Just listening to SODW II

[Who's Wee Dug]

This I found an interesting snippet linked from Cohen on science page/chapter to the Jewish Cohen's:

 

[Tonyblack]

Interesting.

 

[raisindot]

I find a lot of the Jack Cohen stuff to be total crap and reflecting junk opinions and bad history, here too. While it is true that the Ashkenazi are of Eastern European ancestry (I am one of them), they did not arrive there until after thousands of Jews were expelled from Spain in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. Spain has one of the largest Jewish populations in the world, most of whom had come from the Arab world when the Moors took over Spain in the middle ages. So, essentially, almost all Jews started off as Ashkenazi. After the expulsion from Spain, when Jews began to migrate to the few countries where they were allowed to go (Poland being one of the them). many of those Jews began to intermarry (or maybe just interbreed) with the local non-Jewish populations and began to take on some the genes and characteristics of those populations, such as (not commonly) blond and red hair. That's where the true genetic divisions began to occur. The Jews we call Sephardim today are those who emigrated from Spain to the Arab countries. For the most part, Sephardic Jews genetically are much closer to Arabs and other Middle Eastern groups. And Cohen's idiotic theses that the Cohanim maintained "DNA purity" because adulterous women chose to bear bastard sired by Cohanim is just pure bunkum. A "bastard Cohan" would never be given the last name of Cohan, and, therefore his linegage as a Cohen would never be tracked.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Hmm ... as an Ashkenazi myself (and one born in Israel), hopefully I may chime in.

Firstly, the word "Cohen" (in Hebrew) is pronounced with an emphasis on the syllable "hen" - i.e. Co-HEN. Yes, in English it's the other way, but many English-speakers (especially Aussies) are lazy about pronunciation of foreign words.

"Ashkenazi", similarly, is pronounced "Ash-keh-na-ZI". The "z" sound is like the word "buzz", and definitely NOT like "Nazi". (Someone once asked me that, and I had to explain very patiently that no, the two words are completely unrelated. From wiki:

"Ashkenaz" is a very old name ... mentioned in the Biblical book of Jeremiah ... and roughly equivalent to the kingdom of Phrygia (i.e. on the western borders of today's Turkey -Ed.)

...Later, it became associated with the Slavic territories, and later still (from the 11th century onwards) with northern Europe and Germany. The region of Ashkenaz was centred on the Rhineland and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer), in what is now the westernmost part of Germany. Its geographic extent included northern France, and coincided with Charlemagne's kingdom.

However, just how the name of Ashkenaz came to be associated in the rabbinic literature with the Rhineland is a subject of speculation.

There! Now you know more than you ever wanted to about the Ashkenazi Jews).

As for the Sepharadic Jews -- the kingdom of Spain, in Biblical Hebrew, is called Sepharad (from Obadaiah 1:20). I've made notes in italics:

And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel, that are among the Canaanites (i.e. Bohemia), even unto Tzarfat (i.e. France), and the captivity of Jerusalem, that is in Sepharad (i.e. Spain), shall possess the cities of the Negev (i.e. the Negev desert, between today's Israel and Egypt -Ed.)

Even in today's Hebrew, "Tzarfat" and "Spharad" (note the missing "e") are France and Spain. (Germany is simply "Germania". Don't ask me why the Bohemians were called "Canaanites" -- I don't know!)

There are also "Teimanic" Jews (i.e. from Teiman, i.e. Yemen). In English they are known as Yemenite or Yemeni Jews, or Teimanim. They have their own cultures, foods, music and so on -- but very few remain in Yemen or other Arab countries, for they face discrimination almost daily. Most of them migrated to Israel in the early 1950s, or to the UK or USA. And the obligatory wiki-article can tell you much more about them than you ever wanted to know.[/url]

Having said that, some of my neighbours in Israel were Yemenite Jews -- some of the nicest and most hospitable people you could ever wish to meet. They sometimes invited my family to Friday night dinners, and we reciprocated. I don't remember them much now -- it's been 30 years since my family left Israel -- but my parents still keep in touch with them.

 

[raisindot]

And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel, that are among the Canaanites (i.e. Bohemia), even unto Tzarfat (i.e. France), and the captivity of Jerusalem, that is in Sepharad (i.e. Spain), shall possess the cities of the Negev (i.e. the Negev desert, between today's Israel and Egypt -Ed.)

That's pure balderdash. No Jews--exiled or otherwise--would have been living in France or mid-central Europe or even Spain when this particular writing was written (most likely at least 200-300 years BCE. Those places were most likely towns in present day Lebanon or Syria or Iraq and hundreds of years of later towns in Europe were named after them. However, is it certain that after the exile many Jews that weren't moved to Babylonia did go south to Egypt (there is plenty of archeological evidence of this) and probably many of those eventually made their way to Yemen and other areas of the Levant and never came back when the exile was rescinded. If you don't believe that the exile recounded in the Old Testament really occurred, then you could just believe that many Jews migrated on their own to these other parts of the Middle East during these times. Or that perhaps local non-Jewish populations in these areas converted to Judaism, perhaps encouraged by traders and preachers.

 

[RathDarkblade]

That's pure balderdash. No Jews--exiled or otherwise--would have been living in France or mid-central Europe or even Spain when this particular writing was written (most likely at least 200-300 years BCE. Those places were most likely towns in present day Lebanon or Syria or Iraq and hundreds of years of later towns in Europe were named after them.

Well ... who knows when the book of Obadiah was written, or how it was interpreted and re-interpreted over the years.

That passage was re-interpreted sometime in the late Dark Ages/early middle ages (at least according to wiki), so ... *shrug*

However, is it certain that after the exile many Jews that weren't moved to Babylonia did go south to Egypt (there is plenty of archaeological evidence of this) and probably many of those eventually made their way to Yemen and other areas of the Levant and never came back when the exile was rescinded. If you don't believe that the exile recounded in the Old Testament really occurred, then you could just believe that many Jews migrated on their own to these other parts of the Middle East during these times. Or that perhaps local non-Jewish populations in these areas converted to Judaism, perhaps encouraged by traders and preachers.

Oh, the Babylonian Exile definitely took place -- no doubt there. (I presume that's the one you mean, rather than the Roman Exile of 69 AD, yes)?

As for non-Jewish populations converting to Judaism -- yes, that happened quite easily in some places. Just look at the Khazars, for example.