So if someone could prove to you that the majority of the ancestors of Jews are from the Middle East then they can return?

I believe the authors name is Steven Wells, USC professor and DNA genetics expert who outlines the two original races of people and their journey's world wide. ( Both began near one another, in Africa, and the other the M.E. ) Might be interesting to read his account. As Judaism is a religion, there are many possibilities for conversion and also for confusion. If you keep a Jewish home, the Jewish laws, and believe in the one G-d of Israel, isn't that all that really maters to the Creator? What about non religious' Jews... are they still by definition Jews?? There are many who are Jewish and don't know it.. Isn't it up to G-d and the individual?

No one will ever know.. BUILD BABY BUILD !!!!!

Have you read Dr. Steven Wells book, 'The Origins of Man' ? His specialty, DNA and is a professor at USA. His explanation is far superior and, interestingly enough, resembles the Torah. You might fins a thumb nail on Google.

Isn't the proof in the pudding? No other people have returned to their ancestral land as was described in the Torah eons before the fact. As most Jews know, we were 'scattered' and remain but a remnant. When Israel was declared a state after defeating 5 hostile Arab armies in 1948 it would seem the cry, "Next Year Jerusalem" has become THIS year. No one can dismiss the facts, and, these are the facts. Than G-d. No other book has ever done this, no other nation resembles Israel.

the Assyrian army went to attack Judah. The Israelites went North over the Caucasus Mountains and became known as the Caucasians. The Caucasians who converted to Judaism were going back to the religion of their ancestors since they were descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just as the Jews from the Tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi were. There is a genetic heritage that is common to them all. To become Jews who kept the early faith instead of continuing in the pagan substitute religion is a good thing. Add to that the Jewish Messiah Yehoshua of Nazareth and they have a complete faith of being a part of the messenger people of HaShem with the message that was lost anciently to many.

90% of Jews are Ashkenazic? What propaganda is this. The rest is just as stupid.

History proves one has to be very careful of relying entirely on research and one has to look at the identity of the researcher. Although it may appear conclusive researchers are , like all humans, influenced by extraneous factors such as political bias and they tend to concentrate on looking for confirmation of their beliefs . Even though they claim to be completely neutral they cant help themselves in drifting towards preconceived ideas. Whilst I think there is an strong element of truth regarding the Khazar history what is not taken into consideration is the amount of intermarriage between those of Khazar descent and those of original tribal Jewish descent. The facts are quite clear that there has been a great deal of intermingling of genes and that it does not at all negate the origins of Ashkenazim Jews being from the Middle East

Is he a khazar himself? Who conducted census across Eastern Europe in the15 century? Where the number 50,000 comes from? Why Khazars "fled westward"? (To settle in Poland they had to flee northward, BTW). Why did the flee at all? (Out of 100 or more nations, occupied by Mongols, only Khazars "fled" but nobody else did. Why? Why Khazars were different from the other nations?) (Talking about "scientific methods")

In "Born to Kvetch" Yiddish expert Michael Wex says otherwise. There was no Slavic element in the original Yiddish. "Yiddish started out as German for blasphemers".

First of all, every single study have found Ashkenazim to be closely related to Sephardim (including North African Sephardim), which if this study is to be believed would mean Sephardim are also descended from the Caucasus which is completely implausable. Ashkenazim have over 20% Y-DNA haplogroup J1e/J1c3 shared with other Jewish groups including Samaritans. Ashkenazim/Sephardim shows high traces of ancestry from southern Europe which is consistent with Roman converts to Judaism + Levantine and minor North African ancestry. All Jewish groups shows a high a "Caucasus" component, which is consistent with other ancient northern Semitic groups such as Assyrians etc.

I'm an immigrant from Ukraine and originally from Crimea. I studied at school (Soviet time end of 1980s beginning of 1990s) that karaites are descendants of Khazars. Karaites are crimean jews of turkic tribe who converted to Judaism. We also studied not much about Khazars. Khazars had an empire. Czar Bulan (hebrew name Ovadia) ruled by iron fist. After his death the empire collapsed because of different circumstances. Karaites lived in Russia, had lots of privilleges unlike ashkenazi jews. In Crimea, therea karaite synagogues called Kanassa. Karaites were warriors and poets. Russian czar alowed them not to be conscripted to russian army and instead go to universities. The language that karaites (khazars) spoke was called karai or karay. It is a turkic language but used hebrew letters. The language has been lost as karaites were not persecuted unlike european jews and intermarried russians, ukrainians, etc.

Dr. Eran Elhaik, at the very least, being open to criticism via a more public peer-review rather than the closed, magazine-based model. His study has received quite a bit of criticism since then, not the least for the ridiculing "miracle" reference. Where others say "we still lack data, but the Khazar appears very unlikely based on the data we *do* have", the author ridicules this and attempts to shove his theory in. Which, "miraculously", seems to steamroll over linguistics, historic events in that period, actual Khazar convert numbers, and so on... In short, while Dr. Elhaik may be a good geneticist at his core, he tends to be rather bad at most *other* associated fields of science. Which, unsurprisingly, throws his genetic work into a bit of a muddle... because, instead of attempting to account for historic facts, he ignored them.

To support his premise, Dr. Elhaik had two very questionable and badly sourced claims - that population movements from the Caucaus were nonexistent before the fall of Khazaria, and that the Khazarian *Empire* mass converted to Judaism. The former is patently false, since there is wide account of population migrations (Cossacks, Circassians, Chechans, Tatars, etc.). And as to the latter? Analysis largely indicates that the only converts to Judaism were in Khazaria *proper*, largely of the upper echelon of society. Dr. Elhaik references Shlomo Sand and Arthur Koestler as his sources who are, unfortunately... a bit on the fictitious and politically motivated side of historic analysis, so far from consensus that they've been quite obviously cherry-picked to support the main body of research. Other geneticists actually critique the analysis of the data - apparently, Dr. Elhaik used Armenians as a Caucaus group reference point, which is a bit silly, since the Armenian genetic markup is vastly different (categorized as Eastern Anatolian, with a high affinity to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern populations). In short, not much going on here, really - science is not equal to truth. It might *produce* something *close* to truth, in due time, but mostly it just produces paper.

Intermarriage between jews and converts are good for jewish genes. It makes us strong and capable. The opposite we find in people that ísolates themselves and only marry their cousins, inside the same tribe or clan. Amongst them we can find more inherant diseases of all kinds than by other people. They degenerate more and more, both mentally and physically. Just look on our hardeim. They do only marry in isolated communities. That makes them pale, weak, unfit to do military service and endure hardships If we want a strong healthy jewish people we should welcome intermarriage and conversations from different ethnical groups.

either this article is poorly written or the Geneticist's research is seriously flawed: 1. "Ashkenazim account for some 90% of the more than 13 million Jews in the world today." Oh really and what are Sephardim and Mizrachim? We are ONLY 10% of the world Jewish population? Are you sure? 2. It isn't the birth rate it's the infant mortality rate that the research should be looking at...therefore all comments about the population growth made after this point is well not statistically correct. 3. To my Ashkenazi Brethren since David HaMelech (grandson of a Moabite convert named Ruth) had red hair I will give a pass to the red heads amongst ... but all the rest of you blond blue eyed Jews have to realize that well...all y'all were not born from REAL brown skinned DESERT JEW stock like us Separdim and Mizrachim. You will just have to learn to deal with the fact that you were NOT in the original gene mix. ;-)

....There is very absolutely no evidence of any khazars mass conversion to judaism.

Then explain why practically every genetic study has shown us closer to you. Explain why so many Ashkenazi Jews have Levantine features (my mother, whose family lived in Russia for ages, looks Arab), and many Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews look pure European (like Shiri Maimon). Endless studies that show a close genetic relation between all Jews, combined with the fact that this study has been discredited by other researchers, shows that we WERE in the original mix, and are predominantly Levantine with some European mixture.

The math in this article is wrong. I won't get into the mathematical details, but you can trust me. I'm a professional. A population growing from 50,000 to 8 million in 500 years is not implausible at all. A birth rate of 3 children per woman would grow a population of 50,000 to over 160 million in 500 years. The real mystery is why the Jewish population didn't grow to over 160 million. The answer is economic hardship, disease, wars and pogroms. A Jewish birth rate 10 times higher than the gentile birth rate is ridiculous and not necessary for such population growth. The authors must have meant growth rate. A Jewish growth rate 10 times higher than a gentile growth rate is very possible and reasonable. Growth rate is birth rate minus 2, because a birth rate of 2 kids per woman means the population stays the same. A birth rate of 3 kids per woman results in a growth rate of 1. A birth rate of 2.1 kids per woman results in a growth rate of 0.1. Notice, 1 is 10 times greater than 0.1.

So, converted nomadic strays after all - By the way this so called flourishing 'empire' supported themselves by robbing traders and other nomads passing thru ,...

"where their skills in finance, economics and politics were in demand" - Yeah right, but they left no cities, no ruins, no records, nothing like other developed nations to make them remember,...

There goes your myth of that special relationship with our creator and your claim to promised land ,...

but first you explain to me how it is that there is an African Non-Jewish tribe which has the highest relationship to the Cohen Gene outside of the Jewish Gene Pool! In other words not all Ashkenazim are from non-Jewish stock but the vast majority are from non-Jewish stock. (the fair skinned blue eyed North African Jews are Berber converts)

read 43 & 44 .

In many khazar graves hebrew letter inscriptions and coins ( minted locally ) were found. Unfortunately no state archives existed in the IX, c. CE.

The Israeli Secular media should be charged with War Crimes Against the Jews for its constant attacks and attempts at demoralizing and deligitimizing Jews Judaism and the Jewish Homeland , this article is just one of thousands that could be sited, Ethnic Cleansing of the Jews of the world is their Israeli secular medias goal

You really screwed this time pal - Jewish parts of European cities and towns were the dirtiest rat and roach infested neighborhoods and breeding ground for diseases ,... Google Mea Shearim or any place where they dwell, click on images and knock yourself out. What you see it's a 21 Century picture now imagine 100 years ago,...

"Explain why so many Ashkenazi Jews have Levantine features (my mother, whose family lived in Russia for ages, looks Arab), and many Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews look pure European (like Shiri Maimon)" - Ever heard about wars, invasions, rapes, slavery, kidnappings, forced convertions and circumsissions by Maccabees and Hasmoneans, conquerros like Mongols, Tartars, Turks, Vikings, Crusadors, Colonialists, etc. - Trying to tell us that your woman were immune to rape, prostitution, slavery and everything the war and havoc brings with? Ever heard of cosmetic surgeries and beauty saloons that make you look the way you wish? Shiri looks like young Paula Abdul after few nose and boob jobs. They made M. Jackson look like Fritz with Casanova's wig, didn't they? ,...