The Genetic History of Ashkenazi Jews (Kosher Riverboat Cruises)

Thank you for this! My father was born just after the war and adopted in Britain. He looked like an Italian and not a British at all. Due to the trauma of being abandoned at birth he didn't want to investigate, so after he died I did a DNA test and I have strong Italian and Ashkenazi Jewish genes. I'm so happy and proud of my heritage!

Baruch HaShem! This is one of the very best channels on YouTube! I deeply appreciate the time and effort spent on every single video! Thank You!

My darling deceased Jewish husband's family came from Minsk and Pinsk. He had very fair skin, some freckles, and the lightest and most transparent blue eyes, like liquid pools of water.

Ashkenazi on my dad's side. Fascinating to learn of the Italian genetic contribution. My dad's ancestors came from Poland and Russia. Interesting to think of ancestors captured by Romans and sent to Italy. Thank you for presenting on this important study.

As always, you cut through to what is essential and make it understandable. Many thanks.

Incredible video Rabbi. Thank you for your work, hope to see more content when new studies come out.

Thank you, Dr Abramson, for your sane discussion of a fraught subject.

Thank you for your explanations, spoken with clarity and enthusiasm. Any and all aspects of my Jewish heritage are keenly followed, and this video provides yet more information to add to the mix.Impressive and enjoyable :)

That was fascinating. I shared it! Wish I was able to go on the Netherlands cruise. My Great-Grandmother was a Jew from Veendam, Groningen. I've never been there. She came to America, via London, England, and crossed the sea to Ellis Island, then going to French Canada, finally living in California. Have a wonderful cruise!!! Safe journey.

Thanks for making this so accessible. My wife's family includes Northern Italian Ashkenazi heritage. We have dug around a bit and imagine that they came back into Italy at some point, but beyond that we don't know and will have to go digging! In any event, it is amazing that the scientific community is helping to pull the greater story together.

Interesting and timely, thank you Dr. I am an Ashkenazi Jew from both my father and my mother’s side and recently had my DNA tested out of curiosity for my family's history. The results correlate strikingly with the findings of the new study that you share in this video. My Y-DNA haplotype is J1 and mtDNA Southern European. All DNA admixture calculators, and I've used around half a dozen so far, identify my genetic DNA as being Levantine 50-60% and Southern European/Italian at 40-50%. Interestingly, it also identified a North Greek/Balkan influence in the Southern European category, which perhaps says something about my own family’s migration north. Apart from proving that Ashkenazi Jews do indeed descend from Judean exiles as our tradition describes and literary evidence corroborates, what was fascinating to me was that there was no evidence of any Polish or other Central or Eastern European DNA in my results *at all*, despite my family seemingly having lived in the region for what could be up to a thousand years. With so much animosity and hatred aimed at Jews today, particularly at Ashkenazi Jews for some reason, I am proud of my ancestors who managed to pass on our religious, national, and ethnic culture in unbroken lineage for some 2,000 years, against all the odds. If our longevity and success as a people bothers some, then so be it. There is much good in the world and we should focus only on increasing it. עם ישראל חי

I love your work. It's been very instrumental in my research about my heritage and the migratory pattern of our people. It's helped me understand who I am and very interestingly, the Why. Brilliant work as always!

Excellent presentation and description. Thanks for sharing this knowledge. Knowledge puts other things in to the light. Shalom.

Thank you for another informative discussion.

Lotta trolls showing up early today 😕 Must mean the channel is getting popular

This is a fascinating subject. I have zero Jewish ancestry but have many Jewish friends, mostly Sephardim, and over the years we have had many discussions about Ashkenazim and Sephardim origins. But you know, at the end of the day what I find just as fascinating are the differences in practices, especially when it comes to foods and weddings. Genetics aside, it’s truly a very rich culture.

Thank you sharing this fascinating study. It's interesting, that the time around the year 800 would correlate with the reign of Charlemagne, which would give the results of this study a fitting historical background.

I should start this comment out by noting that I don’t use my real name in my YouTube profile, because of trolls. The first time I ever heard the accusation that Jews weren’t Jews was back in 1989 when I was in New York. I had come from Brooklyn to the city with a Jewish friend, and we were walking to a restaurant in the city. As we were walking, we saw a group of black guys in the street that were claiming to be One Percenters, as they called themselves. One of them had a megaphone and was screaming into it. I was wearing a chain around my neck with a Jewish star on it. As my friend and I passed them, the guy with the megaphone pointed at me, and yelled, “A white Jew! A fake Jew!” Having learned Hebrew, and gone to shul my entire life, and had a lot of family members that had been killed in Auschwitz, it was quite a bizarre accusation that I was a “fake” Jew. So yeah. I’ve known about these crazy claims for a very long time, long before Kanye.

Excellent primer, Dr. Abramson. The study (and November 30th NY Times story) were just published, and your video really helped prep for these.

Thank you for the awesome lectures!