Possible Connection in DNA of Pashtuns and Jews-My family!

                                                                   

Nadene Goldfoot  

The haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) is found at a frequency of 51.02% among the Pashtun people. 

I have found some interesting information about R1a from Jews that tested their DNA. In my notes:
 Update 6/25/15: R1a1, R1b, and R1a1a or R1a-CTS6 is the Levite haplogroup.  Read www.levitedna.org. for more information. Jeff Wexler discovered this line of Ashkenazi Levites.  Analyses posted here. R1a1 is common among Ukrainians-thought to have originated there, Russians, and Serbs (Slavic speakers in Germany, as well as among Central Asian populations with admixture possible with Ukrainians, Poles or Russians. (Jeff Wexler is my DNA 4th to remote cousin, one of my matches, meaning we share some DNA on our 1st, 2nd and 4th chromosome.  We all have 23 chromosomes.   It's his Y haplogroup.  
                                                       
 A later 2005 study by Nebel et al., found a similar level of 11.5% of male Ashkenazim belonging to R1a1a (M17+), the dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Central and Eastern Europeans.; R-M269; R1b1a2a; R-V88 are found among Jews.  R-L47-from R1a, Jewish.  Jeff's line is now called R-FGC18215. Scientists keep finding out more and have to update the scientific names of our lines to make it easier.  

                                                                                 

It's the J1 who are the Cohens, descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses who he made the high Priest.  It is an inherited position, handed down through the ages.  Moses was of the tribe of Levi.  The Cohens are his and Aaron's descendants.  The rest of the Levites are also J1s, maybe J2s as well.  Cohens read first on Shabat in the synagogue, and Levites read 2nd.  Levites were denied land allocated to them like the other tribes but were assigned the job of teachers of the Torah and were to live with the people and teach them. 
                                                        

 Many men who know they are Levites in the synagogue  have been testing  as R1s as we find out through much DNA testing of Ashkenazi Jews.  

J1 is very common among the Arabs, showing that Abraham's sons listed in the bible who would have been their progenitor, Ishmael and Esau, carried Abraham's haplogroup as well.  About 40% of male Jews carry this line.  

                                                       

My father, a Q-M242, was a young boxer.
He had to be careful not to get in fights on the street as his
fists were considered legal weapons.  His father died when he was 4 years old
and he was a tough kid, selling newspapers then on the streets.  

Paragroup Q-M242 (xMEH2, xM378) (of Haplogroup Q-M242 (Y-DNA)) was found at 16.3% in Pashtuns.

 Haplogroup Q-M242 is also found at a frequency of 18% in Pashtuns in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

The Royal family of Afghanistan claims to have roots from Kish, father of King Saul, a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin.  
Updated 1/7/19 5:30pm.  
                                                         

My father, Maurice Goldfoot
and myself.  A man can take the test and find out his mother
and his father's haplogroups.  We ladies can only find out our mother's haplogroup, so it helps to have a male in the family to test.  Our our case,
my brother was tested.  His haplogroup would be the same as his father's.  I wonder where that cleft in his chin comes from?  His mother was a W.
Both his parents came from different towns in Lithuania; Telsiai and Lazdijai.  

This is very exciting.  When we first started testing, I had the minimum Y haplogroup test done on my brother, who carries our father's Y haplogroup and is the perfect person to find out what branch our family line of Goldfus/Goldfoot is.  The results were first titled as Q-M242.  We're on the same line as the Pashtuns above who  had been tested!  
                                                        
Since then, I've taken the test from looking at 25 alleles to 111 and so now the title of his Y haplogroup test is called QBZ67, a distinct branch of a Jewish haplogroup.  We Q's make up only 5% of the Jewish population.  
                                                            

Charles Goldfoot, 2 year older brother of Maurice
another Jewish match  of Q -M242 to some Pashtuns
His eyes are more deep set like mine.  He had black hair.  

I had an inkling of this when a Pashtun in our Q group contacted me and we were communicating to each other about our possible origins.  Unfortunately, and this was quite a few years ago, he said he had to stop talking to me because I was Jewish.  Of course, he was a Muslim.  

                                                           

Nathan Goldfus/Goldfoot, my grandfather
born 1871 in Telsiai, Lithuania 
Could this mean we are also from the tribe of Benjamin?  
I believe this was taken after immigrating to England.
He had grown a beard when Maurice (Moshe) was 4 years old.
He has my deep set eyes.  He knew nothing about his haplogroup.
Such things were recently discovered.  His wife
had black curly hair.  They had 4 children; 2 with black hair
and 2 with brown hair-a boy and girl of each. 

DNA was discovered by a Swiss scientist, Friedrich Miescher, in 1869.

In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick proposed the double-helix structure for the molecule, and by 1966 the genetic code (i.e. which amino acids were coded for by which sequences of DNA bases, and what the remaining codons "meant", ) had been completely worked out.     I didn't get my family tested until 2013 after doing a lot of genealogy on my family.                                              

I'm happy to report that with many of us on both sides, that barrier is coming down and we are talking.  With Dr. Shalva Weil of Israel finding out that we two groups have much in common in our cultural practices, the door is opening to our joint history.  DNA is the icing on the cake.  It makes history so much sweeter.  You see the DNA and it is a fact.  How it all came about is history's job of explaining, that and the sciences of anthropology and archaeology.  Since then I've learned that remains of Qs have been found in or around the ancient site of Ur, where Abraham and his father, Terah had lived.  Today Ur is in Iraq.  



Resource: https://www.israelrising.com/the-pashtuns-are-the-tribes-of-israel/
 https://www.thoughtco.com/who-are-the-pashtun-195409
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2018/09/what-haplogroup-do-pashtuns-be.html
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html
https://www.familytreedna.com/public/dna_afghan_pak?iframe=yresults Pashtun DNA test results