Nadia Abu El-Haj, The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology.

Samra, Myer

Nadia Abu El-Haj, The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. ix, 311. ISBN-13: 9780226201405 (Cloth) $US35.00.

When more than twenty years ago I commenced working with the Benei Menashe from North East India who believe themselves to be descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel, I was fortunate to have access to the extensive correspondence between Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail and members of that community with whom he had been in communication since 1979. Rabbi Avichail had founded Amishav, an Israeli organisation which was searching for the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, on the strength of a belief that finding the descendants of all the Israelite tribes would hasten the coming of the Messiah. While he was looking for the lost tribes, here was a community proclaiming themselves to be descendants of one of those tribes.

In his attempt to verify their claims, Rabbi Avichail had requested, and received, hand-prints of members of the community, hoping to have them analysed to establish possible Israelite ancestry. The handprints remained stored in a box in Rabbi Avichail's home, unanalysed; the Rabbi had not found a person who could adequately interpret them--assuming it might be possible to ascertain ancestry from handprints. Today, thanks to advances in the genetic sciences, we have more reliable clues concerning a person's ancestry and geographical provenance.

C. P. Snow coined the term "the two cultures" to describe the gulf that divides the sciences from the humanities. As Nadia Abu El-Haj shows in this significant yet troubling book, the mapping of the human genome has led to the bridging of the divide, at least in the fields of biology, history and anthropology, with the notion that our genetic history is coded in our DNA and can be used to trace our connection with one another--to discover "relatives" we may not have known of, or to suggest where our ancestors might have originated and where they had lived over the generations and the millennia, creating a history leading from our origins to where we are today. This book explains the science that allows us to "read" such information from our genes, the a priori assumptions (politically motivated?) that can lurk behind such readings, and the meanings that people put into the information so retrieved. Abu El-Haj uses the search for Jewish origins to illustrate such issues.

Each cell within our bodies carries DNA inherited from our parents, and through them from our more distant ancestors. Less than 5% of that genetic material is essential, coding for our functioning as human beings; the remainder has been described as "junk-DNA", in that it does not appear to serve any particular purpose. Mutations that are neither beneficial nor harmful but are "indifferent" which occur in this "junk-DNA" and are inherited give strong clues about our ancestry. Scientists can estimate the number of generations of separation between individuals and populations through the extent of variation in their genetic make-up.

Although some of the same mutations might have taken place independently in separate populations, generally similarities in clusters of genetic markers on a particular chromosome, referred to as haplotypes, suggest a common ancestry. Because we inherit genetic material from both parents and this material is recombined in our chromosomes, it is difficult to determine origins from most of that material. However, as males carry only one Y-chromosome, which is inherited solely from their fathers and which cannot therefore recombine with other chromosomes, it is possible to trace someone's patrilineal background and connections through the genetic material on that chromosome.

We are fortunate as well to have genetic material, mitochondrial-DNA, which is derived solely from our female ancestors. This is not located in the nucleus of the cell where the chromosomes are found, but in the cytoplasm, equivalent to the "white" of an egg, the yolk being the nucleus. Looking at the DNA in the Y-chromosome and the mitochondria, we are able to have a fair idea about a person's male and female lines, and possibly where they might have come from.

While genetic studies have been undertaken to assist Afro-Americans work out their ethnic affinities and where in Africa their ancestors came from, and other studies have confirmed a genetic link between Asian populations and Amerindians, there has also been a major focus on the genetics of Jewish populations, partly because many of the scientists involved have been Jewish, but also because of the unique history of the Jews and their geographical spread, coupled with an ideology of being essentially a single family, descendants of the patriarch Abraham, his son Isaac, and grandson Jacob.

Abu El-Haj suggests that the notion of the Jews as more than members of a religious community only developed in the nineteenth century, following the emergence of nationalism in Europe and the development of racial theory--much of it predicated upon the Jews as a distinct "race", and bound up with the Zionist movement. Following the Nazi era and the discrediting of the idea of race, new concepts were needed to express an assumed unity of the Jewish people. In the 1950s and '60s, the eminent haematologist Arthur E. Mourant compared the blood groupings of various Jewish populations with each other and with the broader host communities with whom they lived, concluding that most Jewish groups had more in common with one another than with their host communities.

Blood group analysis was also undertaken in the newly established state of Israel by Yosef Gurevitch and Chaim Sheba, in part in an attempt by the dominant Ashkenazi elite to fathom what relationship they could have to the "backward" Jews flooding into the country from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and in part to bolster the ideology on which the State was founded--that the Jews, originally from Palestine, were returning to the homeland from which they had been expelled. Abu El-Haj points out flaws in the scientific methods of these studies, which identified groups by different criteria-some as distinct populations, such as the Ashkenazim and Sephardim not geographically defined, others defined by the nation or the town they came from. While the Jews from the oriental groups were compared to various populations, these studies failed to compare them with European Jews, or indeed with Arab Israelis, with whom they might presumably have significant affinities if these Jews were returning to their original homeland.

Although the recent DNA research has been more scientifically grounded, Abu El-Haj is critical that it tends to presume that the Biblical narrative and Jewish accounts of their wanderings are historically correct rather than mythological. I shall attempt to present some of the interesting findings and Abu El-Haj's slant on them.

From the Y-chromosome studies, the evidence indicates that "Jewish populations share thirteen common Y-chromosome haplotypes with non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations" (p. 120), including many Palestinian Arabs. Whereas this supports a Middle Eastern background in the male line among Jews, the fact that there are such a variety of haplotypes would apparently indicate they were not the descendants of the one patriarch.

From the mitochondrial studies, the picture is more complicated, with many more distinct female lines being apparent. Although it seems more than 50% of Georgian Jews descend from a common female ancestor, it is not possible to connect her to populations, Jewish or otherwise, in the Middle East or elsewhere (p. 115). As many as 40% of Ashkenazi Jews--who today comprise around two thirds of the world's Jewish population--descend from just four women. One of these apparently had a background that connects to the Levant, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, while the others to locations around the Mediterranean, which Abu El-Haj stresses is not consistent with the idea that they had originated in Israel (p. 124).

The number and diversity of female lines that cannot be connected to a Middle Eastern source has led to the proposition that Jewish communities had been established by Jewish men coming from the Middle East taking wives from the local population, possibly converting them, and bringing up their offspring as Jews. This is surprising given that one's status as a Jew is taken from one's mother. Once these communities were established, they became endogamous, so that even if the founding women had not been Jewish, their descendants most definitely were (p. 120). Abu El-Haj is therefore critical of those who privilege the Y-chromosome evidence to assert "a genetic link among Jewish groups" and that "Jews could trace their male lineages back to biblical Palestine", when the evidence from mitochondrial DNA tells a different story, particularly for "the founding mothers of Ashkenazi Jews" (p. 121).

Jews recognise three "classes" among their members, known as Cohanim (priests), Levites (the priests' assistants) and ordinary people, Israelites. An exploration of what Cohanim from different parts of the Jewish world have in common led to the designation of the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), constructed out of 12 genetic loci on the Y-chromosome, which was found to be present at a high frequency in the sample of both Ashkenazi Cohanim (44.9%) and Sephardi Cohanim (56.1%) Given the relative isolation of these communities from each other over the past 500 years, researchers have concluded that this strongly suggests a common origin (pp. 35-6). This haplotype has also been found in around 10% of Israelites, leading to the suggestion that perhaps it is not just a marker of priestly origin, but more widely of an ancient Hebrew heritage (p. 37). While it occurs in small numbers among certain Middle Eastern populations, it is absent from the DNA of many other groups around the world.

Surprisingly, however, this haplotype has been found among members of the Buba clan of the Lemba, at a frequency-13.5%-higher than that among ordinary Israelites. The Lemba are a Bantu speaking community from South Africa and Zimbabwe, who have long maintained a claim of Jewish ancestry. Y-chromosome studies tend to support the proposition that some of their male ancestors had come from the Middle East, and even the possibility that they might have Jewish roots (p.187). Whilst this does not make the Lemba Jewish, it has apparently sparked interest in them from a number of Jewish organisations, such as South African Jews who invited members of the group to attend a camp organised by the Betar youth movement, Rabbis bringing them books on Judaism, and a Jewish education program, funded by Kulanu, an organisation from America which supports groups around the world, of all and any racial backgrounds, who believe they have Jewish roots or seek to convert to Judaism (pp. 194-195).

As for the Benei Menashe with whom I have been involved, genetic testing conducted at Haifa University has not found any genetic links to known Jewish communities, although a genetic laboratory in Kolkata claimed to have found a link through mitochondrial DNA with Jewish women from Uzbekistan. These findings, however, have not been subjected to peer review, as expected in scientific research. Nevertheless, members of the community have become fervent Jews, and despite the lack of clear genetic evidence, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate has accepted their claim to Jewish ancestry, urging their conversion and settlement in Israel.

Abu El-Haj takes a critical, if not cynical view of such attempts to discover Jewish ancestry or to prove that the Jews originated in Palestine, which she regards as part of the Zionist political agenda and a messianic expectancy. She is particularly, and rightly, negative about genetic laboratories that offer genetic testing as a commercial venture, encouraging people to undergo testing and discover "relations" they would otherwise never have learnt about.

This is an important book from which one can learn a lot about the genetic sciences and what they reveal about Jewish origins. One must concede that not every ancestor of every Jew today would have emerged as an exile from ancient Israel; conversion to Judaism has always been possible. Yet despite the disparagement Abu El-Haj casts upon the Jewish tradition of Israelite descent and the political implications drawn from that belief, the fact is that genealogically there is evidence, in the male line, of significant common Middle Eastern roots. We may not all descend from the one ancestor, and indeed, even Abraham is seen in the Bible to have attracted followers, while many Egyptians are shown to have joined Moses during the Exodus.