Ashkenazi Levites with R1a (Y haplogroup)

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Moses officiated the honor to deem Aaron as High Priest, father of a Dynasty of priests

Aaron's line has produced the J1 (Y haplogroup), and often the J2 as well.  

Approximately 300,000 out of 14.8 million Jewish men around the globe self-identify as Ashkenazi Levites, of whom 2/3 were  descended from one man.  Levites are from the tribe of Levi, of the 3rd son of Jacob and Leah.  Moses and his brother, Aaron, were Levites.  The direct descendants of Aaron were chosen as the high priests or Cohens by Moses.  Other Levites were to be the ones who had other duties in the temple, such as washing the feet of the Cohens, the 2nd readers of the Torah on a Shabbat with Cohens being the 1st.  

 There are many variations of 486 Y-chromosomes within the Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Levite R1a clade, which are other Ashkenazi Jewish paternal lineages, as well as non-Levite Jewish and non-Jewish R1a samples. 

The emerging profile is of a Middle Eastern ancestor, self-affiliating as Levite, and carrying the highly resolved R1a-Y2619 lineage, which was likely a minor haplogroup among the Hebrews. 

Most Gentiles have the tag of R1b1 such as R-L21 or R-M269.  How did the R1a arrive with Ashkenazi Jews and when?  

The R-Y2619 genetic variation is found among ~50 percent of those Ashkenazi males who claim a tradition of Levitic descent. The variation arose ~2,900 years ago and appears to have been present in a male who joined the Ashkenazi population at the time of its founding roughly 700 CE in France.

The presence of Jews in France under Charlemagne is documented, with their position being regulated by law. Exchanges with the Orient strongly declined with the presence of Saracens in the Mediterranean sea. Trading and importing of oriental products such as gold, silk, black pepper or papyrus almost disappeared under the Carolingians.                

The Carolingian Dynasty (751-887) was a family of Frankish nobles who ruled Francia and its successor kingdoms in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages.  Frank, member of a Germanic-speaking people who invaded the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Dominating present-day northern France, Belgium, and western Germany, the Franks established the most powerful Christian kingdom of early medieval western Europe. The name France (Francia) is derived from their name.

The Radhinites were Jewish merchants of the 9th century who traveled between Southern France to China.  They spoke Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Roman (Latin),  and the languages of the Franks, Andalusians and Slavs. 

                                     Emperor Charlemagne
  Charlemagne (reigned from 800-814) A Frankish king;  fixed a formula for the Jewish oath to the state. He allowed Jews to enter into lawsuits with Christians. They were not allowed to require Christians to work on Sunday. Jews were not allowed to trade in currency, wine, or grain. Legally, Jews belonged to the emperor, and could be tried only by him. But the numerous provincial councils which met during Charlemagne's reign were not concerned with the Jewish communities.

The variation has not been found among the Jewish non-Ashkenazi populations tested worldwide, meaning in the Sephardic or Mizrachi Jewish groups. Hence its presence in the Jewish population before that date cannot yet be confirmed. Its most closely related lineages date to the Late Bronze Age and are found at present in Iran and Armenia. R-M207, found in a Jewish man:  We note that one of these is a very rare haplogroup (R1a*) that has previously been observed only in two Armenian men (Weale et al. 2001). We now report the same haplogroup in one additional Belarusian man. The Ashkenazi Levites were typed for a set of 25 biallelic markers including P9, M216, M217, YAP, P2, M35, P14, M201, P15, M52, P19, 12f2b, M172, M9, M20, LLY22g, Tat, M175, P27, P36, M207, M173, SRY10831, M17, and P25. PCR protocols for detection of these polymorphisms have been reported elsewhere (Hammer et al. 2001; .....

Armenia alongside Iran and Turkey on the West side.

Iran is very plausible, as Jews lived in 127 provinces of the huge Persian Empire that spread out from the Euphrates River of Mesopotamia to the Egyptian borderland. We have our Queen Esther story of when Haman started killing Jews in the Empire before Queen Esther stopped him. Queen Esther herself was married to King Ahasuerus, or Xerxes, who was not Jewish.

As for Armenia, Jews moved there after the 1st destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE. During 2nd Temple days, Armenia had ties with the Jews of Jerusalem. Aristobulus, Herod's grandson, was made king of Little Armenia. Two other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia. Since the 5th century, Christian Armenians have lived in Jerusalem in the Armenian Quarter.

 Jews of Kaifeng, late 19th or early 20th century

There is an oral tradition that the first Jews immigrated to China through Persia following the Roman Emperor Titus's capture of Jerusalem in 70 CE. A large number of Jews emigrated from Persia during the reign of Emperor Ming of Han (58–75 CE). Writing in 1900, Father Joseph Brucker hypothesized that Jews came to China from India by a sea route since ancient times.

My notes: from What Haplogroup We Be?

R, R1, R2, R1a, R1b haplogroups are believed to have originated in NW Asia between 30,000 and 35,000 years ago. R1 is very common in Europe and Western Eurasia. R2 is rare and found only in Indian, Iranian and central Asian populations. R1a is most common among eastern European Slavs and populations in India and central and western Asia. It was thought to be the Khazarian Jewish lineage. They most likely originated in the Eurasian steppes north of the Black and Caspian seas in the Kurgan people who lived there around 3000 BCE and known for the domestication of the horse.
Update: 5/10/2012: Subtypes of R1a1 may have come from Khazaria.
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.
 

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. 

Update: R-M17:  Levites carry this , not from ancestral Hebrew population, did not resemble other Y chromosomes from the Jewish population studied.  From Slavic source, 1,000 years ago, if not from Sorbs or Belarusians ancestors, could be from  Khazars-Turkish empire.
Update:9/19/19  https://www.academia.edu/13830064/Phylogenetic_applications_of_whole_Y-chromosome_sequences_and_the_Near_Eastern_origin_of_Ashkenazi_Levites?email_work_card=view-paper

 R1b is the most common haplogroup in Europe and expanded throughout after the last ice age, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. It contains the Atlantic Modal Haplotype. R1b formed from a group that emigrated from Africa 50,000 years ago and eventually settled in Europe in the last 30,000 years.  It has high frequencies among the Welsh, Basques, Irish, English, Portuguese, French and Dutch.  It's occurrence among Ashkenazi Jews may be an indicator of admixture that happened at the time of Jewish residence in the Rhine Valley prior to migration to Eastern Europe.  Prevalent among the Marronite Christian community in Lebanon and represents establishment of European enclave in Lebanon by religious Crusaders in 11th -13th centuries.

 R-M269 (R1b...)  It's a Galicia- Ashkenazi haplogroup, and not that common.  This is found in low frequencies in Europe, Central Asia and Central Asia.  It is thought it moved from Europe into Asia.  It is found in Armenia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine.  In some cases, major downstream mutations such as M269 are used to identify R1b, especially in regional or out-of-date studies  Update: 4/30/15 
Update 5/15/15 The surname of Cohen has found an R-M269 haplogroup.  
R-M124.(R2a) developed 25,000 years ago in Central Asia, the 2nd wave of migration in India;  ..from Ashkenazi in Ukraine

R-M207: Y-haplogroup R-M207 is common throughout Europe, South Asia and Central Asia (Kayser 2003). It also occurs in the Caucasus and Siberia. Some minorities in Africa also carry subclades of R-M207 at high frequencies.

While some indigenous peoples of The Americas and Australasia also feature high levels of R-M207, it is unclear whether these are deep-rooted, or an effect of European colonization during the early modern era.

It's been found in the Lithuania=Poland-Ukraine area in Jewish population.   (R-M207)

Haplogroup R* Y-DNA (xR1,R2) was found in 24,000-year-old remains from Mal'ta in Siberia near Lake Baikal.^[4] In 2013, R-M207 was found in one out of 132 males from the Kyrgyz people of East Kyrgyzstan.^[

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14761-7

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/ashkenazi-levite/about?intent=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkruVBhCHARIsACVIiOxWGTuRYjPp4hPffY392Z3k8uUw9cNSmsJhQKCIrM4KZkxaIrylMDMaAn6zEALw_wcB

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2141940009976831016/4311532341183795402

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

Claiming Rights to Land: This Is My Land

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Moses bartered with the Egyptian Pharaoh to free his slaves at the age of 80 in the year 1311 BCE, and they got to Canaan 40 years later in about the year 1270 BCE. He was told to do this by G-d. The people he was freeing, some being his kinfolk, this stiff-necked people, were to live on the land he was to take them to.  

  King Saul of the tribe of Benjamin, son of Kish,  claimed the land as the Israelite nation sometime between  1270 and 1010 BCE;  after which David of Judah, son of Jesse,  became King and so did his son, Solomon.  

The land was attacked by the Romans in 70 CE when they burned down the capital, Jerusalem and it's 2nd Temple of King Solomon. Judah, the northern part of Israel, was 1,340 years old by 70 CE.   The people knew of their heritage and that it was G-d who wanted them to live in this land.  

Jews had gone through much grief before 70 CE in trying to hold onto their kingdom.  They had the experience of being attacked by the Assyrians in  722-721 BCE and lost about  10,000 of their best people to exile then, and their Assyrian enemy was replaced later by the Babylonian enemy by 586 BCE and   a great part of the population then was also exiled to Babylonia.  Then some returned by 538 BCE to join those who were able to remain.  

Jews have been able remain all this time in the land since 70 CE, not as a nation but living in their ancient cities such as Safed and Jerusalem.                                    

 By May 14, 1948 CE, they were able to announce their 2nd rebirth as a nation once more; a haven for Jews, rebirthed for Jews who have been without a country since 70 CE, 1,950 years of existence but rarely as a citizen of any country.  They've become the perfect blend of the East and the West.   Their  history is remembered in the plant, "Wandering Jew."  Jews are returning from all 4 corners of the world, something not only prophesized but expected and needed to happen.  

In 1620, a small sailing ship, the Mayflower, sailed for the east coast of North America with about 100 passengers, some being Pilgrims.  They landed in Plymouth Rock, to be later called Massachusetts.  By 1630, a fleet of ships also sailed there.  They  claimed the East coast as a country by 1776 and it  filled the whole part of the continent and continues to this day as the United States of America.  It  will be a young  245 years old next year.  

                                                   

 Judah's Jerusalem  was over 1,000 years older when it was burned by the Romans!  Can we imagine what it's like to live in a country that is 1300 years old?  England is a little older than the USA.  

The kingdom of England – with roughly the same borders as exist today – originated in the 10th century. It was created when the West Saxon kings extended their power over southern Britain.  That would be in the 900s. The Norman Conquest was in 1066.  The Conquest was 954 years ago. (The Norman conquest of England was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of Normans, Bretons, Flemish, and men from other French provinces, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled, William the Conqueror.) People have changed since then but so has our technical advances.  Could the English leave England permanently?  As they have done so, we see their religion is not tied to England like it is for the Jewish people.  This shows the difference in attitudes towards a country.  

This was a rare group of people who sailed on the little Mayflower.  They were living in Holland but were immigrants from England who were angry because they were not allowed to practice their Christian religion in  a way slightly different from the established Episcopalian religion in that they studied the Old Testament and admired the Jews, a people that Christianity had said to have replaced in about Rome's 3rd meeting of establishing this new religion-started pretty much by an Emperor's mother, Helena. Then again, Episcopalians were a branch developed from Catholicism, Rome's first rendition of the religion, by one of the English kings.  These English Pilgrims thought they were also on a journey similar to the Jewish Exodus, coming to a new home. 

Woodie Guthrie felt so strongly about the USA that he wrote: 

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From the California, to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiMrvDbq3s

                                                

Jews could sing the same song only theirs would cover,. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.’” (Genesis 15:18). The ‘river of Egypt’ most likely refers to one of the tributaries of the Nile. The word in Hebrew ‘nahar’ denotes a large river and this is how early Aramaic translations along with Jewish commentaries identify the location (See 1 Chronicles 13:5). The Euphrates begins in Turkey and flows through Syria and Iraq before entering the Persian Gulf. The April 1920 League of Nations plan followed those directions pretty much.  

Both Christianity and Islam have copied much of their religion from Judaism, the mother of the two religions.  Yet both seem to have a hard time abiding this older religion, both feeling they have replaced her and she is no longer necessary.  This gives impetus to holding on to her all the more by her adherents, a religion established by the fact of the mother being Jewish and then so are her children.  

Hopefully the USA and other countries can see that after having a nation for so long, one does not forget it or want to forget it.  It's a part of the culture; of the prayers, and part of our ancient history.  Unlike many people, Jews do have a validated history which is what the "Old Testament" is; history of a people, of its wars, loves, errors, and happy existence.  Even digs by archeologists are proving that this history is correct.                                                     

 

Add 1,000 years onto the USA's life and then take away many of its population and see how they would feel about regaining their land, their New York City or Los Angeles.  They wouldn't give it up without a great fight.  For one's country usually stands for certain things, certain rights and ethics that others may not have accepted. 

                                                     

 This is our claim to the land, Israel;  land of the Jews which is over 3,000 years old.  Can we fathom such an age, a length of time? This land is My Land.                                                

Today we see Armenia and Azerbaijan fighting over land, a little piece between them, and they've been fighting for  years.   Fighting broke out between the two regular armies of Armenia and Azerbaijan over a disputed territory on 27 September. The conflict spread rapidly. Urban areas have been heavily bombed and shelled, including Stepanakert, the largest city in Nagorno-Karabakh with a population of 55,000, and Ganja, the second-largest city in Azerbaijan, 100 km further east, which has a population of 350,000. Cluster munitions, on which HI obtained a ban under the Oslo Convention in 2008, have been used in Stepanakert. If the conflict continues to escalate, it could have disastrous humanitarian consequences for civilians.

Armenia has had Jews living there since Solomon's Temple was first destroyed by the Assyrians.  Ties between these Jews and those of the 2nd Temple destruction continued.  One of Herod's grandsons was Aristobulus, king of Little Armenia by Nero, while 2 other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia. Armenian Christians have lived in Jerusalem since the 5th century, and there is an Armenian quarter in the Old City.

 

Azerbaijan, their neighbor, is now divided between the Azerbaijan Republic and Iran.  Artaxerxes III settled Jewish prisoners in Hyrcania within the area of Azerbaijan in 342 BCE.  Jews lived in the town of Berdea in the 7th -10th centuries and in the 11th-12th centuries occupied important position.  Many were adherents of the pseudo-messiah ALROY.  They continued to flourish when the Mongols entered in the 13th century but after the latter embraced Islam, most of them apostatized.  

In 1926, there were in Azerbaijan some 19,000 Jews speaking a Persian dialect.  In 1979 there were 35,497 Jews living here. 

They are both old countries and fight for land they think is theirs.  Palestinians have not been on the land a long time.  Natives who had worked the land sold out to Jews who paid outlandishly high prices for it, as it was sacred to them.  We don't want this same situation of fighting over the land like what has been already going on for the past 72 years in an Israel-Palestine venture.   

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://hi-canada.org/en/news/armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-hi-assesses-needs-of-displaced-people?gclid=CjwKCAiAwrf-BRA9EiwAUWwKXq7mQ0MSmsrnnylp36CzIHPEdFOz4l35_d9p4j_Subt8ujc5PgRpxRoCTgwQAvD_BwE 

Tanakh, Stone Edition. 

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

Why The Jews?, by Dennis Prager & Joseph Telushkin, just in general-reading 

What Happened to Armenia?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Armenia is located in Western Asia and lies east of the Caspian sea.  Jews moved there as early as the period of the destruction of the 1st Temple in 597 BCE.  Ties existed between Jews in Armenia and Judaea during 2nd Temple days before 70 CE when the Romans were on the scene.  

One of Herod's grandsons, Aristobulus, was made king of Little Armenia by Nero.  Two other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia.  

Many Jews moved there in succeeding generations.  Then from the 4th generation onwards, their population started to dwindle due to exile and emigration.  Medieval travelers found a number of small Jewish communities at Nisibis and other places.

                                                                 

 

Armenian Christians have lived in Jerusalem since the 5th century as there is an Armenian quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.

                                                                     

    The Armenian quarter           

The Armenian Genocide (sometimes known as the Armenian Holocaust) was the systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1923. It should have ended in 1917.  The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the region of Angora (Ankara), 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, the majority of whom were eventually murdered.

Under Muslim rule, Christians and Jews were considered Dhimmis, or 2nd-3rd class citizens.  They weren't allowed to do things a citizen could do and had to pay more in taxes, expectations, etc.  "In addition to other legal limitations, Christians were not considered equals to Muslims and several prohibitions were placed on them. Testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels. Their houses could not overlook those of Muslims; and their religious practices were severely circumscribed, e.g., the ringing of church bells was strictly forbidden."  

                                                             

                   Jerusalem's Christians, mostly from Armenia and Greece

Armenia–Israel relations are the bilateral relationship between Armenia and Israel. From 1993 to 2007, Armenia was served by the Embassy of Israel in Georgia. In 1996, Tsolak Momjian was appointed the honorary consul of Armenia in Jerusalem. Eleven years later, the residence of the Embassy of Israel in Armenia was moved to Jerusalem. In October 2010, Shmuel Meirom was appointed the Israeli ambassador to Armenia. Armen Melkonian was appointed the Armenian ambassador to Israel in 2012, with a residence in Cairo. In October of that year, Melkonian presented his credentials to Israeli President Shimon Peres.  On the 21st of September 2019 Armenia announced that it would be opening an embassy in Israel.

                                                             

            Christian quarter of Old City of Jerusalem

Armenian-Israelis are ethnic Armenians with Israeli citizenship. Three thousand Armenians live in Israel, including 1,000 in Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter. About one thousand Armenian-Israelis have Israeli citizenship, mainly in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Institute of African and Asian Studies at the Hebrew University established an Armenian-studies programme specialising in study of the Armenian language, literature, history and culture and the Armenian Genocide.                      

   Notice that the brown and red section below is land fought over between Armenia and Azerbaijan- Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.             

 

Jews from all corners of the world live in Israel.  "In 2008, Yosef Shagal, an Azerbaijani-born former Israeli parliamentarian from Yisrael Beiteinu said in an interview with an Azerbaijani news outlet: "I find it is deeply offensive, and even blasphemous to compare the Holocaust of European Jewry during the Second World War with the mass extermination of the Armenian people during the First World War. Jews were killed because they were Jews ... [With Armenians] the picture is principally different - seeking to establish the state and national independence, Turkish Armenians sided with the Russian Empire, which was at war with Turkey".                                     

People supporting Armenia protest against the military conflict with Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Brussels, Belgium October 7, 2020

(photo credit: REUTERS/YVES HERMAN)

Today Israel is in the middle of a big disagreement again between Armenians and 

those from Azerbaijan.The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ongoing armed conflict between Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, and the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, supported by Armenia, in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. It is the latest escalation of the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict over the territory, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but mostly governed by Artsakh, a breakaway state with an Armenian ethnic majority.

Israel is believed to be Azerbaijan’s largest weapons supplier, with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimating that arms deals between the two countries over the past five years have totaled more than $740 million.  Israel is estimated to import about one-fifth of its oil from Azerbaijan. It rarely comments on its arms sales to anyone.

“My father’s family are all there [in the Armenian capital of Yerevan]. We speak daily. The situation is extremely difficult for them,”David  Galfayan, head of the Noyan Tapan Armenian Center for Culture and Education in Israel, told The Media Line.

Says Galfayan: “We’re extremely angry with the Israeli government for selling weapons to Azerbaijan. It’s not only detrimental to the Armenian people, but to the Israeli people as well.”He notes that the sales could boomerang.

QUOTE: “There are many terrorists that Turkey has imported from Syria to fight in Azerbaijan. All those weapons we’re supplying them, tomorrow will reach our borders and be turned against us,” he complained, referring to pro-Turkey Syrian rebels who have been idled due to a cease-fire in that country’s civil war.

The heavy fighting between forces from Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh continued on Wednesday as the flare-up over the disputed Azeri region entered its 11th day.

Azerbaijan is now divided between their own republic and Iran.  Jews had also lived here, and lived well even under the Mongols of the 13th century but then they embraced Islam, most Jews apostatized.  By 1926, 19,000 European Jews were in Azerbaijan, largely at Baku, and 7,500 "mountain Jews" speaking a Persian dialect.  In 1979, there were some 35,497 Jews in Azerbaijan.  By 2009 there were from 7,800 to 16,000 Jews here.  

Armenia is a Christian country and Azerbaijan is the 26th largest out of 48 Muslim countries with 8,676,000 population in 2011 of which 93.4% are Shi'a Muslim.  They do not share a border but are close to each other and are fighting.  What does the EU expect would happen to Israel with a Palestine in their back yard?  

Resource:

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

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

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia%E2%80%93Israel_relations

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/armenians-in-israel-seethe-over-arms-sold-to-azeri-enemy-644997

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan%E2%80%93Israel_relations

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/AZ

https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/azerbaijan-population

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict

What Happened to Kurdistan's Jews and Muslims?

Nadene Goldfoot
Dedicated to Herb Hochfeld                         

Kurdistan was a mountainous region going through Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

Various groups, among them the Guti, Hurrians, Mannai (Mannaeans), and Armenians, lived in this region in antiquity. The original Mannaean homeland was situated east and south of the Lake Urmia, roughly centered around modern-day Mahabad. The region came under Persian rule during the reign of Cyrus the Great and Darius I.Only the Armenians have continued to exist, almost exterminated recently by WWI in the 1915 genocide of Armenia.  Armenia is a nation, and former Soviet republic, in the mountainous Caucasus region between Asia and Europe. My mother remembers having an Armenian doctor.  We have Armenian Christians living in Jerusalem since the 5th century CE.  There is also an Armenian quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.  

 According to tradition, the first Jewish settlers went to Kurdistan as early as in the time of Ezra in the 5th century BCE after the Babylonians had destroyed the Temple and captured the Jews of Judah.
                                                      
The Babylonians had taken them away in 597 BCE and return in  538 BCE because Cyrus the Great AKA Cyrus II, King of Persia, said so, and then they were allowed to rebuild the Temple and live there.  Ezra was the leader of the returnees.  The Jewish exiles considered Cyrus as a Divine agent.  They had been living in exile for about 60 years. 
                                                      

 King Darius reigned from 522 to 486 BCE.  He had inherited the throne of Cyrus.  At the beginning of his reign he permitted Zerubbabel and the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem to resume the reconstruction of the Temple.  It is thought that Darius was the son of Queen Esther.  Zerubbabel was born in 480 BCE and was the grandson of King Jehoiachin (598-597 BCE reign)  of Judah. There was only one more king after him and that was Zedekiah from 597 to 586 BCE.  Zerubbabel was one of the first returnees to Judah from Babylon with the assent of King Cyrus.  

The early beginnings of Jewish immigration to Kurdistan are attested by the Aramaic dialect spoken by Kurdish Jews up to modern times;  it is close to the language of the Babylonian Talmud and the speech of the Nestorian Christians in Kurdistan.  

Toward the end of the 19th century, such as 1899, the Jewish community was estimated to be 12,000 to 18,000 people.  They were scattered in many villages and towns and living mainly as merchants, peddlers  and craftsmen.  

During the 20th century, the population increased, amounting in Persian Kurdistan to number 12,000 to 14,000.  

After 1948 when Israel was created May 14, 1948, the great majority of Kurdish Jews from all areas emigrated to Israel and living in or near Jerusalem, the most favored city of all.  
                                                     

Kurdish Jews supporting an independent nation of Kurdistan

Some Kurdish nationalist organizations seek to create an independent nation state once again consisting of some or all of these areas with a Kurdish majority, while others campaign for greater autonomy within the existing national boundaries. The natives of Kurdistan excluding the Jews are now Muslims. They happen to be the closest relatives of Jews, with DNA that is most similar. 

The Times of Israel reported on September 30, 2013: "Today, there are almost 200,000 Kurdish Jews in Israel, about half of whom live in Jerusalem. There are also over 30 agricultural villages throughout the country that were founded by Kurdish Jews. Today, the large majority of the Jews of "Kurdistan" and their descendants live in Israel. 

"The people closest to the Jews from a genetic point of view may be the Kurds, according to results of a new study at the Hebrew University."Professor Ariella Oppenheim and Dr. Marina Feirman, who carried out the research at the Hebrew University, said they were surprised to find a closer genetic connection between the Jews and the populations of the fertile crescent than between the Jews and their Arab neighbors. Oppenheim pointed out that previous research of DNA of Jews, including her own work, had revealed great genetic similarity between Jews and Arabs, particularly Palestinians from Israel and the territories.

The study's findings are published in the current issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics.

The researchers used the DNA of 1,847 Jewish men of Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Kurdish descent; Muslims and Christians of Kurdish, Turkish and Armenian descent; various Arab populations; and Russians, Poles and residents of Belarus.

Iraqi Kurdistan first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government, and its status was re-confirmed as an autonomous entity within the federal Iraqi republic in 2005. There is a province by the name of Kurdistan in Iran, but it is not self-ruled. Kurds fighting in the Syrian Civil War were able to take control of large sections of northern Syria as government forces, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, withdrew to fight elsewhere. Having established their own government, they called for autonomy in a federal Syria after the war

A 2010 US report, written before the instability in Syria and Iraq that exists as of 2014, attested that "Kurdistan may exist by 2030.  The weakening of the Iraqi state following the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has also presented an opportunity for independence for Iraqi Kurdistan, augmented by Turkey's move towards acceptance of such a state although it opposes moves toward Kurdish autonomy in Turkey and Syria.
                                                            

The Syrian Kurdish fighters are known for the involvement of women in battles such as Manbij.

Turkey had been shelling both ISiS and the Kurds who were fighting ISIS.  It happens that Turkey doesn't want to lose any of the land the Kurds are living on, which Turkey feels is part of their country.  "The YPG are widely regarded as one of the most effective forces in the fight against IS and attacks on them have prompted calls from the UN, US and EU for Turkey to show restraint."

 FIGHTING AL-NUSRA:  also described as al-Qaeda in Syria or al-Qaeda in the Levant, was a Salafist jihadist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War. Its aim was to establish an Islamic state in the country or ISIS. 

 The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, who took more than 80 Turkish persons captive in Mosul during their offensive, is an enemy of Turkey, making Kurdistan useful for Turkey as a buffer state. On 2014-06-28 Hüseyin Çelik, a spokesman for the ruling AK party, made comments to the Financial Times indicating Turkey's readiness to accept an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. Various sources have reported that Al-Nusra has issued a fatwā calling for Kurdish women and children in Syria to be killed, and the fighting in Syria has led tens of thousands of refugees to flee to Iraq's Kurdistan region. As of 2015, Turkey is actively supporting the Al-Nusra, but as of January 2017, Turkey's foreign ministry has said that Al-Nusra is a terrorist group and has acted accordingly.

President Trump erred when he paved the way for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to invade Syria.  By doing so he abandoned America's Kurdish partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces, who had eliminated the Islamic State's caliphate in March, after 5 years of hard warfare.  The SDF lost 11 thousand soldiers;  The US lost 6 thousand.  

The Kurds are the world's largest ethnic group without their own state, and the Turkish president sees them only as terrorists.  He has a Turkish separatist campaign going on in Turkey. 

"One of Israel’s best-known politicians reiterated his call on Friday for the Knesset to pass a law recognizing the genocide of the Armenian people more than a century ago.

Yair Lapid — a former cabinet minister who now leads the opposition Yesh Atid party — said on Twitter that recognizing the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Turkey was “our moral responsibility as the Jewish state.”  Maybe they should recognize in some way the Kurd's loss in fighting ISIS as well.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia: Kurdistan 
https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/04/24/recognition-of-armenian-genocide-is-moral-responsibility-of-jewish-state-says-top-israeli-politician/

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

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33690060

https://www.haaretz.com/1.5460712 DNA

http://www.genocide1915.org/fragorochsvar_bakgrund.html#20

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

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