubilee years, for plantation and for [tithe of] vegetables…. On the first of Shevat is the new year for trees…”

In an article on the Seder al-Tahwid liturgy, liturgical scholar Ezra Fleischer postulates that the Kiddush ceremony on the holiday was based on an earlier Mishnaic-era institution. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah 2:7 describes how the Sanhedrin, the high religious court of Talmudic-era Israel, consecrated the new month by declaring “it is sanctified.” at which point the entire assemblage would respond in kind, “it is sanctified, it is sanctified.” This declaration was performed with pomp and publicity in order to make it clear that the final word in setting the Jewish calendar belonged to the rabbis of Eretz Yisrael and no one else. In the context of the Seder al-Tahwid this ritual serves to highlight Nisan’s role as the first month of the Jewish lunar year, the beginning of this process of sanctifying the new moon.

If the first of Nisan is such an important date to both the Bible and Talmud then, why is the day celebrated today only by this small Jewish community? To answer this question we must look to the Geonic period of Jewish history, corresponding roughly to the second half of the first millennium. Over the past decade, historians increasingly see this period as one in which a number of variations of Judaism were vying for supremacy. These included several schools of Jewish jurisprudence based in different geographic regions across the Mediterranean Diaspora. Two of the most prominent schools were the Babylonian (Minhag Babhel, based in Baghdad) and Palestinian (Minhag Eretz Yisrael) rites, as well as Karaite Jews who did not follow the Rabbis at all but formed their own, non-rabbinic madhab.

The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem was abolished in the 5th century by Byzantine decree. Its various successors could not recapture its prestige and the Rabbis of Eretz Yisrael gradually lost their power to sanction the new moon. The Karaites developed their own system for setting the calendar. But within the rabbinic tradition, in the absence of the Sanhedrin, the Babylonians and Eretz Israelis often found themselves at odds.

The most notorious controversy between the two schools involved Saadiah ben Joseph Al-Faumi, the head of the Babylonian Academy better known as Saadiah Gaon, and Aharon ben Meir, the head of the Eretz Israel Academy. In 921-923, the two engaged in an extended and very public argument regarding the sanctification of the Hebrew year 4682 (921/22). While the core of this debate surrounded the complicated methods of calculating the Jewish calendar, it became a referendum on which academy, and by extension rite, would become authoritative in the diaspora. Saadiah emerged victorious (historians Marina Rustow and Sacha Stern argue that his authority on these matters may have resulted from his mastery of Abbasid advances in astronomy).

In Eretz Israel, however, the Jewish community, based in Jerusalem, continued to follow the Minhag Eretz Yisrael, which also exerted influence on other Near Eastern Jewish communities such as Egypt. The heads of the Jerusalem academy still often insisted that the right to set the calendar rested solely with them. As late as the 11th century, Rabbi Evyatar Ha-Kohen, the head of the Palestinian Academy (partially in exile in Cairo) would declare:

The land of Israel is not part of the exile such that it would be subject to an Exilarch (a title often applied to the head of the Babylonian Academy) and furthermore one may not contradict the authority of the Prince (a title at times applied to the head of the Palestinian Academy), on the word of whom [alone] may leap years be declared and the holiday dates set according to the order imposed by God before the creation of the world. For this is what we are taught in the secrets of setting a leap year.

All in all, the competition between Babylonia and Eretz Israel ended in a decisive Babylonian victory. This was due to several factors which I will discuss later.

The Waning of the Custom

Already during the period following the end of the first millennium, the celebration of the first of Nisan as the Jewish new year, became the domain of a very small minority of Jews. Whereas during the Geonic Period this festival was celebrated among the Jews of The Land of Israel -as well as their satellite communities across the Middle East- (including a small “Palestinian-rite” contingent in Iraq), by the time of the great Jewish Rabbi and philosopher Maimonides (who was a proponent of the Babylonian rite) this unique rite would become rarer and rarer until becoming nearly extinct.

Let us return for a moment to the issue of the long standing disagreements between the two great Jewish centers of the world during the better part of the first millennium: The Land of Israel and Iraq/Babylonia. The discord between the Babylonians and the Palestinians was not limited to calendrical matters- as previously expanded upon. Another issue which found the two at loggerheads was the liberal nature and the non-standardization of Jewish liturgical texts among the Palestinians. For instance, the Babylonians looked askance at the Palestinian custom of introducing fresh liturgical poetry and inserting them into the fixed prayers during the annual festivals. These and other customs like the celebration for the first of Nisan were deemed exotic at best and incompatible with normative Halakha at worst

As the scholar Steven Reif points out in his article on prayer and liturgy when for instance, in the 8th century, the Andalucian Jewish community sought guidance in liturgical matters, they contacted the Babylonian Gaonim, Natronay and Amram who provided instructions that, of course, followed the ancestral rites of Babylonia. Eventually these texts were recorded and later compiled to form what we now call a “siddur”. As the centralization and standardization of Jewish liturgy took off across the Diaspora, this left the Jews who followed the Palestinian rite-and who were fast becoming a minority-to feel more isolated and entrenched. As mentioned before, the Jews of Eretz Israel had long felt that they maintained in primacy in matters of religious ritual. The Palestinians sought to establish their power bases in their own satellite communities. There is also evidence of correspondence and cross cultural fertilization between the center of Byzantine Eretz Yisrael and those in Christian Europe. The Cairo Genizah, for instance, produced responsa from the proto-Ashkenazic Rabbis of the German city of Mainz to the “lions of Jerusalem” as the Rabbis of the Palestinians Academy were euphemistically referred to, see here. There is also evidence from a medieval scroll called Megillat Ahimaaz that the Palestinian Academy maintained ties with the Jews of Italy.

Post Babylonia and Eretz Israel

The great competition between Babylonia and Eretz Yisrael ended in a decisive Babylonian victory. This was due to several factors not least of which is the fact that Babylonian Jewry experienced much more stability under Sassanian and later Islamic rule while its Eretz Israel counterpart was constantly experiencing persecution and uprooting. The final death knell for Minhag Eretz Yisrael was delivered in July of 1099 when an army of Crusaders broke through the walls of Jerusalem and massacred the city’s Jewish inhabitants, the Babylonian-rite and the Palestinian-rite communities; as well as the Karaites were put to the sword. One of the unfortunate consequences of the Babylonian victory was the gradual decline and eventual disappearance of many unique Eretz Yisrael customs. It is only due to the discovery of the Cairo Genizah that scholars have become aware of many of those long-lost traditions and customs.

But although Babylon did achieve victory, its status as a center of world Jewry began to change and it in fact began to experience a precipitous decline as the Sephardic communities of the Iberian Peninsula and the Ashkenazic communities of France and Germany were increasingly on the ascendancy. Both of the aforementioned communities maintained traditions that came out of Babylonia (although as the scholar Israel Ta Shma points out in his book on early Ashkenazic prayer, both the Sephardic and Ashkenazic rites and customs are an amalgamation of both schools, although the influence of Eretz Yisrael was perhaps more evident in the Ashkenazi rite, probably due to the old ties between the proto Ashkenazim in Christian Europe and the Academy in Byzantine Eretz Yisrael see for instance here.

The latest evidence of the celebration of the first of Nisan comes to us from the 13th century and it would seem that even by this time it was all but stamped out by those who were determined to establish the primacy of the Babylonian school. This period coincides with the increased activism of Rabbi Abraham Maimonides, the son of Moses Maimonides, the great Spanish codifier of Jewish law. Rabbi Abraham, who championed standardization based on his father’s codification, exerted great pressure against the Synagogue of the Palestinians in Fustat, Old Cairo to bring their ritual into line with Babylonian standards. He was for the most part successful but, as we have already seen, this unique custom was retained (albeit in diminished form) among Egyptian Jews to this very day.

In an April 20, 1906 article for the English Jewish Chronicle, Herbert Loewe provides an eyewitness account of an Al-Tawhid ceremony in the fashionable Abbasiya neighborhood of Cairo. Two years later, a more detailed description was recorded by the Chief Rabbi of Egypt, Refael Aharon ben Shimon in his book Nehar Misrayim.

After extolling this “beautiful custom,” ben Shimon laments how the custom had become so weakened and how so many had become lax in keeping it. He states that this is largely due to the fact that the city had experienced such large scale expansion and many members of the Jewish community had relocated to the suburbs. He concludes on an optimistic note with the hope that the custom will experience a renaissance in the near future.

I reproduce it here (courtesy of Hebrewbooks.org):





Two other North African Jewish communities retain more pared-down versions of the celebration of the first of Nisan. In the communities of Tunisia and Libya, the ceremony is referred to as bsisa (and also maluhia). Bsisa is also the name given to a special dish that is prepared for this day which is made of wheat and barley flour mixed with olive oil, fruits and spices. Several prayers for the new year are recited whereupon the celebrants exchange new year greetings with each other. Many of these prayers contain similar themes to the Egyptian-Jewish Tahwid prayers discussed above. (For example: “Shower down upon us from your bounty and we shall give it over to others. That we shall never experience want– and may this year be better than the previous year.”)

As in the Egyptian community, however, the new year aspect of the celebration is not especially stressed. As the eminent historian and expert on North African Jewry Nahum Slouschz points out in an article in Davar (April 7, 1944), “It is impossible not to see in these customs the footprints of an ancient Rosh Hashanah which was abandoned with the passage of time because of the tediousness of the Passover holiday and in favor of the holiness of the traditional [Tishrei] Rosh Hashana.” (For more on the roots and contemporary practice of bsisa and maluhia see here, here, here, and here. For videos of the bsisa/maluhia ceremony see here, here, and here.)

Although the observance of the First of Nissan is no longer as prominent as it once was in rabbinic Judaism, the two most prominent non-rabbinic Jewish communities, the Karaites and the Samaritans, have maintained the holiday into recent times. The Cairo Genizah contains leaves from a Karaite prayer book containing a service for the first of Nisan. This custom eventually fell out of the Karaite textual record as Karaite traditions fell in line with Rabbanite ones over the later middle ages. In his monumental study of the now extinct European Karaite community, historian Mikhail Kizilov discusses how Eastern-European Karaites underwent a gradual process of “dejudaidization” and “turkification” in the 1910s-20s. This was largely due to the work of their spiritual and political head, Seraya Shapshal, who, aware of growing Anti-Semitism in Europe, was determined to present his flock as genetically unrelated to the Jews (claiming instead that they were descendants of Turkic and Mongol tribes). He likewise sought to recast Karaism as a syncretistic Jewish-Christian-Muslim-pagan creed. Among the reforms instituted by Shapshal was the changing of the Karaite calendar. Although the Karaites of old began the calendar year on Nisan, as per Exodus, they had long assimilated the Rabbinic custom of beginning the year in Tishrei. Shapshal sought to avoid a lining up of the Karaite and Rabbanite new years which is why he switched the Karaite new year to March-April, thereby ironically reverting back to the ancient Karaite custom. This particular reform never took off and the community continued to celebrate the new in year in Tishrei. Even the official Karaite calendars printed that date (which like the Rabbanites they called “Rosh Hashanah”). Currently, Karaites do not actually celebrate this day or recite any special liturgy, however they do nominally recognize this day as Rosh Hashanah and they will exchange new year tidings.


Siddur Eretz Yisrael, published by modern scholars (and proponents) of the Eretz Israel rite. BenTzadoq / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
The tiny community of Samaritans in Israel preserve the most extensive observance of this day. According to the Samaritan elder and scholar Benyamim Sedaka, the Samaritans celebrate the evening of the first day of the first Month – The Month of Aviv – as the actual Hebrew New Year. They engage in extended prayers on the day followed by festive family gatherings. They likewise bless one another with the traditional new year greeting “Shana Tova” and begin the observance, as the followers of the Palestinian rite once did, on the Sabbath preceding the day. The entire liturgy for the holiday is found in A. E. Cowley’s “The Samaritan Liturgy.” The fact that the Samaritans, who have functioned as a distinct religious community from Jews since at least the second century BCE, observe this tradition is the greatest indicator of its antiquity. The antiquity of this custom is also suggested by the fact that the springtime new year is likewise celebrated by many other ethnic communities from the Middle East including the Persians and Kurds (who call it Nowruz) and also, much closer to Jews linguistically and culturally, the Arameans and Chaldeans/Assyrians who call their New Year Kha (or Khada) B’nissan (the first of Nissan).

Minhag Eretz Israel is now effectively extinct. Today, however, there is a small community of predominantly Ashkenazic Jews in Israel who seek to reconstruct this rite. Using the work of scholars who have labored to piece the Palestinian rite together based on the Cairo Genizah, this community endeavors to put it back into practical usage. Among many other customs, they celebrate the First of Nisan. The flagship institution of this movement is called Machon Shiloh and its founder and leader is an Australian-Israeli Rabbi named David bar Hayyim. In private correspondence, Yoel Keren, a member of Machon Shilo, stated that his community observes the festival in the manner prescribed by the Geniza fragments. On the eve of the first of Nissan, the community waits outside to sight the new moon, then recites the kiddush prayer and finally sits down to a festive meal. The community has also recently published a prayer book called Siddur Eretz Yisrael, which is based on the ancient rite. You can listen to some prayers recited in this rite here, here, and here.
For an interesting interview with Rabbi Bar-Hayyim about the rite and its contemporary usage see here.

This year, as the the pubic celebrations of Tawhid have been canceled due to the worldwide pandemic, the following words from the Tawhid prayer ring more relevant than ever:

כֵּן, יהוה אֱלֹהֵינוּ וֵאלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, עֲצוֹר וּמְנַע מַגֵּפָה מִנַחֲלָתְךָ וְהָסֵר מִמֶּנּוּ כׇּל־מִינֵי מַשְׁחִית וְכׇל־מִינֵי עֲנִיּוּת.

May it be your will our G-d and the G-d of out fathers, cease and prevent the epidemic from upon your inheritance. And remove from upon us all manners of destruction and poverty.
Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Tribe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Ephraim

[Rabbit Hole]

Stop mentioning Jews in TITLE WITH THE NAME THE GREEKS REALLY HAD NEAR MYSTICAL ORIGINS. Sikelot.

[Rgvgjhvv]

This forum is so fucking shit

[Renekton]

This forum is so fucking shitTotally, the lock up of the people made them crazy

[Rabbit Hole]

Totally, the lock up of the people made them crazy

[Dimitri159]

You are Sikelot the troll. I was trying to defend him if he can't see that i can't convince him.

Defend Hahns or SuperDorian? I don’t see why you’d try to defend Hahns first of all, he goes against even what you are claiming. For example, you say Greeks are close to South Italians while Hahns will sit back and stress an over exaggeration of Greek islanders and mainlanders, claiming that only islanders are close to south Italians. It’s ridiculous. I don’t care if you disagree with me but you should address other “trolls”.

[Dimitri159]

Stop mentioning Jews in TITLE WITH THE NAME THE GREEKS REALLY HAD NEAR MYSTICAL ORIGINS. Sikelot.

You completely twist my words. I’m done arguing with you. Stop trolling.

[Tauromachos]

This forum is so fucking shit

Kouros?

[catgeorge]

Central_Greek is an island plot. The name is wrong

I am 99.9% sure its Athens.

[Rgvgjhvv]

I am 99.9% sure its Athens.

It's the closest to point to most people with Aegean island ancestry. "Mainland" Greeks will plot closer to Greek_Thessaly. So it could be a coincidence but it should be considered as more of an Islander sample.

[Dimitri159]

Central_Greek is an island plot. The name is wrong

Can you find one of these where actual central Greece, Peloponnese or northern Greece is involved? I’d like to see. Somewhere actual mainland.

[catgeorge]

It's the closest to point to most people with Aegean island ancestry. "Mainland" Greeks will plot closer to Greek_Thessaly. So it could be a coincidence but it should be considered as more of an Islander sample.

Athens has the Cyclade component as its a periphery of Athens. Mainlanders get Central_Greek quite high even above Greek_Thessaly in some cases.

[Rgvgjhvv]

Can you find one of these where actual central Greece, Peloponnese or northern Greece is involved? I’d like to see. Somewhere actual mainland.

What do you mean?


Athens has the Cyclade component as its a periphery of Athens. Mainlanders get Central_Greek quite high even above Greek_Thessaly in some cases.

I haven't seen many mainlanders that get Central_Greek before Greek_Thessaly, to be honest. It's usually a reliable indicator of what their ancestry is.

[Tauromachos]

What do you mean?



I haven't seen many mainlanders that get Central_Greek before Greek_Thessaly, to be honest. It's usually a reliable indicator of what their ancestry is.

There is Mainland Greeks who get Central Greek before Thessalian

[Rgvgjhvv]

There is Mainland Greeks who get Central Greek before Thessalian

Lakonia?

[catgeorge]

What do you mean?



I haven't seen many mainlanders that get Central_Greek before Greek_Thessaly, to be honest. It's usually a reliable indicator of what their ancestry is.

South of the Agrinio, Lamia and Volos line get them . Check it out.

Athens is merely a melting pot of the Greek world. (used to be until it is being overrun by third world trash)

[Tauromachos]

Lakonia?

Yeah South Greeks Lakonians and Maniots do for sure but even some other Mainlanders

[Dimitri159]

What do you mean?



I haven't seen many mainlanders that get Central_Greek before Greek_Thessaly, to be honest. It's usually a reliable indicator of what their ancestry is.


I mean this,

1. East_Sicilian (4.290) ( East Sicilian Neolithic )
2. Central_Greek (4.788) ( Central Greece )
3. Greek_Islands (6.961) ( Crete? )
4. Italian_Jewish (7.304) ( Jewish plus Italian )
5. Italian_Abruzzo (7.498) ( Central South Italy )
6. Greek_Crete (7.816) ( Crete )
7. West_Sicilian (7.828) ( don't know )
8. Ashkenazi (8.437) ( see Sephardics )

Could you find one of these that show one for actual mainland Greeks instead of all islanders?

[Tauromachos]

Lol



Messinia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Italian_Abruzzo 3.56
2 Greek_Central 4.05
3 Greek_Thessaly 4.9
4 Albanian 5.3
5 Kosovar 6.58
6 Italian_Tuscan 6.89
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 6.92
8 Italian_Sicilian 8.05
9 Bulgarian 11.3
10 Macedonian 11.5
11 Sephardic_Jew 11.55
12 Italian_Bergamo 12.89
13 Romanian 13.74
14 Montenegrin 14.29
15 Serbian 16.76
16 Turkish 18.57
17 Spaniard 18.67
18 Turkish_Aydin 19.81
19 Cypriot 20.11
20 Bosnian 20.54


Messinia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.47
2 Greek_Thessaly 4.43
3 Albanian 4.9
4 Italian_Abruzzo 5.29
5 Kosovar 5.87
6 Italian_Tuscan 7.5
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 7.87
8 Italian_Sicilian 9.37
9 Bulgarian 10.07
10 Macedonian 10.48
11 Romanian 12.13
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.51
13 Montenegrin 12.87
14 Italian_Bergamo 13.62
15 Serbian 15.51
16 Turkish 17.87
17 Turkish_Aydin 18.8
18 Bosnian 19.15
19 Spaniard 19.38
20 Cypriot 20.64




Laconia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.59
2 Greek_Thessaly 3.8
3 Italian_Abruzzo 4.26
4 Albanian 4.46
5 Kosovar 5.54
6 Italian_Tuscan 6.55
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 7.7
8 Italian_Sicilian 8.91
9 Bulgarian 10.4
10 Macedonian 10.78
11 Italian_Bergamo 12.58
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.71
13 Romanian 12.98
14 Montenegrin 13.48
15 Serbian 15.99
16 Turkish 18.55
17 Spaniard 18.7
18 Turkish_Aydin 19.72
19 Bosnian 19.82
20 Cypriot 20.67



Tsakonia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.39
2 Italian_Abruzzo 3.7
3 Ashkenazy_Jew 4.27
4 Italian_Sicilian 5.47
5 Greek_Thessaly 7.36
6 Albanian 7.99
7 Sephardic_Jew 9.23
8 Kosovar 9.26
9 Italian_Tuscan 9.76
10 Bulgarian 13.99
11 Macedonian 14.4
12 Italian_Bergamo 15.73
13 Turkish 15.87
14 Romanian 16.28
15 Montenegrin 17.06
16 Cypriot 17.14
17 Turkish_Aydin 17.66
18 Turkish_Kayseri 18.48
19 Serbian 19.6
20 Balkar 20.86





Corinth:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.66
2 Greek_Thessaly 5.34
3 Albanian 5.88
4 Italian_Abruzzo 6.2
5 Kosovar 6.69
6 Ashkenazy_Jew 8.03
7 Italian_Tuscan 8.6
8 Italian_Sicilian 9.62
9 Bulgarian 10.47
10 Macedonian 11.04
11 Romanian 12.28
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.64
13 Montenegrin 13.23
14 Italian_Bergamo 14.62
15 Serbian 15.84
16 Turkish 17.03
17 Turkish_Aydin 17.93
18 Bosnian 19.46
19 Turkish_Kayseri 19.99
20 Spaniard 20.37

[Dimitri159]

South of the Agrinio, Lamia and Volos line get them . Check it out.

Athens is merely a melting pot of the Greek world. (used to be until it is being overrun by third world trash)

Is it really overrun though?

[Dimitri159]

Lol



Messinia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Italian_Abruzzo 3.56
2 Greek_Central 4.05
3 Greek_Thessaly 4.9
4 Albanian 5.3
5 Kosovar 6.58
6 Italian_Tuscan 6.89
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 6.92
8 Italian_Sicilian 8.05
9 Bulgarian 11.3
10 Macedonian 11.5
11 Sephardic_Jew 11.55
12 Italian_Bergamo 12.89
13 Romanian 13.74
14 Montenegrin 14.29
15 Serbian 16.76
16 Turkish 18.57
17 Spaniard 18.67
18 Turkish_Aydin 19.81
19 Cypriot 20.11
20 Bosnian 20.54


Messinia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.47
2 Greek_Thessaly 4.43
3 Albanian 4.9
4 Italian_Abruzzo 5.29
5 Kosovar 5.87
6 Italian_Tuscan 7.5
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 7.87
8 Italian_Sicilian 9.37
9 Bulgarian 10.07
10 Macedonian 10.48
11 Romanian 12.13
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.51
13 Montenegrin 12.87
14 Italian_Bergamo 13.62
15 Serbian 15.51
16 Turkish 17.87
17 Turkish_Aydin 18.8
18 Bosnian 19.15
19 Spaniard 19.38
20 Cypriot 20.64




Laconia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.59
2 Greek_Thessaly 3.8
3 Italian_Abruzzo 4.26
4 Albanian 4.46
5 Kosovar 5.54
6 Italian_Tuscan 6.55
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 7.7
8 Italian_Sicilian 8.91
9 Bulgarian 10.4
10 Macedonian 10.78
11 Italian_Bergamo 12.58
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.71
13 Romanian 12.98
14 Montenegrin 13.48
15 Serbian 15.99
16 Turkish 18.55
17 Spaniard 18.7
18 Turkish_Aydin 19.72
19 Bosnian 19.82
20 Cypriot 20.67



Tsakonia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.39
2 Italian_Abruzzo 3.7
3 Ashkenazy_Jew 4.27
4 Italian_Sicilian 5.47
5 Greek_Thessaly 7.36
6 Albanian 7.99
7 Sephardic_Jew 9.23
8 Kosovar 9.26
9 Italian_Tuscan 9.76
10 Bulgarian 13.99
11 Macedonian 14.4
12 Italian_Bergamo 15.73
13 Turkish 15.87
14 Romanian 16.28
15 Montenegrin 17.06
16 Cypriot 17.14
17 Turkish_Aydin 17.66
18 Turkish_Kayseri 18.48
19 Serbian 19.6
20 Balkar 20.86





Corinth:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.66
2 Greek_Thessaly 5.34
3 Albanian 5.88
4 Italian_Abruzzo 6.2
5 Kosovar 6.69
6 Ashkenazy_Jew 8.03
7 Italian_Tuscan 8.6
8 Italian_Sicilian 9.62
9 Bulgarian 10.47
10 Macedonian 11.04
11 Romanian 12.28
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.64
13 Montenegrin 13.23
14 Italian_Bergamo 14.62
15 Serbian 15.84
16 Turkish 17.03
17 Turkish_Aydin 17.93
18 Bosnian 19.46
19 Turkish_Kayseri 19.99
20 Spaniard 20.37

So it turns out that central Italians are closer on average. We were wrong. However this puts Rabbitholes bs about Jews right down the gutter.

[catgeorge]

Is it really overrun though?

Yes it is and I want them out.

[Tauromachos]

So it turns out that central Italians are closer on average. We were wrong. However this puts Rabbitholes bs about Jews right down the gutter.

I don't know ,there is other results were South Italian is closer.



I posted these not because of the Italian but because Central Greek pops up before Thessalian

[Roy]

They do. In other news water is wet.

[catgeorge]

So it turns out that central Italians are closer on average. We were wrong. However this puts Rabbitholes bs about Jews right down the gutter.

Not we - with the authoritarian leftist Marxist attitude - YOU where wrong.

[Tauromachos]

To me alot of Greeks and i include people from Mainland regions look more similar with South Italians and Sicilians than anything
else(even if the notion is not popular here and alot of people make fun of it)

[catgeorge]

To me alot of Greeks and i include people from Mainland regions look more similar with South Italians and Sicilians than anything
else(even if the notion is not popular here and alot of people make fun of it)

Nothing to make fun of, south Aegean and Sicily is a genetic continuum. But it doesnt discount the fact South Aegean is closer to the mainland than Sicily... if people need that smashed over their head until it sinks in so be it.

[Tauromachos]

Nothing to make fun of, south Aegean and Sicily is a genetic continuum. But it doesnt discount the fact South Aegean is closer to the mainland than Sicily... .

Sure

[Dimitri159]

Not we - with the authoritarian leftist Marxist attitude - YOU where wrong.

Wasn’t wrong about the Jews though, as you can see ;).

- From a Libertarian!

[Dimitri159]

Yes it is and I want them out.

Are you implying that there are more immigrants than ethnic Greeks? So I’m more likely to find a migrant/ refugee in Athens than a Greek? I need to know before I go back so I’m a aware when I observe the phenotypes in Athens.

[Tauromachos]

Wasn’t wrong about the Jews though, as you can see ;).

- From a Libertarian!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GggD9kp5uEc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-H75p-IKRs

[Dimitri159]

I don't know ,there is other results were South Italian is closer.



I posted these not because of the Italian but because Central Greek pops up before Thessalian

Can you show me those other results you found that showed South Italians closer?

[Dimitri159]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GggD9kp5uEc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-H75p-IKRs

Lol I’m not sure I heard of any of that until now. I’m just aware they are genetically similar and not tied up in a bunch of complexes to be able to admit it.

[Rgvgjhvv]

Lol



Messinia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Italian_Abruzzo 3.56
2 Greek_Central 4.05
3 Greek_Thessaly 4.9
4 Albanian 5.3
5 Kosovar 6.58
6 Italian_Tuscan 6.89
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 6.92
8 Italian_Sicilian 8.05
9 Bulgarian 11.3
10 Macedonian 11.5
11 Sephardic_Jew 11.55
12 Italian_Bergamo 12.89
13 Romanian 13.74
14 Montenegrin 14.29
15 Serbian 16.76
16 Turkish 18.57
17 Spaniard 18.67
18 Turkish_Aydin 19.81
19 Cypriot 20.11
20 Bosnian 20.54


Messinia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.47
2 Greek_Thessaly 4.43
3 Albanian 4.9
4 Italian_Abruzzo 5.29
5 Kosovar 5.87
6 Italian_Tuscan 7.5
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 7.87
8 Italian_Sicilian 9.37
9 Bulgarian 10.07
10 Macedonian 10.48
11 Romanian 12.13
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.51
13 Montenegrin 12.87
14 Italian_Bergamo 13.62
15 Serbian 15.51
16 Turkish 17.87
17 Turkish_Aydin 18.8
18 Bosnian 19.15
19 Spaniard 19.38
20 Cypriot 20.64




Laconia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.59
2 Greek_Thessaly 3.8
3 Italian_Abruzzo 4.26
4 Albanian 4.46
5 Kosovar 5.54
6 Italian_Tuscan 6.55
7 Ashkenazy_Jew 7.7
8 Italian_Sicilian 8.91
9 Bulgarian 10.4
10 Macedonian 10.78
11 Italian_Bergamo 12.58
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.71
13 Romanian 12.98
14 Montenegrin 13.48
15 Serbian 15.99
16 Turkish 18.55
17 Spaniard 18.7
18 Turkish_Aydin 19.72
19 Bosnian 19.82
20 Cypriot 20.67



Tsakonia:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.39
2 Italian_Abruzzo 3.7
3 Ashkenazy_Jew 4.27
4 Italian_Sicilian 5.47
5 Greek_Thessaly 7.36
6 Albanian 7.99
7 Sephardic_Jew 9.23
8 Kosovar 9.26
9 Italian_Tuscan 9.76
10 Bulgarian 13.99
11 Macedonian 14.4
12 Italian_Bergamo 15.73
13 Turkish 15.87
14 Romanian 16.28
15 Montenegrin 17.06
16 Cypriot 17.14
17 Turkish_Aydin 17.66
18 Turkish_Kayseri 18.48
19 Serbian 19.6
20 Balkar 20.86





Corinth:
# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.66
2 Greek_Thessaly 5.34
3 Albanian 5.88
4 Italian_Abruzzo 6.2
5 Kosovar 6.69
6 Ashkenazy_Jew 8.03
7 Italian_Tuscan 8.6
8 Italian_Sicilian 9.62
9 Bulgarian 10.47
10 Macedonian 11.04
11 Romanian 12.28
12 Sephardic_Jew 12.64
13 Montenegrin 13.23
14 Italian_Bergamo 14.62
15 Serbian 15.84
16 Turkish 17.03
17 Turkish_Aydin 17.93
18 Bosnian 19.46
19 Turkish_Kayseri 19.99
20 Spaniard 20.37

This isn't Eurogenes K13 or K15.

[Tauromachos]

This isn't Eurogenes K13 or K15.

Ok :(

[Tauromachos]

Can you show me those other results you found that showed South Italians closer?

I don't know right now for good examples but its accepted also in professional studies that Mainland Greeks are closer to
Central and South Italians than to Northern ones

They cluster with South Central Italy not with North Central Italy only the more North shifted Mainland Greeks are closest to Tuscans

Here is one example i compared to an Islander in one of my threads
Greek Mainlander from Korinthos, Peloponnese




1 SW_Europe 37.82
2 West_Asia 23.8
3 NE_Europe 19.94
4 SW_Asia 13.59
5 NE_Asia 1.05
6 SE_Asia 0.99
7 Oceania 0.9
8 West_Africa 0.6
9 Siberia 0.55
10 South_Asia 0.45
11 Americas 0.23
12 South_Africa 0.08


Single Population Sharing:


# Population (source) Distance
1 Greek_Central 3.39
2 Italian_Abruzzo 3.7
3 Ashkenazy_Jew 4.27
4 Italian_Sicilian 5.47
5 Greek_Thessaly 7.36
6 Albanian 7.99
7 Sephardic_Jew 9.23
8 Kosovar 9.26
9 Italian_Tuscan 9.76
10 Bulgarian 13.99
11 Macedonian 14.4
12 Italian_Bergamo 15.73
13 Turkish 15.87
14 Romanian 16.28
15 Montenegrin 17.06
16 Cypriot 17.14
17 Turkish_Aydin 17.66
18 Turkish_Kayseri 18.48
19 Serbian 19.6
20 Balkar 20.86

They were different but the difference between him and the Islander was not as if they come from different planets if you know what i mean

[lei.talk]

https://www.theapricity.com/forum/images/misc/quote_icon.pngDimitri159 (https://www.theapricity.com/forum/member.php?27031-Dimitri159&tab=aboutme#aboutme) https://www.theapricity.com/forum/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png (https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?319997-The-Greeks-Really-do-Have-Near-Mythical-Origins-Ancient-DNA-Reveals&p=6623921&viewfull=1#post6623921) Why does every Greek on here express that the Ancient Greek elite was Northern European (https://www.theapricity.com/snpa/rg-hallstatt.html)? I don’t get it.



Originally Posted by Anti (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16240)-Nordicist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_race#Origins_of_Nordicism) http://www.theapricity.com/forum/images/kiddo/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=226761#post226761)
:clap2: "all your civilizational founders are belong to us (http://marchofthetitans.com/)" :clap2:


https://i.imgur.com/KSx9NfA.png (https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?88950&p=1838423&viewfull=1#post1838423)

[Rabbit Hole]

https://www.theapricity.com/forum/images/misc/quote_icon.pngDimitri159 (https://www.theapricity.com/forum/member.php?27031-Dimitri159&tab=aboutme#aboutme) https://www.theapricity.com/forum/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png (https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?319997-The-Greeks-Really-do-Have-Near-Mythical-Origins-Ancient-DNA-Reveals&p=6623921&viewfull=1#post6623921) Why does every Greek on here express that the Ancient Greek elite was Northern European (https://www.theapricity.com/snpa/rg-hallstatt.html)? I don’t get it.



Originally Posted by Anti (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16240)-Nordicist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_race#Origins_of_Nordicism) http://www.theapricity.com/forum/images/kiddo/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=226761#post226761)
:clap2: "all your civilizational founders are belong to us (http://marchofthetitans.com/)" :clap2:


https://i.imgur.com/KSx9NfA.png (https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?88950&p=1838423&viewfull=1#post1838423)

Never seen that.

[Tauromachos]

Lols

[SharpFork]

We lack a lot of relevant samples, especially samples from the Archaic Age after the Bronze Age collapse will be key to show if any migrations happened then.
Tbh we lack byzantine and Roman era samples too.

[Rabbit Hole]

Wasn’t wrong about the Jews though, as you can see ;).

- From a Libertarian!

Prove it. Upload their K36 population chart? Jews descend from Samaritans

From scientists who claim to be Jewish.

[Tauromachos]

Lol I’m not sure I heard of any of that until now. I’m just aware they are genetically similar and not tied up in a bunch of complexes to be able to admit it.

Its good at times to see or hear of something you never heard of before no matter what turns out to be true
at the end

[Tauromachos]

Lol I’m not sure I heard of any of that until now. I’m just aware they are genetically similar and not tied up in a bunch of complexes to be able to admit it.

Its good at times to see or hear of something you never heard of before no matter what turns out to be true
at the end

[Rabbit Hole]

https://www.quora.com/What-results-do-Ashkenazi-Jews-receive-on-DNA-tests-Are-there-any-Ashkenazi-Jews-willing-to-share-their-results

Jews decend from South Europeans lol.

[Tauromachos]

https://www.quora.com/What-results-do-Ashkenazi-Jews-receive-on-DNA-tests-Are-there-any-Ashkenazi-Jews-willing-to-share-their-results

Jews decend from South Europeans lol.

We wuz Jews n shieeeeeeeeeeet

[Rabbit Hole]

Mycenaean samples from the mainland were much more southern (Near Eastern if you want to call it so) than present-day mainland Greeks. Why this is the case is still debatable, but there will be no doubt after dozens of Classical and Heroic age Greek samples come out soon.

True but he semi explained it in the thread.
“*Keep in mind that South Italy should be interpreted as Eastern Mediterranean rather than specifically Sicilian because Levantine Arabs and Cypriots typically get 20–40% South Italy, and in total Levantine Arabs get almost 50% Southern Europe.”

Saying that because people from the Levant have Greco-Roman ancestry, that this means that Greco-Romans are Levantine is absurd.

Any poster implying such has it totally backwards.

The Greco-Romans have had a presence in the Levant spanning 2000 plus years and crusaders from all over Europe have had a large presence in the Levant, too.

Levantine ''Arabs'' ( mostly the Lebanese Muslims ) and some Lebanese Christians and Syrian samples were close to Cyprus therefore the Eastern Med admixture in Europe can be accountable for Levantine non Semitic same case with Cyprus autosomally.

However European Jews had scored differently and autosomally match up to Iron Age populations.

Both Levatine Arabs and Cypriots continued the continuum of the age old Levantine populations. Back then, now and until forever. Thus, continuing the genotypes of the ancient Greek genetics.

There you have it the Near Eastern admixture in ancient Greeks was from the North Levant. :D

[Dimitri159]

https://www.quora.com/What-results-do-Ashkenazi-Jews-receive-on-DNA-tests-Are-there-any-Ashkenazi-Jews-willing-to-share-their-results

Jews decend from South Europeans lol.

They are close*

[Dimitri159]

Prove it. Upload their K36 population chart? Jews descend from Samaritans

From scientists who claim to be Jewish.

The genetic distant charts people are posting on here proves it, plus the answers on Quora proved it. What more proof do you need? They aren’t identical but they are close.

[Rabbit Hole]

They are close*

They aren't close*

[Rabbit Hole]

The genetic distant charts people are posting on here proves it, plus the answers on Quora proved it. What more proof do you need? They aren’t identical but they are close.

99 percent Jewish diasopra. A South European would never get a 99 percent Jewish diasopra :D

[Dimitri159]

99 percent Jewish diasopra. A South European would never get a 99 percent Jewish diasopra :D

Omg, did you read the answers on Quora? Plus Jeiwish diaspora has its own ethnic genetics. On some of those companies Italians and Greeks also have their own special grouping, doesn’t mean those separate grouping don’t cluster with each other.

[Dimitri159]

They aren't close*

Well according to most of those Quora answers they are. I guess you’re too impatient to read the details of the answers. Clusters between Jews, Italians and Greeks are all close.

[Rabbit Hole]

Omg, did you read the answers on Quora? Plus Jeiwish diaspora has its own ethnic genetics. On some of those companies Italians and Greeks also have their own special grouping, doesn’t mean those separate grouping don’t cluster with each other.

OMG JEWS ARE JEWS! JEWS ARE A RACE OMG JEWS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ANCIENT OR MODERN GREEKS MAINLAND SOUTH EUROPEANS DO NOT HAVE 99 PERCENT JEWISH DIASOPRA SCORES COMMUNIST.

GOODBYE!

[Dimitri159]

OMG JEWS ARE JEWS! JEWS ARE A RACE OMG JEWS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ANCIENT OR MODERN GREEKS MAINLAND SOUTH EUROPEANS DO NOT HAVE 99 PERCENT JEWISH DIASOPRA SCORES COMMUNIST.

GOODBYE!

You set yourself up twice. Just stop.

[Konstantinos]

Tbh we lack byzantine and Roman era samples too.

We lack a lot about Greeks, that's my point. But people make conclusions as if they know everything. Nothing new under the sun.

[SharpFork]

We lack a lot about Greeks, that's my point. But people make conclusions as if they know everything. Nothing new under the sun.
I agree.

[Dimitri159]

Ok :(

Kinda random and the discussion is died down now, but just real quick I wanna go back to the whole islander/ mainland differences. Take a look at this video... These are Thessalian Greeks. They do not look that different from islander Greeks by a whole lot, people exaggerate too much.(watch from 16:10 to 21:25 and also 34:35 to 38:50).

https://youtu.be/C4PnMqkggcI

[Rabbit Hole]

Kinda random and the discussion is died down now, but just real quick I wanna go back to the whole islander/ mainland differences. Take a look at this video... These are Thessalian Greeks. They do not look that different from islander Greeks by a whole lot, people exaggerate too much.(watch from 16:10 to 21:25 and also 34:35 to 38:50).

https://youtu.be/C4PnMqkggcI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h6-IFCw4Ok&t=3s

Ashkenazi Jews in Europe match up to Jews genetically in the Middle East
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ScPipFKng&t=30s
Jews on the importance of being Jewish

[Rabbit Hole]

We lack a lot about Greeks, that's my point. But people make conclusions as if they know everything. Nothing new under the sun.

What's the definition of Byzantine Greeks? Eastern Romans?

[catgeorge]

Well according to most of those Quora answers they are. I guess you’re too impatient to read the details of the answers. Clusters between Jews, Italians and Greeks are all close.

Distance from Ashkenazi to Greek_Thessaly is the same distance Greek_Thessaly to Bavaria & North France or if you want to go NE it's Poland & Ukraine.

[Konstantinos]

What's the definition of Byzantine Greeks? Eastern Romans?

Greeks of the Byzantine Empire. They called themselves Romans denoting living in a post-Roman state while preserving their ethnic identity.

[Dimitri159]

Distance from Ashkenazi to Greek_Thessaly is the same distance Greek_Thessaly to Bavaria & North France or if you want to go NE it's Poland & Ukraine.

Wtf no it’s not you’re way tf off. They posted genetic distance charts like 50 times and Jews were within the top ten, didnt see Bavarians on the list at all. Also here’s another on Gedmatch.... https://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=73014&d=1519974619.

I stand corrected on accounts to Bulgarians. The genetic distance between mainland Greeks and Bulgarians is indeed closer than Greek and Jewish. But Jewish is still close within the cluster. I have no idea where you get France and Bavaria.

[Dimitri159]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h6-IFCw4Ok&t=3s

Ashkenazi Jews in Europe match up to Jews genetically in the Middle East
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ScPipFKng&t=30s
Jews on the importance of being Jewish

For the first video all it is saying is that the genetic distance between Jews and Middle Easterners aren’t far off. I don’t see how you’re proving anything. The genetic distance between south Europeans and Middle Easterners isn’t so far apart either to begin with, and Jews are somewhere in between south Europeans and Middle Easterners.... https://i.postimg.cc/fy9B4wQV/nik.png

[Dimitri159]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h6-IFCw4Ok&t=3s

Ashkenazi Jews in Europe match up to Jews genetically in the Middle East
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ScPipFKng&t=30s
Jews on the importance of being Jewish

Plus I wasn’t even talking about Jews anymore, get over it. I was talking about how the phenotype in Thessaly isn’t that different from South Italian/ Islander phenotypes regardless of genetics because in the end their all still within the same genetic distance so they all still look the same.

[Rabbit Hole]

Bye autist

[Dimitri159]

Bye autist

Thank you! Now fu** off.