What’s up with Jews with red hair? Was there a secret colony of Jews in Ireland? (There are legends of Jesus visiting the Isles, so many Jews went there.) Where did the red hair come from?
WRS
Please change “many” in the parenthetical remark above to “maybe.”
Thank you.
WRS
Why do you assume that there is something unusual with Jews having red hair? There isn’t. In fact, my great-grandfather’s last name translated to “red.” I had red hair as a kid and my kids have red highlights in their hair today. So what?
Red hair isn’t only exclusive to Western Europeans you know.
I am a Jew with red hair. Why?
Judaism is matrilineal. My mother is Jewish and my father is not (by Jewish law). By Jewish law I am Jewish, but I have Irish blood. Hardly anyone is a “pure bred” anything anymore.
Heck, I’ve got red hair (as does my son), and I’m not Irish at all. My family is Eastern European and more than one of us has red hair. My husband, who is three-quarters Irish, has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. Go figure.
Robin
If he also has fair skin, your hubby looks like a lot of Irish folks do. There are far more of them than those of us with red hair, even in Ireland.
I guess I was mystified because hair color is genetically determined, and the only area where there are people with red hair that I am aware of is the Isles of Britain and Ireland.
Jewish with Irish blood - makes sense in America. Thanks VivaEuropa. You’re right, no one’s pureblooded anymore. (As a matter of fact, I have no idea what my ethnicity is, other that it’s Asian, which is a big, big, big area.)
Ryan_Liam, could you educate me of other lands or areas (besides Europe) where one might find red hair?
Thanks, guys. 
WRS - who has not a strand of red hair
A grad school professor of mine, who specialized mostly in Central Asian history, said there are tenth-century sources which describe the Kyrgyz as having red hair. I know the Irish have been known to wander far afield, but I wasn’t aware they ended up in Kyrgyzstan.
(Another person of 100% Jewish ancestry - as far as I know - checking in; my aunt has red hair and freckles. I had red hair when I was a small child, although more auburn than carrot red, and my grandmother is blonde. Go figure.)
"I know the Irish have been known to wander far afield, but I wasn’t aware they ended up in Kyrgyzstan. "
Perhaps that was the closest pub at the time?
- PW
The frequency of red hair in Britain and Ireland is generally attributed in large part to the invasions by the various tribes of Scandinavia and Northern Europe, where red hair is also quite common. Ditto for its occurence in Russia and Eastern Europe. The Vikings and Danes get most of the blame. But in fact, red hair occurs with at least some frequency in nearly every part of the world, including Asia, Africa, and Australia (among the indigenous peoples – of course there are red-haired immigrants from Western Europe everywhere these days as well).
As it happens, I’m currently reading a book by Steve Olson called Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins. While it might be a little on the preachy side, Olson’s book does do a good job of explaining, using the current evidence from work on human genetics, how completely interrelated all living humans are.
In one chapter, Olson specifically addresses the genetic makeup of Jews, particularly those of Askenazic (Eastern European) descent, partly to address the question of why, since Jews tend to marry within their religious and ethnic group, the Jews of Eastern Europe at least superficially resemble the people of those lands more closely than the people of the Middle East, from whom Eastern European Jews purportedly descend. The evidence, according to Olson, is in fact consistent with what Jews believe to be the case; namely, that they descend more or less directly from Jews who emigrated from the Middle East, with a certain amount of additional genetic material provided from occasional intermarriage or conversion – according to Olson, a rate of about 1 intermarriage in 100 could be expected to result in the genetic distribution we find today in Ashkenazic Jews. Keep in mind that even by the time of the rise of the nations of Israel and Judah, there was already genetic material from people all over the world in the makeup of the people who became the Jews-- the same is true even for apparently isolated people like the Bushmen of southern Africa, btw. The Middle East has perhaps seen even more than its share of genetic mixing, having been the primary route out of Africa for primitive man and a crossroads between Europe, Africa, and Asia for tens of thousands of years. Not only is “no one pureblooded anymore” (as you concede), but in a very real sense they never were in the first place.
As it happens, I’m primarily of Scotch-Irish and English descent, with a little Italian thrown in. My hair was red as a child, though it darkened to brown by the time I graduated college. There’s bright red hair among several members of my Dad’s family. There’s more red hair, however, among my wife’s mother’s family, who’re all of Ashkenazic extraction, most of them having immigrated from Russia and Poland around the turn of the twentieth century. My wife’s mother’s hair is red, and one of her brothers has a lot of red in what hair he has left and even more in his beard. My wife’s hair is nearly black, mine’s a medium brown with occasional red, my son’s is a very light brown or dark blonde, my older daughter has bright copper-colored hair, and my youngest daughter’s hair looks like it’s going to be blonde or light brown, like my son’s. We have nearly the whole gamut in one family.
Most of the red hair among Jews today is probably attributable to the Northern European invaders into Eastern Europe, just as it is for the British and Irish, but it’s a pretty good bet that there’d be some even if those incursions had never taken place.
Red hair is apparently also common in among the Berbers of the Rif mountains in northern Morocco. And somewhere on this board ( can’t find it now ) someone posted a link to news photo of a Syrian minister, showing his flaming red hair.
- Tamerlane
My mom (an Ashkenazi Jew) has red hair, but my grandmother has brown hair and my grandfather had black hair. Is red hair a recessive gene or something?
Yes, red and blonde is recessive.
One of Saddam’s aides, Ibrahim Izzat, is a red head.
Wasn’t Odysseus described in the Odyssey as having red hair.
Well, King David was supposed to have been a red-head, so red haired Jews seem to go back a looong way…
Another one checking in… 100% Jewish ancestry here, too. when I spent two years in the states (20 years ago), an Irish friend of mine said that all I needed to do in order to become officially Irish was change my name to O’barbanel 
Dan Abarbanel
Things to note: my dad is 100% Ashkenazi Jewish. My mom is 100% of Irish descent.
My sister is a redhead and I have red lights in my (brown) hair. My bubbe loooooves to claim that this comes from my dad’s side of the family because “Jews often have red hair!” The fact that my mom’s family is Irish and there are actually several redheads on that side of the family AND everyone on my dad’s side of the family I’ve ever met or seen pictures of has/had dark hair, eyes, and olive skin has no effect on her argument. Jews often have red hair!
My uncle (my father’s brother’s) hair is auburn, tending towards red.
One of my sisters looks like what most Americans think of when they describe someone as “Middle Eastern” looking. She’s got brown eyes, deep olive skin color, dark brown–almost black–hair. My other sister has a peaches-and-cream complection (with freckles, no less!), reddish/ slightly brown hair, and dark hazel eyes. I look like a cross between the two of them–brown hair with red highlights in summer, brown eyes, light olive skin (except in summer, when I get darker PDQ). We’re full sisters, and our mother and father both come from Ashkenazi Jewish families, and we don’t know of any intermarriages in either of my parent’s ancestries. Genetics is a funny thing, ain’t it?
I can’t believe no one has pointed out that there is a “cluster” of red hair in Poland, just as there is in Ireland. Many of America’s Jews emigrated from Poland. Both my grandmothers – both Polish – had red hair, it wasn’t considered uncommon there.
-Red-headed Jew.
I know more red-headed Finns than I do red-headed Irish. I have never understood where that stereotype comes from. For me the typical Irish colouring is pale with dark brown hair and blue eyes. I know/have known a total of 3 Irish red-heads.