OTHERS Who Were Included in the Freeing of Israelite Slaves By Moses

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Moses learned that he, a Prince of Egypt, was really a son of the Israelite slaves of his country.  When he finally confronted a new pharaoh, one that he didn't know, didn't grow up with, he said he wanted to free all the Israelite slaves.  He finally got them, and the group included Others besides the Israelites.  Who were the others that were also slaves?  

On blocks of stone found on the Sinai peninsula, we can see carvings that resemble the Hebrew script - they are quite different to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. The writing provides evidence of an independent culture, and several historians believe that the images carved in the stone prove that these people were the slaves of the Egyptians. And this is also the story that the Bible tells.  

Because the slaves were an invaluable work force, it was in the state's best interests to keep them alive. But they were made very much aware who wielded the power. 

                         Moses, captured here by the 17th-century Spanish artist Jusepe de Ribera, is an icon of leadership, piety, and liberation throughout western culture.  He died at the age of 120.  

During the Islamic history of Egypt, slavery were mainly focused on three categories: male slaves used for soldiers and bureaucrats, female slaves used for sexual slavery as concubines, and female slaves and eunuchs used for domestic service in harems and private households.  

At the end of the period, there were a growing agricultural slavery. The people enslaved in Egypt during Islamic times mostly came from Europe and Caucasus (which where referred to as "white"), or from the Sudan and Africa South of the Sahara through the Trans-Saharan slave trade (which where referred to as "black"). Could this had been true of the biblical days as well?                                     

Our Others, most likely, were also Semites like the Israelites.  Some of these Semites came to Egypt as traders and immigrants. Others were prisoners of war, and yet others were sold into slavery by their own people. A papyrus mentions a wealthy Egyptian lord whose 77 slaves included 48 of Semitic origin.In fact, by the late Middle Kingdom era, around 3700 years ago, Canaanites had actually achieved absolute power, in the form of a line of Canaanite pharaohs ruling the Lower Kingdom, coexisting with the Egyptian-ruled Upper Kingdom. (These Canaanite pharaohs included the mysterious "Yaqub," whose existence is attested by 27 scarabs found in Egypt, Canaan and Nubia and a famous one found at Shikmona, by Haifa.) The biblical tradition of the patriarch Jacob settling in Egypt could well derive from this time. Abraham, Jacob's grandfather, was born about 1948 BCE which was 3,971 years ago.  The Middle Kingdom era of 3700 years ago would be just right.  

Conscription of prisoners of war into the military continued into the Middle Kingdom, in which Nubian and Levantine troops were conscripted in order to accompany Egyptian troops on quarrying expeditions as armed support. Women and children were also captured and enslaved en masse: 

As we know from the Torah, our Israelite slaves were used to build the storage cities of  Pithom and Ramses.  The pyramids had already been built.  The storage cities Pithom and Rameses, built for the pharaoh by the Hebrews, were located in the northeastern part of the Egyptian delta, not far from Goshen, the district in which the Hebrews lived. Goshen is the Nile Delta.                                       

The Hebrew Bible was written in Hebrew.The Hebrew Letter Bet (ב).  The letter Bet is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet and the first letter of the Hebrew Bible. This letter is actually the source of the Greek letter Beta .  An ancient B in Hebrew:

Beyt

b, bh

Hebrew Today

https://hebrewtoday.com › The Hebrew Alphabet

 Its Greek translation, with all its errors in translation,  with Beta 

 Symbol in Greek Alphabet

Β β

 the Septuagint,   (c. 300 BCE–c. 300 CE) and provided a language for the New Testament and for the Christian liturgy and theology of the first three centuries CE. The Bible in Latin, the Vulgate, shaped the thought and life of Western people for a thousand years. Bible translation led to the study and literary development of many languages.

In Egypt at a later date, the slave concubines in the harems of rich Egyptian men were often Circiassian women, while the concubines of middle class Egyptians were often Abyssinians; while the male and female domestic slaves of almost all classes of Egyptian society often consisted of Black Africans. After all, Egypt is on the continent of Africa.  

In time, the Canaanite leaders were themselves ousted by the Hyksos, a mysterious group who settled in Egypt some time before 1650 BCE, and who came to rule the Lower Kingdom from the city of Avaris. Controversy remains, but it is increasingly agreed that the Hyksos originated from northern Levant - Lebanon or Syria.

The Roman-era Jewish historian, Josephus for one, identifies the Hyksos with the Israelites.  He cites the 3rd-century Egyptian scribe and priest, Manetho, who wrote that after their expulsion. Some scholars suspect that Exodus is based on distant Semitic memories of the expulsion of the Hyksos.  Others are dubious about Manethos' history, which was penned centuries after the actual event.  But we know that the Torah was written by Moses himself and kept by his descendants.  Our culture glorifies this with our practice of Passover, practiced ever since the event had happened.  So we have the written proof of our history and the physical tradition of our remembrance with Passover.  

                A Passover Seder in early 1900s

 According to historical evidence and modern-day practice, the festival was originally celebrated on the 14th of Nissan which in our year of 2023 fell on April 5th which was Erev Pesach (the night before Passover).  It's the night that we have our seder (teaching  the story from our textbook (Haggadah) which includes a huge meal with certain foods standing in for certain memories like eating matzoh which stands for the unleavened bread made in a hurry with no time to rise as Moses would be saying to start the walk, and the mixture of haroset (the stuff used to glue bricks together.) The night at the table starts with ?We were slaves....In this way, we re-hash the Exodus every year of our lives and so on to our children.  No, we haven't forgotten.                                         

   

Whether we were Hyksos or not or even if our ancestors knew who they were besides being Israelites, it doesn't matter.  After 400 years of being brainwashed by the Egyptians and building and building, they needed the next 40 years to be conditioned into another people, Moses's people, and glorifying the beliefs they already had from Abraham by adding to them from Moses.  The OTHERS were with us and included in the expectations.  

Now, in the day of DNA, a day in the future in which our ancestors could not even imagine, we can tell our individual history of where our ancestor started from by a DNA test of the Y haplogroup for men.  This tells us that Moses' brother Aaron, who we know had sons, and was the high priest of our people, have the Y haplogroup called J1.  It is the haplogroup of Abraham.  Many Arabs also have this haplogroup as they also came from Abraham.  (This is why we have today the Abraham Accords) trying to unify our relatives together and be at peace with each other.)  

    High Priest Aaron, brother of Moses, a J1, with Moses and Pharaoh 

This haplogroup of J1 is found to have arisen 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, and Abraham was born only about 4,000 years ago. He is mentioned in Genesis, living in about the 2nd millennium BCE. His father was Terah and was unhappy with his life in Ur in about 2,000 BCE. and left Ur, which was part of the Sumerian civilization. Besides Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Kurds are found in this haplogroup. Interestingly, Kurds are still living in Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein gassed many of them. Kurds have the closest dna to most Jewish men. The highest frequencies are in Iran and Iraq. It was carried by traders into Europe, Central Asia, India, and Pakistan. Most likely traders could have been Jews, who became involved in such endeavors.

There is a J1c3 which seems to be the oldest found.  It used to be called J1e,   In the website-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Victar/Haplogroup_J1c3_(Y

-DNA), they said that 30% of Yemenite Jews have the 

haplogroup of J1c3 or P58, as it is also called. As I see it, J1c3 

was the original or oldest, going back 9,000 to 10,000 

years J1c3d is a subgroup of it.  The J1 SNP of L859 tells if you 

are an Arab Hashimite.

We find we also have a few other representations of the Jewish men with the Y haplogroup of E.  Many Jews have this, and Arabs too. 

E, (E1b1b1) whose name was then changed to E-M35.  Another line on the same level was E-M35.1 which is now being called E-L117, and  E-M84 of Berber origins.   E1b1b1-m35 is now Z830 cluster B or E-Z830-B.  This is the haplogroup of Albert Einstein whose ancestor was Naphtali Hirsh Einstein b: 1733-d: 1799. 
E1b1b1c1a is now called M84.  About 4% of Jews are of M84.  E3b, mentioned by Harry Ostrer in Legacy,  
Update 6/27/17
 Originally from Africa 50,000 years ago it was thought, now more likely the Middle East, shares common ancestry with haplogroup D.  It has groups in Africa and the Middle East.  Some clades are also found in Europe among those living near the Mediterranean, believe to represent the ancient genetic influence from the Middle East to Europe.20% of Ashkenazi Jews are E1b1b.

Haplogroup E1b1b1 is a very Jewish line.  (from Albert Benhamou)  added 5/2/2012 Albert  Einstein  belonged to haplogroup E1b1b1b2* E-Z830, with a sample taken from a paternal descendants of Naphtali Hirsch Einstein.   Also,  According to a genetic study in December 2012, Ramesses III, second Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty and considered to be the last great New Kingdom king to wield any substantial authority over Egypt, belonged to Y-DNA haplogroup E1b1a, mainly found in sub-saharan Africa.  He of course was not Jewish but Jews lived in Egypt for 400 years as slaves.  Added 2/15/13.  

E-M35.1 now called  (E-L117) is the 2nd most frequent  haplogroup found in Jewish families.  This is the same as  E1b1b1 that Einstein had. It's just been given a newer title.  18% to 20% of Ashkenazi Jews carry this and 8.6 % to 30% of Sephardi Jews carry it. It is the 2nd highest haplogroup found in Jewish men after J1.   "The E1b1b1 men claiming to be Levites may have existed in Israel before the Diaspora of 70 CE.  

This does not mean that E men were part of the "OTHERS".  There are other ways that it could have taken place.  Sons are not always produced in a marriage, so daughters with their husbands could have taken the position. The difference would have been that OTHERS did not have the additional upbringing  of their ancestors on Abraham's teaching of there being only one G-d.  However, after living with Israelites possibly for the past 400 years, they would have learned, I bet.  

There are a few other Y haplogroups found within the Jewish family.  R, G, Q, perhaps I.  

Our Others may have been descendants of African slaves who had built the pyramids.  Most likely Jacob and his family from the North looked a little different as they were not born in Africa but were descendants of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees on the Euphrates River of the Middle East.  The Hyksos could have been Middle Easterners as well, from Ur, from Babylonia.  Any unlucky person could have been captured and used as a slave in Egypt in Biblical days.  All the people who wanted to leave this position followed Moses and left.  

Resource:

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Egypt#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%20the,to%20as%20%22black%22).

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-03-25/ty-article/were-hebrews-ever-slaves-in-ancient-egypt-yes/0000017f-f6ea-d47e-a37f-fffeebef0000

https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-c998-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99#:~:text=Egypt%3A%20Israelites%20build%20cities%20of,slays%20Egyptian%20%2D%20NYPL%20Digital%20Collections

https://www.britannica.com/video/179508/Israelites-Overview-Moses-slavery  (left out errors)

https://ancient-hebrew.org/learn/learn-the-ancient-pictographic-hebrew-script.htm

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

  

DNA and Haplogroup of Jewish People

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

The best thing I've done is take DNA testing seriously and get into my DNA and my haplogroup.  To understand oneself is to know who your parents are and all their ancestors, do a family tree, and then take some DNA tests.  So much of where our talents lie are inherited talents. With Jewish people, our history is found in the Bible/or Tanakh, as we call it in Hebrew.  The more you learn, the more you want to go deeper.  

Updated:Through testing, you'll find a lot of 4th and 5th cousins.  With 4th cousins, that's going back to your 64 4th great grandparents.  Going back to 5th cousins means going back to your 128 5th great grandparents.  The next level of 6th means that you have 256 ggrandparents and so on.  The pot our genes comes out of holds a lot of ancestors.  Luckily, our skills that we inherit usually come from our nearby ones, although there could be exceptions.  

We do have 99% of our DNA in common with all other homo sapiens.  It's that 1% that's exclusively ours that we can match with other people who share our ancestors.  That's the exciting part that turns us into detectives in finding these people.  

                                              

  I discovered through 23 & Me that my DNA contains 2% Neandertal.  I've read every one of Jean M. Auel's novels like the Clan of the Cave Bear, who include Neandertals in her stories of early Cave Man.                                        

A haplogroup is the branch on the tree of early human migrations and genetic evolution.  Haplogroups are defined by genetic mutations or "markers" found in Y chromosomes (the male line) and mtDNA testing (the female line).  These markers link the members of a haplgroup back to the markers first appearance in the group's most recent common ancestor.  Haplogroups of have a geographic relation. 

                                                

According to our story, Jacob's family tree went back into the beginnings of the bible.  He's the father of 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel.  According to my research, he was the son of Isaac and grandson of Abram/Abraham.  His haplogroup should be the same as his sons, and this should go on to be the same on down the generations.  I find that it should have been called what the scientists of today have called "THE COHEN GENE OF J1.  Since Jacob was a J1 or should have been, all 12 sons should have been the carrier of this as well, so that's how it works.  it only changes a little through a mutation and that takes a long time to happen.  So why aren't all Jewish men carrying J1?  What happened?              

What happens if a man does not produce sons to carry this on?  It stops.  Evidently this happened.  Jacob had 12 sons by 4 wives.  He also had a daughter.  Leah, his first wife, had 6 sons and the daughter.  Rachel had 2, Leahs handmaiden had 2, and Rachel's handmaiden had 2.                 

 At one point, a son did not produce a son, and only produced daughters.  Their husband would have taken over responsibilities including their male line, whatever it was.  People in those days were tribal.  They had gone from family groups to tribes, and then clans where they took in other tribal populations, though Jewish ones.  This is how a few other haplogroups developed amongst the 12 tribes and the Jewish people.                

The priests in the Temple were charged to be from the direct line of Aaron, older brother of Moses who was from the tribe of Levi.  Moses was born in 1391 BCE and died in 1271 BCE.  His male descendants told their sons orally that they were to carry on this position.  Today, the Cohens are the first to read from the Torah on a Shabbat (Saturday) morning in the synagogue.  My 5th cousin, Herb Hochfeld,  knew he was a Cohen and did this.  He DNA tested and this was verified.  He was a J1 or J-M267.  So it's not just all men with the surname of Cohen.  Others have picked up other surnames for different reasons.  But Herb's male line hadn't lost who they were and what was expected of them for these past 3,417 years.  I think that's pretty amazing!

This fact certainly could have been lost in Europe, though, with the 2nd World War interfering with our lives.  Men could be Cohens and not know it unless they have been DNA tested. 

We still find certain haplogroups are more common.  The J1 seems to have a big population.  Another very common one is E-L117.  My father's line is Q, and after testing 111 alleles, is now called QBZ67. There is a branch starting with G, and I, and R.  

Tree of life with branches of haplogroups

Women's haplogroup have different letters of the alphabet.  My paternal grandmother is a W. W (Wilma) is a small group that appears in the western Ural Mountains, the natural border between Europe and Asia and the eastern Baltic area, and is also found in India. This is what my Polish/Lithuania grandmother turned out to be. Not all W’s are Jewish, of course. It occurred first about 20,000-25,000 years ago in NE Europe or NW Asia. Her branch was one of the last discovered of any female haplogroup since Bryan Sykes wrote THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE and discovered the 7 major lines of females. W is like the 8th discovered and didn't make it into his book.   K is the most common Jewish female haplogroup that I've noticed.  He called K women, Katrine.  W has been called Wilma.  

Ashkenazi Jewish women were down to 4 basic women to carry the future population, the scientists tell us.  Evidently when they were found there were only 4 different haplogroups of these Jewish women who wound up in Germany after being taken to Rome after 70 CE.  I bet one was K.                                                           Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Golda                                               Meir         

Hedy Lamarr Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only child of Gertrud "Trude" Kiesler (née Lichtwitz; 1894–1977) and Emil Kiesler (1880–1935). Her father was born to a Galician Jewish family in Lemberg (now Lviv in Ukraine) and was a bank director at the Creditanstalt-Bankverein. Trude, her mother, a pianist and Budapest native, had come from an upper-class Hungarian Jewish family. She had converted to Catholicism and was described as a "practicing Christian" who raised her daughter as a Christian, although Hedy was not formally baptized at the time.     

Gal Gadot of Israel playing Wonderwoman.  Gal Gadot-Varsano is an Israeli actress and model. At age 18, she was crowned Miss Israel 2004. She then served two years in the Israel Defense Forces as a soldier, whereafter she began studying at the IDC Herzliya college, while building her modeling and acting careers.      

One of our IDF female soldiers of Israel.  

                   

  J is also used for women, which is confusing. J:  7% of Jewish women are found to be J1, (Jasmine) which originated about 40,000-45,000 years ago in Near East or Caucasus/ central Asia and is associated with the spread of farming and herding in Europe during the Neolithic Period beginning 10,000 years ago. It’s common in the Middle East and among Jews. J2 is localized in the Mediterranean. J is 17% European originating in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago and is the 2nd largest haplogroup for women. Another J listed is 5% European originating in N. Spain about 17,000 years ago.  Bryan Syke's  book goes into where they first originated and gives us great detail about it.  

                               

Paul Newman's father was Jewish, mother wasn't but he saw himself as a Jew. His father was the son of Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, Hungarian Jewish and Polish Jewish emigrants from Hungary and Vistula Land. Paul's mother was a practitioner of Christian Science. She was born to a Slovak Catholic family in Peticse (near Homonna) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

    That is the interesting part of knowing the haplogroup.  Scientists have found the place of origin for each branch.  For instance, our Q line was first discovered in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey.  Our branch somehow became a Jewish line, while others became the native Americans of North and South America. 

Jeff Goldblum found out about his roots with Henry Louis Gates. 

TV programs about genealogy and DNA are popular.  Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a documentary television series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on March 25, 2012 on PBS. In each episode, celebrities are presented with a "book of life" that is compiled with information researched by professional genealogists that allows them to view their ancestral histories, learn about familial connections and discover secrets about their lineage.

Season Six was shown from October 2019 to October 2020 with two new episodes airing weekly in October 2019, eight episodes airing weekly in January and February 2020 and six episodes airing weekly in October and November 2020. All episodes air on Tuesdays.  There are many other interesting programs about finding one's ancestors.  

Be a detective and so some research about you and your family.  You will have a far better understanding and patience with yourself if you do, and you'll appreciate how you got here in the first place.  DNA is so fantastic as to how it all works.  It's one of those important wonders of the world.  

update: 12/17 21:  I just ran across this info and thought I'd share it as we Jews are an endogamous people.

Endogamy is the practice of marrying within the same ethnic, cultural, social, religious or tribal group. In endogamous populations everyone will descend from the same small gene pool. People will be related to each other in a recent genealogical timeframe on multiple ancestral pathways and the same ancestors will, therefore, appear in many different places on their pedigree chart. Endogamy can be the result of a conscious decision or cultural pressure to marry within the selected group but also occurs as a result of geographical isolation (for example, in island communities).

Examples of endogamous groups include Jews, Polynesians, Low German Mennonites, the Amish, Acadians or Cajuns (French settlers in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada), French Canadians, people from many Arab countries, people from Newfoundland and people from many islands. Endogamy is also a problem in early Colonial American populations.

The interpretation of DNA results from endogamous populations can be particularly challenging because such people will typically have large numbers of matches in the DNA databases.

The interpretation of autosomal DNA matches can be particularly difficult, especially in the case of endogamous populations where the pedigrees cannot be traced back beyond the 1800s. The relationships will often be more distant than predicted.

The Family Tree DNA Family Finder matching algorithms were modified with effect from 21st April 2011 to downweight matches between Jews in order to provide more accurate relationship predictions.[1] 23andMe make similar adjustments for customers with Ashkenazi ancestry.[2]

For people with Jewish ancestry it has been suggested that you need to have at least one long half-identical region of 23 cMs or more to have some hope of finding the relationship in genealogical time.[3]  (https://isogg.org/wiki/Endogamy)   Are they talking about a segment of 23cMs?  

Resource:

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

Deep Ancestry Genographic Project by Spencer Wells

THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE, by Bryan Sykes

DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick & Andrew Yeiser

Jacob's legacy, A Genetic View of Jewish History by David B. Goldstein 

DNA TRADITION; The Genetic Link to the Ancient Hebrews, by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman

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