# Which theory explaining the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews is the considered the most valid today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 18, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645 "2014-10-18T01:36:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645/1 "2014-10-18T01:36:08Z")
Hi, I’ve seen competing theories to explain the origins of of Ashkenazi Jews in Europe. Which theory is considered the most valid today? I look forward to your feedback. davidmich > **[Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos](https://www.yahoo.com/)** > > Latest news coverage, email, free stock quotes, live scores and video are just the beginning. Discover more every day at Yahoo! The word “Ashkenazic” is derived from the Hebrew word for Germany. The word “Sephardic” is derived from the Hebrew word for Spain. The word “Mizrachi” is derived from the Hebrew word for Eastern. Most American Jews today are Ashkenazic, descended from Jews who emigrated from Germany and Eastern Europe from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, although most of the early Jewish settlers of this country were Sephardic. The first Jewish congregation in North America, Shearith Israel, founded in what is now New York in 1684, was Sephardic and is still active. The first Jewish congregation in the city of Philadelphia, Congregation Mikveh Israel, founded in 1740, was also a Sephardic one, and is also still active. > **[History and Genetics: Ashkenazic Jewry in the Rhineland](http://lawrenceschiffman.com/history-and-genetics-ashkenazic-jewry-in-the-rhineland/)** > > Genetic markers have suggested that Ashkenazic Jewry was founded by a small number of immigrants. From analysis of mitochondrial genomes it appears that only four subtypes account for 70% of the Ashkenazi Jews. This suggests a total of four female founders. These founders appear to descend from families that come from the Middle East from which they migrated to the Rhineland. It is fits well with what historical sources tell us about the Israel-Italy-Germany connection > **[Genetic Roots of the Ashkenazi Jews](https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/genetic-roots-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-38580)** > > Most Ashkenazi Jews, traditionally believed to have descended from the ancient tribes of Israel, may in fact be maternally descended from prehistoric Europeans. The majority of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from prehistoric European women, according to study published today (October 8) in Nature Communications. While the Jewish religion began in the Near East, and the Ashkenazi Jews were believed to have origins in the early indigenous tribes of this region, new evidence from mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on exclusively from mother to child, suggests that female ancestors of most modern Ashkenazi Jews converted to Judaism in the north Mediterranean around 2,000 years ago and later in west and central Europe. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645/2 "2014-10-18T01:58:29Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > Hi,From analysis of mitochondrial genomes it appears that only four subtypes account for 70% of the Ashkenazi Jews. This suggests a total of four female founders. Not at all. It suggests that only four of the female founders still have living descendants. Your reasoning would be the same as saying Mitochondrial Eve was the only woman founder of the modern human race. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645/3 "2014-10-18T02:05:59Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > Not at all. It suggests that only four of the female founders still have living descendants. Even less than that. It suggests that only four of the female founders have living descendants along an unbroken female only line. The others can have all of the descendants they want, so long is there is a male somewhere in the lineage. ---
**Author:** ![Recusant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@Recusant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recusant)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645/4 "2014-10-18T02:25:23Z")
I believe the most commonly accepted theory nowadays is that one of their ancestors was bitten by a radioactive Jew. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645/5 "2014-10-18T02:40:18Z")
Not my reasoning. It’s from this website. I see more websites now asserting that the Ashkenazim came to Germany via Italy from the Middle East. I’m trying to ascertain which theory has the best evidence to support it. [http://lawrenceschiffman.com/history...the-rhineland/](http://lawrenceschiffman.com/history...the-rhineland/) “From analysis of mitochondrial genomes it appears that only four subtypes account for 70% of the Ashkenazi Jews. This suggests a total of four female founders. These founders appear to descend from families that come from the Middle East from which they migrated to the Rhineland. It is fits well with what historical sources tell us about the Israel-Italy-Germany connection” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645/6 "2014-10-18T03:53:33Z")
We had [a thread touching on this a couple years ago](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=666354). > [@Kimstu](#): > > There’s an interesting [article in _Commentary_ that describes some findings discussed in a couple of recent books:](http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/jews-and-their-dna/) > > > [@](#): > > > > The standard Jewish version of these origins was that Ashkenazi Jewry had first crystallized in the late first millennium of the Christian era […] > > > > Two new books address this question. One, David B. Goldstein’s _Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History_, is the work of a scientist who […] has been personally involved in much Jewish genetic research. The other, Jon Entine’s _Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People_, is by a layman and journalist. Yet […] the difference between them is one more of style than of substance. They agree on most major points, starting with the puzzling disparity in the distribution patterns of Jewish Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. > > > > The fact of this disparity is now solidly established. […] Jewish males with antecedents in such widely separated places as Yemen, Georgia, and Bukhara in Central Asia are far more likely to share similar Y-chromosome DNA with one another than with Yemenite, Georgian, or Bukharan non-Jews. Jewish females from the same backgrounds, on the other hand, yield opposite results: their mitochondrial DNA has markedly less resemblance to that of Jewish women from elsewhere than it does to that of non-Jewish women in the countries their families hailed from. […] > > > > Now, it would seem, as David Goldstein writes, that > > > > > [@](#): > > > > > > [some] Jewish men . . . travel[ed] long distances to establish small Jewish communities [by themselves]. They would settle in new lands and, if unmarried, take local women for wives. > > > > In the absence of rabbis to perform conversions, they married local women who, while consenting to live as Jews, were not halakhically Jewish. By halakhic standards, therefore, their descendants were not Jewish, either, even though their Jewishness was not challenged by the rabbinical authorities. Although such communities must, in their first generations, have known the truth about themselves, this does not appear to have bothered them or anyone else very much. AFAICT, it sounds historically plausible that male Jewish merchants living in Europe far from their home communities married local women who were not halakhically Jewish and founded new communities maintaining Jewish observances. After a few generations, nobody was likely to care that the “founding mothers” hadn’t been halakhically Jewish. However, I can see how it might make some modern Ashkenazi Jews uncomfortable to think that their matrilineal ancestry isn’t Jewish “all the way back”. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-theory-explaining-the-origins-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-is-the-considered-the-most-valid-today/701645/7 "2014-10-18T04:38:59Z")
Thank you Kimstu for that fascinating background. It all sounds very plausible. I will order those books today. davidmich