Talk:Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry/Archive 5

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Request new section to discuss Brook 2022 and later studies that confirm or disconfirm it

A new subsection called "Brook et al. studies" ought to be created on the entry "Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry" under the section "Genetics and the Khazar theory" on the basis of the following data and interpretations. Although the following line of thinking from Brook represents a paradigm shift, it's not to be labeled as fringe because these are actually sound arguments in favor of a Khazar contribution unlike those that came before, in addition to meeting the minimum standards of having been peer-reviewed and published by a respected academic publisher. The book is endorsed by Dr. Karl Skorecki who is listed as a co-author of three population genetics papers referenced in this Wikipedia entry.

First, it could be noted that this is yet another change in Brook's viewpoint, in comparison to Brook 2018. In his book The Maternal Lineages of Ashkenazic Jews (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2022), Kevin Alan Brook proposed that there actually are or may be multiple Khazar and Alan uniparental haplogroups in the modern Ashkenazi population in addition to small traces of Turkic and North Caucasian autosomal DNA.

The Ashkenazic branch under N9a3 is a daughter branch of a variety found in Turkic-speaking Bashkirs - citation: pages 85-86 in Brook 2022. Brook 2022, following YFull (https://www.yfull.com/mtree/N9a3a1b/) and Dr. Ian Logan (http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_by_group/n9a_genbank_sequences.htm), calls the Ashkenazic branch N9a3a1b1 and the Bashkir branch N9a3a1b.

Subsequently, a Mongolic-speaking Daur person from northeastern China was found to be at the same level as the Bashkirs - citation: "Genetic Diversity Analysis of the Chinese Daur Ethnic Group in Heilongjiang Province by Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequencing" by Mansha Jia, Qiuyan Li, et al. in Frontiers in Genetics volume 13 (21 June 2022), article no. 919063, url = https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2022.919063/full but in its supplemental data set and specifically GenBank accession number ON127764, which YFull and Logan both accept as members of branch N9a3a1b. Wikipedia has a standard format to cite accession numbers which is to use the "ref" tag between left and right angle brackets (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/angle_bracket) followed by two left curly brackets (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curly_bracket) then GenBank|ON127764.1 followed by two right curly brackets and a closing "/ref" tag between left and right angle brackets.

At this time, Han Chinese people have not been assigned to N9a3a1b or N9a3a1b1. The pattern is Turko-Mongolian, the population cluster that the core founding ancestors of the Khazars belonged to.

In addition, the Ashkenazic type of N9a3 was already present in Jews buried in Erfurt, Germany during the 14th century, specifically in female sample number I14740 from the population cluster "Europe-EU" which had more eastern origins and can be considered part of Knaanic Jewry in comparison to the "Europe-ME" group which was associated with Rhineland Jewry - citation: "Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century" by Shamam Waldman, Daniel Backenroth, Éadaoin Harney, Stefan Flohr, Nadia C. Neff, Gina M. Buckley, Hila Fridman, Ali Akbari, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Iñigo Olalde, Leo Cooper, Ariel Lomes, Joshua Lipson, Jorge Cano Nistal, Jin Yu, Nir Barzilai, Inga Peter, Gil Atzmon, Harry Ostrer, Todd Lencz, Yosef E. Maruvka, Maike Lämmerhirt, Alexander Beider, Leonard V. Rutgers, Virginie Renson, Keith M. Prufer, Stephan Schiffels, Harald Ringbauer, Karin Sczech, Shai Carmi, and David Reich in Cell volume 185 (30 November 2022), an open access article with the doi = 10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002 and url = https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01378-2 and she is specifically listed as N9a3a1b1 under the column labeled "mtDNA terminal (YFull)" on "Data S2, Table 1: The characteristics of the Erfurt samples." within Supplemental Data S2 at the url = https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002/attachment/d79f736e-ddf7-4d98-af4e-50036da7e219/mmc2.xlsx and it is also noteworthy that on page 26 of Supplemental Data S1 at url = https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cell.2022.11.002/attachment/22896784-6f78-4e3d-a8d9-b21531ad6809/mmc1.pdf it says that although there is "no major East-Asian ancestry" in Erfurt's Jews, "one individual (I14740) carried the mtDNA terminal haplogroup N9a3a1b1, which is nested within a Central/East Asian branch (https://www.yfull.com/mtree/N9a3a1/)."

Also, the Ashkenazic branch under A12'23 which is called A-a1b3* by YFull appears to be Central Asian, matching ancient Central Asians and ancient Siberians and a modern Turkmen from Uzbekistan - citation: page 17 in Brook 2022.

Further, the Ashkenazi paternal haplogroup G2a-FGC1093 is the same haplogroup that some North Ossetian and Kumyk people from the North Caucasus belong to - citation: page 7 in Brook 2022.

G2a-FGC1093 was subsequently also found to have been present in a man from ancient times (5th century BCE) from the Koban culture who was unearthed from the Zayukovo-3 Cemetery in Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus - future citation: the upcoming paper "Koban culture genomes sequencing" and its sample name lib7al_PE which is listed in a table circulated in public forums such as https://m.facebook.com/groups/417281705806518/posts/1189249118609769/ and at https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?8066-Genetic-Genealogy-amp-Ancient-DNA-in-the-News-(DISCUSSION-ONLY)&p=890549&viewfull=1#post890549 but it does not yet appear in public databases such as https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-FGC1093/

Page 141 of Brook 2022 highlights a passage in the 2013 study "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews" where its authors acknowledged that they "cannot rule out the possibility that a level of Khazar or other Caucasus admixture occurred below the level of detectability in our study" and explains why their methodology was faulty and led to their inability to capture it.

Despite all this, at this moment there are no confirmed direct linkages between Ashkenazi haplogroups and Khazar haplogroups, as acknowledged in Brook 2022 on pages 140-141. Ashkenazi X2e2a is in the same broad haplogroup family as Khazar X2e but this is seen as insignificant because the Khazar was not confirmed to be X2e2a (page 141).

The preprint "Tracing genetic connections of ancient Hungarians to the 6-14th century populations of the Volga-Ural region" by Bea Szeifert, Dániel Gerber, et al. studies the genetics of "Novinki-type sites" that they say could include Khazars and one or two of their Novinki samples had the haplogroup they call A+152+16362 as stated on Figure 5 at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2022/04/28/2022.02.04.478947.full.pdf A reading of A+152+16362 is at the base of multiple subclades, one of which is A12'23 which includes Ashkenazi A-a1b3*. But the carriers in this study might not carry the extra necessary Ashkenazic mutation T16189C! but we don't know at this time because databases such as YFull and GenBank do not yet include this sample.

Ashkenazi haplogroup H40b is listed on page 141 in Brook 2022 as another haplogroup that cannot be found among Khazar samples already collected but its inclusion in that section implies, but does not directly state, that some Khazars could have had it, maybe. Page 52 in Brook 2022 states that H40b was common in the Kushnarenkovo-Karayakupovo culture. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Kushnarenkovo_culture says "N. A. Mazhitov thinks that the population of Kushnarenkovo culture were the ancestors of the ancient Bashkirs." But H40b is also in Poles, for whatever reason, so maybe that is its true origin for Ashkenazi Jewry.

Ashkenazi haplogroup U5a1d2b is also listed on page 141 of Brook 2022 in the sentence dealing with it being absent from existing Khazar samples. Brook did not commit to a Turkic ancestry hypothesis for Ashkenazi U5a1d2b but noted on page 107 that it is found in several Turkic populations (Bashkirs, Volga Tatars, Tubalars, Uyghurs) and North Caucasian populations in addition to many European populations.

Nowhere does Brook 2022 describe the Khazars as being related to Armenians, Georgians, Anatolians, Iranians, or Azerbaijani Jews. On page 140, the Khazars are described as an ethnicity of Turkic origin. This is in distinction to Elhaik.

On page 4, Brook 2022 disagreed with the hypothesis of a Khazar origin for Ashkenazi Levite haplogroup R1a1a.

On pages 140-141, Brook 2022 asserts that some Khazars and Alans did convert to Judaism. He does not state in this book that all of them converted.

Nothing in this book proves "that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from Khazars," as Wikipedia interprets the Khazar hypothesis to be. It is only about small contributions of small lineages and small genome-wide percentages. But even a small amount would demonstrate the truth to the part Wikipedia says about "after collapse of the Khazar empire, the Khazars fled to Eastern Europe".

Brook 2022 and Brook 2006 did not agree with Koestler's assertion that Khazars "exchanged their native Khazar language for Yiddish" (Wikipedia's wording), contending instead that Khazars exchanged their Khazar language for a Slavic language and that the switch to Yiddish came centuries later. Brook 1999 argued that the Slavic-speaking Jews were not only part-Khazar and part-Alan but also part-Slavic in terms of ancestry, not only in terms of language. According to Waldman et al. 2022, the "Europe-EU" subpopulation in 14th-century Erfurt had high amounts of Slavic admixture. The Turkic-associated haplogroups N9a3a1b1 and A-a1b3* have not been identified in Slavic populations so Slavs aren't plausible transmitters of those haplogroups into a Jewish population and this is a separate phenomenon that stems from an originally separate non-Slavic population. Contrastingly, the existence of Slavic carriers of U5a1d2b and H40b renders weak the theoretical case for the Khazar origin of those two Ashkenazi haplogroups.

Further up, in the historiography section, Wikipedia refers to Brook's views that changed over time as he expressed across the first, second, and third editions of The Jews of Khazaria but does not yet mention how his views changed again as seen in Brook 2022, which was published four years after the third edition of the earlier book. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:185:E5E4:3D6E:BB01 (talk) 08:18, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

As you allude, Brook's book argues that there is may be a small Khazar contribution, but not that Ashkenazi Jews are substantially Khazar. He argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East and various parts of Europe, with the Khazar contribution being small (as well as there being small contributions from China and North African Berbers). (Here: https://www.academicstudiespress.com/out-of-series/9781644699836#:~:text=It%20focuses%20on%20the%20129,lasting%20legacy%20of%20conversions%20to). I'm not sure sure it would be a paradigm shift since the possibility of small Khazar contributions was suggested by some before, and it is distinct from the idea that the Ashkenazi are mostly or to a large extent Khazar (i.e. the Khazar hypothesis). You wrote: "...that Khazars exchanged their Khazar language for a Slavic language and that the switch to Yiddish came centuries later." It seems that Brooks is arguing (as he did in earlier times) that Ashkenazi Jews descend mainly from proto-Askenazi Jews from west and central Europe - perhaps represented by the "Erfurt-ME" population - (who would have spoken a Germanic language ancestral to Yiddish) who then moved east and absorbed some Slavic-speaking Jews who were part Khazar (rather than the latter switching to Yiddish en masse). Anyway, an alternative to a new Brooks section might be to add a mention of Brook's new book to the the part of the "History" section where Brooks books are mentioned. Skllagyook (talk) 10:35, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

He argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East

The study by Richards et al., (2013) found that 80% of the maternal lineage was European. Hence one should be very wary of a non-expertarriving at conclusions diametrically opposed to a team of informed specialists.Nishidani (talk) 15:10, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

One would need a source like an independent review written a competent professional paleogeneticist to evaluate Brook's new book. He is a dedicated scholar, and we gave leeway for the fact he was self-published and not reliably published in wiki terms for the earlier work. This may be different, but again, the field he summarizes is intricately complex, and only high level professional positive reviews could be used to refer to his results here. Nishidani (talk) 15:07, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

You wrote: "The study by Richards et al., (2013) found that 80% of the maternal lineage was European. Hence one should be very wary of a non-expert arriving at conclusions diametrically opposed to a team of informed specialists.

I wrote above that:

He [Brooks] argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East and various parts of Europe

(with a minority from elsewhere). That would be different from but not exactly diametrically opposed to Richards and definitely not diametrically opposed to the 2014 study by Fernandez et al., which questioned the findings by Richards 2013 that Ashkenazi K lineages (around 35-40% of Ashkenazi mtdna lineages) are European, instead proposing that they (or some of them) could be Middle Eastern. (There were other geneticists that also questioned Richards 2013 such as Behar and Skorecki, though some others such as Ostrer, Goldsetin, and Torroni were more favorable.) So the idea that Ashkenazi mtdna could include a significant Middle Eastern component is not radical. It is true that Brooks was a non-expert whose past work was not professionally published. But this source is peer-reviewed and endorsed by Karl Skorecki, a prominent geneticist in the field. I think I might agree with you that it may not be appropriate (at least yet) to give Brooks his own section in "Genetic studies" given that the majority of his work was not peer-reviewed. But I don't see a problem with adding a mention of his 2022 book and its findings in the "History" section where Brooks' work is already described. Skllagyook (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Nishidani, Brook's other main book publisher, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, is not a self-publishing or non-professional operation but on par with Academic Studies Press. See https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Rowman_%26_Littlefield and, regarding peer review taking place for their books, https://rowman.com/page/rlauthres An anonymous author at https://humanitiesjournals.fandom.com/wiki/University_Presses_/Academic_Publishers wrote "Yes Rowman and Littlefield does indeed count for tenure at "prestige" x2. I'm in a top-ranked R1 department and my book with R&L counted in my promotion file and made a stir in the subfield." Karen Kelsky wrote at https://theprofessorisin.com/2012/09/21/does-the-status-of-the-press-matter/ "Presses like Ashgate, Rowman and Littlefield, and Palgrave and so on are an indeterminate rank and will count at some universities and departments more highly than at others."

The earlier press involved, Jason Aronson Publishers, was a mainstream press with separate religious/history and professional psychology divisions that was acquired by Rowman and Littlefield in 2003. See https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Jason_Aronson Brook's book was published by their religious/history division.

It was misleading of you to have quoted the part "He argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East" while cropping away the other part of Skilagyook's words: "and various parts of Europe". Skilagyook already called you out on this. Page 139 in Brook 2022 offers the possibility that 8 of them are Italian or Greek. A paragraph on pages 137-138 includes 32 lineages interpreted to come from German and Slavic converts to Judaism. The end of page 138 "shows closer Spanish ties" for still another lineage. Only one lineage is seen as Chinese here (page 81). Two are viewed as North African but non-Egyptian on page 140. North Africa outside of Egypt is excluded from the Near East (Middle East) category according to https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Near_East The ones proposed to be Middle Eastern, such as the 7 lineages on the bottom of page 139, in raw numbers are outnumbered by these others combined with haplogroups for which Brook did not suggest a definitive origin, though proportionally some of the Middle Eastern ones have among the highest frequencies in the Ashkenazi population (page 15).

Besides, we can still see on page 77 of Brook 2022 that three non-Jewish European populations (but which are known for having Sephardic Converso ancestry, which may or may not be relevant in this case) have the Ashkenazi lineage K2a2a1 so this mainly departs from Richards 2013 in disassociating K2a2a1 from central or northern Europeans.

Brook 2022, page 72, repeated the plausibility of the possibility from Richards 2013 that K1a1b1a in Ashkenazi Jewry might derive from "southern or western Europe."

Brook 2022, page 84, agreed with Richards 2013 that the most common Ashkenazi N1b lineage could come from the "west Mediterranean" region of Europe.

Page 142 of Brook 2022 speaks of "remnants from the East Slavic-speaking pre-Ashkenazic Jewish population of eastern Europe, the East Knaanim" and goes on to state that "all Ashkenazim also descend from the ninth-century founders of the Ashkenazic population in Germany". He quotes Beider that the Erfurt-EU Jews who arrived were "Few in number". The isotopic analysis on page 5 in Waldman 2022 showed that Erfurt-EU and Erfurt-ME had "differences in water sources during childhood". Page 48 of Data S1 in Waldman 2022 uses the differences in isotopes to support the documentation about Jewish migrations into Erfurt from different lands with different dominant languages and cultures. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB (talk) 19:08, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

It is true that at the moment no second scientist has chimed in about Brook 2022, but any published reviews of it in academic/scientific journals could appear one, two, three years from now. The book was only published a little more than a month ago. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB (talk) 22:48, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Skllagyook. A small mention of the small amount of possible Khazar admixture according to Brooks may be merited but this isn't a major paradigm shift in the hypothesis. Andre🚐 20:54, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I didn't clip out anything wittingly. My mistake came from copying and pasting while watching the Argentina/Australia World Cup Match. What struck me in the line from Skllagyook's summary,

He [Brook] argues that Ashkenazi maternal lineages are mainly derived from the Middle East and various parts of Europe

Was the priority, in order, given to the Middle East; (b) that it contradicted Richard et al's study; (c) that the sentence is meaningless factually.

It is meaningless factually because Brook is construed as saying that the Ashkenazi genetic profile comes from an area extending from the western Mediterranean across Egypt, to Yemen, Saudi Arabia and eastern Iran, inclusive northwards of most of prsent day Turkey. I.e. there is zero specificity. It's like saying, when asked where one's mother's origins lay, 'Oh she and her kind came from somewhere between Spain and Iran.'

I presume our interlocutor is Mr Brook?Nishidani (talk) 23:37, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Brooks in his recent book proposes that the Middle Eastern lineages (or at least many of them) come from the region of ancient Israel. (From the link in my first post above "...the 129 maternal haplogroups that the author confirmed that Ashkenazim have acquired from distinct female ancestors...indigenous to diverse lands that include Israel, Italy, Poland, Germany, North Africa, and China, revealing both their Israelite inheritance and the lasting legacy of conversions to Judaism.")

My intention was not to imply that the Middle Eastern component was necessarily the majority merely by mentioning it first. By "mainly the Middle East and Europe" I meant that both that they were each significant elements and together made up the bulk (with Berber, central Asian/Khazar, or Chinese lineages being much more minor). Brooks' conclusions do differ from those of Richard's but, as mentioned, they do not differ so much from those of all other notable experts e.g. Fernandez et al. or the opinions of Behar of Skorecki. Skllagyook (talk) 23:43, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

But returning to the OP, all of the haplogroups Brook considers to be possibly Khazar could just as soon, and probably are, Slavic/Eastern European. N9 is explained to be Sarmatian, Magyar, or Hungarian. U it talks about Finnish, Polish, Belarussian, etc. Haplogroup H is said to be Italian and Iranian. I is Syrian and Turkish. And so on. K1a1b1a was thought to have a Levantine origin for the three Ashkenazi K founders while research considers it potentially Western European[1][2] Andre🚐 00:12, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

N9a was indeed in Sarmatians and Magyars (Brook 2022, page 86), as Andrevan said, but it has not been established that they were in the Ashkenazic branch of N9a named above. Slavic populations, in this case Czechs and Russians, belong to a different branch of N9a (Brook 2022, page 85). 2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB (talk) 04:04, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Brooks in his recent book proposes that the Middle Eastern lineages (or at least many of them) come from the region of ancient Israel.

All of this is inflected by the cultural bias that seeks to ascertain proof from the science of paleogenetics for the concept of a 'return to one's homeland' underwriting the religious ideology of Judaism. We all should know by now, it has been apparent since Behar 2013, that 'Middle East' is a code word for 'Israel', even though Behar admits that by 'Middle East' he is referring to Turkey. If one examines the literature in chronological sequence, there is a generic semantic drift from reflex affirmations of a Hebrew/Israel/Levantine origin in the 1990s, to a Middle East qua Turkish origin, which retains the mythistorical narrative of a common origin around 2500-Ist century CE point of departure, i.e. around the times of the Babylonian exile or the putative Roman 'expulsion' (79.135CE) As studies progressed,-and since in orthodoxy Jewish descent is determined through the maternal line, hence the germinal importance of mitochondrial DNA -the Israelite/Levantine origin broadened to encompass a northern Middle East hearth. Costa and Richards note that this specific topic has resisted clear conceptual resolution, and whatever the dissent (Fernandze) it remains true that no one seriously speaks of an Israelite origin having been determined. The myth is dead.

That said, ther are three points to consider. (a) An extremely high level of competence is required, given the nuanced and even fundamental variations in the numerous papers on the topic. It requires an overview by an expert. However much I admire Brook's passionate mastery of the historical literature, he doesn't qualify to synthesize the results of molecular biology; (b) If as Skllagyook puts it, Brook considers 'Middle Eastern lineages (or at least many of them) come from the region of ancient Israel,' he is dissenting, as a raw amateur, with what the scientific literature, which has distanced itself from that fixation, generally states. Zero evidence has emerged linking genetically Ashkenazi founders to Israel (that term in ancient times is a misnomer by the way, for the biblical Israel's dates would restrict diasporic founders origins to a short few centuries 9th-7th centuries BCE. The proper neutral term, Palestine, has no such political implications). (c) With all due respect, we have to consider WP:Promo here. Wikipedia cannot be an outlet for one's own research or a site promoting one's views.

Given (c), one is required to bide one's time until scientists with a thorough grounding in this recondite topic review and cite his work. Once this secondary assessment becomes available, then his latest contribution can be evaluated for inclusion. That is the way the rules work here.Nishidani (talk) 12:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

You wrote: "even though Behar admits that by 'Middle East' he is referring to Turkey"

Where does Behar state that? That is not his position as far as I know. In his 2013 study, he finds affinities in the Mid. Eastern component of Ashkenazi and Levantines such as Cypriots, Druze, Lebanese, and Samaritans. In his 2017 study on Ashkenazi Levites he suggests that Ashkenazi r1a lineages originate from "a minor haplogroup among the Hebrews". He is far from the only geneticist whose research argues that the Middle Eastern component in the Ashkenazi is from the Levant region (whether one calls it "Isreal", "Palestine" "the Levant", or something else). It is not a dissenting position.

And, as mentioned, Brook's book is endorsed by Karl Skorecki, who is a prominent and widely cited scientist in the field. Given that we have included Brook's other works here, which were non-peer-reviewed, I do not see why we cannot include this one (in a WP:DUE manner in the relevant section - as I said, I agree that Brooks does not need a section of his own).

You wrote: "Wikipedia cannot be an outlet for one's own research or a site promoting one's views."

I'm not sure what you mean by the above. It is not my research. I am not Brooks and have no connection to him or his work. It's a peer-reviewed source by an author endorsed by a prominent geneticist, and whose non-peer-reviewed works we already cite in this page. Skllagyook (talk) 13:33, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Science is based on verifiability. (a) Behar and a few others apparently restrict their data base access, it is not available to potential critics, which means, technically, that one of the fundamentals of verifiability is missing. (2) since one of the methodological keystones of population genetics, Principle Component Analysis, has been challenged as mathematically suspect recently, one must review research where that figures as a core tool with considerable caution, until this is sorted out, or the math refined. (3) Das, Elhaik et al., 2017 nonetheless elicited from Behar et als., 2013 paper an AJ mapping which suggests that the published Behar results all show a concentration in northwestern Turkey. Not Levantine, Israel, or some generic Middle East. (Das Elhaik 2017 p.2) In layman's terms, the 2013 paper implies that the Middle East is being used there for Turkey, though this is not explicitly stated by the authors. The admission lies in their data.

In science, if some other peer interprets your work in a way you disagree with, one replies to correct the perceived misprision. Elhaik, Das say that Behar's 2013 work supplements their own northern Turkey/AJ connection. If their reading is flawed, then one would expect a collegial rebuttal. I am not aware that Behar has since challenged that reading. Correct me if I err.

2600:1000:B12B:24B:1D42:A5C7:3560:3CFB is almost certainly Brook, wqho brought his recently published book to this page of wikipedia, asking that it be covered. That is prima facie a serious WP:Promo WP:COI issue.

Finally, to repeat a point I've made over these years. There is a simple egg of Columbus solution available to this crux. Israel/Palestine abounds in Israelite bones from which DNA can be extracted and analysed. Rather than engage in often conflicting rersearch directed towards making an inference from AJ samples, the premise should be to define what we know of an Israelite genetic profile, and then compare the results with the AJ data. As far as I am aware, this is studiously avoided. I personally wouldn't care if the results confirmed the myth of origins we have. To the contrary. Science is value neutral and follows wherever the data leads, regardless of moral, ethnical, ideological concerns.Nishidani (talk) 17:37, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Waittasec. The academic consensus is that Ashkenazi Jews are extremely similar to Middle Eastern Jews. They have European admixture, but the major similarity is to Middle Eastern peoples ie Palestinians, Druze. But that's not what's being discussed here. This is about the fringe hypothesis that there is Khazar admixture - Central Asian/Turkic. So, I have to disagree with Nishidani's argument. Andre🚐 19:25, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The academic consensus is that Ashkenazi Jews are extremely similar to Middle Eastern Jews.

Wonderful. Translated that means that though 80% of the maternal lineage of Ashkenazi is neolithic European, this doesn't dent the 'fact' that the Ashkenazi are strikingly similar to Middle Eastern Jews (aka Palestinians) who do not have this maternal Ashkenazi component. All you need to do is throw the gender difference out.

In any case, if you read the thread (a) Mr Brook's outline of his book is all over the place thematically (b)Skllagyook's summary addressed a major theme of his book which, if so, is patently nonsense, and (c) therefore I addressed that. Apropos the Khazars, which as you note, should be the focus here, Brook has very little to add that couldn't be said in one line. But the chops and changes over time in this one author, this is just the more recent version, don't strike me as significant, particularly in so far, as opposed to his intense historical knowledge re Khazars, he simply doesn't have the requisite scientific background to be noteworthy. If the majority here disagrees, well, I've a lot of other things on my plate, . . .Nishidani (talk) 21:41, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Middle Eastern Jews (aka Palestinians) I think we're a bit confused here. There's good research showing that AJ have more similarity to Middle Eastern Jews - which could be Yemenite Jews, etc., not necessarily Palestinians. They are also closely related to non-Jewish Palestinians, Druze, Lebanese, etc. There's a healthy dose of European admixture and good evidence that Europeans make up a good portion of the heritage of AJ. See for example: [3] These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent. Andre🚐 21:52, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• The academic consensus is that Ashkenazi Jews are extremely similar to Middle Eastern Jews. the major similarity is to Middle Eastern peoples ie PalestiniansAndre

My ironic paraphrase

• the Ashkenazi are strikingly similar to Middle Eastern Jews (aka Palestinians).Nishidani

• I think we're a bit confused here. There's good research showing that AJ have more similarity to Middle Eastern Jews - which could be Yemenite Jews, etc., not necessarily Palestinians.Andre

What is confusing is the vagueness, loose language and arbitrary selection of sources, as citing Koperlman from 14 years ago in a rapidly evolving field of science. Please don't take wiki articles on this topic as guides. The section of Yemeni Jewish genetics is, put politely, farcical, admitting from genetic arguments large-scale conversion and no large scale conversion in the same section. All wiki pages on this topic share the same carelessness, a lack of a cogent overview. There is no consensus here, and shouldn't be, in a field that has such am intense pace of evolution and hypothesis.Nishidani (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Just look at the latest research then [4] [5] ". The comparisons suggested the Ashkenazi circa 1350 had a mix of ancestry resembling populations from southern Italy or Sicily today, with components found in modern Eastern Europe and the Middle East mixed in." How is that inconsistent with Kopelman?

Genetic evidence supports a mixed Middle Eastern (ME) and European (EU) ancestry in AJ. This is based on uniparental markers with origins in either region

• Behar et al., 2006, Behar et al., 2017;
• Costa et al., 2013
• Hammer et al., 2000
• Hammer et al., 2009
• Nebel et al., 2001

), as well as autosomal studies showing that AJ have ancestry intermediate between ME and EU populations (

• Atzmon et al., 2010
• Behar et al., 2010
• Behar et al., 2013
• Bray et al., 2010
• Carmi et al., 2014a
• Granot-Hershkovitz et al., 2018
• Guha et al., 2012
• Kopelman et al., 2020

Andre🚐 22:36, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

This is a strawman argument, consisting of a list of papers that, probably unread, have been clipped from the relevant wiki pages, regardless of the numerous differences and figures that can be elicited regarding hypothetical admixture percentages in research over 2 decades (Nebel 2001) to Kopelman (2020). No one is contesting that there is a ME component among the Ashkenazi, as your assumption above suggests. If you are familiar with the literature, that component has been estimated to range from 3% upwards. What was noted is that (a) wiki genetic articles are slapdash piles of reports whose details conflict, often as with Yemeni Jews, where our article asserts two contradictory theories, each appealing to DNA studies i.e., (I) that there were almost no conversions (pure descent) and (ii)there were large-scale conversions (something historically known to be the case) (b) that Middle East is an empty term abusively used to hint at a Levantine or Israeli founding origin whereas (c) as with Behar 2013, it appears to point to northern Turkish origins. One could add dozens of other incoherences, such as (d) the ignorance of history illustrated by many of these papers (e) and its replacement by a religious narrative so that (e) miraculously, per Behar et al., the suggested foundation dates are made to coincide with the mythical dates of a putative expulsion or imposed exile; (f) that the whole literature is marked by a philosophical ineptitude full of unargued assumptions or ignored difficulties, (not least the incongruency between the modern Jewish religious definition of Jewishness as grounded in descent from a Jewish mother, and the Old Testamental belief that legitimacy as a Jew comes through the paternal line). Namely, in any lineage both maternal and paternal origins have equal weight. If I have mixed parentage ethnically, it is wholly arbitrary to privilege just one line to the exclusion of the other. Harping on 4 founding fathersmothers of apparent ME origin (while studiously avoiding any precision about where in the vast ME they may have hailed from) as defining one's ethnicity as an Middle-Eastern descended Ashkenazi, sits unhappily beside a feasible estimate that 80% of the female line descends from a European genomic heritage going back to the Neolithic. The massive obfuscation is POV-driven, and, if the critique of PCA is correct, the results of these various papers throughout those decades has, wittingly or unwittingly, reflect the historical preconceptions (the myth of return/the idea that identity is biological) of their authors, rather than the extremely complex realities of the past. It is quite pointless my stating this. The ideological commitments are too deeply enseamed into our public and scientific discourse, so that commonsense has no traction, and passages like the following are, if read, quickly forgotten, because their exposure of the absurd assumptions underwriting the literature on genetic identity would put a lot of people out of work.

How far back must we go to find the most recent shared ancestor for – say – all Welsh people or all Japanese? And how much further is it to the last person from whom everyone alive today- Welsh, Japanese, Nigerian, or Papuan-can trace descent. . . Speculative as they are, the results are a surprise. In a population of around a thousand people everyone is likely to share the same ancestor about ten generations. Some three hundred years- ago. The figure goes up at a regular rate for larger groups, which means that almost all native Britons can trace descent from a single anonymous individual on these islands who lived in about the thirteenth century. On the global scale, universal common ancestry emerges no more than a hundred generations ago-well into the Old Testament era, perhaps, around the destruction of the First Temple in about 600 B.C.Steve Jones, Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science Hachette 2013 p.27.

That means, analytically, that attempts to define Jewishness by selective manipulation of haplotypes is nonsensical, since all one is doing is repressing everything else in the genome that points to cross-ethnic affinities.Nishidani (talk) 13:16, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

This list of sources is from the Waldman work in Cell, Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century. It is not a straw-man. Your figure of 3% is much too low. From the research, Under the extensive set of models we studied, the ME ancestry in EAJ is estimated in the range 19%–43% and the Mediterranean European ancestry in the range 37%–65%. Andre🚐 15:52, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Your argument is a strawman since you assume I am denying some ME component, which is not the case. If you were familiar with the literature, you would have immediately realised that the figure in my 'from 3% upwards,' is not 'mine' but a dcirect allusion to Ranajit Da1, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia and Eran Elhaik , Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish Frontiers of Genetics 21 June 2017:

Briefly, we analyzed 18,757 autosomal SNPs genotyped in 46 Palestinians, 45 Bedouins, 16 Syrians, and eight Lebanese (Li et al., 2008) alongside 467 AJs [367 AJs previously analyzed and 100 individuals with AJ mother) (Das et al., 2016) that overlapped with both the GenoChip (Elhaik et al., 2013) and ancient DNA data (Lazaridis et al., 2016). We then carried out a supervised ADMIXTURE analysis (Alexander and Lange, 2011) using three East European Hunter Gatherers from Russia (EHGs) alongside six Epipaleolithic Levantines, 24 Neolithic Anatolians, and six Neolithic Iranians as reference populations (Table S0). Remarkably, AJs exhibit a dominant Iranian (88%) and residual Levantine (3% ) ancestries, as opposed to Bedouins (14% and 68% respectively) and Palestinians (18% and 58% , respectively). Only two AJs exhibit Levantine ancestries typical to Levantine populations (Figure 1B). Repeating the analysis with qpAdm (AdmixTools, version 4.1) (Patterson et al., 2012), we found that AJs admixture could be modeled using either three- (Neolithic Anatolians [46%], Neolithic Iranians [32%], and EHGs [22%]) or two-way (Neolithic Iranians [71%] and EHGs [29%]) migration waves (Supplementary Text). These findings should be reevaluated when Medieval DNA would become available. Overall, the combined results are in a strong agreement with the predictions of the Irano-Turko-Slavic hypothesis (Table 1) and rule out an ancient Levantine origin for AJs, which is predominant among modern-day Levantine populations, (e.g., Bedouins and Palestinians).

Had you paused to reflect on your own figures, 19-43%/35-65%, you should have realized that the substantial variations in the ranges indicate discrepancies that underline how rubbery the these conclusions are. We are not in the realm of facts ascertained by a consensual scientific methodology.

Had you actually familiarized yourself with the discussions that followed the Waldman paper you would have noted that the marked heterogeneity instanced by the Erfurt DNA gave rise to speculations to explain this high degree of differential genetic complexity in that community that broached the possibility, on the basis of the data, of Iberian, Berber, Roma, Avar-Longobardic, East-Asian, Siberian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Khazar, Mitanni, Armenian, Carthaginian etc.etc., input.

It is obvious that the house of these genetic population theories, and their wiki reflexes, needs to be put in order, tidied up to make the constant dissonance in results comprehensible. Some people who might take a hint from Emily in Ian McEwan's Atonement,(2000)

She would soothe the household, which seemed to her, . .like a turbulent and sparsely populated continent from whose forested vastness competing elements made claims and counter-claims upon her restless attention.'(p.70)Nishidani (talk) 20:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

My focused requests are about improving the page by adding content, including from new studies by Brook, Waldman, Jia, and others.

The issue at hand in this entry is about whether the Khazar contribution to Ashkenazi Jews is zero or non-zero and if non-zero to what degree, and what historians and scientists of all perspectives have to say about that controversy, not about the degree of a connection to the Levant or to the Middle East more broadly. But, for the record, Brook 2022 page 139 lists HV1a'b'c and T2g1a as "more likely" stemming from Israelites than from Europeans, and Brook 2022 page 136 remarks that ancient samples of HV1a'b'c and T2g1a were recovered from ancient residents within the boundaries of today's Israel. When ancient Judean genetic sequences come out (next year? there are rumors) we will learn whether any of them had K1a9 or K1a1b1a or other prominent Ashkenazi haplogroups. This, along with certain paternal lineages, would start to chip away at Nishidani's claim that "Zero evidence has emerged linking genetically Ashkenazi founders to Israel" which was intended to discredit Brook 2022's back cover that mentions Israel as one of the places of maternal origin. Nishidani's long-standing political bias against Israel and Zionism clouds his thinking and he has no publications or scientific endorsements or reviews or peer reviews or work citations of his own so why listen to him or allow him to control this topic's coverage?

It's inappropriate that you've severely restricted who can edit this entry on the so-called "encyclopedia that everybody can edit" (how the site was in the beginning). I saw the messages "This page is currently protected so that only extended confirmed users and administrators can edit it." and "Editors to this page: must be signed into an account and have at least 500 edits and 30 days' tenure" which were limitations imposed by Johnuniq on 27 May 2021. That is why this had to be requested in this Talk page. Then Nishidani blames me for doing so on the grounds that it looks promotional! What other option was there? My purpose was to bring your attention new data in support of a small Khazar contribution that have heretofore not been published and which are superior to the previous arguments that were strawmen easily knocked down such as the "Khazar Levite" hypothesis and the "Khazars as Armenians" hypothesis. Brook 2022 presented specific arguments that need to be summarized in the entry, at whatever length you deem appropriate, to be expanded as other scientists start to write about it and cite it.

Brook 2018 (not, of course, Brook 2022, which wasn't out yet) was cited within the June 2019 scientific paper "Substructured Population Growth in the Ashkenazi Jews Inferred with Approximate Bayesian Computation" by Ariella L. Gladstein and Michael F. Hammer in Molecular Biology and Evolution, albeit as a source on Khazar history.

Wikipedia inappropriately props up and promotes certain books with their own entire entries, such as The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler and The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, at the expense of other books, simply because those are more notorious and received widespread international mass media attention. This problem then gets compounted by Google's bias in favor of frequently displaying Wikipedia as the first result in searches. In recent years, Google still has had a near-monopoly on searches. Wikipedia then becomes a malign influence on the field of Khazar studies because multitudes of people visit this page and think any non-zero Khazar hypothesis has no grounding to it and is associated only with crazy or antisemitic people and debunked explanations by certain researchers with "credentials". Other, balanced and politically unmotivated voices with less media coverage but more data replicatability get less space or no space. Is that fair?

In Google Books, Brook's The Jews of Khazaria was found to be cited at least 217 times, Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe 343 times, The Invention of the Jewish People 689 times, Golb and Pritsak's Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century 308 times, Golden's Khazar Studies (1980) 307 times, Dunlop's The History of the Jewish Khazars 582 times. Despite far exceeding Koestler's in scholarly citations and being widely considered a more trustworthy source, Dunlop's book was not deemed to merit its own entry.

I would also argue that you did not adequately cover the zero plausibility point of view expressed in Behar's 2013 article "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews", which should appear under your subsection entitled "Behar et al. studies". You have room to add some more words about that study and about Brook 2022 (which disagrees with it) considering you discuss the pros and cons of Elhaik in 10 paragraphs.

At the present moment, readers of the entry are not informed about the current parameters of the debate. Whether readers are ill-informed about other topics like Yemeni Jewish genetics when there are conflicting narratives or interpretations, as Nishidani said, is another matter. 2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE (talk) 04:12, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

If a consensus leads you to continue to object to a dedicated section for Brook 2022, you could instead add one new paragraph under the subsection "Behar et al. studies" that expressses both the sentiment from Behar's "No Evidence" paper that there was no Khazar or North Caucasian contribution at all and then Brook 2022's analysis of that paper's flawed method (page 141) and Brook's presentation of evidence in support of likely Khazar and North Caucasian contributions (especially pages 7, 16-17, and 85-86). 2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE (talk) 04:30, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong. As a published author, I'm all too aware of how exasperating it can be to work within wiki rules that militate against informed scholars citing their own work. But that is the system, and its overall effect is positive, despite the collateral lacunae this causes. I appreciate much of your work, and I agree with much that you state above. Khazar matters generate hysteria unfortunately, and the best I could do was simply show that speculation over the Khazar-Jewish hypothesis has an honourable lineage within Jewish historical discourse, and therefore the panicky reactions to any mention of the topic, with their fall-back shouting about 'anti-semitism' and 'anti-Israeli-ism' are just political bullshit, when not, perhaps more insidiously, an abuse of science that approaches the material with ideological, and often racial, preconceptions about what constitutes 'Jewishness'. Numbers will decide if your work is to be included or not, and I will abstain from voting either way.Nishidani (talk) 13:16, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I must disagree with you. per RS, the Khazar hypothesis is indeed tied to anti-Semitism as sources have shown, for example [6] Andre🚐 15:53, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Puerile, read the article's history of the concept. Anyone can prove anything by sweeping fringe lunatic sites from Telegraph and Twitter playing to minor constituencies (10,000 more or less) of paranoid conspiracy theorists.Nishidani (talk) 20:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, Andre, but notice that I included the word "only" in my phrase "associated only with crazy or antisemitic people". The problem is not only the existence of extreme/fringe and hateful personalities but that the extensive space given over to discussing them skews the discussion of the controversy, which leads many people to assume it's too tainted from guilt-by-association. Nishidani's observations that the topic generates "panicky reactions" and "hysteria" are apt. I have seen it play out that way in social media (Facebook, Twitter) and newspapers and elsewhere. The mere word "Khazar" sets some people off. It has even led Schelly Dardashti to ban the topic from being discussed altogether in her popular Jewish genealogy Facebook group Tracing the Tribe.

Ariel David's 30 November 2022 Ha'aretz piece "DNA of Medieval Skeletons in Germany Sheds Light on Origins of Ashkenazi Jews" https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2022-11-30/ty-article/dna-of-medieval-skeletons-in-germany-sheds-light-on-origins-of-ashkenazi-jews/00000184-c3ec-d05a-a3b4-e3ecc8940000 interviewed Waldman 2022 co-author Shai Carmi who explained that there are "no major direct links to the Caucasus" (Mr. David's wording). That is not the same as saying none at all and does not address the Turkic elephant in the room, N9a3a1b1, which was not originally from the Caucasus. But Mr. David tried to claim that Waldman 2022 does not "support the long-discredited “Khazar hypothesis”" and then defines that hypothesis in the same mistaken maximal and mutually exclusive way as your entry sometimes states or implies. Mr. David expresses that hypothesis in the following terms: "the claim that Ashkenazim have no link to the ancestral population of Judah but descend instead from the Khazars, an early medieval kingdom in the Caucasus where part of the population had converted to Judaism." Excuse me for repeating this, but this is not an either-or proposition: either Khazaria or Israel.

Antisemites frequently contradict other antisemites. Some believe one thing, others believe the opposite. There is no reason to promote the idea that only the Khazar connection is tainted but the Judean connection is not. The notion that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from Khazars is associated with 1940s-era German Nazism and with the current viewpoint of certain prominent Jew-haters such as David Duke and Kevin MacDonald ( https://davidduke.com/dr-kevin-macdonald-utterly-destroys-debunks-khazar-theory/ and https://nationalvanguard.org/2015/06/rethinking-the-khazar-theory ). The Nazis saved many Crimean Karaites from extermination on the basis that they were allegedly Khazars. Some Jew-haters in message boards think the promotion of the Khazar hypothesis by some Jewish authors in the 20th century was misdirection and sinister because it supports a narrative in support of Judaism.

On https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User_talk:Andrevan you show an excellent pyramid, the top rungs of which emphasize the importance of scholarly arguments based on tactics like "counterargument" and "refuting the central point" as opposed to dismissing an idea or a writer out of hand "ad hominem" "without addressing the substance of the argument". As of 5 December 2022, the current Wikipedia entry is missing both a key argument and a key counterargument or refutation.

So a new paragraph would be warranted that would say words to the effect that Behar et al. 2013(b) "No Evidence" argued against any Turkic or North Caucasian contribution to Ashkenazi genomes but that was based on IBD matching within 20 generations, so Brook 2022 explained that this did not reach back to Khazar times and Brook found several Ashkenazi haplogroups (A-a1b3 and N9a3a1b1) that are candidates for being of Khazar origin and one (G2a-FGC1093) that is a candidate for North Caucasian origin. The same N9a3a1b1 assignment and its Central/East Asian rootedness appeared one month later in the definitely non-fringe paper Waldman 2022 (which was co-authored by world-renowned Jewish geneticists among whom are David Reich, Harry Ostrer, Gil Atzmon, and Nir Barzilai), which pointed to its YFull page for its genetic family tree on which a Daur member was recently added in addition to the Bashkirs who were already on there.

I cannot take issue with Nishidani's observation that particular Jewish lineages have been emphasized in certain studies and certain newspaper articles at the expense of others, except that he meant to say "4 founding mothers" instead of "4 founding fathers". 2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE (talk) 20:00, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting my slip.Nishidani (talk) 21:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I oppose the suggestions by N2600:1000:B12B:24B:C66D:AB21:B40B:4CDE to either add more evidence or argument of the Khazar hypothesis, or the idea that Had you paused to reflect on your own figures, 19-43%/35-65%, you should have realized that the substantial variations in the ranges indicate discrepancies that underline how rubbery the these conclusions are. We are not in the realm of facts ascertained by a consensual scientific methodology. Sounds to me like a confirmation bias situation where you are picking and choosing which papers already support your conclusions. Waldman is the absolutely latest cutting-edge research. Furthermore the Erfurt group is a group of German Jews post-AJ founding event so the existence of likely ME at lower-bound 19% is much higher than the 3% from the R Das 2017 which also contains problematic fringe ideas that Yiddish is Irano-Turkic or more mention of the debunked Khazar connection. This is a WP:FRINGE view. Had you actually familiarized yourself with the discussions that followed the Waldman paper you would have noted that the marked heterogeneity instanced by the Erfurt DNA gave rise to speculations to explain this high degree of differential genetic complexity in that community that broached the possibility, on the basis of the data, of Iberian, Berber, Roma, Avar-Longobardic, East-Asian, Siberian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Khazar, Mitanni, Armenian, Carthaginian etc.etc., input. Where are you getting this list from? You say the discussions that followed the paper. What discussions? Andre🚐 21:23, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The entire section which begins Ariel David's 30 November 2022 Ha'aretz piece "DNA of Medieval Skeletons in Germany Sheds Light on Origins of Ashkenazi Jews" and ends misdirection and sinister because it supports a narrative in support of Judaism. is basically WP:RGW and WP:OR. We follow what RS sources say not lead. And the idea of the Khazar hypothesis being pro-Semitic scarcely makes sense. The bottom line is the most cutting edge genetic studies do not suggest North Caucasus, that doesn't mean a few Jewish Khazars might not have been in the mix at some point, but per Shaul Stampfer there seems to be unclear documentation as to the size of the supposed mass Khazar conversion or whether it happened at all. Andre🚐 21:37, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The pot calling the kettle black. The confirmation bias is all yours. Note that in the thread, I refer to various theories, estimates without espousing any view, unlike yourself. I note contradictions in a literature that is supposed to be scientific, you cite one or two sources and take them as the last word, i.e., a fidetistic approach. I never espoused the Khazar theory: I wrote it up because the furor caused by Elhaik's paper with its personal assaults on his research and his person went flagrantly and ignorantly in the face of the history of the Khazar hypothesis, which has been an object of legitimate, serene infra-Jewish speculation for centuries. I wrote the Khazar article for the same reason, aside from a long interest in central Asian cultures. In all this, I have suspended taking sides, pro-or anti-Khazar. I merely sum up the state of the art. Of course, I have a viewpoint, one informed by 4 decades of studying nationalism and identity. That means I read for POV pushing in the fact of historical facts, th(the logical analysis of whatever I read, and the epistemological assumptions I detect within any discourse of this kind. The POV pushing to assert a genetic connection between Israel and the Ashkenazim in this area is blatantly political - an endorsement of the religious myth of return, and inflects the results. The Jews, like the Greeks, have been in voluntary diaspora since their beginnings, united by a religious tradition as the Greeks are by a linguistic tradition. All have intermarried local populations the world over. There is no such thing as a genetic Greek or a genetic Jew, since identity is cultural, not, as the Nazis asserted, racial. I've exceeded my boredom level, apart from foruming, and therefore on both grounds will leave it there.Nishidani (talk) 21:56, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm happy to leave it there but you say you aren't going to take a position, yet you then take one: The POV pushing to assert a genetic connection between Israel and the Ashkenazim in this area is blatantly political - and who is the one doing that, because it isn't me? you cite one or two sources and take them as the last word I cited quite a few sources and I also haven't mainly made any changes to the article. I am merely defending what I understand to be the present consensus view that Ashkenazi Jews do indeed have a Middle Eastern component - consistent with heritage shared with the Semitic peoples of the Mediterannean. I will note you didn't answer the question about the discussions and your list, but note that Berber, Carthaginian, and Southern Italian are all groups that also have a heavy Middle Eastern (i.e. Semitic) genetic component whether from the Phoenicians, Arabs, etc. This is not a political claim about Israel at all. Andre🚐 22:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Just in case you wonder why I don't reply. You are totally focused on what you think, and never address anything except by misdirection. One needs at least an elementary knowledge here, something your reference to Berbers as semites suggests you lack. Correcting misprisions when they come thick and fast and if answered, just lead to more of the same, is a waste of everyone's time, not least your own, which would be better employed doing some serious reading.Nishidani (talk) 17:26, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Your accusation of misdirection is not well-taken since you yourself have also decided to discuss whatever is of closest interest to you and accuse others of malfeasance or lack of information, which verges into WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL territory. Of course Berbers have ton of Middle Eastern connections. See Arab-Berber Andre🚐 17:36, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I made a mistake above, Mr Brook corrected it, I thanked him, and adjusted. You made a mistake, asserting Berbers were semitic. I corrected you. You come back with a link to to justify your error without acknowledgin it. Did you read that page? It states 'Arab-Berbers are people of mixed Arab (i.e. 'Semitic') and Berber (i.e. non Semitic) origin.' You didn't refer to Arab-Berbers, but to Berbers. If one fucks up, it is not shameful to admit it.Nishidani (talk) 21:19, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

No, we just disagree. It's possible to disagree and to legitimately misunderstand for innocent reasons. I'm trying to get at the crux of the issue. I asked you for the source of the list which included among other things, Carthaginians, Berbers, and others as possible explanations for the rate of Middle Eastern admixture in AJ. As we know, Carthage was a Phoenician colony. The Berbers of North Africa had multiple waves of migration from the Middle East such as the documented Arab migrations. The point of my saying this was that it is very likely that the Berber samples of the population would have ME in it similar to other North African populations, as my statement said, Berber, Carthaginian, and Southern Italian are all groups that also have a heavy Middle Eastern (i.e. Semitic) genetic component. The same could be said for Ethiopians. The Berber language group is also classified in the Afroasiatic group distantly related to Semitic languages. I did not say that Berber and Semite are 1:1 mappings or that one is entirely within the other. I said there's a relationship there and that is a true statement. One would expect, if the AJ ME admixture is consistent with origination in the region of the Levant, that Berber should be in the next ring of relationship based on geographic proximity and known migration patterns. Andre🚐 21:28, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Just to note I’ve taken this off my watchlist as I don’t think I know enough to take part. Doug Weller talk 13:15, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

No problem Doug. Hope you are doing well. Returning to the OP and their proposal, if anyone wants to read Brook 2022, it is available on De Gruyter through the Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library[7][8] and it's clear to me on some perusal that OP's message is a lot of original research. Andre🚐 23:33, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

The genetics stuff

Going through this again, I see that there are a lot of genetic papers that shouldn't be here

• They are introduced regardless of thed Khazar hypothesis
• In an attempt to show that Ashkenazim do have Middle Eastern origins.
• That is, some editors have taken it into their heads to scrounge up papers in the larger debate about Jewish origins, and introduce this not to directly confute Elhaik, but rather to vindicate the ME origin of Jews.
• All that is amply evidenced in the relevant pages on Jews and genetics.
• Apart from the sheer irrelevance (Ashkenbazi Levite lines? what is that doing here?) and unreadability, they shouldn't be cited unless the said papers directly challenge Elhaik's Khazar hypothesis. This paper is about the Khazars, and is not a venue for endorsing alternative theories.

Nishidani (talk) 13:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Genetics papers that address/challenge the Khazar hypothesis are relevant, not necessarily only Elhaik's iteration of it specifically - as it predates and exists independently of Elhaik (Richards, Costa et al., for instance, argue that Ashkenazi mtdna is not Khazar nor from the Caucasus but are not responding to Elhaik in particular).

Regarding Levite lines, some researchers (e.g. Nebel) had previously suggested that Ashkenazi Levite lines might be Khazar. But the more recent studies on them (cited here - Behar, Rootsi et al.) conclude that they are not. So they would seem to be relevant for that reason.

I would also argue that, since the Khazar hypothesis posits that the Ashkenazim are primarily or in large part descended from the Khazars, studies finding that they are largely Middle Eastern and/or European would not be irrelevant either. Skllagyook (talk) 14:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

As I wrote, genetic papers that address Khazar issue directly are fine by me. So what are you disputing? Every editor who worries over this keeps coming back to Elhaik's first paper, while quietly ignoring the 2016-2017 revisions. The Elhaik Khazar hypothesis2 is not squabbling with a Middle Eastern origin. To the contrary, it argues for a Middle Eastern origin, in so far as that term embraces north-western (Behar) and north-eastern Turkey. It certainly contests the assertion that by ME we are to understand the (southern) Levantine founding fathers hypothesis. As I said, papers that directly address the Khazar hypothesis are welcome and should be retained. But those that don't mention the Khazar hypothesis, but are introduced to discuss specific genetic profiles unrelated to the hypothesis, look like they are being harvested to assert or vindicate or 'debunk' a contentious theory that they otherwise never mention, and therefore shift the focus too broadly, close to WP:OR. Nishidani (talk) 16:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Totally agree with Nishidani here. Including articles that don't mention the hypothesis is WP:SYN. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:32, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree: while the article shouldn't be comprehensively about the genetic origins of the Ashkenazi, to the extent that they are ME/European rather than Khazar (which would show up presumably as Turkic/Asiatic), that is relevant and shouldn't be removed inasmuch as it's well-sourced. The Khazar theory originated long before Elhaik such as Arthur Koestler. Andre🚐 16:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

On 14 June 2023, Skllagyook wrote, "Genetics papers that address/challenge the Khazar hypothesis are relevant" and Nishidani wrote, "genetic papers that address Khazar issue directly are fine by me." Then would you have the courtesy of adding one or two sentences about the Brook 2022 study which does exactly this? It was recently endorsed ("[A] most valuable resource for further reference regarding the Ashkenazi mitochondrial lineages.") by Toomas Kivisild, Professor in the Department of Human Genetics and Head of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Genetics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a co-author of multiple scientific papers on Jewish DNA including "The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event" (2006) and "Counting the Founders: The Matrilineal Genetic Ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora" (2008). Since April, this book also has two citable genetic samples in the public database GenBank that directly relate to the Khazar hypothesis and confirm what the book was suggesting about these two particular haplogroups:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/OQ732697.1

Haplogroup A-a1b3a1 sample with an Ashkenazi maternal line from Przyrów, Poland

Its position on the haplotree is evident at https://www.yfull.com/mtree/A-a1b3a/ (which includes this GenBank sample) as being in the descendant branch of a variety found among Uzbekistani Turkmens and ancient Kazakhstani samples from other genetic studies.

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/OQ732365.1

Haplogroup N9a3a1b1 sample with an Ashkenazi maternal line from Rajgród, Poland

This confirms it is the same branch that a medieval Jew held in the Erfurt 2022 study, being another study not yet cited in this Wikipedia entry, even though it directly says this is a Central/East Asian haplogroup. Both of these 2022 scientific studies are peer-reviewed and eligible for inclusion.

Its position on the haplotree is evident at https://www.yfull.com/mtree/N9a3a1b/ (which includes this GenBank sample) as being in the descendant branch of a variety found among Turkic-speaking Bashkirs and Mongolic-speaking Daurs. 172.58.242.203 (talk) 03:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I think we had this conversation before. See above. I for one am waiting for peer-reviewed molecular genetic papers that examine your thesis, and discuss it, which the above links don't supply. Virtually none of the queries raised in that earlier thread were answered, as opposed to repeating the contents of your thesis. When Elhaik's contentions were published, they generated a dense and heated set of critical papers, and we duly transcribed those debates. Given that you are not a molecular biologist, we require something of the same reverberation to avoid wikipedia being used as a promotional vehicle for work that as yet has had no notable impact on the field. Your thesis is radical, -indeed, as shown above, it contradicts in key points what major molecular biologists state, hence the caution.Nishidani (talk) 07:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Brook 2022 is completely in harmony with the statement on page 883 of Behar 2013 that the scientists involved in that paper "cannot rule out the possibility that a level of Khazar or other Caucasus admixture occurred below the level of detectability in our study." If antisemitic conspiracy theories promulgated by members of Neo-Nazi, Black Hebrew Israelite, and cult organizations continue to be summarized in this entry, scientific studies absolutely need to also be, with the article giving weight to the science over the crazies, even though yesterday Nishidani expressed an objection to the inclusion of some of those pre-2022 scientific studies. If discredited hypotheses about haplogroup R1a (Ashkenazi Levite) being "Khazarian" are relevant to discuss in the four paragraphs that are here, and they certainly are historically relevant, then so too are the emerging ideas on N9a3a1b1 for which the two 2022 publications will surely not be the last to discuss them.

A final comment for the moment is about Nishidani's complaint over Wikipedia editors "quietly ignoring the 2016-2017 revisions" of Elhaik's hypothesis. The same could be said of the suppression of Brook 2022 from this article. From the guidance on Wikipedia:Reliable_sources: "Especially in scientific and academic fields, older sources may be inaccurate because new information has been brought to light, new theories proposed, or vocabulary changed. ... Be sure to check that older sources have not been superseded, especially if it is likely that new discoveries or developments have occurred in the last few years. ... Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." Since Elhaik and Brook are both major players in this academic debate who are cited often, and both are mentioned in this Wikipedia entry, if Elhaik's revised views and data after 2012 are relevant to mention then so too are Brook's revised views and data from after 2018. If Behar's team of scientists someday admitted to having accidentally missed the Turkic-associated and North Caucasian-rooted haplogroups in Jews, that would be similarly relevant. And Nishidani's repeatedly expressed view that so-called citizen scientists| cannot make genuine discoveries and that only degreed professional scientists can do so is antiquated. Brook didn't make the aforementioned discoveries; other citizen geneticists did (Cooper for N9a3a1b1, Sea for A-a1b3a1, Rothstein for G2a-FGC1093). This isn't about promoting Brook but about discussing new data. 172.58.242.203 (talk) 09:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

If Brook 2022 is completely in harmony with Behar (not true, see the earlier thread), then we have Behar already-

yesterday Nishidani expressed an objection to the inclusion of some of those pre-2022 scientific studies

No, That completely misses the point. I am for the inclusion of all genetic studies that mention the Khazars, and opposed to those that do not mention them (i.e. WP:OR)

Since you are not a molecular biologist, we require secondary sources written by those, books, articles etc., which take up your proposals/results before using them. We cannot use your book directly. That is the way wikipedia works.

Elhaik is a molecular biologist, working at the cusp of his field so any comparison of disparity in treatment ignores that crucial difference. Brook is to be admired for the intense work and effort he has devoted to cover the debates in the field of Khazar studies. He is not a 'major player' in this academic field (so far). Major players in this field, aside from qualified geneticists, are trained academic historians with competence in Jewish history, with several ancient and modern languages at their command, or with archaeological work to their credit, etc. That is not a put-down. It is simply what wiki rules about RS commend as best practice for sourcing. Behar, and Ostrer can be shown to make serious historical errors, because they are not trained historians but geneticists who can't distinguish disproven or questioned historical memes from cutting-edge research in that area, as opposed to their field of competence. An amateur/outsider with no formal qualifications can indeed make crucial discoveries, as Hardy found when he came across the manuscripts of an Indian clerk, Srinivasa Ramanujan. Anton van Leeuwenhoek opened up a vast new world just by grinding lenses, idem Benjamin Franklin etc.etc. The outstanding problem in paleogenetic demographics is advanced mathematical competence, which many molecular biologists do not apparently have, trusting in the programmed algorithms of their number-crunching computer software. Only peer-reviewed articles from within the discipline pass muster. An outsider, if they have stumbled on some oversight, should simply exercise patience, not perhaps that of Gregor Mendel but, if a breakthrough is there, it will be picked up in the literature. One cannot take an outsider's word for it, however sedulous and advanced their studies may be. That is fundamental on wikipedia. Nishidani (talk) 10:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The unofficial essay Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(science) suggests citing "reputable scientific journals, statements and reports from reputable expert bodies, widely recognized standard textbooks written by experts in a field, or standard handbooks and reference guides, and high-quality non-specialist publications." Nishidani is disputing the idea that somebody without a formal credential in a particular field can ever become an expert and his argument against mentioning Brook 2022 at all at the present time essentially hinges on that technicality. It also states, "Major academic publishers and university presses publish specialized book series with good editorial oversight. Volumes in these series summarize the latest research in narrow areas usually in a more extensive format than journal reviews." Although currently Brook 2022 as a particular work fails the second part of the following test in terms of its discussion in genetic literature: "The authors and the paper itself are widely cited by other researchers in the paper's field." It passes this one: "Recognized experts in the field have commented or offered informal opinion." (Kivisild and Skorecki). And also passes this one: "The paper has been appropriately reviewed through formal or informal peer review." (five anonymous peer reviewers who included two geneticists and three historians) As an author, several older works by Brook were cited within genetic literature by some credentialed geneticists:

This is not Brook's first foray into genetic research. An aspect of Brook's genetic knowledge (Ashkenazi Levite R1a) is cited on page 186 of professor of genetics Raphael Falk's 2017 book Zionism and the Biology of Jews (the text credits Brook with communicating this to him). A Y-chromosomal haplogroup from Brook's 2014 study "The Genetics of Crimean Karaites" is cited by the genetic study Das 2016 ("Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz") and the related work Elhaik 2016 ("In Search of the jüdische Typus").

Brook 2006, which is mostly about the history and only peripherally about genetics, was cited by Gladstein 2016 ("Population Genetics of the Ashkenazim") and its revision Brook 2018 cited by Gladstein 2018 ("Substructured population growth in the Ashkenazi Jews inferred with Approximate Bayesian Computation"). Brook 2006 was also cited in Dzhaubermezov 2017 ("Genetic characterization of Balkars and Karachays according to the variability of the Y chromosome").

Nishidani considers the discussion of potential Khazar markers in Brook 2022 as "radical". If this had been so, the following sentence from that essay would have applied: "Editors should be especially leery of citing papers making exceptional claims until the relevant community has evaluated the evidence." However, the sentence from Behar 2013 that I cited before did allow for the small possibility of an eventual finding of such markers.

In the context of Waldman 2022 (the Erfurt DNA study), which mentioned N9a3a1b1 but did not mention the other two markers, the population geneticist Razib Khan hosted a December 2022 podcast "The Medieval Origins of the Ashkenazim" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHiKO0EbQ00) with three of the citizen scientist co-authors of the Erfurt paper. At 48:59+ Ariel Lomes says, "N9a3 maternal lineage ... perhaps it ties to either Silk Road going through the Byzantine Empire or maybe some other location which, I don't want to say Khazars but here I am, I mentioned it. ... But I think we can't really disqualify maybe a tiny amount of more elevated Khazar ancestry. Again, really minor, on the low single digits..." At 51:50+, Leo Cooper mentions the Turkic Bashkirs and North Caucasians who carry haplogroups close to N9a3a1b1. Then at 53:03 Khan offers his opinion: "You're talking about Khazars, now. Let's keep it real." This agrees with the interpretation of that haplogroup in Brook 2022. Lomes is currently in an internship in professional geneticist Shai Carmi's lab at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (https://il.linkedin.com/in/ariel-lomes-8bb52465).

Brook 2022's data set has started to be used by others already, albeit not yet in other publications, as this is early in the game. Its A-a1b3a1 mitochondrial sequence helped YFull to clarify the position of the Ashkenazi branch of the "A" tree. This branch had simply been called "A" in Costa 2013 (a major Jewish mtDNA study). YFull requires at least two exemplars of every branch before they name them. This was the second one in that branch and YF085842 was the first one and formerly placed at the level A-a1b3a and, before then, A-a1b3. This was the first of its kind in GenBank. It will likely also be cited in future scientific studies and databases that focus on haplogroup A and/or Jewish populations. N9a3a1b1 was called simply "N9a" in Costa 2013, again not very precise.

YFull MTree and GenBank form major parts of the backbone of public mitochondrial knowledge in the scientific community. Some of this year's scientific papers that cite YFull MTree include "Phylogeographic history of mitochondrial haplogroup J in Scandinavia" and "High Coverage Mitogenomes and Y-Chromosomal Typing Reveal Ancient Lineages in the Modern-Day Székely Population in Romania". 172.58.242.203 (talk) 09:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)