Talk:Ashkenazi Jews: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively ← Previous edit Next edit →Content deleted Content addedVisual WikitextInline

Revision as of 23:08, 23 October 2012

Tip: #section links are case-sensitive on most browsers

Links from this article with broken #section links :
]

You can remove this template after fixing the problems | FAQ | Report a problem

This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Judaism High‑importance

	Judaism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Judaism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Judaism-related articles on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JudaismWikipedia:WikiProject JudaismTemplate:WikiProject JudaismJudaism
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Jewish history High‑importance

	Judaism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Jewish history, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Jewish history on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Jewish historyWikipedia:WikiProject Jewish historyTemplate:WikiProject Jewish historyJewish history-related
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Ethnic groups High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ethnic groups, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles relating to ethnic groups, nationalities, and other cultural identities on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Ethnic groupsWikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic groupsTemplate:WikiProject Ethnic groupsEthnic groups

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Ethnic groups open tasks:

Here are some open WikiProject Ethnic groups tasks:

Meta-tasks:
- Place the {{Ethnic groups}} template on the talk page of articles within the scope of this project.
- Resolve the disparity in importance rankings among different ethnic groups
Articles about ethnic groups that currently have issues needing resolution:
Start an article:
- Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Ethnic groups/Article requests

Feel free to edit this list or discuss these tasks.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Middle Ages Mid‑importance

	Middle Ages portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle Ages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Middle Ages on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Middle AgesWikipedia:WikiProject Middle AgesTemplate:WikiProject Middle AgesMiddle Ages
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Israel Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Israel, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Israel on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.IsraelWikipedia:WikiProject IsraelTemplate:WikiProject IsraelIsrael-related

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Project Israel To Do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Assess : Rate the Unassessed Israel-related articles and Unknown-importance Israel-related articles.
Cleanup : Cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the list by category and the tool's wiki page.
Collaborate : Participate in WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration.
Copyedit : Timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2005
Deletion sorting : Participate in discussions at WikiProject Deletion sorting/Israel.
Expand : Ayala Procaccia, Diamond industry in Israel, Edna Arbel, Levin Kipnis, Rami Kleinstein, Sephardic Haredim, Zman Tel Aviv, Nachum Heiman, Public Defence (Israel), Prisoner of Zion, Trial of Benjamin Netanyahu, Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran, Pre-Modern Aliyah
See also Articles needing translation from Hebrew Misplaced Pages.
Geographical coordinates : Add geographic coordinates to Israel articles missing geocoordinate data.
Infobox : Add infoboxes to Israel articles needing infoboxes.
Maintain : See Israel articles needing attention.
Map : See discussion at Module:Location map/data/Israel. Add maps to articles in Misplaced Pages requested maps in Israel.
NPOV : Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries
Photo : Add pictures to articles in Misplaced Pages requested photographs in Israel.
Stubs : See Israel stubs.
Update : Basic Law proposal: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People
Other :
- Translate to Hebrew : David Bar-Hayim, Guy Bavli, and Guy Oseary.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Germany Low‑importance

	Germany portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Germany on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GermanyWikipedia:WikiProject GermanyTemplate:WikiProject GermanyGermany
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Jennifer Senior (October 24, 2005). "Are Jews Smarter". New York Magazine. Retrieved October 21, 2012.

Untitled

The reference is in: Jennifer Senior (October 24, 2005). ""Are Jews Smarter?" (cover story). New York Magazine. |}

Archives

Index

Archive 1	Archive 2	Archive 3
Archive 4	Archive 5	Archive 6
Archive 7	Archive 8	Archive 9
Archive 10	Archive 11	Archive 12
Archive 13	Archive 14	Archive 15

This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.

Edit request on 20 July 2012

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

I have issues with the following sentences: "Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of other nations and faiths, while some Jews have also adopted children from other ethnic groups or parts of the world and raised them as Jews. Conversion to Judaism, rare for nearly 2,000 years, has become more common." Since the 20th century intermarriage with other peoples has dramatically increased comapared to before, but it still happened before and was not as uncommon as people believe. "Conversion to Judaism, rare for nearly 2,000 years" this is also completely false as is the case with the semi-Mongoloid Khazars about 1000 years ago converting to Judaism as documented in Misplaced Pages, as well as the Edomites also converting to Judaism as covered in Wikpedia - although the Edomites converted shortly before the time of Christ. The paragraph says citation needed - another reason to remove the conversion section and dramatically alter the preceding intermarriage section as per my comments above. The article also says: "Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas" without any citation. It is more likely that the majority of them migrated from the Pale of Settlements in Poland westward and became more Germanized and not the opposite way around.

Not done. This may need consensus not a simple edit request.--Canoe1967 (talk) 06:33, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Blonde and red hair

The genetic section claims that the Ashkenazi have mostly Arabic and Mediterranean ancestry. Then, why do they have European features like hair color? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.23.200.140 (talk) 12:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Depends whether you're talking matrilines or patrilines. A Jew is defined as having a Jewish mother, and most of the Ashkenazim's matrilineal ancestry (and a fair proportion of the patrilineal) does indeed go back to the Middle East. But there were just enough rapes during pogroms that a significant proportion of patrilines are European. In the same way, if you analyse the genetic origins of Black Americans, quite a high proportion of patrilines are White European, from owners using their slaves as concubines. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 10:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

This explanation does not seem to be consistent with what the article states under "Genetic origins". Apparently, both Y-chromosomes (which come on the paternal line) and mitochondrial DNA (which comes on the maternal line) show quite a bit of intermixing with the local population. In fact, there would seem to be quite a bit more of the latter than of the former: compare the sections on paternal and maternal descent, and also see this: "A 2010 study by Bray et al, using SNP microarray techniques and linkage analysis, estimated that 35 to 55 percent of the modern Ashkenazi genome may be of European origin, and that European "admixture is considerably higher than previous estimates by studies that used the Y chromosome"."

The insistence on "Cossack rapes" as the main or only source of intermixing seems extremely stereotypical, as well as unsupported by what the current version of the article seems to say. Feketekave (talk) 11:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

(Quite incidentally, I am a bit surprised that the article mentions Koestler but not Renan. There's a new edition of Renan's late works on the matter; it is a very interesting early attempt to counter a traditional narrative of origins by a highly complex and tentative account based on the scientific knowledge available at the time. Koestler simply substitutes one facile narrative for another.) Feketekave (talk) 11:55, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Fair point. There were probably cases like the storyline of Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Slave, where a Jewish man married a Polish girl from a remote region and smuggled her into his community as Jewish, with or without some form of conversion taking place. This would have had to be highly hush-hush, given that for a Christian to convert to Judaism was generally a severely punishable form of heresy. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 16:01, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The Khazar study

I feel that this is a good addendum to the paragraph on the recent genetic study that found Khazar influence in Ashkenazi Jews. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/08/ashkenazi-jews-are-probably-not-descended-from-the-khazars/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.248.98.23 (talk) 19:51, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Why does the page claim the Khazar heritage is only advocated by racists and antisemites, while in the next paragraph there is a study that is in support of the same theory? I hope you are not implying that arXiv.org are antisemites. 178.191.46.89 (talk) 11:28, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Again it's a matter of degree. It is one thing to claim that many Ashkenazim have SOME Khazar descent. It's another to claim that the Ashkenazim ARE Khazars, i.e. have no Israelite descent at all. None of the studies supports the latter. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 16:36, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Because it usually does come from antisemitic (or maybe just anti-Ashkenazi, for whatever reason) sources who want to claim that they are "fake" Jews and thus have no real blood ties to Israel. More often than not, it's used as a political weapon. 69.248.98.23 (talk) 23:56, 11 September 2012 (UTC)evildoer187

Scholarly consensus. query

Although the historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.(ref name="Atzmon2010")

Yet, Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin "The origin of Eastern European Jews revealed by autosomal, sex chromosomal and mtDNA polymorphisms" at Biology Direct 6 October, 2010, writes:-

(1)The close genetic resemblance to Italians accords with the historical presumption that Ashkenazi Jews started their migrations across Europe in Italy and with historical evidence that conversion to Judaism was common in ancient Rome. The reasons for the discrepancy between the biparental markers and the uniparental markers are discussed.(Abtract)

(2)EEJ are the largest and most investigated Jewish community,yet their history as Franco-German Jewry is known to us only since their appearance in the 9th century,and their subsequent migration a few hundred years later to Eastern Europe . Where did these Jews come from? It seems that they came to Germany and France from Italy . It is also possible that some Jews migrated northward from the Italian colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea . All these Jews are likely the descendents of proselytes. Conversion to Judaism was common in Rome in the first centuries BC and AD. Judaism gained many followers among all ranks of Roman Society .p.1

(3)The autosomal genetic distances (table 1) do not show any particular resemblance between the Jewish populations. EEJ are closer to Italians in particular and to Europeans in general than to the other Jewish populations.p.2

(4)X-chromosomal haplogroups demonstrate the same relatedness of EEJ to Italians and other Europeans (table2, figure 3). In contrast, according to the Y-chromosomal haplogroups EEJ are closest to the non-Jewish populations of the Eastern Mediterranean p.

(5)In order to compare two competing theories regarding the origin of EEJ, their geographic
distances were computed as if they originated from Italy or Israel, i.e. the great circle distances for EEJ were calculated not between Warsaw and other capitals, but between Rome or Jerusalem and other capitals. The correlation
between the autosomal genetic distance matrix and geography was slightly higher, 0.804, for Rome but dropped to 0.694 for Jerusalem.p.4

(6)The autosomal genetic distance analysis presented here clearly demonstrates that the investigated Jewish populations do not share a common origin. The resemblance of EEJ to Italians and other European populations portrays them as an autochthonous European population.p.4

(7)Some previous studies based on classical autosomal markers concluded that EEJ are a Middle Eastern population with genetic affinities to other Jewish populations. The problems with these studies have been previously discussed in detail analysis , and the genetic distance analysis of Livshits et al. , which includes a single European Mediterranean population, Spain. Despite this when a genetic distance analysis was performed, the greater similarity of EEJ to Russians and to a lesser extent to Germans more than to Non-European Jews was evident . In fact Russians were more similar to EEJ than to any Non-Jewish European population in that analysis.p.8

(8)It is not possible at this stage to say what is the source of this resemblance, since we don’t know what is the origin of Sephardic Jews, but considering all the genetic affinities of both groups it likely stems from Sephardic Jews being the descendants of converts in the Mediterranean basin rather than from a common Jewish origin in the Land of Israel. When one compares the autosomal distances of EEJ (current study) or Ashkenazi
Jews (in Atzmon et al. and Behar et al. ) from the Jewish populations that were investigated in the current
study, Iraqi, Iranian, Moroccan, Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews, one finds perfect agreement. EEJ or Ashkenazi Jews are much closer to non-Jewish Europeans than to these Jewish populations in all three studies.p.11

(9) EEJ are Europeans probably of Roman descent who converted to Judaism at times, when Judaism was the first monotheistic religion that spread in the ancient world. Any other theory about their origin is not supported by the genetic data. Future studies will have to address their genetic affinities to various Italian populations andexamine the possibility of other components both European and Non-European in their gene pool.p.11 --Nishidani (talk) 14:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there a consensus? I am interested in this from the oddity of saying linguistic evidence can show geographic origins of an ethnic group. Paul Wexler, in his latest work writes:-

'the history and structure of some Jewish languages strongly suggest that the creators of some Jewish languages (an example is Yiddish) were not native Jews but rather non-Jews who had joined Jewish communities in Europe, Asia, and North Africa either through formal conversion to Judaism or through informal association with the community (e.g. through marriage with Jews)'. Paul Wexler, Jewish and Non-Jewish Creators of "Jewish" Languages, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006 p.xvi.

I don't espouse these views, of course. I just note that several important scholars to my knowledge challenge the assertion in this section of the page. I'd appreciate some review of this.Nishidani (talk) 15:12, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Zoossmann-Diskin study findings are not supported by any of dozens of Y DNA, mtDNA, autosomal DNA findings regarding the origin of Ashkenazi and other Jewish groups, many of whom are not mentioned here. To name some of them: Hammer at al, Gerard Lucotte et al, Kopelman et al 2009, Moorjani et al 2011, Behar et al(2004,2006,2010) Dr. Harry Ostrer studies, Need et al, L. Hao et al, Bray at al, Bauchet et al, Seldin et al, Nebel et al(2004,2006) Karl Skorecki studies, Thomas at al, Shen et al and more recently Christopher L. Campbella and al. There is almost unanimous consensus among genetic scientists regarding the shared Middle Eastern origin of all Jewish population groups,(excluding Indian and Ethiopian Jewish population) including Ashkenazi Jews.

There can not be consensus for inclusion of unbalanced claims which are not considered mainstream opinion and are in many cases taken out of context in order to allude to something with political and not scientific meaning.--Tritomex (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Please provide me with the exact passage in Atzmon and co's paper where this generalization is derived from.--Nishidani (talk) 18:41, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Considering Atzmon, you have it here: "Previous genetic studies of blood group and serum markers suggested that Jewish groups had Middle Eastern origin with greater genetic similarity between paired Jewish populations...Here, genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and comparison with non-Jewish groups demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture." I suggest also Dr Hary Ostrer "Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People" It gives great summarizing of all genetic studies in Jewish population carried out in last 20 years.--Tritomex (talk) 21:33, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I repeat, on what specific passage in Atzmon is the sentence:'Although the historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.(ref name="Atzmon2010")'?

If you cannot find support for this formulation from Atzmon with a passage that shows it is a close paraphrase of the cited source, which is quoted for making these three combined claims, then it is inevitable to conclude that the claim is WP:OR. Nothing in what you cited above corresponds to that sentence.--Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I did not claimed that Prof Atzmon spoke about this issue, (I was not the editor of that section)although he indeed did. From the same source

"Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE and have maintained continuous genetic, cultural, and religious traditions since that time, despite a series of Diasporas" I think that the wording of this sentence was intended to avoid WP:COPY --Tritomex (talk) 23:33, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Source.

Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE and have maintained continuous genetic, cultural, and religious traditions since that time (Atzmon2010)

Misplaced Pages.

Although the historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.(ref name="Atzmon2010")

The bolded words are not in the source. Nishidani (talk) 07:21, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Atzmon et al.deny that there is a scholarly consensus:'Recent studies of Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA haplotypes have pointed to founder effects of both Middle Eastern and local origin, yet the issue of how to characterize Jewish people as mere coreligionists or as genetic isolates that may be closely or loosely related remains unresolved.
Their paper providences evidence for one argument about all Jews in 2010. A few months later, Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin, taking in their paper, advanced a different conclusion specifically about Ashkenazi Jews. In your initial remarks you cited numerous papers predating both Atzmon and Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin's recent work, in order to assert that the latter's conclusions are not supported by geneticists who never read Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin's paper. That also is WP:OR.

The wiki phrasing is, frankly, stupid. One does not write of 'a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence for the simple reason that evidence does not have a consensus, as the sentence implies. Evidence provides the material basis for which, eventually, a consensus may be formed by the scholars who analyse it. It is the scholars who form the consensus, not the evidence.

Unless someone can justify the use here of 'scholarly consensus' from Atzmon's article, the thesis it maintains must be balanced by the thesis proposed by Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin, as per WP:NPOV. We must not take sides in what it a lively scholarly debate, but simply report the various positions. --Nishidani (talk) 08:02, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Since the passage is egregiously WP:OR, I'll provide a fix that reflects actual sources, and shows the range of theories. There is a problem in this section, which almost exclusively deals with Rabbinical developments in Babylonia, and hardly at all with the Ashkenazi world. That also needs fixing.--Nishidani (talk) 14:32, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

As I have said and showed above there are dozens of studies all confirming the shared and common Middle Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Jews and there is scholarly consensus regarding this issue. I can add all 21 genetic studies as references. Zoossmann-Diskin single study can not balance 21 opposite genetic studies carried out by world leading institutions and all showing the same result In fact with your proposal we would have a clear POV if something totally out of mainstream consensus would be presented as equal "fact" to the mainstream consensus. Prof Atzmon participated in many recent studies like the studies of Dr. Harry Ostrrer and he has reaffirmed his well known findings, so your assumption is wrong. Atzmon clearly referee in his findings to Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, as the study which was used here relates to Ashkenazi Jews and clearly shows their Middle Eastern genetic origin.--Tritomex (talk) 14:44, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Your recent POV edits Nishidani represents vandalization. You can not edit genetic studies in the place where they do not belong and you can not create POV by inserting one study which is totlay out of mainstream and present it as equal. I will always remove vandalization attempts from this site and I will report you if you continue to do this without consensus.--Tritomex (talk) 15:04, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Please familiarise yourself with the elementary protocols of wikipedia. What you say does not interest me. What sources say is what we write. You are making an assessment about one of several theses. It is indeed a very serious charge to characterize corrective work of an error on an article, after no adequate justification for the anomaly could be provided, as vandalism, and is reportable as uncooperative edit-warring to restore what you have failed to justify.

(a) you are engaged in a conspicuous violation of WP:OR by citing 21 genetic studies, the majority of which were published before Zoossman-Diskin and Bray's study, both of which deny your personal conclusions. Bray et al even state that from 35-55% of the Jewish Ashkenazi has a local, non-middle eastern, european "admixture".
(b) I have included Atzmon et al's position, which like Oestrer's, represents a scholarly point of view, in a rapidly developing field so complex there is still no "consensus".
(c) if you actually read Zoossman-Diskin, he responds to Atzmon's work, appraises it, incorporates some of its results but uses different techniques to tweak some of their data and obtaining different results.
(d) since you have failed for over a day to provide any textual justification for the statement in the article I challenged, it has failed WP:V and therefore must be regarded as WP:OR. By your irrational revert, whose edit summary is purely, wildly subjective, you are defending against policy what appears to be an incorrect, illogical and solecistic generalization without source-support here.

So could you please provide WP:RS justification for the words scholarly consensus regarding the ME origin of the Ashkenazi, and (b) please inform us what sources you rely on for holding that Zoossman-Diskin's study and results are unique. They are not. They are supported by Bray, as I noted. You elided both, and therefore are pushing one POV among several on the basis, apparently, of personal beliefs. The sensible thing would be to revert. I do not require your consent to improve a conspicuous error on a page. --Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

To begin with and to finish with: There is a section devoted to Genetic study in this article and you can not edit whatever you want, wherever you want. Bray et al is mentioned in this article in proper section.--Tritomex (talk) 15:38, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

No. That is, frankly, dictatorial and erratically irrational. The section deals with the origins of the Ashkenazi, and a claim was made that was false. Origins require (a) historical documentation and (b) genetic evidence. The reference I questioned is a paper on genetics, in this section, and your accusation that Atzmon's genetic evidence can be sourced, but genetic evidence contradicting it should go to 'the proper section' is absurd. Please calm down, and think the original problem through rationally and in terms of policy.--Nishidani (talk) 15:46, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

The section deals with historic origin. You have separate section for genetic studies. I have nothing against edition of Zoossman-Diskin study in proper section. In fact this recent edits in non correct places were identical with vandalizatons carried out by Historylover4 I will add the findings of different studies which were not included here in proper genetic section later.

Historic facts-goes to historic section, genetic facts goes to genetic section.--Tritomex (talk) 15:58, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

To repeat. You were asked to justify a generalization that fails WP:V. You refuse to tell me where Atzmon et al's paper states the view attributed to him. Secondly, you accept Atzmon's paper, which is on genetics, in the history section, but you refuse Zoossman-Diskin's paper there, which arrives at a different conclusion from Atzmon about a putative historical fact . Your argument is utterly irrational. Were it logical, it would require Atzmon's removal from the history section. The 'fact', thirdly, happens not to be an historical fact but an hypothesis.

So could you please tell me where in Atzmon is there a reference to 'scholarly consensus'. Had you read the paper, you would have realized that he says exactly what Bray and Zoossman-Diskin say, i.e. 'Ashkenazi Jews have European admixture ranging from 30%~60%.'--Nishidani (talk) 16:27, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

The claim is a WP:REDFLAG and requires more then one paper to establish it.It goes against recent scholarship for example ,, all those studies say that Jews have same middle-eastern heritage.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 16:07, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:REDFLAG waving has to be justified, Shrike, and frankly your use of it is nonsensical and counterintuitive. Your interpretation is patently nonsensical because, were it true, no wiki science editor could ever add new evidence to a page from a tenured scholar, unless that work got confirmed, which would mean articles would lie behind research for years.

Atzmon, Bray and Zoossman-Diskin all concur that Ashkenazi are an admixture of founders of Middle Eastern descent and an admixture varying from 30-60% of European, non Middle Eastern people. Unless you fellows are willing to actually read those sources you should not be quoting them against each other. You simply cannot defend a false statement, since nowhere in the source (Atzmon) is there any reference to a scholarly consensus on this issue. Unless you can come up with a recent authoritative specialist text that provides this kind of judgement it remains WP:OR. Both you and Tritomex are refusing to face the problem, that the text I queried fails WP:V --Nishidani (talk) 16:27, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

No, not if the research is groundbreaking or confirms results or is new research in the field, it can all be properly stated in a neutral way as research he/she conducted and the results he/she got. But when you have one "study," and it goes against all the other mainstream views and studies up to date, it is clearly WP:REDFLAG. There are controversial books by historians as there are controversial books by scholars. Being the work of a historian or a scholar does not make it mainstream or reputable. --Jethro B 18:23, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Again, you are making a judgement about a source, which as editors neither you nor Tritomex have a right to make. Where is your sourc justification for stating that Zoossmann-Diskin's paper is 'one "study," and it goes against all the other mainstream views and studies up to date.'? That is Tritomex's assertion, and you repeat it. If you want to use it as an argument give me a link to a third party review which states that Z-D et al(a dozen geneticists have collaborated on several of his papers where results like this emerge) are making an extraordinary claim.--Nishidani (talk) 12:24, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nowhere there is a figure of 60% European admixture among Ashhkenazi Jews. This is your personal invention+ WP:OR. No one denies the European admixture among Ashkenazi Jews Its considered at 30% by Atzmon and between 35-55% by Bray, much less by Behar, Molutsky Nebel and Hammer or Lucotte. Ashkenazi Jews are not a "race" to have "pure genetic origin" However what you failed to notice all of this studies are confirming the consensus regarding Middle Eastern genetic origin of Ashkenazi Jews and I am afraid that this comes in your case because you have political agenda here. Considering Atzmon, he clearly says Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE and have maintained continuous genetic, cultural, and religious traditions since that time, despite a series of Diasporas" and provides a secondary source regarding historic origin from a "A History of the Jewish People" by Ben-Sasson. Regarding different sections in this article-there is a historic section which deals with historic details and genetic section deals with genetic details. --Tritomex (talk) 17:51, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I have removed all parts of the sentence which can be contested per source.--Tritomex (talk) 18:11, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I.e. an egregious case of WP:IDONTHEARTHAT. Stop repeating your personal views. I asked where in Atzmon is there any mention of a scholarly consensus concerning the origin of the Ashkenazi. You keep quoting: Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE and have maintained continuous genetic, cultural, and religious traditions since that time. That says nothing about a scholarly consensus, and your personal review of your impressions of the literature has nothing to do with "scholarly consensus." So please answer my original query, without throwing sand continually in my eyes. If you cannot construe a simple English question, please desist from commenting, and wait until someone who can grasp the issue comments instead.--Nishidani (talk) 19:16, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Michael Balter, in the magazine Science, had this to say about such studies:

Such notions, however, clash with several recent studies suggesting that Jewishness, including the Ashkenazi version, has deep genetic roots. In what its authors claim is the most comprehensive study thus far, a team led by geneticist Harry Ostrer of the New York University School of Medicine concludes today that all three Jewish groups—Middle Eastern, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi—share genomewide genetic markers that distinguish them from other worldwide populations.

--Jethro B 18:34, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

What's that got to do with the price of cheese, Jethro. I am asking for a generalization sourced to Atzmon to be verified. I am not interested in discussing the peripheral issues. You know how to read English. Please do me the courtesy of checking Atzmon, as I requested, to see where he says what the text attributes him with stating. If you cannot find the statement about 'scholarly consensus' in Atzmon ,WP:V has been violated by WP:OR. It's that simple.--Nishidani (talk) 19:16, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to add in the quote I added as an additional ref as scholarly consensus, shown by several recent studies. Or we can just make a list of references that goes on and on that would show such a consensus, and show that what you're proposing is one fringe view (Also, as far as I know, the saying is "what's that got to do with the price of tea in China?") --Jethro B 19:25, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Dodging the question and etremely disingenuous. The citation regards Ashkenazi Jews. Atzmon is cited for them. The generalization regards them, not Jews. That is the article title. Please do not continue Tritomex's confusions by pretending that Zoossmann-Diskin's paper is denying genetic elements characteristically related to Middle Eastern populations exist in Ashkenazi Jews. That would only show unfamiliarity with the many sources he cites in support. And a scholarly paper, peer-reviewed, written by a front-ranking scholar with tenure in Israeli and Australia should not be dismissed by wiki editors as WP:fringe. nota bene also that your proferred book in a new science was published a full year before the several research papers being cited here were published.Nishidani (talk) 19:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Well that's not very nice, to accuse someone of dodging questions and being "extremely disingenus" (not just disingenuous, but "extremely!"). See WP:AGF. But more importantly, note the bolded text in what I provided above. Betalo, Ashkenazi version (bolded) is referring to, not surprisingly, Ashkenazi Jews. --Jethro B 20:14, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

The "scholarly consensus" thing has already been removed from the article, apropos disingenuousness.

The sentence Atzmon uses, "Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE and have maintained continuous genetic, cultural, and religious traditions since that time, despite a series of Diasporas" (reworded to avoid COPYVIO) can certainly be used in the article, since AFAIK it is uncontested by experts in the relevant fields. Anyone have a source that says otherwise? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 20:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

As per Jayjg's frequent advice, on these points. This is a page on Ashkenazi Jews', and evidence regarding them must come from sources dealing with them, a subset of Jews. The generalization in question refers to all Jews (Iranian Jews and Ashkenazi if you read Atzmon have notable genetic differences but they are all 'Jews', what they share in common, and the context is defining what is distinctive about one branch, the Ashkenazi). Secondly, the statement is stupid. 'Genetic traditions'? Oh really? (On my birthday dad handed me down some jeans) The statement happens to be useless. Atzmon says the split coincided with roughly 2,500 years ago. The idea that there is a cultural and religious continuity for all Jews maintained since the Babylonian exile ignores everything we know about the formation of Rabbinical Judaism. Uh, but then, it's pointless. . . I can count. --Nishidani (talk) 20:38, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. --Jethro B 20:14, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I wasted a whole day with someone whose inability to understand anything was conjoined to the exercise of a right to revert what he had no understanding of. You drop drop in, and alter it, but to save appearances. No apologies are needed from you.

The result is an obfuscation. Bray, Atzmon, and Zoossmann-Diskin all accept a Middle East component (the 'founder' gene), but differ in their historical views, depending on the weight they give to the founder gene evidence. Zoossmann-Diskin, summing up the evidence on p.4 specifically says there are (at least) two theories concerning Ashkenazi origins (neither excluding ME founding elements). By Tritomax's elision of my edit, which gave three theories (ignoring the Khazar hypothesis), we are privileging one slant from one theory, and that still violates WP:NPOV. We are obliged to give all serious hypotheses an airing, L &G, and this, today, has been denied.

(2) Since one of the foremost authorities on Yiddish, Wexler, developed 20 years ago his Sorbian hypothesis, the text re Yiddish, which I fixed, is now back to its POV state.

So, the revert fucked up a fair suggestion which gave the state of the art references for three hypotheses; cancelled the alternative theory for the origin of Yiddish; and the emended statement is dopey, because stating that Jews are a people with roots in the Middle East is like saying the English, wherever they migrated, have roots in Great Britain, or that people of Irish descent hail from Ireland. It's obvious and says nothing. It denies the fact that many Jews, genetically, have genetic profiles that also contain non-Middle eastern elements from antiquity. "Admixture" from European genetic contexts which all the studies cited here admit for Ashkenazi is being systematically, contra sources, denied its proper place. And the fixation with a fictitious purity of roots has no place on this or any other encyclopedia.

There is still no valid argument given as to why a respectable scholarly paper by a geneticist published contemporaneously with Atzmon, citing other scholars who share a similar view (Bray, Cochran) about the European genetic component, should not be allowed here. Nor why the Yiddish theory cannot be corrected to represent the views of one of the foremost scholar of that topic in Israel. --Nishidani (talk) 20:38, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I didn't alter it. Tritomex did. No apologies are needed from you. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 21:10, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I didn't direct that remark to you, but to Jethro. No apologies needed.--Nishidani (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Were you tired when you wrote that? Or were you serious about everything? If it's the latter, kindly identify to me where in the article history I dropped in and altered anything, followed by a complaint that some revert (presumably a revert I made) "fucked" up an item that is not a human being (if you had said I "fucked" up a human being, it would make more sense, but I haven't touched this article). Also note that 27 hours elapsed on this talk page since you made a post until I "dropped" in, so you hardly "wasted" an entire day with me. --Jethro B 00:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Wow. I honestly do feel terrible that you "wasted" an entire day to get views into an article, views which you've said "I don't espouse these views, of course." Such dedication for views that you don't espouse is really something (and no, I'm not being sarcastic here). --Jethro B 21:47, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Not wholly wasted. I read 11 articles and considerable portions of three books, two by Wexler and one by Jits Van Straten The Origin of Ashkenazi Jewry: The Controversy Unraveled,' De Gruyter 2011, which at least shows, in its survey of what is actually being written about and reliably published that much of the crap on this page just trots out a hackneyed popular piece of hasbara. The wasted part of the day is that nothing of what I read can be included here because I'm outnumbered by the usual line-up, and I doubt on the evidence whether anyone opposing a sensible rewriting of this article according to informed sources can get a word in edgewise anywhere on the article, as opposed to the talk page, where of course, boredom reigns if one does, on reading the quality of the responses. Nishidani (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm delighted to hear that your day was not completely wasted, and that you succeeded in reading 11 articles and considerable portions of three books to enhance an argument in support of including material regarding views that you "don't share... of course." Such determination should be emulated by others. --Jethro B 00:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not surprised you enjoyed reading Wexler. His agenda is right up your alley. What are Van Straten's credentials? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:00, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Gil Atzmon is an endocrinologist and gerontologist, who obtained his Ph.D in population genetics from Hebrew University. For Tritomex, Jethro and yourself, this is hunky dory, a good source for an historical issue.

Jits van Staten obtained his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Minnesota in 1972. His side-interest is Jewish genealogy and he has created the best data base for Amsterdam historical Jewish community. His book was published by de Gruyter. I think his book 'superficial', not technical enough for my taste, but it does provide a comprehensive survey of many of the key issues. He knows more about the historical side, and the scholarly debates on these issues than most of the biologists cited, whose 'evidence' consists, to judge from their bibliographies, of rather dated general books.

Zoossman-Diskin earned his Phd in population genetics at Tel-Aviv University in 1997 and specializes in the genetic origins of Jewish populations.

Paul Wexler is one of Max Weinstein’s students, and professor emeritus of historical linguistics at TAU, and one of a rare breed of qualified experts on the intricate warp and weft of slavonic, germanic and yiddish linguistics. I enjoyed reading him, but I'm not persuaded, if you care to know. That, in any case, is irrelevant.

So, what’s your beef? That there is only one story to tell, and any ‘dissident’ to the main narrative is to be weeded out on whatever policy ground one can scrabble after? Zoosmann-Diskin p.4 says the genetic evidence is controversial. We cannot mention that? On the language, all we have at the moment is the old theory about Yiddish, one strong POV. We cannot mention then that some eminently qualified specialists challenge it? Our job is to mention this as part of the discourse on Ashkenazi origins (unless, uh, you are one of those people who believe everything has the right interpretation and any disturbance of the 'truth' is only evidence of anti-semitism, or jihadist politics).--Nishidani (talk) 11:43, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Hajj with the ridiculous paranoia, it doesn't help. --Jethro B 14:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

So what a microbiology expert has to do with Jewish history and Jewish genetics. Van Staten is maybe interested in Jewish genetics or history but he has no any credentials in this field. What he knows or not is something that is not important at all. Zoossman-Diskin study has its place in genetic section, this study has no place in historic section.

There are 21 genetic studies some of them carried out by genetic scholars with much higher reputation than Zoossman-Diskin and who are not thinking that the genetic evidence is controversial. In fact no one beside him think so, Considering Atzmon, he does not give historic narrative by his own-he is providing a clear secondary reference from "A History of the Jewish People" written by one of leading Jewish historian Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson--Tritomex (talk) 13:20, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Unless you can say something intelligently responsive to what RS say that helps resolve a legitimate issue, this is the last time I will respond to you here, because nothing you write is apropos, and is full of personal assessments of RS.Nishidani (talk) 13:27, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani what is now the reason for your citation template? You have clear references in both sources ." Contemporary Jews comprise an aggregate of ethno-religious communities whose worldwide members identify with each other through various shared religious, historical and cultural traditions 1,2. Historical evidence suggests common origins in the Middle East, followed by migrations leading to the establishment of communities of Jews in Europe..."Most Jewish samples, other than those from Ethiopia and India, overlie non-Jewish samples from the Levant (Fig. 1b) The tight cluster comprising the Ashkenazi, Caucasus (Azerbaijani and Georgian), Middle Eastern (Iranian and Iraqi), north African (Moroccan) and Sephardi (Bulgarian and Turkish) Jewish communities, as well as Samaritans, strongly overlaps Israeli Druze and is centrally located on the principal component analysis (PCA) plot when compared with Middle Eastern, European Mediterranean, Anatolian and Caucasus non-Jewish populations (Fig. 1)". This Jewish cluster consists of samples from most Jewish communities studied here, which together cover more than 90% of the current world Jewish population5; this is consistent with an ancestral Levantine contribution to much of contemporary Jewry....Our PCA, ADMIXTURE and ASD analyses, which are based on genome-wide data from a large sample of Jewish communities, their non-Jewish host populations, and novel samples from the Middle East, are concordant in revealing a close relationship between most contemporary Jews and non-Jewish populations fromthe Levant. The most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant."

So your citation template is fully unjustified therefore please avoid WP:POINT, WP:OVERTAGGING, --Tritomex (talk) 19:53, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Rubbish. I ask for verification of Davies (1984:1042) and you removed the tag by simply adding a new source, which, see below, is dubious also. I have had to restore the tags, because you have not understood them ('historic' evidence requires historical documentation confirmed by historians, not genetic data). I have also added a citation request for 'They brought with them both Rabbinic Judaism and the Babylonian Talmudic culture that underlies it.' 'They' in the sentence flow, please be attentive to English, means that the theoretical Ashkenazi of the 4th century (now you have put that back to the 3rd century!) brought the Bablyonian Talmudic culture with them. That is an exceptionally extraordinary claim for a period for which we have nothing but one dubious claim, mostly rejected, about the Cologne graveyard. See below.

Your argument for removing my material, not only Zoossmann-Diskin, but Wexler was the wild assertion that

Having established this principle that I cannot cite a genetic paper for an historical fact, you do two things. You leave the Atzmon genetic paper which violates your own principle on that section, and go ahead and add another source to the same section, and follow it up with a third which is again, a genetic paper in the history section, violating the very principle you used for removing my addition of Zoossmann-Diskin. It's called 'giving people the run-around': a wild editor with a POV battle mentality messes with a text, while others assist, help revert, use the talk page to challenge the lone editor, with never a peep about the bullshit the wild card throws. The others are so inattentive to what you are doing they don't even check your edits to correct the numerous grammatical errors you make. It is one of the standard tagteaming ploys in this section of wikipedia.

In other words, the only logic in what you are doing is that you feel entitled to remove my material on grounds which do not apply to anything you add to that section. I tagged 'historic' in 'genetic and historic evidence' because the genetic paper cannot be used for a claim about historic evidence, which is in the competence of historians. Your addition of a genetic paper for historical claims therefore is invalid on your own principles.

As to your charge above, don't be silly. I tagged the material in ther article (which you evidently have not consulted: it was added here by someone copying and pasting it from History of the Jews in Germany where the section is totally unreliable because the extraordinary claims there are no longer accepted by historians). You evidently have not verified if the source is correct. I refer to . D. Davies, Louis Finkelstein (1984). The Cambridge History of Judaism. Cambridge University Press. p. 1042). You removed the tag without verifying the source, but added to it here here, where the new source is also invalid and tried to confirm the same invalid claim by three further googled and invalid sources here after I challenged it. Worse still, the claim you make on the basis of these sources, that Jews were in Germany in the 3rd century, which no historian I am familiar with agrees to be documented, is contradicted by a further source you then add higher up, which states

'the majority of the founders of the population came more recently from the region of present day Israel, moved to Spain, France, and Italy, and then in the 10th century into the Rhineland valley in Germany.' (that itself requires qualification, because Jews were there before that date. But genetics journals are not good on history)

You have now added this mess.

In the territory of nowadays Austria Jewish presence is documented since 3rd century CEIn Hungary, Jewish presence was documented since the Roman period.In France Jewish communities existed in 465 CE in Brittany, in 524 CE in Valence, and in 533 CE in Orleans, although the Jewish presence in France dates to earlier period. In Romania the Jewish history dates back to 2nd century,while the Jewish presence in Italy dates back to 1th century.

Note 19 is a Jewish Virtual Library reference. It is the only ref between 19-23 which might have some claim, were it not for the fact that it contradicts what scholars now say. It cites Cologne. That evidence is regarded as doubtful in specialist sources.

We have already pointed out the archeological record from Late Antiquity with its transient Jew in a number of places along the Roman border. There is not a single location or a single location of continuous habitation, except for a doubtful claim put forward for Cologne.' Michael Toch, The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages,Brill, 2012 p.67

Note 20 refers us to the newspaper account of the discovery of a Jewish amulet in Austria, not Germany (Ashkenaz). Worse, the article contradicts its own conclusions, saying there's no proof the child was Jewish, that the amulet may have been bought for him, only then to conclude it proves, not the presence of Jewish objects, but of a Jewish community. The journalist obviously is incompetent.
Note 21 is a Virtual Library reference to Jews in Hungary, not Ashkenaz. And your link is broken
Note 22 is a reference to a page of the Romanian Jewish community on Jews in Dacia. What's Dacia got to do with Ashkenazi in Germany? So what?
Note 23 is a Jewish Virtual Library ref to Italy's Jews. So what?

All this would be interesting for someone who knows nothing of the subject but totally irrelevant. You appear to be preaching to the choir, trying to prove to me that Jews existed in the Roman empire! That's obvious. Jews constituted some 10% of the Roman Empire, for ****'s sake. The page is however on Jews in Ashkenaz, and the formation of that community. Edit to the page, not according to the fantasies you imagine another editor might secretly entertain.--Nishidani (talk) 12:24, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Ps. Your edit here is again wrong-headed, and hypocritical. It is wrongheaded because , as I remarked here, 'I have had to restore the tags, because you have not understood them ('historic' evidence requires historical documentation confirmed by historians, not genetic data).' It is hypocritical because you removed one source, a genetics article, on the ground this cannot be used for historical data here and now supply a source that comes from a genetic stub. Unless you can understand that your editing is totally self-contradictory, it will have to be removed again (after a day), and unless you can adequately supply a source written by a competent historians, it cannot satisfy the request I made. --Nishidani (talk) 12:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani If you have a problem with references given, you have to present it. You inserted a dubious-discuss template without explaining the reason of insertion and you have removed a valid source from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

−

Regarding the third source given for this sentence it states:"Ashkenazi Jews, that is, those Jews of Eastern European origin, constitute more than 80 percent of all world Jewry. The early founders of the Ashkenazi community made their way to Europe during Roman rule, but the majority of the founders of the population came more recently from the region of present day Israel, moved to Spain, France, and Italy, and then in the 10th century into the Rhineland valley in Germany."

So this is directly inline with the sentence, and with the remaining two sources explained above, although it is not upon me to justify the source, but upon you to explain the insertions of this different templates. If you have no reason to explain why the Hebrew university publication is dubious, than the removal of unjustified template is the only solution. As you may have noticed, I let your removal of well respected historic book of Edward Henry Palmer, which you described as outdated(without providing any source for such claim) just in order to achieve finally some kind of consensus with you. Considering the source from Jewish virtual Library it clearly states that the "Evidence of Jews in the area now known as Germany dates back to the early 4th century" so again I don't know what is dubious for you in this source. Templates are used to present the need to improve sources and references and this is what I did and what I will do. There can be no logical doubt that everything presented in this 2 sentence is fully supported by the sources given. I would also like other editors to share their impressions regarding the references given. Prof Atzmon and Prof Behar directly refer to well known Jewish historian Hayim Ben Sasson, and are providing direct historic reference from the book "The History Of Jewish people" Considering the Hebrew university paper it provides clear reference about historic migrations and establishment of Ashkenazi Jewish community, while genetic info is given in different section.

- (The page is however on Jews in Ashkenaz,) Please read the title of the section!!
- (What's Dacia got to do with Ashkenazi in Germany?) Are you at least familiar with the title of the chapter: History of Jews in Europe before the Ashkenazim
- (The journalist obviously is incompetent) Please avoid WP:OR--Tritomex (talk) 13:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

(a) Please stop sidestepping my request. You removed Zoossmann-Diskin from the section because you said it was not, as a genetics paper relevant to the history section. You retained a genetics paper for the history section (Atzmon) and added one more to the history section (Hebrew University Genetic stub on Ashkenazi). Please reply to this. Why do your edits permit genetic papers as sources for historical facts, but my edits are not allowed to follow your procedure?

The section shouldn't be there, except as brief background, and is an obvious abuse. As a separate section it mixes three subjects (a)Ashkenazi Jews (b)the Jews in Europe (c) the Jews in Mesopotamia. Ideally, all such pages should be written from sources that deal with Ashkenazim, otherwise you violate (as is the case all over this page, WP:OR). What do the following passages in this section have to do with the article, or the section heading?

After the Roman empire had overpowered the Jewish resistance in the First Jewish–Roman War in Judea and destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, the complete Roman takeover of Judea followed the Bar Kochba rebellion of 132–135 CE. Though their numbers were greatly reduced, Jews continued to populate large parts of Judaea province (renamed to Palaestina), remaining a majority in Galilee for several hundred years. However, the Romans no longer recognized the authority of the Sanhedrin or any other Jewish body, and Jews were prohibited from living in Jerusalem. Outside the Roman Empire, a large Jewish community remained in Mesopotamia. Other Jewish populations could be found dispersed around the Mediterranean region, with the largest concentrations in the Levant, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece,

In Syria-Palaestina and Mesopotamia, where Jewish religious scholarship was centered, the majority of Jews were still engaged in farming, as demonstrated by the preoccupation of early Talmudic writings with agriculture. In diaspora communities, trade was a common occupation, facilitated by the easy mobility of traders through the dispersed Jewish communities.

In Syria-Palaestina and Mesopotamia, the spoken language of Jews continued to be Aramaic, but elsewhere in the diaspora, most Jews spoke Greek. Conversion and assimilation were especially common within the Hellenized or Greek-speaking Jewish communities, amongst whom the Septuagint and Aquila of Sinope (Greek translations and adaptations of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible) were the source of scripture.

After the Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, new opportunities for trade and commerce opened between the Middle East and Western Europe. The vast majority of Jews now lived in Islamic lands. Urbanization, trade, and commerce within the Islamic world allowed Jews, as a highly literate people, to abandon farming and live in cities, engaging in occupations where they could use their skills. The influential, sophisticated, and well organized Jewish community of Mesopotamia, now centered in Baghdad, became the center of the Jewish world.

I gather from what you said that all of this stuff can be removed as irrelevant to the topic.

(b) It is not WP:OR, which deals with article content additions. On talk pages one evaluates sources by examining their relevance, authority and utility. I noted that the newspaper account contradicts itself. It says the one object found was Jewish. The child may not be Jewish. This is proof there were Jews. Even an idiot would know that you can't use a newspaper report, that is so incoherent it contradicts itself, for an historical 'fact'.--Nishidani (talk) 13:41, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani, many of your comments here have been quite vociferous and employed harsh rhetoric. While I welcome your opinion and enjoy spending days discussing a lively topic regarding views that you "don't espouse these views, of course," please let's try to maintain as much civility as possible, along with good faith (see WP:AGF). That includes calling other edits or editors "hypocritical" rather than assume good faith with the edit, or languishing that your version isn't being inserted. All of this combined will contribute to a much more pleasant conversation, one that would be equivalent to us sitting around a campfire holding hands and singing Kumbaya. I'm looking foward. --Jethro B 14:24, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Let's consider this respectable study, and what it has to say.

Progressively more detailed population genetic analysis carried out independently by multiple research groups over the past two decades has revealed a pattern for the population genetic architecture of contemporary Jews descendant from globally dispersed Diaspora communities. This pattern is consistent with a major, but variable component of shared Near East ancestry, together with variable degrees of admixture and introgression from the corresponding host Diaspora populations.

The study also writes, and references:

Since their emergence as a national and religious group in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago (Biran and Naveh 1993), Jews have maintained continuous cultural and religious traditions amid a series of Diasporas (Ben-Sasson 1976).

And also:

Early population genetic studies based on blood groups and serum markers provided evidence that most Jewish Diaspora groups originated in the Middle East... Our research teams and others have independently performed genome-wide analyses of Diaspora Jewish groups and comparison with neighboring populations... Yet, they came to remarkably similar conclusions, providing evidence for shared genetic ancestries among major Jewish Diaspora groups together with variation in admixture with local populations.

--Jethro B 14:48, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I see you omitted that they admit:'These patterns have been congruous with the inferences of many, but not of all historians using more traditional tools such as archeology, archival records, linguistics, comparative analysis of religious narrative, liturgy and practices.'

A very large number of historians and linguists find huge technical problems in the notorious bottleneck problem of explaining how the minute medieval Ashkenazi population became the several millions attested in late 19th century censuses. It is one of the major stumbling blocks in genetic readings of Ashkenazi history.

I keep calling for the historical evidence, and you two keep quoting geneticists on history, while one of you refuses a source for an alternative history because it is in a genetics paper, which is a stark and 'violent' incongruity in methodology.

In my family, we also have a genes that are Jewish markers, which however, since we have a fair understanding of logic, does not mean we 'originated in the Middle East', since by the same logic, giving three centuries of documented history, we originated from Brittany, Ireland, Wales, England, Spain, Italy, and Goan India, with genic imput from all those populations. What these geneticists keep doing to define the Jewish type is excluding the logical deduction one could equally make from the other 30-55/60% of the genome which hails from other lands. If you tell me Sachertorte, which I had at lunch, is made from chocolate, you're right, but it contains eggs, vanilla, and sugar as well, and without them would not be Sachertorte, but just chocolate. As often as not, people choose which genes they want to privilege to establish their genetic identity. Identity, however, is always cultural, not racial, as the B'nei Moshe and Beta-Israel examples show. I'm amazed that, after WW2, people have lost their sensitivities to this topic, and actively embrace a kind of stereotyping which enabled genocide.

What geneticists define as 'Jewishness' in Europe relates to male founder genes, the paternal lineage in Y-DNA. What Rabbinical Judaism's halakhic definition accepts as 'Jewishness' is matrilineal descent. The two definitions are in stark conflict but are collapsed in the commentariat, and even by geneticists, who ignore that their results, based on a quasi-racial stereotyping of the 'Jew' are not compatible with halakhic law which defines 'Jews' by different descent criteria. That is why I am completely indifferent to whatever geneticists say about history, unless they are practiced historians as well who observe the methods of professional research in that discipline, like the earlier C.D. Darlington who introduced me to the topic several decades ago.--Nishidani (talk) 16:00, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani Your comment about me and others "wild editor with a POV battle mentality messes with a text, while others assist, help revert, use the talk page to challenge the lone editor, with never a peep about the bullshit the wild card throws." is a serious violation of Misplaced Pages rules.--Tritomex (talk) 15:10, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

:Nishidani There are no "genes that are Jewish markers" stop using racial terminology There are Middle Eastern haplogroups of Y DNA and mtDNA while your qualification of respected scientists as "quasy racial" people who are "stereotyping of the 'Jew' " is an insult against Jewish people and those scientists who carried out this studies. Although your opinion regarding "Jewish genes" has no weight, Misplaced Pages has zero tolerance for racism.--Tritomex (talk) 16:21, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Don't be silly. Jewish markers is shorthand for 'The powerful genetic markers of Jewish ancestry' (interview with Harry Ostrer). So, cut the toxic insinuations that I am insulting 'the Jewish people'. That's provocative bullshit.--Nishidani (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

If you want to fight what you believe is "provocative bullshit," it's not helpful to go call someone "provocative bullshit." --Jethro B 17:51, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Tritomex wrote:'your qualification of respected scientists as "quasy racial" people who are "stereotyping of the 'Jew' " is an insult against Jewish people' is 'provocative bullshit' because nowhere did I call geneticists 'quasy racial' people (where did he get that from?) and, having distorted my remarks, specifically said that I had 'insulted the Jewish people'. That is the usual antisemitic meme thrown by POV warriors, and is provocative bullshit. Don't defend it.--Nishidani (talk) 18:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani, firstly, they are a genetic research group, not a historical research group. Secondly, obviously not all are going to agree on something. But on the article for the Holocaust, we don't say "Many historian, but not all, agree that the Holocaust happened." Thirdly, what their research did was support those many historians, and go against those other few. The research backs up the many. --Jethro B 16:28, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Please, I repeat, please reply to my original request. I.e. My edit was removed because it contained a genetic paper in the history section. Tritomex retained the other genetics paper, and included a third. Where is the logic in that? What is the policy basis for such idiosyncratic rule shouting while making an exception for oneself to the proclaimed rule?--Nishidani (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Also, Nishidani, your comments above demonstrate a remarkable amount of original research and personal opinions being interjected into here. It seems that you are rejecting geneticists out of personal opinions, stereotyping beliefs, a state of awe, and rejection of the methods that established geneticists use, alongside personal anectodes, which is not a Misplaced Pages policy, and is not a valid reason. It's unfortunate that is what has contributed so largely to the discussion here. --Jethro B 16:32, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Don't be silly. That on a talk page I have to explain to people, who are not adding anything from books to the article but just googled tidbits, what historians say on an historical topic, is not 'original research'. It is a reflection of my responsibilities as an editor to familiarize myself with the topic. If my interlocuters can't understand the point, I explain it to them. Most of the comments I made actually are the same that Ostrer has mentioned in his interviews, and that you can't recognize the echoes means you are not doing your homework.

Many of these genetic papers make historical claims which are not derived from the genetic evidence, but from a geneticist's correlation of the genetic evidence with books they read about Jewish history. And precisely there, critics have noted many errors, particularly in Ostrer's work. He is 'unfamiliar with Jewish history'. What the Applebaum's state goes for all of this evidence.

A thornier problem is that Ostrer, like many research physicians, takes genetic data to be more scientific, and therefore more definitive, than they are. Genetically described populations reflect probabilistic clusters of markers inscribed in our DNA. They are not a concretization of race. Moreover, many of the conclusions that can be drawn from genetic evidence are reliant on the quality of accompanying historical data. For example, the Cohen modal haplotype is a cluster of distinctive genetic markers shared by a high percentage of contemporary Jewish Cohanim (the priestly clan that traces its ancestry back to Moses' brother Aaron). The idea that the ancestry that these men share can be traced to the ancient Israelite priesthood makes sense to almost everyone who views these data, but it is not inherent in the data. The data show only that these men share common ancestors who lived a specified number of generations ago. Estimating when those ancestors lived depends on an educated guess about the length of an average generation during the last 3000 years or so. But the idea that those ancestors were Cohanim is derived from our knowledge of Jewish history, it is not inscribed in the genetic markers.--Nishidani (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I could add a lot of other criticism on this abusive use of genetic papers on questions of exquisitely historical purport, in the literature. You are both confused over this.

To conclude. Tritomex made a principle of asserting that the history section here must not contain genetic papers, and then proceeded to violate his own principle. I'm fine with the principle, and think the history must be based on what historians say. For example, his four references from useless sources today, on Hungarians, Italians, Romanians etc., are snippets (the Romanian source has an unsupported assertion in one brief line of habitation from the 2nd century) which are covered amply by historical works specializing in this. I will therefore replace all four with an appropriate source in due course. I.e. Michael Toch The Economic History of European Jews, Brill 2012 pp.155ff. You have the link. Read it. It includes the 'Jewish amulet' bit ion Haaretz. Read the whole book. It shows what a shambles much of the traditional googlable stuff about early habitation is, in an historian's perspective.--Nishidani (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is a collobaritive project open to all. That includes those who have a PhD in physics and those who are in 8th grade. It is the responsibility of editors to use RS (that includes Haaretz) to back up their statements; not to use personal opinions to explain why a change should occur, which is what you did when you said "I'm amazed that, after WW2, people have lost their sensitivities to this topic, and actively embrace a kind of stereotyping which enabled genocide" and "I am completely indifferent to whatever geneticists say about history" along with a personal anectode "In my family." All of that is very nice reading around the fireplace, but isn't proper here.

Also, please don't accuse others of being silly. If I wanted to be silly, I'd join the circus! --Jethro B 17:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Haaretz is not RS if (a) on the talk page it can be shown to be a self-contradictory for the information required and (b) better sources exist (as is Toch here) which cover exactly the same material, are written by area specialists and are under academic imprint. Serious editors do not waste time fussing like this or justifying poor edits when someone provides a far more comprehensive RS source for the same material. They look at the merits between two proposals and see what is more encyclopedic. They exclude partisanship. That is what I mean about avoiding putting people through an exercise of time-wasting challenges. It's courteous to see the obvious, and allows editors to confirm that they are in an good faith environment.--Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Circus acts aren't silly. They're sad, notoriously so. If one wants to be silly, it's enough to become a politician.--Nishidani (talk) 18:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Btw, I'm really not sure this is worth continuing, given that the initiator of the discussion seems to believe this is just some "exercise." --Jethro B 17:53, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Do I have to spell that edit summary out for you. The section is on European Jews prefatory to the Ashkenazi. The issue contested is genetics as a source for historical information (see my original complaint). No one here so far seems to be familiar with the historical literature. Everyone else is prepossessed by arguing genetic evidence for a presence which lacks historical confirmation, using historical allusions in genetic papers that cannot be confirmed by sources on the Ashkenazi. I've been dragged persistently through appallingly time-consuming explanations by people who refuse to explain their behaviour, while no one is actually looking at the historical literature (in abundance) pertinent to the question, save myself. That means for me that I am being put through an exercise in distractive time-wasting talk page chat. --Nishidani (talk) 18:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani The historic chapter had and has only one opening sentence regarding genetic origin of Ashkenazi Jews, which is supported by 20 different genetic studies and represents consensus.(I can add all 20 genetic studies as reference) You altered this section with inclusion of enormous quantity of your taughts regarding one-single genetic article which contrary to 20 others, has different opinion on the subject than the mainstream. With this you created a POV in which you tried to present the genetic origin of Ashkenazi Jews as controversial, and without consensus, which is not the case, nor it is supported by overwhelming majority of genetic scholars and studies. Off course you can add that genetic study to the article, in proper section(genetic study) but not by vandalizing the historic section of this article and by creating POVs.Historic section will be devoted to historic facts and both genetic references (Behar and Atzmon) has direct secondary references regarding historic facts from "The History of Jewish People" by Ben Sasson. There is no reasonable argument to include Zoossmann-Diskin in historic section and not to include 18 other studies, some carried out by geneticists with much higher reputation than Zoossmann-Diskin which all support the findings of Atzmon and Behar. With your logic, the whole historic chapter will be transformed in to second genetic section, because you can not accept the current well documented and properly attributed sources.--Tritomex (talk) 19:18, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay. To go back to the start. I'll take you through this very slowly and methodically. We had this:

(a)Although the historical record is very limited, there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.(ref name="Atzmon2010")

(b)There is a genetic and historic evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.

My edit showed there was no such thing as a 'there is a scholarly consensus of cultural, linguistic, and genetic evidence.'

To make this statement without violating WP:OR, you require a text to assert that there is a scholarly consensus. What you repeat now, that Atzmon is supported by '20 different genetic studies and represents consensus,' is your judgement, unless you can cite a source which makes that backup statement. Therefore you shouldn't be repeating it again and again.

There happens to be a majority, and a minority opinion within genetics, with this regard. What you argue is the majority opinion is sustained by Atzmon and co. You removed the minority opinion, represented by Zoosmann-Diskin and co (for he had a dozen collaborators on his three relevant papers), by Goldman and by Bray et al. Their views are fairly given at Genetic studies on Jews. Per WP:NPOV all relevant views must be represented.

You write:

(a)

You altered this section with inclusion of enormous quantity of your taughts regarding one-single genetic article which contrary to 20 others, has different opinion on the subject than the mainstream.

That sentence is incomprehensible, so I cannot reply to it.

(b) 'With this you created a POV in which you tried to present the genetic origin of Ashkenazi Jews as controversial'.

The source you removed says:-

The genetic affinities of the Jewish populations have been studied since the early days of genetics, yet the origin of these populations is still obscure.. . The origin of Eastern European Jews, (EEJ) by far the largest and most important Ashkenazi population, and their affinities to other Jewish and European populations are still not resolved.'

In other words, whereas I cited a genetic paper which says the issue is 'obscure' and 'unresolved' as opposed to your undocumented assertion that a scholarly consensus exists, you removed the source that challenges Atzmon, and then said I created a POV. No, I registered a dissenting POV to what Atzmon et al. claim. By removing a 'minority' source, you created a POV, one narrative when there are at least two. You did the same with your deletion of material contesting the tired, and hotly challenged old theory, that Yiddish is a dialect of High German. So you created a double POV imbalance by repressing all sources which challenged a false and simplistic one-sided story.

A consensus view in a subject does not, ipso facto, deny the validity of mentioning a dissenting opinion, neither in the Supreme Court judgements, in science, in scholarship or on wiki. That is what WP:NPOV means. All positions are represented with due weight. You appear not to understand this.

You have therefore violated NPOV by supressing an opinion which conflicts with Behar and Atzmon.
You have sourced the idea that there is historic evidence that the Ashkenazi come from the Middle East to three genetic papers. I have repeatedly told you that (a) evidence from history is, according to historians, absent for the origins of the Ashkenazi (the historical consensus) (b) Historic evidence, per Toch (2012) says that whereas Jewish presence is everywhere attested in epitaphs and synagogues, no significant evidence exists of this sort for the Ashkenazi until the 9th century. (c) you said on three occasions Historic facts-goes to historic section, genetic facts goes to genetic section. and yet you are violating your own opinion in using, in the historic section, three genetic papers.
When faced with this contradiction, you say, but Atzmon and Behar use an historian's book for their historical 'facts', and refer me to The History of Jewish People (1969) which was not written by Ben Sasson, he was the editor and a contributing author. Apart from it being way, way behind the immense strides in Jewish historical studies in the last 4 decades, that book does not support, as far as I can see, a claim that the Ashkenazi came from the Middle East. It says that with the growth of their populations, and encouraged by the slave trade, European Jews began to move into Germany in the ninth century (p.394) One does not cite geneticists who cite outdated books, which happen not to mention the issue in question, on an historical problem for which there are superb modern historical works written over the last decade. So, you have have no argument to justify breaking the rule (genetics in the genetic section, history in the history section).--Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

While I admire such methodology, I think you should beware of WP:TLDR. That's a lot a lot of text to sit down and read, and I doubt most people will read all of it. --Jethro B 22:05, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I't's called being responsible and scrupulous concerning getting encyclopedic, reliably sourced and exact phrasing into wikipedia, irrespective of POV. I doubt a large part of what I read. I don't discount it if the source is reliable and from scholars of repute and standing. --Nishidani (talk) 22:27, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani Beyond Zoosman-Diskin there are 20 other studies which do not support controversy in the origin of Ashkenazi Jews Hammer and all

Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene

flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non- Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.

Nebla and all

"It is believed that the majority of contemporary Jews descended from the ancient Israelites that had lived in the historic land of Israel until ∼2000 years ago. Many of the Jewish diaspora communities were separated from each other for hundreds of years. Therefore, some divergence due to genetic drift and/or admixture could be expected. However, although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. Moreover, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic Jews cluster adjacent to their former host populations, a finding that argues against substantial admixture.In our sample, this low-level gene flow may be reflected in the Eu 19 chromosomes, which are found at elevated frequency (12.7%) in Ashkenazi Jews.. "

Anna C Need and al

"Here we show that within Americans of European ancestry there is a perfect genetic corollary of Jewish ancestry which, in principle, would permit near perfect genetic inference of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. In fact, even subjects with a single Jewish grandparent can be statistically distinguished from those without Jewish ancestry. We also found that subjects with Jewish ancestry were slightly more heterozygous than the subjects with no Jewish ancestry, suggesting that the genetic distinction between Jews and non-Jews may be more attributable to a Near-Eastern origin for Jewish populations than to population bottlenecks."

Shen and al

"A 2004 study by Shen et al. compared the Y-DNA and DNA-mt Samaritans of 12 men with those of 158 men who were not Samaritans, divided between 6 Jewish populations (Ashkenazi origin, Moroccan, Libyan, Ethiopian, Iraqi and Yemeni) and 2 non-Jewish populations from Israel (Druze and Arab). The study concludes that significant similarities exist between paternal lines of Jews and Samaritans, but the maternal lines differ between the two populations. The pair-wise genetic distances (Fst) between 11 populations from AMOVA applied to the Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial data. For the Y-chromosome, all Jewish groups, except for the Ethiopians, are closely related to each other. They do not differ significantly from Samaritans (0.041) and Druze (0.033), but are different from Palestinians (0.163), Africans (0.219), and Europeans (0.111). Nevertheless, the data in this study indicated that the Samaritan and Jewish Y-chromosomes have a greater affinity than do those of the Samaritans and their geographical neighbors, the Palestinians."

Naama M. Kopelman and all

"We perform a genome-wide population-genetic study of Jewish populations, analyzing 678 autosomal microsatellite loci in 78 individuals from four Jewish groups together with similar data on 321 individuals from 12 non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations. ... We find that the Jewish populations show a high level of genetic similarity to each other, clustering together in several types of analysis of population structure. Further, Bayesian clustering, neighbor-joining trees, and multidimensional scaling place the Jewish populations as intermediate between the non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations. ... These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry...Jewish populations show somewhat greater similarity" to Palestinians, Druze and Bedouins than to the European populations, the most similar to the Jewish populations is the Palestinian population".

Faerman

"Ashkenazi Jews represent the largest Jewish community and traditionally trace their origin to the ancient Hebrews who lived in the Holy Land over 3000 years ago. Ashkenazi Jews are among the groups most intensively studied by population geneticists. Here, main genetic findings and their implications to the history of Ashkenazim are presented reflecting in a way major developments in population genetics as a discipline. Altogether, Ashkenazi Jews appear as a relatively homogenous population which has retained its identity despite nearly 2000 years of isolation and is closely related to other Jewish communities tracing their common origin to the Middle East."

Hammer and all 2009

In conclusion, we demonstrate that 46.1% (95% CI = 39–53%) of Cohanim carry Y chromosomes belonging to a single paternal lineage (J-P58*) that likely originated in the Near East well before the dispersal of Jewish groups in the Diaspora. Support for a Near Eastern origin of this lineage comes from its high frequency in our sample of Bedouins, Yemenis (67%), and Jordanians (55%) and its precipitous drop in frequency as one moves away from Saudi Arabia and the Near East (Fig. 4). Moreover, there is a striking contrast between the relatively high frequency of J-58* in Jewish populations (~20%) and Cohanim (~46%) and its vanishingly low frequency in our sample of non-Jewish populations that hosted Jewish diaspora communities outside of the Near East. An extended Cohen Modal Haplotype accounts for 64.6% of chromosomes with the J-P58* background, and 29.8% (95% CI = 23–36%) of Cohanim Y chromosomes surveyed here. These results also confirm that lineages characterized by the 6 Y-STRs used to define the original CMH are associated with two divergent sub-clades within haplogroup J and, thus, cannot be assumed to represent a single recently expanding paternal lineage. By combining information from a sufficient number of SNPs and STRs in a large sample of Jewish and non-Jewish populations we are able to resolve the phylogenetic position of the CMH, and pinpoint its geographic distribution. Our estimates of the coalescence time also lend support to the hypothesis that the extended CMH represents a unique founding lineage of the ancient Hebrews that has been paternally inherited along with the Jewish priesthood"

Haplotype VIII of the Y chromosome is the ancestral haplotype in Jews.

Lucotte G, David F, Berriche S. Source

International Institute of Anthropology, Paris, France. Abstract

DNA samples from Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews were studied with the Y-chromosome-specific DNA probes p49f and p49a to screen for restriction fragment length polymorphisms and haplotypes. Two haplotypes (VII and VIII) are the most widespread, representing about 50% of the total number of haplotypes in Jews. The major haplotype in Oriental Jews is haplotype VIII (85.1%); haplotype VIII is also the major haplotype in the Djerban Jews (77.5%) (Djerban Jews represent probably one of the oldest Jewish communities). Together these results confirm that haplotype VIII is the ancestral haplotype in Jews."

Behar and al 2006

"Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry"

L Hao and all

"...The results also reveal a finer population substructure in which each of 7 Jewish populations studied here form distinctive clusters - in each instance within group Fst was smaller than between group, although some groups (Iranian, Iraqi) demonstrated greater within group diversity and even sub-clusters, based on village of origin. By pairwise Fst analysis, the Jewish groups are closest to Southern Europeans (i.e. Tuscan Italians) and to Druze, Bedouins, Palestinians. Interestingly, the distance to the closest Southern European population follows the order from proximal to distal: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian, which reflects historical admixture with local communities. STRUCTURE results show that the Jewish Diaspora groups all demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry"

The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome — the complete set of genetic instructions for making a human — and shows that the Jewish groups share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships. Comparison with genetic data from non-Jewish groups indicates that all the Jewish groups originated in the Middle East. From there, groups of Jews moved to other parts of the world in migrations collectively known as the Diaspora.

Atzmon and all.

Behar and all 2010

Priya Moorjani and al 2011

A striking finding from our study is the consistent detection of 3–5% sub-Saharan African ancestry in the 8 diverse Jewish groups we studied, Ashkenazis (from northern Europe), Sephardis (from Italy, Turkey and Greece), and Mizrahis (from Syria, Iran and Iraq). This pattern has not been detected in previous analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome data , and although it can be seen when re-examining published results of STRUCTURE-like analyses of autosomal data, it was not highlighted in those studies, or shown to unambiguously reflect sub-Saharan African admixture , . We estimate that the average date of the mixture of 72 generations (~2,000 years assuming 29 years per generation ) is older than that in Southern Europeans or other Levantines. The point estimates over all 8 populations are between 1,600–3,400 years ago, but with largely overlapping confidence intervals. It is intriguing that the Mizrahi Irani and Iraqi Jews—who are thought to descend at least in part from Jews who were exiled to Babylon about 2,600 years ago , —share the signal of African admixture. (An important caveat is that there is significant heterogeneity in the dates of African mixture in various Jewish populations.) A parsimonious explanation for these observations is that they reflect a history in which many of the Jewish groups descend from a common ancestral population which was itself admixed with Africans, prior to the beginning of the Jewish diaspora that occurred in 8th to 6th century BC

Cambell and all 2012

"North African Jews are more closely related to Jews from other parts of the world than they are to most of their non-Jewish neighbors in North Africa, a study has found. North African Jewish Populations Form Distinctive Clusters with Genetic Proximity to Each Other and to European and Middle Eastern Jewish Groups. SNP data were generated for 509 unrelated individuals (60.5% female) from the 15 Jewish populations (Table 1). These SNP data were merged with selected datasets from the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) to examine the genetic structure of Jewish populations in both global and regional contexts (Fig. 1 and SI Appendix, Fig. S1). The first two principal components of worldwide populations showed that the North African Jewish populations clustered with the European and Middle Eastern Jewish groups and European non-Jewish groups, but not with the North African non-Jewish groups, suggesting origins distinctive from the latter... The relationships of the Jewish communities were outlined further by the IBD sharing across populations [Fig. 3B and SI Appendix, Tables S1 (lower triangle) and S4], because the Jewish groups generally demonstrated closer relatedness with other Jewish communities than with geographically near non- Jewish populations."

So do you want only Zoosman-Diskin, or you want all of this+ other studies which I did not cited now to be included in historic section? Because if the lonely study telling the opposite from mainstream is included I have to include all of this, giving each of them as much importance and space as Zoosman-Diskin study in order to avoid POV. This is historic-not genetic section So please accept reasonable and rational solution and avoid broadening the historic section with genetic information by 5000-10000%. As you can see the single genetic sentence represent consensus and it it single not because there is no more info to say about Atzmon and Behar or about other studies, but because I did not think genetics has place in that section. That is why I proposed you to edit ZD in genetics. BTW This edit was not originally mine, I just removed few contested words from a sentence which stood there for a long time. If you dispute the word "historic evidence", I am also ready to find consensus with you. However, my knowledge of genetics is enough to know that regarding the Middle Eastern genetic origin of AJ there is more than enough evidence. However if there is consensus to opposite, to include ZD in historic section, I am ready to edit all details and analysis from all studies, most of them not even mentioned here to historic section, as I am myself a medical doctor familiar with genetics. Also in such case I would include a table showing each study in relation of confirming/opposing the Middle Eastern ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews and in relation of specifically supporting/or not the origin of Ashkenazi Jews from ancient Israelites --Tritomex (talk) 23:19, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

You don't get it, because you are battling a strawman, and dodging my simple point.

It's neither my job nor yours to subscribe to a truth. An editor is obliged simply to survey the relevant literature and enter all points of view, if (s)he encounters different conclusions. Zoossmann-Diskin et al,(and to a lesser extent Bray et al.) draw a different conclusion. Per wikipedia NPOV you are obliged to register all relevant opinions on a topic, and you insist on cancelling on, even though its author is a first rate geneticist. For several days you have been asserting, against policy, that Atzmon et al have the truth, and to register any scholarly disagreement with it is POV-pushing. Is that clear? You are repressing a POV because you subscribe personally to the conclusion of many of your sources. That is a patent violation of wiki procedures.--Nishidani (talk) 08:00, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani no one will prevent you to add Zoossmann-Diskin et al to the genetic section, even more I would advise it, but if you insist that Zoossmann-Diskin should be also included in historic section by expanding the single sentence in that chapter which relates to genetic studies(which was originaly not my edition-I removed parts of it that you have challenged) POV can be avoided only if all (and I mentioned only some) genetic studies would be added there too. Thats mean 19 additional studies, analysis, references, diagrams and tables and to give each of them same space as ZD. in order to avoid this(although this would certainly explain the level of consensus) I proposed another solution, although I am now ready for this too.

Considering Bray and all, it does not support ZD, as Bray and all confirms the Middle Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Jews in 65%-45% in the same way as all studies before and later. --Tritomex (talk) 13:24, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Wexler removal

In his violent revert of everything I had added to this page, Tritomex deleted Wexler on the origins of Yiddish. There are several theories about the origin of Yiddish, not one, as the page asserts, in violation of WP:NPOV. There was the degraded Hebrew theory, the jargonized High German theory, the Bavarian theory, the Sorbian theory etc. They are all surveyed in Neil G. Jacobs Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction,Cambridge University Press,2005 in the long introduction to this vexed topic (pop.6ff.) All these are theories and remain such, and no one theory can be allowed to pass as a fact, which is how this article pretends is the case. --Nishidani (talk) 13:16, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Wexler you wrote on this page "I don't espouse these views, of course. I just note that several important scholars to my knowledge challenge the assertion in this section of the page. I'd appreciate some review of this" and latter, you overrun this page and presented a minority view as an established fact in direct example of what is POV editing. I have nothing against inclusion of Wexler view, however only as parallel with the majority and mainstream scholar opinion about the origin of Yiddish and not as concluded, established fact. More so this is not an article about Yiddish language--Tritomex (talk) 13:36, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Total misrepresentation. So, if you can't construe simple English, desist from talking to me. Jacobs says there is no mainstream scholar(ly) opinion now about the origins of Yiddish. Read the sources before coming back here.--Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

It is most fascinating how any revert can e "violent." Also, what makes you think Tritomexi is a "he"? --Jethro B 14:20, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

A 'violent' revert is when one edit covering two distinct topics in different parts of a text is reverted on the strength that you object to one of the edits. It means the deleter is removing everything done by a person without discriminating and evaluating the respective merits of each particular edition. That is hostile editing.

See WP:SOAP. This isn't the place to complain about editors or that an article doesn't fit your standards --Jethro B 15:02, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
By chance I check a page while reading a book. I note that it is totally out of sync with wiki criteria and practices, and in many places full of poor sources and dubious material. I make one edit, it suffers a total revert, ostensibly about genetics, but removing everything else, on yiddish from one of the world's foremost authorities (one position among several as I began to edit in relevant material). Shrike arrives, Jethro arrives, NMMGG arrives, and, saying nothing of the lamentably phrased, incoherent edits by Tritomex, you all passively back him by kibitzing on the talk page. That behaviour, over dozens of pages, is not neutral. It is a disturbing pattern, and means that people like myself cannot trust the 'community' to enter a page and analyse all behaviour in terms of policy and the merits of each specific edit without regard to who is editing. I am profiled, I assume, as 'anti-Jewish', and therefore need a cohort of control? It's a bloc partisan behavioural pattern. Tritomex knows nothing of the subjects treated because the sources he adduces are all web sites or googled according to need. All of that crap he put in yesterday is stale, or useless, or contained in an excellent monograph published this year by Toch who dismisses much of the reportage in those JVL sources as erroneous deductions from Church fantasies about the Jews. Archeology is what counts, or direct report from Jewish sources, not Christian sources, which are often suspect because of their need for raising the spectre of Jewish threats. All over Byzantium, the mediterranean littoral and Italy the Jewish presence is attested by epitaphs and synogogue remains. There is almost nothing of this in the north until very late. It's really pointless when WP:AGF is challenged by such behaviour to do anything other that directly edit the text.\|}--Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

See WP:SOAP. This isn't the place to complain about editors or that an article doesn't fit your standards --Jethro B 15:02, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

By chance I check a page while reading a book. I note that it is totally out of sync with wiki criteria and practices, and in many places full of poor sources and dubious material. I make one edit, it suffers a total revert, ostensibly about genetics, but removing everything else, on yiddish from one of the world's foremost authorities (one position among several as I began to edit in relevant material). Shrike arrives, Jethro arrives, NMMGG arrives, and, saying nothing of the lamentably phrased, incoherent edits by Tritomex, you all passively back him by kibitzing on the talk page. That behaviour, over dozens of pages, is not neutral. It is a disturbing pattern, and means that people like myself cannot trust the 'community' to enter a page and analyse all behaviour in terms of policy and the merits of each specific edit without regard to who is editing. I am profiled, I assume, as 'anti-Jewish', and therefore need a cohort of control? It's a bloc partisan behavioural pattern. Tritomex knows nothing of the subjects treated because the sources he adduces are all web sites or googled according to need. All of that crap he put in yesterday is stale, or useless, or contained in an excellent monograph published this year by Toch who dismisses much of the reportage in those JVL sources as erroneous deductions from Church fantasies about the Jews. Archeology is what counts, or direct report from Jewish sources, not Christian sources, which are often suspect because of their need for raising the spectre of Jewish threats. All over Byzantium, the mediterranean littoral and Italy the Jewish presence is attested by epitaphs and synogogue remains. There is almost nothing of this in the north until very late.

It's really pointless when WP:AGF is challenged by such behaviour to do anything other that directly edit the text.|}--Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

This from the hatnote is pertinent to the problem. It explains why Tritomex's 4 sources are inadequate for encyclopedic work,

All of what Tritomexe put in yesterday is stale, or useless, or contained in an excellent monograph published this year by Toch who dismisses much of the reportage in those JVL sources as erroneous deductions from Church fantasies about the Jews. Archeology is what counts, or direct report from Jewish sources, not Christian sources, which are often suspect because of their need for raising the spectre of Jewish threats. All over Byzantium, the mediterranean littoral and Italy the Jewish presence is attested by epitaphs and synogogue remains. There is almost nothing of this in the north until very late. --Nishidani (talk) 19:01, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with content. Seriously, let EVERYONE focus on the content and stop questioning each other's faith and "testing" each other. Please. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 15:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Nishidani - Do me a favor, dial it back a notch. Some of the rhetoric is just a bit much, and while you might not mean to, your tone is coming off as a bit uncivil and soapbox-ish. Everyone is participating in good faith, lets just remember that and discuss in a calm fashion, please. I have no interest in the subject matter, only in everyone getting along long enough to figure out what is the best content. Everyone needs to just focus on cooperating a bit. Thanks. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 18:51, 21 October 2012 (UTC) You're looking at a few words, and dismissing as rhetoric what I believe to be a legitimate issue of poor editing. Perhaps Tritomex is in good faith. The fact is he established a principle for me, and reverted a mass of academically sourced material, which he then violated in order to edit in what he prefers, and subsequently spattered the page with extremely poor googled sources. I have repeatedly asked him and now Jethro to explain to me why I cannot include a genetic paper in a history section, and Tritomex can do so. His revert asserted that these papers were not to be added to this section. He then added two. It's very easy to talk about AGF on the basis of a few words of exasperation. AGF means, assume good faith. Review, and tell me if it is proof of good faith, to violate principles you ask others to observe, and consistently over two days refuse to explain the anomaly. Thanks --Nishidani (talk) 19:01, 21 October 2012 (UTC) Except you've made a lot of comments unrelated to the point of a content dispute and which violate AGF. It isn't AGF, and it's unrelated to the content dispute, to accuse others of tagteaming and profiling you as anti-Semitic; accuse someone of failing to construe English; accusing me (as you later said it was directed to me) of making a revert that "fucked up" some stuff when I never made a single revert on this article, etc. All of these are unnecessary. --Jethro B 19:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC) You totally misread all of your evidence. I never said you used a revert to fuck up a lot of relevant work from quality sources. I said the revert was done by Tritomex. Read again. --Nishidani (talk) 22:14, 21 October 2012 (UTC) Thank you for that clarification, although I'd remind you that's one of out a few edits I chose. --Jethro B 22:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC) If you want to appear usefully neutral, by all means make a fuss about my edits. What is disturbing is that you came here and have focused singularly on what I am arguing, and have said not a word about your judgement on the merits of Tritomex's many edits to the article and comments. My view is that they show severe defects. Perhaps I may be wrong (I certainly am not wrong on his cancellation of my evidence that there are several theories about the origins of Yiddish, everyone but him knows that). No one, no matter where he or she is coming from, gets things invariably right on complex issues, and yet you and a few others, come in and set your sights on me, whose only claim to be a decent editor is that I insist on the highest quality RS, and precise English in articles. I assume good faith, when I observe editors using their independent judgement to review what all editors argue on a page. And please desist from showcasing a few stray remarks in frustration or comic relief from the boredom of consistently being talked past, while ignoring the substance of the evidence produced.--Nishidani (talk) 22:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC) With the highest respect, while I freely admit that I cum into many places, I certainly did not come in here and "set my sights" on you. The simplest proof is the fact I'm looking at a computer screen, the next proof is only I can read my mind. But this is another example of a wild conspiracy theory aimed at editors, and it does not contribute whatsoever to a discussion. Paranoia doesn't help. --Jethro B 22:08, 21 October 2012 (UTC) Pun appreciated but I have a very good ear for tone, and don't believe it. Where have you commented on Tritomex's edits. Where have you corrected the many grammatical errors he has made in his edits? or the factual errors of misreporting things any Jewish person who knows her history would sight instantly as incorrect (for instance for the weird idea Jews were only present in the 1st century in Italy, two centuries off what his source says?) I'll let you in on a secret. I've deliberately left them uncorrected, as I always do, to quietly observe if editors are actually reading the edits made by others which I have to cope with. He has made many very obvious errors in grammar and usage, and you, for one, have not made the easy corrections. Is it paranoia to infer that you spend a lot of time looking at what I write, while ignoring what Tritomex is doing? --Nishidani (talk) 22:21, 21 October 2012 (UTC) He's made grammatical errors, as have you (consider this comment, where you write the word "drop" twice and misuse semicolons). I've noticed them. So? It's generally considered impolite to go through another person's edits and fix it, unless you have explicit permission from that editor. Not everyone on Misplaced Pages speaks perfect English. It isn't my job to correct mistakes, unless the editor requests that I do so. But again, this is a lack of WP:AGF - while indeed I have read the comments, and refrained from changing them because I didn't write them, you're assuming that to be not reading the comments. And quite honestly, there isn't any merit or reason to believe that because I'm not changing someone else's comments, I haven't read it. --Jethro B 22:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC) I've tried to make this point to Nishidani many times in the past. Everyone makes mistakes when posting, including Nishidani himself. The only person who makes a big deal out of it and insists on correcting and berating others for everything from simple typos to grammar and punctuation is him. Now apparently if you don't act like a condescending prick you're not reading others' comments. Lovely. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC) Uh, both of you have missed the point. It's no problem making those errors on the talk page, as per your example. I could cite numerous examples from the talk pages. There is a different rhythm here: it's chat no one ever looks at but those engaged on it. It is everything when simple errors of syntax, of spelling and whatnot are made in edits to the article, and that is what I was indicating when I cited the fact that he introduced a source on Italian Jews without reading it closely, since it gets the dates out by two centuries, despite the fact that the source loudly registers, as do specialist monographs, the fact that Jews were settled in Italy as early as the Maccabees. It is your job, and mine, and NMMGG's, and everyone's, to correct errors of grammar and source use in the article, particularly when someone who has got a shaky grasp of the language edits. None of you did. I assume therefore none of you took care to closely examine the quality of Tritomex's edits to the article.--Nishidani (talk) 07:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with content. Seriously, let EVERYONE focus on the content and stop questioning each other's faith and "testing" each other. Please. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 15:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Nishidani - Do me a favor, dial it back a notch. Some of the rhetoric is just a bit much, and while you might not mean to, your tone is coming off as a bit uncivil and soapbox-ish. Everyone is participating in good faith, lets just remember that and discuss in a calm fashion, please. I have no interest in the subject matter, only in everyone getting along long enough to figure out what is the best content. Everyone needs to just focus on cooperating a bit. Thanks. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 18:51, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

You're looking at a few words, and dismissing as rhetoric what I believe to be a legitimate issue of poor editing. Perhaps Tritomex is in good faith. The fact is he established a principle for me, and reverted a mass of academically sourced material, which he then violated in order to edit in what he prefers, and subsequently spattered the page with extremely poor googled sources. I have repeatedly asked him and now Jethro to explain to me why I cannot include a genetic paper in a history section, and Tritomex can do so. His revert asserted that these papers were not to be added to this section. He then added two. It's very easy to talk about AGF on the basis of a few words of exasperation. AGF means, assume good faith. Review, and tell me if it is proof of good faith, to violate principles you ask others to observe, and consistently over two days refuse to explain the anomaly. Thanks --Nishidani (talk) 19:01, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Except you've made a lot of comments unrelated to the point of a content dispute and which violate AGF. It isn't AGF, and it's unrelated to the content dispute, to accuse others of tagteaming and profiling you as anti-Semitic; accuse someone of failing to construe English; accusing me (as you later said it was directed to me) of making a revert that "fucked up" some stuff when I never made a single revert on this article, etc. All of these are unnecessary. --Jethro B 19:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

You totally misread all of your evidence. I never said you used a revert to fuck up a lot of relevant work from quality sources. I said the revert was done by Tritomex. Read again. --Nishidani (talk) 22:14, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for that clarification, although I'd remind you that's one of out a few edits I chose. --Jethro B 22:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

If you want to appear usefully neutral, by all means make a fuss about my edits. What is disturbing is that you came here and have focused singularly on what I am arguing, and have said not a word about your judgement on the merits of Tritomex's many edits to the article and comments. My view is that they show severe defects. Perhaps I may be wrong (I certainly am not wrong on his cancellation of my evidence that there are several theories about the origins of Yiddish, everyone but him knows that). No one, no matter where he or she is coming from, gets things invariably right on complex issues, and yet you and a few others, come in and set your sights on me, whose only claim to be a decent editor is that I insist on the highest quality RS, and precise English in articles. I assume good faith, when I observe editors using their independent judgement to review what all editors argue on a page. And please desist from showcasing a few stray remarks in frustration or comic relief from the boredom of consistently being talked past, while ignoring the substance of the evidence produced.--Nishidani (talk) 22:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

With the highest respect, while I freely admit that I cum into many places, I certainly did not come in here and "set my sights" on you. The simplest proof is the fact I'm looking at a computer screen, the next proof is only I can read my mind. But this is another example of a wild conspiracy theory aimed at editors, and it does not contribute whatsoever to a discussion. Paranoia doesn't help. --Jethro B 22:08, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Pun appreciated but I have a very good ear for tone, and don't believe it. Where have you commented on Tritomex's edits. Where have you corrected the many grammatical errors he has made in his edits? or the factual errors of misreporting things any Jewish person who knows her history would sight instantly as incorrect (for instance for the weird idea Jews were only present in the 1st century in Italy, two centuries off what his source says?)

I'll let you in on a secret. I've deliberately left them uncorrected, as I always do, to quietly observe if editors are actually reading the edits made by others which I have to cope with. He has made many very obvious errors in grammar and usage, and you, for one, have not made the easy corrections. Is it paranoia to infer that you spend a lot of time looking at what I write, while ignoring what Tritomex is doing? --Nishidani (talk) 22:21, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

He's made grammatical errors, as have you (consider this comment, where you write the word "drop" twice and misuse semicolons). I've noticed them. So? It's generally considered impolite to go through another person's edits and fix it, unless you have explicit permission from that editor. Not everyone on Misplaced Pages speaks perfect English. It isn't my job to correct mistakes, unless the editor requests that I do so. But again, this is a lack of WP:AGF - while indeed I have read the comments, and refrained from changing them because I didn't write them, you're assuming that to be not reading the comments. And quite honestly, there isn't any merit or reason to believe that because I'm not changing someone else's comments, I haven't read it. --Jethro B 22:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I've tried to make this point to Nishidani many times in the past. Everyone makes mistakes when posting, including Nishidani himself. The only person who makes a big deal out of it and insists on correcting and berating others for everything from simple typos to grammar and punctuation is him. Now apparently if you don't act like a condescending prick you're not reading others' comments. Lovely. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Uh, both of you have missed the point. It's no problem making those errors on the talk page, as per your example. I could cite numerous examples from the talk pages. There is a different rhythm here: it's chat no one ever looks at but those engaged on it. It is everything when simple errors of syntax, of spelling and whatnot are made in edits to the article, and that is what I was indicating when I cited the fact that he introduced a source on Italian Jews without reading it closely, since it gets the dates out by two centuries, despite the fact that the source loudly registers, as do specialist monographs, the fact that Jews were settled in Italy as early as the Maccabees. It is your job, and mine, and NMMGG's, and everyone's, to correct errors of grammar and source use in the article, particularly when someone who has got a shaky grasp of the language edits. None of you did. I assume therefore none of you took care to closely examine the quality of Tritomex's edits to the article.--Nishidani (talk) 07:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:NPOV issue

Please consider joining the feedback request service.

An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following list:

Unsorted Error: No RfC category specified

When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

This article under the history section, has the following sentence.

'There is a genetic and historic(al) evidence that the Ashkenazi Jewish population originated in the Middle East.'

This generalization on the genetic evidence, as opposed to historical evidence, is well supported in much of the scholarly literature. No dispute. There is, however, recent evidence which challenges this.

A major authority in the field, Avshalom Zoosmann-Diskin, is on record as disagreeing with our article's statement of one theory as a fact. In a 2010 paper he writes:-

(a) The origin of Eastern European Jews, (EEJ) by far the largest and most important Ashkenazi population, and their affinities to other Jewish and European populations are still not resolved.'

His paper then compares

(b)two competing theories regarding the origin of EEJ,

His conclusion is:-

(c) The autosomal genetic distance analysis presented here clearly demonstrates that the investigated Jewish populations do not share a common origin. The resemblance of EEJ to Italians and other European populations portrays them as an autochthonous European population.p.4

In short, in the technical literature there appear to be two positions. Can neutral third parties clarify what WP:NPOV requires here, and whether or not it is legitimate to exclude mentioning the other scholarly position which contests the generalization we have?Nishidani (talk) 12:51, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment - There are a couple of problems with this RfC. 1. It makes no suggestion on how the text should be changed. 2. It does not state the issue in a neutral manner. An editor has provided about a dozen sources that support the current text (which, by the way, says that there is evidence that supports something, not that the evidence proves it) and only one source that challenges it. Zoosmann-Diskin's theory, as far as has been shown here, is not supported by other scholars, which makes it FRINGE. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Make positive suggestions for improving the RfC by all means. Nishidani (talk) 20:58, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
You should post specific text you want included in the article. Open ended RfCs don't usually end with a consensus for a specific change in my experience. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 21:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Things that are simple to do.

(1)'Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources.'(WP:NPOV)

Leaving aside for the moment the outstanding issue, which consists of Tritomex's refusal, in contravention of WP:NPOV: to allow me to register Zoossmann-Diskin's explicit note, as a geneticist, that there are two competing theories':

('In order to compare two competing theories regarding the origin of EEJ, their geographic distances were computed as if they originated from Italy or Israel, i.e. the great circle distances for EEJ were calculated not between Warsaw and other capitals, but between Rome or Jerusalem and other capitals.')

There are some things we can surely agree on:

As Tritomex reminds me, the page, though on Ashkenazi, has a section on European Jews before the Ashkenazi. As documented above, it has a huge volume, exceeding half of the section, on Judaism outside Europe, mainly in Babylonia. I have suggested this be removed, since it is amply covered in multiple pages, and has no place here. What we need is more work on the topic of the section, not irrelevant blobs on non-European Judaism. May that then be trimmed by removing the paras I listed above?
Toch's book on the economic history of European Jews, which I have introduced, covers all of the points raised by the several articles Tritomex introduced yesterday. I believe academic cutting-edge books, if they cover the field, should replace general, often dated, sources that are either partisan, or not attributed. Is it okay to replace them with Toch and other specialist academic sources that cover the same material?
Jacobs gives several theories for the origins of Yiddish, as does Wexler. Tritomex removed all of my work on this section and reconfirmed the old theory, thus recreating a POV imbalance. The standard Weinreich theory we have now as the truth has now been challenged and finessed. The cutting edge denies things are so simple. May then I update and rewrite that to show the complexity of theories?Nishidani (talk) 08:44, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I did not "refuse to allow you" to write down Zoossmann-Diskin study. In fact I proposed you to write it down and place it in genetic section. I presented in upper section some of other studies which have to be presented with ZD in order to maintain WP:NPOV giving each the same merit as ZD. I took on myself a task to write it down if you insist on the inclusion of that single genetic study in the historic and not in to genetic section. So by this I showed maximal constructiveness and good faith.

Considering the section "European Jews before the Ashkenazi" I am not sure what your intention and proposal is right now:

a) To remove it altogether ?
b) To include alternative views on Yiddish to that section?
c To include all genetic studies to that section?

--Tritomex (talk) 16:48, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

- You added two genetic articles to a section on history, and removed Zoosmann-Diskin from that section on the grounds that genetic articles cannot be used in the history section. What you did, with your revert, and arguments, is in the record. You have refused to explain this contradiction in your editing.--Nishidani (talk) 19:43, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
- Please reread what I wrote. The proposals are clear. Focus on what was said, and by all means give me some feedback.Nishidani (talk) 19:36, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Considering Yiddish language, although I am not sure that the scope of this article should go in the theories about the origin of Yiddish I would propose the inclusion of the view presented by Dr Robert King

Dr King believes that huge Jewish community originating from Middle East migrated from Middle East since biblical times and established itself in territories of nowadays Germany very early. According to Dr King, This Hebrew and Aramaic speaking community developed Yiddish language. Also, Bernard Beck in the same book: page 78 propose that Polish, Lithuanian, Russian Jews may have lived on that territory since the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Although this is alternative position,if we decide to include other alternative positions I would propose the inclusion of this one too.--Tritomex (talk) 20:19, 22 October 2012 (UTC) Also we should include the view of Sorbian specialist Heinz-Schuster-Sewc of the University of Leipzig, who is of he opinion that a Slavic ancestor of Yiddish “never existed” and is a pure “product of imagination.”--Tritomex (talk) 20:41, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I made three clear proposals as to how, uncontroversially, work on other issues. Let's deal with them one by one. First the proposal to remove (see above, I copied out them out above) matter having nothing to do with the topic announced by the section heading. Please discuss these point by point, in logical order. Do you agree to removing all the material (Mesopotamia etc.) not bearing on the pre Ashkenazi Jews of Europe?--Nishidani (talk) 21:15, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

(::As to Yiddish, it is not our purpose here to adjudicate who is right. The minimal requirement is to register as per Jacobs and others, the four theories proposed, succinctly. This is no place (the Yiddish language article is the place) to cram the section with rebuttals of each. --Nishidani (talk) 21:12, 22 October 2012 (UTC))

I do not think that we should give Jacobs an exclusivity of opinion regarding the origin of Yiddish. This would be POV, if other theories like those I mentioned above wont be included, in the same way as the insertion of Wexler controversial ideas have to be balanced with the criticism from other experts as in other case we will again have POV;

Therefore I propose Wexler to the artickle about Yiddish language. The scope of this article will be drastically enlarged if we include all linguistic theories and population genetic studies. Also, I do not understand the reason why we should remove from historic section, important historic facts about the Jewish history predating the formation of Ashkenazi community while we are close to consensus to include ALL genetic studies to the same section. Your argument that " I have suggested this be removed, since it is amply covered in multiple pages", is unfounded and at least controversial as you had previously proposed linguistic theories and single non-mainstream genetic study insertion in the same section regarding Jewish history. While the linguistic theories are already covered in the article relating to Yiddish,this genetic study is "covered in multiple pages" and it has already a place in this article genetic section. My proposal is to include all genetic studies, special tables regarding the findings of each study in relation to the Middle Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Jews (to avoid eventual POV)(although per source we would have 20 Middle Eastern references and 1 undecided) and to leave Yiddish linguistic theories for the article about Yiddish language. --Tritomex (talk) 23:35, 22 October 2012 (UTC) I think we cant put equality sign between the mainstream opinion and alternative opinion. There is no equality between those who deny the Holocaust, or the existence of Palestinian people and those who reject this view in the same way as there is no equality between those who are stating that Yiddish is Germanic language and Wexler.. That does not mean that we should avoid alternative opinion, but it do not goes in to lead, it should be in part of articles dealing specifically with this issues, or mentioned in separate sections without promoting minority claims to the equal importance with mainstream opinion.Considering Atzmon and Behar their fidomgs are supported by 20 another genetic studies, while Zoosman Disskin is not supported by any other genetic study, therefore its by logical definition of the meaning of mainstream (the prevailing current of thought) do not represent mainstream opinion and has it place only with other studies in genetic section. (WP:UNDUE) "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of, or as detailed, a description as more widely held views. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views." --Tritomex (talk) 00:30, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Tritomex about the UNDUE issue. From the sources presented here, it would seem that ZD's findings don't jive with about 20 other high quality papers, so there's no reason to give him equal weight. As for Wexler, from the little digging around I did I don't see much support for his theory either. If there are other sources that support him, please post them here. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 03:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Check the dates. Z-D is 2010. Almost all of Tritomex's papers predate that, and therefore his evidence for 'consensus' is useless.Nishidani (talk) 12:51, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

His evidence for consensus is not "useless" if one scholar disagrees with it, particularly if that scholar published a paper almost two years ago and nobody else has supported him since. Even if that wasn't the case, ZD's opinion would need to be mentioned in proportion to its prominence, at about 20:1. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Please check the dates, and the primary research focus of his 20 odd papers. A good many of them are to do, not with Ashkenazi, (mentioned en passant) but other Jewish populations. The only acceptable evidence for the several assertions made here are papers dealing specifically with Z-D's Ashkenazi research. You are all making judgements that should be drawn from what geneticists say, commenting on each others work. --Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Jethro provided a good very recent review paper I think review papers are the best WP:RS.I think we should use the same logic as WP:MEDRS.--Shrike (talk)/WP:RX 19:39, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure Michael Balter's masters degree in biology is a better guide to the subject than Zoosmann-Diskin, Goldberg or Bray? Did you you read Jethro's link, Shrike? It says this (which is what Zoosmann-Diskin is arguing). His autosomatic marker evidence is bound to give a different angle that those who concentrate as most of those papers do, on the male genetic evidence.

given the findings of a common genetic origin plus a complex history of admixture, geneticist David Goldstein of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that neither of the "extreme models"—those that see Jewishness as entirely cultural or entirely genetic—"are correct." Rather, Goldstein says, "Jewish genetic history is a complicated mixture of both genetic continuity from an ancestral population and extensive admixture." Michael Balter Tracing the Roots of Jewishness, Science Now, 3 June 2010,

Goldstein, Bray and Zoosmann-Diskin are looking at the admixture. Goldstein confirms that there are "two models" independently from Zoosmann-Diskin. You are all objecting to my inclusion of the other of the two models, and that violates NPOV. When your Jewish genome has 30-60% European admixture, you come from the Middle East and you come from Europe.Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Your Jewish genome??? What in the world makes you think any of the editors here are even Jewish for such an assumption to be cast? --Jethro B 23:08, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I requested that we deal with three issues in order (a) (b) (c), and ignore genetics. The first request is to address the fact that in a section on the European Jews before the Ashkenazi there a four large paragraphs dealing with Adot ha-mizrach, namely the Jews in the Near East, in Mesopotamia etc. Please respond to this, and once resolved, I will address in order the other two points. This is the third time I have repeated a request to Tritomex to address the first issue (a). He refuses to, and keeps talking about genetics (which I excluded) and Yiddish (c). Please address the merits of proposal (a) first.--Nishidani (talk) 09:35, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Nishidani We had days of exhausting talks regarding genetics, genetics is presented in the first and second sentence of your comments in this section of the talk page. I would strongly like to finish the issue of genetics and I am sure we would have after than many times more easier task to agree on your new proposals. Please Let us finish first the older and bigger issue, and than we can move forward much faster to new ones.--Tritomex (talk) 11:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Please read what I wrote at the top of this section. I'm here to write articles, not to waste time in repeating myself to people who repeat themselves. An RfC is required for the genetics (see the new section I have now added), since you have systematically avoided replying to my 2 questions. I have therefore, rationally, decided to look at what can be done rapidly to improve an indifferent page. I listed three things, other than genetics. They are more important than one line on the page. Please address them. (a) is a very simple call. If you haven't an opinion, fine. If you have an opinion, state it.Nishidani (talk) 12:21, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Balter, Michael (June 3, 2010). "Tracing the Roots of Jewishness". Science (journal). Retrieved June 10, 2010.

Categories:

Revision as of 21:42, 23 October 2012 editNishidani (talk \| contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users99,556 edits →Things that are simple to do.: Note to Shrike and NMMGG← Previous edit		Revision as of 23:08, 23 October 2012 edit undoJethro B (talk \| contribs)Rollbackers9,518 edits →Things that are simple to do.Next edit →
(2 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)
Line 450:		Line 450:
	*'''Comment''' - There are a couple of problems with this RfC. 1. It makes no suggestion on how the text should be changed. 2. It does not state the issue in a neutral manner. An editor has provided about a dozen sources that support the current text (which, by the way, says that there is evidence that supports something, not that the evidence proves it) and only one source that challenges it. Zoosmann-Diskin's theory, as far as has been shown here, is not supported by other scholars, which makes it FRINGE. ] (]) 19:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)		*'''Comment''' - There are a couple of problems with this RfC. 1. It makes no suggestion on how the text should be changed. 2. It does not state the issue in a neutral manner. An editor has provided about a dozen sources that support the current text (which, by the way, says that there is evidence that supports something, not that the evidence proves it) and only one source that challenges it. Zoosmann-Diskin's theory, as far as has been shown here, is not supported by other scholars, which makes it FRINGE. ] (]) 19:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
	*::Make positive suggestions for improving the RfC by all means. ] (]) 20:58, 23 October 2012 (UTC)		*::Make positive suggestions for improving the RfC by all means. ] (]) 20:58, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
			*:::You should post specific text you want included in the article. Open ended RfCs don't usually end with a consensus for a specific change in my experience. ] (]) 21:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

	== Things that are simple to do. ==		== Things that are simple to do. ==
Line 489:		Line 490:
	:::::Jethro provided a good very recent review paper I think review papers are the best ].I think we should use the same logic as ].--] (])/] 19:39, 23 October 2012 (UTC)		:::::Jethro provided a good very recent review paper I think review papers are the best ].I think we should use the same logic as ].--] (])/] 19:39, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
	::::::Sure Michael Balter's masters degree in biology is a better guide to the subject than Zoosmann-Diskin, Goldberg or Bray? Did you you read Jethro's link, Shrike? It says this (which is what Zoosmann-Diskin is arguing). His autosomatic marker evidence is bound to give a different angle that those who concentrate as most of those papers do, on the male genetic evidence.		::::::Sure Michael Balter's masters degree in biology is a better guide to the subject than Zoosmann-Diskin, Goldberg or Bray? Did you you read Jethro's link, Shrike? It says this (which is what Zoosmann-Diskin is arguing). His autosomatic marker evidence is bound to give a different angle that those who concentrate as most of those papers do, on the male genetic evidence.
	::::::given the findings of a common genetic origin '''plus a complex history of admixture''', geneticist David Goldstein of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that '''neither of the "extreme models"—those that see Jewishness as entirely cultural or entirely genetic—"are correct."''' Rather, Goldstein says, '''"Jewish genetic history is a complicated mixture of both genetic continuity from an ancestral population and extensive admixture."''' Michael Balter , Science Now, 3 June 2010,		::::::<blockquote>given the findings of a common genetic origin '''plus a complex history of admixture''', geneticist David Goldstein of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that '''neither of the "extreme models"—those that see Jewishness as entirely cultural or entirely genetic—"are correct."''' Rather, Goldstein says, '''"Jewish genetic history is a complicated mixture of both genetic continuity from an ancestral population and extensive admixture."''' Michael Balter , Science Now, 3 June 2010,</blockquote>
	:::::::Goldstein, Bray and Zoosmann-Diskin are looking at the admixture. Goldstein confirms that there are "two models" independently from Zoosmann-Diskin. You are all objecting to my inclusion of the other of the two models, and that violates NPOV. When your Jewish genome has 30-60% European admixture, you come from the Middle East and you come from Europe.] (]) 21:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)		:::::::Goldstein, Bray and Zoosmann-Diskin are looking at the admixture. Goldstein confirms that there are "two models" independently from Zoosmann-Diskin. You are all objecting to my inclusion of the other of the two models, and that violates NPOV. When your Jewish genome has 30-60% European admixture, you come from the Middle East and you come from Europe.] (]) 21:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
			::::::::'''''Your''' Jewish genome''??? What in the world makes you think any of the editors here are even Jewish for such an assumption to be cast? --<small style="border: 1px dashed;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap">'''] ]'''</small> 23:08, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

	::I requested that we deal with three issues in order (a) (b) (c), and ignore genetics. The first request is to address the fact that in a section on the '''European Jews before the Ashkenazi''' there a four large paragraphs dealing with '''Adot ha-mizrach''', namely the Jews in the Near East, in Mesopotamia etc. Please respond to this, and once resolved, I will address in order the other two points. This is the third time I have repeated a request to Tritomex to address the first issue (a). He refuses to, and keeps talking about genetics (which I excluded) and Yiddish (c). Please address the merits of proposal (a) first.--] (]) 09:35, 23 October 2012 (UTC)		::I requested that we deal with three issues in order (a) (b) (c), and ignore genetics. The first request is to address the fact that in a section on the '''European Jews before the Ashkenazi''' there a four large paragraphs dealing with '''Adot ha-mizrach''', namely the Jews in the Near East, in Mesopotamia etc. Please respond to this, and once resolved, I will address in order the other two points. This is the third time I have repeated a request to Tritomex to address the first issue (a). He refuses to, and keeps talking about genetics (which I excluded) and Yiddish (c). Please address the merits of proposal (a) first.--] (]) 09:35, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
	:Nishidani We had days of exhausting talks regarding genetics, genetics is presented in the first and second sentence of your comments in this section of the talk page. I would strongly like to finish the issue of genetics and I am sure we would have after than many times more easier task to agree on your new proposals. Please Let us finish first the older and bigger issue, and than we can move forward much faster to new ones.--] (]) 11:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)		:Nishidani We had days of exhausting talks regarding genetics, genetics is presented in the first and second sentence of your comments in this section of the talk page. I would strongly like to finish the issue of genetics and I am sure we would have after than many times more easier task to agree on your new proposals. Please Let us finish first the older and bigger issue, and than we can move forward much faster to new ones.--] (]) 11:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)