What is a Race's Importance When We Now Have DNA Haplogroups?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

Races started with those that survived the 40 days on the Ark with Noah during the Flood.

Considering that Moses wrote about races almost 4,000 years ago as told about in the Tanakh (Old Testament), of the Five Books of Moses, the section of Genesis,   is amazing.  It may be explained to us in  a vague and imprecise fashion, but the story of Noah and the Ark is indeed beautiful that even satisfies children's curiosity as to how mankind was divided into different races.  As the rabbis explain in the story of the Creation and of the common origin of all men, there is the essential unity of all races in this explanation.  

A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. ... Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. 

                           Taking slaves from Africa

When we talk about the concept of race in the 21st century, we are discussing a socially constructed idea. For the most part, we are talking about skin color when we use the term today. But, at the dawn of the 17th century, race typically identified a group of people with a common ancestor. That group, just as we see in families today, could be quite diverse. It wasn’t until the latter half of the 17th century that we see the development of the concept of race as it is currently viewed.

We Jews have lived all over the earth, in Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and back in Israel are but a few of the places.  

The conception of race began to take on a new aspect in the 19th century.  The realization of the existence of the Aryan and Semitic families of languages led to the theory of the existence of Aryan and Semitic races.   Later, this led to the classification of the subsections, the Teutons,  exemplifying the  Aryan race  and the Jews the Semitic race.  When you read of anti-Semites, it refers to Jews only, as no one has held hatred against anyone like they do the Jews, who wouldn't accept other's religion.  The Greeks tried and failed, and the the Romans tried and failed.                     

           Here are people from many lands of origin.  

The Aryan and Semitic language theory was based on the belief, since then rejected by science, that (a) Jews were physically homogeneous.  Actually, we are an endogamous people, something proved by DNA.  Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific social group, religious denomination, caste, or ethnic group, rejecting those from others as unsuitable for marriage or other close personal relationships. Endogamy is common in many cultures and ethnic groups. From the beginning Abraham's descendants practiced this, though men did marry out of the group. There were times they were forced to do this as when they were in forced ghettos as they were in Italy. Social circumstances dictated when this was practiced the most. (b) They believed that there was a correlation between physical type and mental cultural characteristics.  In Germany, Jews were regarded as being racially "inferior," by their political views. The fact that Jews, who are only 0.02% of the world's population, have won many of the Nobel prizes, tells us that Jews are not racially "inferior." They are known to have, for a people, a high I.Q, usually 10 points higher than the general population.                                 

Who is a Jew in the USA ? USA's Jewish population is 2%.  Here are Jews showing many Ashkenazi Orthodox. Judaism (35% Reform, 18% Conservative, 10% Orthodox, 6% others, 30% Non-denomination), Irreligious/Atheists, etc. Even though we are endogamous and were a tribe, 12 tribes, a clan, an empire, we are made up of several haplogroups, not just one.  J, E, G, I, R, Q, T,and that's just the men.  

Evidently whoever these theorists were never read the bible where it explains about how races came to be;   that Jews started with the story of Abraham (Father of the Jews)  and Sarah who came from the city of Ur of the Chaldees which was situated on the Tigris River, the Tigris and Euphrates that are so well known in today's Iraq.  Their son was Isaac whose son was Jacob who had 12 sons, the beginning of the 12 tribes of Jacob who were ruled eventually by King Saul, followed by Kings David and then his son, Solomon, etc. They were known as Israelites, but acquired the name of Jews from the remaining tribal land of Judah, thus the name Jews.  Abraham had had a son, Ishmael, by Sarah's Egyptian handmaid, Hagar as well, who was to become the Father of the Arabs. This led up to the fact that Ishmael and Isaac were half-brothers, and their descendants were destined to become distant cousins.                                        

For the past few years, we have been using DNA to discover the the branches of the tree of life that we have all come from which is so exciting.  Men find that they come from certain branches of the tree, and can be told just what the scientists call each branch.  The line that Moses and his brother, Aaron came from are called J1 by scientists and this part of DNA is called the Y haplogroup--the line that men come from.  This is much better than thinking in terms of race

   If you read Bryan Sykes's book, THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE, you will find a beautiful story of where women came from, starting with an Eve. Personally, my father's Jewish line that goes from father to son, etc.  comes from the Q line, deeply tested to receive the title of QBZ67, and my mother's line which is also mine and my daughter, is of the H for Helena branch.                                                                          

Haplogroups are like tags on new clothing in the store that we all are born with that tell scientists what branch we are. The tag is handed down from father to son;  and from mother to daughter, etc.  There are slight mutations, showing distance from each other, like time traveling.  It's so remarkable, with such planning to it, that it actually blows my mind.  It erases a lot of problems in genealogy.  It's used in court cases of whether a man is the father of a child or not.  It's how we found out that Thomas Jefferson or his brother/brothers fathered children of their black slaves or not.                                       

At the end of the 19th century, the Aryan-Semite Races became a basic conception of the revived anti-Jewish movement in Germany which, in the new era of tolerance, could no longer base itself exclusively on religion and, moreover was confronted with large numbers of Jews in whose lives Judaism placed no part. In other words, they were becoming integrated into their society and looked and dressed like the general population and not like the orthodox Jews.  Thus, what had before been an innocuous, if unsound theory, became in the hands of E. DUHRING, WILHELM MARR, H.LS. CHAMBERLAIN, A. ROSENBERG, etc, a deadly  weapon. Theadore Herzl acknowledged this over and over in his diaries and correspondence: "I will fight anti-Semitism in the place it originated—in Germany and in Austria," he said in one letter. He identified the genealogy of modern, racist antisemitism in the writings of the German social scientist Dr. Eugen Duehring in the 1890s.                   

A fundamental principle of the Nazi movement from the outset as told about in readings about National Socialism, was officially and precisely formulated by the NUREMBERG LAWS in 1935, intermarriage between Jews and "Aryans" being sternly forbidden and the new Jewish disabilities being extended to all persons with 2 or more Jewish grandparents.

This concept was applied somewhat less rigorously in Fascist Italy in 1938, and in various Nazi-occupied countries of Europe from 1939 to 1945, the length of WWII.  On it was based the extermination policy carried out by the Germans in this period, extending therefore in many instances to persons with only the vaguest Jewish associations and even to Christian clergymen and priests.  

The alleged "scientific" evidences of racialism, based on craniometry, etc, are wholly untenable. 

Since 1790, the USA has taken a federal census every 10 years on its population which is where we geneticists get so much of our information.  Knowing if the person was White or Black was marked on the census. Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Black, Mulatto, Negro, African, White, Free White,  Slaves, Free Colored, Some Other Race, were all words listed to describe a person's race and position.   

Are Jews a race?  It just happens that there are Black Jews, White Jews, Oriental Jews, Middle Eastern Jews, etc.  We come in many colors from many parts of the world. For several years, Jews have been returning to Israel to live.  This was expected and welcomed to happen.  It was foretold in the Bible.  There are, however, a few basic haplogroups that are predominantly Jewish, except for people who converted or married into and converted to Judaism.   

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html

https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/race/MREAD_1790_2010.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#:~:text=Judaism%20(35%25%20Reform%2C%2018,%2C%20Irreligious%2FAtheists%2C%20etc.&text=Who%20is%20a%20Jew%3F