Are Jews white? A judge tries to answer the question in a messy lawsuit.
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A recent judicial ruling defining Jewish as a protected race follows a long and often ugly history.
Surprise: Ashkenazi Jews Are Genetically European
After being denied a job because he was heredity Jewish in spite of having converted to Christianity Bonadona sued. Some Jewish people are offended by the lawsuit and the ruling.
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The judge ruled last month that Bonadona had been discriminated against because of his Jewish lineage, deciding that he was part of a protected “race” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For some Jewish people, it did not feel like a victory. The regional branch of the Anti-Defamation League released a statement in February while the case was ongoing: “ADL is deeply offended by the perception of Jews as a race found in both allegations against the College and the plaintiff’s assertions in the lawsuit.” After the decision, David Barkey of the ADL called it a “double-edged sword.”
Surprise: Ashkenazi Jews Are Genetically European
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The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, who come most recently from Europe, has largely been shrouded in mystery. But a new study suggests that at least their maternal lineage may derive largely from Europe.
Though the finding may seem intuitive, it contradicts the notion that European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel and the Middle East around 2,000 years ago. Instead, a substantial proportion of the population originates from local Europeans who converted to Judaism, said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England.
Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews
The Jewish world is more ethnically and racially diverse than many people realize.
For most Americans, traditional Jewish culture summons up images of Passover seders with steaming bowls of matzah ball soup, black-hatted, pale-skinned Hasidic men, and Yiddish-speaking bubbes (grandmothers) and zeydes (grandfathers). In reality, these snapshots represent only one Jewish ethnic group — Ashkenazi — of many.
Worldwide, Jews from distinct geographic regions vary greatly in their diet, language, dress, and folk customs. Most pre-modern Diaspora communities are categorized into three major ethnic groups (in Hebrew, sometimes called eidot, “communities”):
Mizrahim
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Ashkenazim, the Jews of Germany and Northern France (in Hebrew, Ashkenaz)
Sephardim, the Jews of Iberia (in Hebrew, Sepharad) and the Spanish diaspora
Mizrahim, or Oriental Jews
Ethiopian Jews
Sephardim
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Ethiopian
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Mizrahi Jews, Mizrahim, also referred to as Edot HaMizrach (Communities of the East), Bene HaMizrah (“Sons of the East”), or Oriental Jews, are descendants of local Jewish communities in the Middle East from biblical times into the modern era. They include descendants of Babylonian Jews and Mountain Jews from modern Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. Yemenite Jews, as well as North African Jews are sometimes also included, but their histories are separate from Babylonian Jewry.
Sephardi Jews, also known as Sephardic Jews or Sephardim (The Jews of Spain), originally from Sepharad, Spain or the Iberian peninsula, are a Jewish ethnic division. They established communities throughout areas of modern Spain and Portugal, where they traditionally resided, evolving what would become their distinctive characteristics and diasporicidentity, which they took with them in their exile from Iberia beginning in the late 15th century to North Africa, Anatolia, the Levant, Southeasternand Southern Europe, as well as the Americas, and all other places of their exiled settlement, either alongside pre-existing co-religionists, or alone as the first Jews in new frontiers.
Are Jews White?
Trump’s election has reopened questions that have long seemed settled in America—including the acceptability of open discrimination against minority groups.
Emma Green 12/05/2016
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