I saw this posted by nekounam in another thread, which has since disappeared. I think it deserves a thread of its own. Besides the irony of this study in light of some of the discussions here, if its findings are accurate, it raises some interesting questions. For instance: (1) If this is shown to be true, and the Ashkenazi Jews were originally an Iranian tribe, would knowledge of this fact by the Nazis have changed anything? After all, the pseudo intellectual basis that covered up racism by the Nazis was based on the belief that the Jews were a semetic people. If, instead, the Ashkenazi Jews were not descendants of the original semetic tribes of Israel, but rather an Iranian tribe, would that knowledge have changed the course of history? (2) Would this finding, if proven true, affect the argument by Ashkenazi Jews laying ancestoral claims when in fact their ancestors might not have ever stood foot on Palestine? (3) Would the opinion of Iranians towards Israel be at all affected or changed if what is suggested by this study is proven accurate? Especially if the Israelis stop taking hostile attitudes towards Iran, could this become a basis for the Iranians to feel more sympathetic towards Israel? I need to look further into this issue!
Would this surprise anyone if it were true? Jews and Iranians are both murderous, unclean bastards. Nuke 'em all, I say.
The basic premise of your Nazi question is flawed. Hitler blamed the Jews because of the economic situation in Germany when he took power. He put blame on Jewish banks for the trouble that the Treaty of Versailles burdened Germany with. The Jews were an easy target for hate by the Nazis as the perception was that they had the money while the rest of Germany suffered. The Jews were also easy targets because they were a different relgion from the Nazis. There are plenty of other reasons for why the Nazi's targeted the Jews. BTW, how many baseless useless threads are you going to continue starting? Your infactuation with the Jews is amazing. You want to deny them their right to exist, then turn around and claim they are a lost tribe of Iran. Pretty soon you will have us reading your claims that Battlestar Galactica is really about a Persian Space faring race that lost one of its tribes on Earth.
What about Spanish Jews? What is the point of this thread? If what this article says is true, then why do you dislike your own people so much?
I don't feel like engaging you in a history discussion. But suffice it to say, whatever the real reasons for the antipathy towards Jews, the pseduo intellectual basis for it rested on prevailing racial theories of "Aryan supremacy" that were spurned by Gobineau's work entitled On the Inequality of Races. The work postulated that all innovations and all human civilizations were traceable to Aryans, and that the mixture of Aryan and "semetic" races brings about the decline of civilization. While "anti-Jewish" feelings in Europe would not have been affected by such studies, obviously the "pseduo intellectual" basis for it would have to be changed if this study is shown to be accurate and if its results were known at the time. I don't find this thread useless at all. Indeed, it reaises some profound questions. I do find the thread about "Iran" that "Ian McFadden" started to be useless. There is no point to that thread. As for calling this "baseless", I don't know enough about the issue as I just learned about it lurking into another thread. But on the face of it, I hardly think a study published by Harvard's medical school would be "baseless". Unlike your comments and opinions, these studies are conducted by experts and undergo peer review.
This article is about the Ashkenazi Jews, not the Sephardic ones. As I said, I just learned about this issue. And while I never "disliked" anyone due to their religion or ethnicity, I have to admit that if this study is accurate, and if its conclusions become widely known, then I think it might even have some political repercussions. Iranians generally are very "naive" in liking anyone that can be traced to them. For instance, it is now well established that Croatians orginally were from Iran and are descended from Iranians. That knowledge alone has made Iranians a bit more fond of Croatians than otherwise would be true!
Ummm, a significant part of Ashkenazim are descended from Jews kicked out of southern Europe. But, you know, I'm sure you know more about our history than we do.
Isn't that like saying that a significant portion of the English speaking people in North America are of Hispanic origin? That would not negate the fact that people from England settled in North America. Or am I missing something? I am no expert on the origins of the Jews, Sephardic or Askhkenazi. However, just doing a little research based on this article, it is clear that there were some Iranian tribes who converted to Judiams and were not semetic. Indeed, there is a group of Jews who still live in the Caucasus known as the "Mountain Jews" who are believed to be decendants of Persians, unrelated to the semetic "tribes of Israel".
Despite all the research and studies out there, the basic origin of Jews is still ridiculously simple. Modern Jews are largely descendant from Jews expelled from Israel between 6th century BC and 70 CE who along the way intermarried with an undetermined amount of "gentiles" and converts. The details may be bewilderingly complicated, but you can hardly question the basic frame. And the idea that not all Jews are descended from original expellees and therefore not entitled to their ancestral home is as old as Zionism itself and quite frankly, idiotic. Firstly, even if some Ashkenazim are descended from Turkic or Iranian tribes, the amount of mixing that happened since would make it very improbable that any given Jew would be descended only from those tribes. Basically, I think it's safe to assume that if we went back a 100 generations, any Jew, save for Sammy Davis Jr. and other fashionable converts would have at least one ancestor who lived in Israel. Second, the idea fails to account for complexities of ethnogenesis of cultural groups. Biblical stories, Norse and Greek myths of common ancestors are far from modern reality. I mean, is there anyone who actually believes that all ethnic Greeks today descend from those tribes that before the dawn of recorded history entered Southern Balkans from the north? After Roman, Gothic, Avar, Slavic, Turkish and god-knows what other invasions of the area, the idea that Greeks would somehow stay ethnically "pure" is preposterous. Yet the Greek state is willing to give citizenship to anyone with even the remotest connections to Greece and Hellenic ancestry, from Alexandria to Tbilisi. Why? Because any other policy would eventually end in some kind of a draconian system of "blood purity" tests even Hitler would be proud of. Despite all this, though, it is unquestionable that some continuity exists between modern and ancient Greeks and since there are no other serious claimants, that's good enough. Same goes for the Jews.
It would merely show a link between Jews and Iranians, not that Ashkenazi Jews were originally an Iranian tribe. Nobody is even making that argument (outside of bigsoccer)! There have been countless genetic studies proving that Ashkenazi Jews are largely semitic in origin. There have even been studies showing a some link between KURDS and Sephardic Jews. I'm sure that we'll ultimately discover a great deal of similarity amongst Middle Eastern populations. "Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora." (M.F. Hammer, Proc. Nat'l Academy of Science, May 9, 2000) "Jewishness disrupts the very categories of identity, because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension." -Daniel Boyarin "Jewish descent is sufficient to make one a Jew, at least (according to current Jewish law) if one's mother is a Jew. Conversion to Judaism also makes one a Jew, according to Judaism. Full conversion is the same as becoming a part of the Jewish people. In fact, if one converts he is given a new name ending in "ben Avraham" which means "son of Abraham," because he is considered to be adopted into that lineage." http://www.amfi.org/mailbag/There is a difference between Judaism and Jewishness.htm
With all due respect, I think you're one of them people who, when you tell them how much you're suffering from a cold, doesn't listen and in turn tells you about their pneumonia. In short: not every issue is about you. Not every issue is about Iran. The world, in fact, does not revolve around Iran. That must be a bit of a blow to you but still, someone had to give you the news.
Ben and el urchino, The secular historical view has held that the Ashkenazi are descended from Khazar tribes that inhabited the Caspian region. This view is based on the historical evidence, where a Khazar King converted to Judiasm and along with him, his had his subjects convert as well. However, there has always a problem with that "historical" understanding. Basically, most of the Ashkanazi did not or wear customes that were similar to the Turkic (Mongoloid) tribes. Nor did they obviously look Mongloid either. That had led religious chauvinists to force the idea that the Ashkenazi were from the lost tribes of Israel, who had somehow ended up in the Khazar domain. And they supported this assertion by generalized comments about greater similarity between Ashkenazi genetic studies with "Middle Easterner" as opposed to Turks. When you look into the Middle Easterners closest to the Ashkenazi in that regard, however, you find them to be Iranians. Basically, since I know Iranian history, and having done some research on the genetic issues, the findings from that Harvard study make perfect sense. The Turkic Khazar tribes that moved into West to the Caspian region came to a land that was traditionally occupied and inhabited by Iranian tribes. Long before the Khazars for many centuries, the people of the region were Iranians (Scythians etc). Thus, putting together the genetic, historical, and archeological evidence, and divorcing the issue from attemps by modern day Israeli nation builders to link all Jews to the "lost tribes of Israel", I think the conclusion becomes very clear that indeed the Ashkenazi Jews were orginally Iranian. If anyone here wants to do further reading on the issue, including the inhabitants of the region that the Khazars came to occupy, their custume, and other factors that suggest support for the findings of that study, I recommend the following: Origins of Iranian People http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Relig...trian/Oric.Basirov/origin_of_the_iranians.htm Story of Mankind (Indo Europeans) http://www.authorama.com/story-of-mankind-12.html Khazars and Ashkenazi Jews http://www.faqs.org/faqs/judaism/FAQ/07-Jews-As-Nation/section-5.html
The title of the study talks about a "common ancestoral heritage". The study suggests the same thing. No. There have been countless studies to show that the Ashkenazi were more closely related to "Middle Easterns" than Turkic (Mongloid) people. The rest of your comments are addressed in my previous post.
Now you're just being blatantly dishonest. This is a view mostly offered on Arab and neo-Nazi sites for obvious propaganda purposes. This is not "the secular historical view" nor was it even your view a few weeks ago! The "secular historical" view is that Ashkenazi Jews came from Germany and before that from the south after leaving Israel. For those unfamiliar with the term Ashkenazi: http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article?tocId=9355931 Of course, Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazis, is Germanic, meaning German Jewish. Say what????????? You are creating fiction upon fiction upon science fiction. Ashkenazi Jews are closely linked genetically to Arab peoples near Israel (Syrians, Palestinians). See above post. At this point, I can't even be confident about that. You appear to have no interest whatsoever in historical accuracy. Your bizarre references to the "lost tribes of Israel" has absolutely nothing to do with Ashkenazi Jews. Ashkenazi Jews have never claimed to be a "lost tribe of Israel" or had any doubts about their direct links to Israel - by them or their detractors. Most of these arguments are post-1948 for obvious reasons. The study suggests that a small number of Ashkenazi Jews may have a common ancestor with Iranians. Just like some Jews will also have a common ancestor with Italians. Anyhow, now that you've decided that Ashkenazi Jews are Iranian, I hope you can now leave us alone and go bother the Arabs. Thank you. Even though you worship their God, it appears you do not want to claim them as your offspring. Basically, you are taking the anti-Zionist Ashkenazis are Khazars theory and marrying it to your demented Iran is the center of the cosmos worldview. I am pleased that the descendants of some Khazars and Iranians who joined the children of Israel are part of the tribe. I feel the same way about Africans and Europeans. Judaism is not a race, but only the most delusional and/or dishonest person would attempt to argue that ancient Israel is not the fundamental source of modern Jewry.
I did not have a view on this issue, either way, until last night! And I did not research neo-Nazi and Arab sites last night to find the answers. Indeed, I am at a loss why neo-Nazis would want to claim that the Jews are not semetic? That seems an odd position for "anti-semites" who don't like Jews to take! And Arabs? I thought they were interested in arguing that they have a shared "semetic" background with the Jews? Why would they be interested in what you are suggesting? The issue raised by the study here is the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews? Not their movements in Europe. Either way, the real issue is whether the Ashkenazi are in some general way decendants of the Israeli tribes? Or are they decendants of a tribe (of whatever origin) that had converted to Judiasm? If latter is the case, I think the questions I raised about anti-semiticism and the pseduo intellectual premise for them in the late 19th/early 20th century would arise. That is a very dishonest way of presenting the study. The sample may be small and I would agree tht if there was any interest to prove or disprove the issue either way, it would require a larger sample. But it was not a discriminated sample of any particular Askhkenazi or any particular non-Jewish Iranians. Indeed, lets just put it this way: the study speaks for itself. It is not, but I have seen you try to make it so. By arguing repeatedly that the evidence shows a common ancestoral heritage for Jews. In reality, just looking into the issue a bit more critically, it appears to me that while there are some similarities in the genetic make up of most Jews and the people of the Middle East, there are greater differences between Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews than there are between non-Jewish Iranian and Ashkenazi Jews. Listen, in my view, people ultimately belong to the "nation" or "group" or even "race" that they, in Ernest Renan's conception, vote for in their "daily plebecites". Human beings have ultimately mixed and mingled for too long through history for "racial origins" to be either in any sense pure, or for such factors to create a strong bond between folks who have become culturally and otherwise distinguishable. But I really prefer that we lived in a world where we could research ideas without trying to force them into a "politicized conclusion". In this regard, if the secular historical evidence suggests that the Askhkenazi orginated from the "Khazar region" (that is based on the clear, not alll that ancient, history of the Khazars kingdom which converted to Judiasm in the post Islamic period), and if we know that the region itself was populated mainly by Iranians mixed later with the arrival of Turkic tribes, and if there is no evidence of any large migration of peolpe from the lands of Israel to this area, and if the "genetic results" show general similarities to people of the "Middle East" (including Iran) and some specific markers are "identical" to Iranians, then I would think the issue raised by all this suggests a conclusion that makes a lot more sense than your bible theory on the origins of the Askhkenazi etc. P.S. Let me note, btw, that the thread here starts with a question. I am not pretending I suddenly have discovered the answer, except I do so by the reaction from Ben that there are political reasons why certain answers would be preferred to some others. And that would then drive research and focus in the particular direction that Ben likes, and away from possibly much more fruitful directions.
I am rather mystified by the hostility from certain posters. IM is putting forward his opinions based on this research and some have chosen to vehemently oppose any possible link between Iran and the Jews and perhaps having a similar heritage? In either case, I will leave such discussions to others for now. I would however point to this perhaps attack by Ben; It further proves my point on the Jewish community on bs I would say even taking offence at such a link. However, your perception that Iranians worship "Arab" God is extremely flawed. First, not all Iranians are Muslims and secondly, Muslims just like the other major mono-theistic religions proclaim that there is only one God. Muslims consider their God the same as the Jewish God and Christian God and the Arabic word Allah has the same roots as Hallelujah. Please be careful of spreading such mis-conceptions.
If you're mystified, then I'm utterly mystified by your mystification. However, that still puts you light years ahead of Iranian Monitor, who though very ignorant about Jewish history knows exactly what he's doing. See above two sentences. I don't think you're following the game.