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The last discussion we had on whether or not to include these categories to people of Jewish descent ended in somewhat of a stalemate. Neither side had consensus, either for removing the cats or for restoring them, and yet certain editors still took matters into their own hands. Let's settle this once and for all. Should the categories be added, or removed?
My opinion remains the same as before: the categories are appropriate. Statute of limitations on descent do not exist, and as shown through a litany of data, the overwhelming majority of modern Jews do trace their origins to the Middle East. Evildoer187 ( talk) 04:53, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Nishidani, Jews were formed as a people in the ME and began leaving their homeland one millennia before Jesus walked the earth. The Jewish diaspora is the largest diaspora known to ethnographers. Also, Jews do not proselytize and tend to live in isolated clusters, so how did so many groups of Jews emerge outside of the Levant if they did not emigrate from there? Gilad55 ( talk) 22:47, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
One has to wonder why an editor would oppose an ethnographically appropriate category. Ethnic Jews are of Middle Eastern descent, so why wouldn't we consider Jewish Americans to be persons of Middle Eastern descent? Anti-Semitism is defined as a hostility toward Jews as a people and toward the attributes of the Jewish people. The Levantine descent of ethnic Jews is certainly one of those attributes. Let's add the category and be done with it. Gilad55 ( talk) 22:39, 26 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Every reason given was contrived, so I am indeed still wondering why an editor would oppose including Jewish Americans in this category when Jews of so many other nationalities are included. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:12, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55 I would like to point out Debresser's hostility and failure to assume good faith. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
If by "loud and aggressive" you mean committed to civil discourse and abiding by Wikipedia guidelines, then yes, I suppose Evildoer and myself are completely out of control. You, sir, removed a category without consensus then violated 3RR. I would take some time to reflect if I were in your position. Gilad55 ( talk) 01:58, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
You didn't have consensus to remove them, just as I didn't have consensus to add them,
A Jew is therefore a member of a people, by birth or by conversion, who chooses to share a common cultural heritage, a religious perspective, and a spiritual horizon derived uniquely from Jewish experience and Jewish wisdom
Nishidani, Identifying as a Jewish American of ME descent does not require a person to assume a set of religious beliefs. The Levantine descent of all major Jewish ethnic sub-groups is affirmed by science. Namely, the sciences of genetics and archeology. Genetics affirms that Jews, all Jews, share a common Levantine ancestry. Genetics also has revealed that the Khazar hypothesis is a myth. Archeology affirms that the oldest artifacts unearthed in Israel/Palestine are of Hebrew and Canaanite origin thus confirming the ancient presence of Jews and Jewish civilization in the Levant. A wholehearted belief in Torah is wonderful, but not necessary to claim one's Jewish identity and heritage. Also, one does not replace the other. The two are complementary. Gilad55 ( talk) 16:33, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
I won't address the second part of your post. Gilad beat me to the punch on that one. The categories in question had been there for over a year before there was any discussion, and had not been removed until last week, several months after it was established (albeit ambiguously) that nobody had consensus to change anything. And seeing as they didn't have consensus to remove it, they were reverted, and rightly so. This is a two-way street. Evildoer187 ( talk) 17:06, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Also, Nishidani, you used the phrase, "Zionism is not Judaism". Neither Evildoer nor myself are promoting Jewish nationalism and yet you used a phrase popular among persons who oppose the return of Jews to Israel and Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state. Are you here to promote scientifically appropriate categories or merely to oppose Zionism; central to which is the belief that Jews are indigenous to Israel? This is not a rhetorical question. Gilad55 ( talk) 17:19, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
The Levantine descent of all major Jewish ethnic sub-groups is affirmed by science.
Nishidani, When I speak of Jews, I speak of the Jewish people as a whole. Ashkenazim often link Israel to the West or act as the face of Israel, yet only make-up 20% of Israel's Jews. Also, it's interesting that when I say, 'Jewish American' you assume that I am referring to Ashkenazim. Anti-Zionists are preoccupied with Ashkenazim and with portraying Ashkenazi Jewishness as inauthentic. Yes, genetic studies suggest that Ashkenazim possess European maternal ancestors who likely married Jewish men who emigrated to Southern Europe from the Levant. Yes, these genes can be traced to four maternal ancestors. Yes, this would mean that the descendants of these women are not halachically Jewish, but Jewish in the secular and ethnic sense; which would make them eligible for inclusion in the category being discussed. We are not, after all, discussing the Orthodox definition of who is a Jew as this definition is far too exclusive to apply to any persons except the Orthodox. It would seem that the only person relating this discussion to Zionism and Jewish immigration to Israel is you. You've been observed employing anti-Zionist rhetoric while attempting to invalidate the ME descent of Jewish Americans. Gilad55 ( talk) 22:59, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Also, widespread conversion to Judaism is hotly contested. There are no reliable, true histories that attest to such conversion. You've employed yet another anti-Zionist meme. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"Zionism is not Judaism." I am reticent to get into a political discussion on Wikipedia, as I don't find this to be the appropriate forum. That being said, Israel and a desire to return to it has been integral to Jewish culture long before these ideas manifested themselves in the Zionist movement. At best, your comment is ignorant. At worst, it is willfully disingenuous.
"Does anyone on earth actually disagree with that?" Actually yes, there are plenty of Jews who disagree with you. And if I am to wax anecdotal for a moment, the only Jews I've met who separate Zionism from Judaism are ultra right wing Hasidim and anti-Zionist leftist Jews. As for myself, I don't believe they are literally the same, but they are undeniably intertwined with one another. Evildoer187 ( talk) 11:39, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
"much of the 'science' over the past 15 years has been questioned as questionable." By whom?
"If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders". I think you mean "matrilineal".
"Behar and his team consistently came up with results that 'there is a likely Near Eastern origin for the maternal gene pool of Ashkenazi Jewry." His study does not arrive at this conclusion. In fact, the word "likely" does not appear even once in the entire paper. Or are you referring to Nadia's book (see below)? At any rate, genetic and historical consensus places the origins of Ashkenazim in the Near East, particularly the Levant.
Also, you cited Nadia Abu El Haj, a noted anti-Zionist whose very credentials have been repeatedly called into question. You say you are opposed to dragging ideology into this discussion, but then you cite her? Needless to say, that source by itself is not adequate. The DNA tests speak for themselves, and overwhelmingly in favor of Levantine origins for all Jewish groups. Evildoer187 ( talk) 11:49, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
As for Richard's study. "As might be expected from the autosomal picture, Y-chromosome studies generally show the opposite trend to mtDNA (with a predominantly Near Eastern source) with the exception of the large fraction of European ancestry seen in Ashkenazi Levites"
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131008/ncomms3543/full/ncomms3543.html Evildoer187 ( talk) 12:24, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
"If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders". I think you mean "matrilineal".
In fact, the word "likely" does not appear even once in the entire paper.
'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, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.
In the Ashkenazi Jews, this approach enabled us to reconstruct a detailed phylogenetic tree for the major Ashkenazi Hgs K and N1b, allowing the detection of a small set of only four individual female ancestors, likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool, whose descendants lived in Europe and carried forward their particular mtDNA variants to 3,500,000 individuals in a time frame of <2 millennia.
Also, widespread conversion to Judaism is hotly contested.
'The Jewish attitude toward proselytism apparently changed from a passive to a more active approach during the Hellenistic period. The chief reason for presuming that there were massive conversions to Judaism during this period is the seemingly dramatic increase in Jewish populations at this time. . .Only proselytism can account for this large increase'](pre-Exilic 150,000 to Ist century CE 8 million)
Some notable poskim, from non-Zionist Ashkenazi circles, placed a halakhic safek (doubt) over the Jewishness of the Beta Israel. Such dissenting voices include rabbis Rabbi Elazar Shach, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.[55][56] Similar doubts were raised within the same circles towards Bene Israel Jews,[57] and Russian immigrants to Israel in the 1990s.
"No I don't on the first count". In which case, you are wrong. The paper you linked to just now (your second link redirects to a barebones Wikipedia article) are clearly referring to maternal DNA, not Y-DNA. You said "If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders", to which I responded that the 4 founders were matrilineal. And you're accusing me of distorting?
"and you are wrong on the second." I believed you were referring to citation #16 on here ( /info/en/?search=Genetic_studies_on_Jews#Autosomal_DNA).
"Accusing me of being 'wilfully disingenuous while you now distort and misrepresent the relevant papers I cited is ironic." I haven't misrepresented a thing, and your accusation is doubly ironic given what I just point out above. My "willfully disingenuous" remark was direct at Alf.
"I.e. you dismiss peer-reviewed academic RS (Nadia Abu El-Haj) whose reportage you dislike, by adducing personal readings of the relevant primary literature." I was simply pointing out the irony of your complaints vis a vis ideological arguments, when you have cited someone who is both anti-Zionist and of dubious credibility. One look at her Wikipedia article is enough to verify this. Used by itself, her book is not sufficient to refute the mountains of DNA tests reaffirming Levantine origins for Ashkenazi Jews.
"Your personal readings are then shown to misrepresent both Nadia Abu El-Haj's reportage of Behar's paper, and Behar's paper itself." I mistakenly believed that Behar only released one paper, which I linked to. That was an error on my part. My mind is hazy at 3 in the morning, and I may have subconsciously conflated him with another geneticist. In any case, you referred to 4 patrilineal founders in your post, and that's what I was referring to. As for Nadia, what exactly have I misrepresented?
"Y-DNA , further, defines patrilineal descent, which is excluded as a criterion for Jewishness by rabbinical consensus. If the rabbis are right, Behar et al., are wrong. If Behar and co are right, then the relevant halakha must be rewritten. See? The conceptual paradigm is messy." Strictly speaking, if one is born to a Jewish father and gentile mother, he/she is still of Jewish descent. As genetic studies (including those you have cited) attest to, Ashkenazim have Levantine origins and varying degrees of European admixture. That is predominant narrative among scholars and geneticists. Therefore, European descent and Middle Eastern descent are applicable. However, given how Jews are defined both by themselves and by others, the latter would be more appropriate, in this case. Evildoer187 ( talk) 13:54, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, if one is born to a Jewish father and gentile mother, he/she is still of Jewish descent.
'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, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.
"Both of you, please refresh your reading of history, starting with the conversion of the Abiabene aristocracy; John Hyrcanus's conversion of the Idumeans; the conversion of the Himyarite aristocracy" Those are all Southwest Asian kingdoms. Adiabene was in Assyria, Idumea in the Levant (in what is now southern Israel and SW Jordan), and the Himyarite kingdom was in Yemen. Further, nobody is arguing that Ashkenazim or any Jewish group are purely Levantine, just that the Middle Eastern descent is clearly there, and it is not minor. Nobody is genetically pure. Moreover, Jews self-identify as Judeans (that's where "Jew" etymologically derives from), a tribe native to the Middle East. So long as that self-identity is preserved, and the ancestral links between modern Jewry and the Middle East have been proven time and again, the categories are applicable.
"ps. in this thread, 'reticence' is used as a synonym for reluctance (like the classic 'transpire' in the sense of 'happen'). We really should avoid solecistic usage, if only because it disturbs my sleeping pattern (esp. while I'm editing)" And I was reluctant to delve into a political argument. The word was used appropriately. Evildoer187 ( talk) 14:07, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
I am reticent to get into a political discussion on Wikipedia, as I don't find this to be the appropriate forum.
And I was reluctant to delve into a political argument. The word was used appropriately.
"strictly speaking is meaningless. Your position is entertained only by some schools of Reform Judaism. A sister in law of mine was denied that recognition by a rabbi of great distinction who said she required conversion in such a case. The rabbi was of great distinction and a wonderful man, - he went out of his way to help her with exceptional courtesy and humanity -but was under the constraint of halakhic law. You are prevaricating."
You ignore secular and atheist Jews as well. Further, we don't use Halakhic law to determine whether or not someone is Jewish by descent, and we never have. Anyone born to a Jewish or partially Jewish parent is listed under these categories. We even have Karl Marx and Heinrich Heine listed as Jews, even though both were baptized into Christianity, and certainly would not be considered Jews under Halakhic law. That's not prevarication. Sorry.
"Walls of text, poorly formatted, and going all over the place with 'arguments' that ignore, distort or talk round specific issues cannot, by their nature, be replied to. That you arer either totally confused, or out of your depth, or are playing games can be seen at a glance by comparing the following sequence of edits above."
Not only are these hypocritical accusations (most of them, anyway), they breach WP:NPA. I am a writer, and proofreading is par the course for us. I post responses as promptly as possible and then tweak them in the hopes they won't be lost in the shuffle.
As for the paper, I already confessed to making a mistake, which I ascribed to having just woken up. Posting on here when I was half-asleep was not a master stroke, in hindsight.
"If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders"
This passage here is what I was referring to, when I said "I think you mean "matrilineal". What study says there are 4 patrilineal founders? None of the links you've posted make any such argument.
At any rate, the consensus among scholars, geneticists, et al is clearly in favor of Levantine origins for Ashkenazi Jews. Even Elhaik's controversial study concluded that Ashkenazim had "Semitic" ancestry. Nobody disputes that Ashkenazim have mixed with indigenous Europeans. However, the Near Eastern ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews is still significant, and pretty much fact at this point.
Descent categorization is contingent on nationality and ancestry. I've already addressed the latter. In case of the former, Jewish is a distinct nationality, originating in (yes) the Middle East. If Jews were merely Poles, Russians, Hungarians, Ethiopians, or what have you, that renders the entire family of "Jewish descent" categories useless. Evildoer187 ( talk) 16:40, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
All these DNA stories are no really relevant to the issue. Not because part of my blood can be traced to Spain (some of my ancestors were of Sephardic heritage) am I of Spanish descent. If this is how we categorize people, all of us would have a long list of descent categories. We usually go back only a few generations, as far as is relevant to the person himself. DNA studies show that all of the world has one ancestor in Biblical times. And where did this ancestor live, pray tell? There is no end to this argument, and that was one of the main arguments against these categories in the discussion. Debresser ( talk) 17:56, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
DNA studies show that all of the world has one ancestor in Biblical times.
What are "Biblical times" and how could a timeline not taken from a true historical record be relevant to science and to scientific studies? We don't even know for certain when Mosche wrote the Pentateuch let alone when the events of Genesis and Exodus took place. DNA, unlike timelines constructed to affirm stories found in religious texts, is relevant to this discussion. Genetic studies confirm that modern Jews, all modern Jews, share common ancestors - ancestors who were most likely Levantine in origin due to the genetic overlap between all modern Jews and other groups living in the Levant; namely Syrians, Druze and even persons who self-identify as Arab Palestinians. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:09, 1 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Debresser, Yes, all of humanity share common ancestors who can be traced to a point 400,000 years in the past. When geneticists like Ostrer identified the common ancestors of Jews, they were examining separate clusters of DNA; autosomal DNA to be specific. Jews share more autosomal DNA with each other than we do with non-Jews. We share so much of this DNA that many of us are third and fifth cousins. Yes, we are all distantly related, yet share more of our genes with some groups than with others. Also, I say, "most likely Levantine" due to the fact that the genes shared by Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrahim overlap with genes shared by other groups living in the Levant. This indicates that the ancestry shared by Jews is of Levantine origin. Gilad55 ( talk) 02:14, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Also, Debresser, science does not offer "proof". Science offers evidence. Gilad55 ( talk) 02:17, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"One is full of assertion, the other enlists evidence, and tries at least to construe it correctly, which cannot be said for what Evildoer has done above, visibly altering the evidence."
Asserting that I'm deliberately altering things does not make it so. The mistakes I have made, I have admitted to. You have done no such thing. Rather, you ignore relevant evidence to push a POV. Evildoer187 ( talk) 02:20, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
"We usually go back only a few generations, as far as is relevant to the person himself." Debresser, does that mean that an African-American whose family was brought over on early slave ships, and has been in America for many hundreds of years, is now white? Or Native American? And for that matter, are the descendants of the pilgrims now Anglo-Saxon? My husband is ethnically Chinese but his family has lived in Malaysia for as long as they can remember (at least 150 years) and thus has no record of ever having been in China... does this suddenly make him an ethnic Malay? And for all he knows, he could have some Malay blood in him... is he still Chinese? If only the last few generations is relevant, then we're basically negating the concept of ethnic groups at all. But as you're of course aware, in exile, we still managed to maintain our identity as a nation for 2,000 years, and did have distinct Jewish vernacular languages that incorporated Hebrew, and did maintain Jewish culture and customs... There is likely over a period of two thousand years to be some intermarriage with local populations, but there is enough Semitic Y-DNA markers to say that Middle Eastern descent plays a very substantial role in the DNA makeup of most Jews. After all, if you're asking for 100% of Jews to have 100% Jewish blood quantum before such a category could be used, then I'm afraid that you're really going to struggle to find ANY ethnic group that such a high standard could apply to... Kitty ( talk) 02:37, 2 March 2014 (UTC) Nishidani, re: "One could just as validly argue that Jews are people who subscribe to Judaism, a religion developed in the ME. The formula you adopt disenfranchises many Jews, for it has a logical entailment: Jews who do not hail from a semitic background in the Middle East are not in fact Jews." The traditional definition of a Jew is a person who is the child of a Jewish mother. Thus, one can join the tribe despite not being an original member of it (just as Native Americans adopted people into their tribes, or like I can gain citizenship into another country). Jews are both a religion or a people, there's no question of either-or. But while there have been some converts from outside of the ME, they would presumably either marry a Jew or their children or grand-children would or so on; the idea of someone being descended from 10 generations of only converts seems incredibly unlikely. There's enough Middle Eastern y-DNA markers within most of the Jewish people to indicate that this forms a very large part of our descent, and as I mentioned to Debresser, if you're looking to speak in absolutes (100% of Jews must have 100% blood quantum) then basically no ethnic groups are going to be valid. Not all Jews do have shared ancestry, but very many do, and I don't think we should be ignoring that or insisting that they all have to. Kitty ( talk) 02:46, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
The overwhelming majority of Jews share ancestry with each other, and with other Levantines. Especially given how the majority of Jews alive today are Ashkenazi, Sephardic, or Mizrahi. This has been affirmed time and again by DNA tests. Purity of blood should not be a prerequisite for inclusion in a category. Evildoer187 ( talk) 02:53, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
^ An ad-hominem attack and, worse, a display of ignorance. Jews are an ethnic group. Einstein was an atheist who, during adulthood, turned away from Judaism, a religion practiced by most, but not by all ethnic Jews, and embraced scientific inquiry and mathematics. The Honorable Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef was a Jew who emigrated to Israel from Iraq and, being Sephardi, would have shared no European ancestors with Einstein; who was Ashkenazi. But, yes, both men are of the same nation and shared Levantine ancestors. Gilad55 ( talk) 04:16, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"A groundbreaking paper published in 2000 by Harry Ostrer, a professor of genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer showed that most modern Jews are descended on their male side from a core population of approximately 20,000 Jews who migrated from Italy over the first millennium and eventually settled in Eastern Europe.
“All European [Ashkenazi] Jews seem connected on the order of fourth or fifth cousins,” Ostrer has said.
Known as the so-called “Rhineland hypothesis,” the consensus research holds that most Ashkenazi Jews, as well as many Jews tracing their lineage to Italy, North Africa, Iraq, Iran, Kurdish regions and Yemen, share common paternal haplotypes also found among many Arabs from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Only a small percentage of the Y-DNA of Ashkenazi Jews—less than 25 percent—originated outside of the Near East, presumably as converts.
This historical and genetic mosaic has provided support for the controversial concept of a “Jewish people.” The Law of Return, the Israeli law that established the right of Jews around the world to settle in Israel and which remains in force today, was a central tenet of Zionism. It is invoked by some religious Jews to support territorial claims (even though, based on this research, many Arabs, including Palestinians, where therefore also have a genetic ‘right of return’)." [1] The Genetic Literacy Project is a great source for unbiased information on this topic. Gilad55 ( talk) 04:34, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
If you haven't figured it out by now Yuvn, I couldn't give a rat's ass about religious tradition. If someone is documented as having Jewish ancestors, then they are Jews as far as Wikipedia is concerned. And where do Jews trace their ethnic origins and descent to? The Middle East, as virtually all of the genetic papers agree on barring some minor quibbling over the extent of European admixture. Otherwise, these Jewish descent categories should not even exist. Evildoer187 ( talk) 04:48, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
No other ethnic group is required to provide academic sources as evidence of their descent. We trust that indigenous Mexicans are the descendants of the Incas, among other ancient South American indigenous civilizations, because Mexicans claim this descent as part of their national ethos. Similarly, Hebrew descent is part of the Jewish ethos. As there are no viable theories to counter the claim that all Jews share a common descent, the burden of proof falls on those who would have the cat removed, not on those who would keep it in place. To proceed in any other way, would be to enforce a double-standard and ignore the process by which any cat should be removed. Gilad55 ( talk) 04:40, 3 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Here are some genetic sources.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/Nebel-HG-00-IPArabs.pdf
http://bhusers.upf.edu/.../uploads/2011/02/Behar2010.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12820706
http://www.nature.com/.../100603/full/news.2010.277.html
http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/Behar_contrasting.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032072/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S0002929707613251
http://forward.com/.../jews-are-a-race-genes-reveal/...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687795/
And one for women...
http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/43026_Doron.pdf
I'll be back with some non-genetic sources. Evildoer187 ( talk) 04:43, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
And here we have the unedited text of the Jewish Encyclopedia from 1906, with some statistics from both Josephus and Tacitus. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13992-statistics
"Tacitus declares that Jerusalem at its fall contained 600,000 persons; Josephus, that there were as many as 1,100,000, of whom 97,000 were sold as slaves. It is from the latter that most European Jews are descended."
I will post some more links tomorrow, as soon as I get out of class. Evildoer187 ( talk) 05:15, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
That is a good joke. :) Whether it is all, many or most, ethnic Jews hail from the Middle East. All, many and most would each merit a description of Jews as being persons of Middle Eastern descent. Jews do not proselytize and genetic studies affirm that ethnic Jews possess Levantine DNA. Science tells us that it makes no difference whether a Jew is Ashkenazi, Sephardi or Mizrahi. Members of each group are related as distant cousins within a family. Also, persons can be included in more than one category of descent. Many Ashkenazi Jews can claim Western European descent while simultaneously claiming Middle Eastern descent by virtue of the fact that their forefathers began their journey in Israel/Palestine. Were you under the impression that categories of descent are mutually exclusive? Gilad55 ( talk) 23:02, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
As an aside, inheritance in Ha'aretz Yisrael was based on tribal affiliation which is passed from father to son. The son inherits his share of the land from his father and so on. It's good that we emphasize the Mosaic covenant, but the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant of inheritance, is the foundational covenant of Judaism. This is perhaps why Jews do not and never proselytize. The inheritance of Ha'aretz Yisrael is limited to the children of Israel. Not the spiritual children, mind you, but the physical children. Judaism is very much a part of that inheritance. It is the thing that seals the child to the land. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:22, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, Please define "authoritative source". Gilad55 ( talk) 23:46, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"Israel Science and Technology Homepage is the national database and directory of science and technology related sites in Israel. The site also includes sections on Jewish scientists and students in the Diaspora.
I established the first version of this site during my term as The Science Adviser to the Prime Minister Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu during 1996-1999. Since then, the site has been vastly expanded."
From the ISTH: "After the exile by the Romans at 70 CE, the Jewish people migrated to Europe and North Africa. In the Diaspora (scattered outside of the Land of Israel), they established rich cultural and economic lives, and contributed greatly to the societies where they lived. Yet, they continued their national culture and prayed to return to Israel through centuries. In the first half of the 20th century there were major waves of immigration of Jews back to Israel from Arab countries and from Europe. During the British rule in Palestine, the Jewish people were subject to great violence and massacres directed by Arab civilians or forces of the neighboring Arab states. During World War II, the Nazi regime in Germany decimated about 6 million Jews creating the great tragedy of The Holocaust." [2] Gilad55 ( talk) 23:54, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Jews are a nation. Israel is our national home. Jews in Israel and in the diaspora define themselves as descendants of the tribes of ancient Israel. This definition is reflected in the abbreviated history above. Intermarriage and the conversion of European women certainly occurred in the diaspora, but mass conversion to Judaism in the diaspora is not related in any true history of the diaspora. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:04, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"We decide what we do here by consulting authoritative sources, not personal opinions." I provided you several, and you rejected all of them. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:15, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
And Debresser, personal anecdotes and ad ignorantium fallacies do not constitute an argument. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:16, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
"Genetic science on this is constantly revising its conclusions as one can see from the conflicts within it: Ostrer back Behar, and when Richards-Costa came out, agreed with them, though Behar et al and Richards-Costa have fundamental differences over origins." They all agree that Jews have Levantine origins. They disagree on the extent of foreign admixture. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:28, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
"What your CAT does implicitly challenge is a valid historically grounded hypothesis that large numbers of Jews descend from people who converted to Judaism, in Egypt, Africa, and Europe. CATs should not assert as a given 'fact' what is just an hypothesis." So is this a blood purity argument? Last I checked, nobody disputes that modern Jews are mixed. We're all mixed. An ethnically pure nation simply does not exist. In the end, Jews are self-defined, and defined by most others, as a nation in direct descent from the Hebrew tribes of the Middle East. The "hypothesis" I've laid out has significant from scholars, geneticists, archaeologists, and historians. The idea that most Jews today are descendents only of converts has no such support, and exists primarily in the fevered imaginations of....well, you know. What distinguishes Jews from other national groups is that a good portion of it spent the last 1,500+ years in diaspora. The very name "Jewish diaspora" implies a scattering; a dispersion from their land of origin, and that is how it is applied to other nations as well. Unless you can show me a source indicating that A) there is a statute of limitations on descent or B) all individuals within a nation must have blood ties to particular patch of land to be counted as "of that country", then I see no reason to remove the cats, other than for (possibly) ideological purposes. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:45, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
The idea that Jews are not a nation is a relatively recent one, dating back to the past couple of centuries, and arising mainly from a fear of persecution. But even this has failed to gain any serious traction, outside of Reform and "anti-Zionist" Jewish circles. Today, it is championed mainly by anti-Zionists, usually by people who are not Jewish. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:52, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Shalom11111 ( talk) 08:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Shalom11111 did not allude to a double standard. Rather, Yambaran stated in plain terms that a removal of the cat would enforce a double standard. Also, genetics is one, but not the only pillar of the pro cat argument. Genetics is admissible as evidence supporting the concept of Jews as an ethnic group. This concept does not negate the concept of Jews as an ethno-religious group. In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive. Genetics affirms that Jewishness is as rooted in ancestry as it is in Judaism. Why else would a Jew who leaves the faith still be considered a Jew? Gilad55 ( talk) 22:21, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Debresser, What, according to you, does apply to Wikipedia categorization? What would you accept as evidence that Jews originated in the Levant as opposed to, let's say, your navel? Gilad55 ( talk) 22:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
As an aside, I was looking for a resource elaborating on a phenomenon I've long been aware of - religious Jews who oppose the secular Jewish state out of a belief that this state is an abomination before G-d. These persons are known to co-opt the cause of 'Palestinian human rights' to delegitimize Israel or to establish and live in unrecognized Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Persons living in these settlements are responsible for 'price-tagging' - attacks meant to heighten tensions between the Arabs of Palestine and Jews. From the Encyclopedia Britannica On-line:
"Jews hold widely divergent views about the role of Diaspora Jewry and the desirability and significance of maintaining a national identity. While the vast majority of Orthodox Jews support the Zionist movement (the return of Jews to Israel), some Orthodox Jews go so far as to oppose the modern nation of Israel as a godless and secular state, defying God’s will to send his Messiah at the time he has preordained.
According to the theory of shelilat ha-galut (“denial of the exile”), espoused by many Israelis, Jewish life and culture are doomed in the Diaspora because of assimilation and acculturation, and only those Jews who migrate to Israel have hope for continued existence as Jews. It should be noted that neither this position nor any other favourable to Israel holds that Israel is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy regarding the coming of the messianic era." [3] Gilad55 ( talk) 00:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
The Jewish state was established, in part, to accomplish the 'in-gathering of the exiles'. The effecting of this in-gathering is motivated by the belief that diaspora Jews are the descendants of persons who were forced into exile by a succession of conquests and occupations of Ha'aretz Yisrael. Anyone opposing the Jewish state would, of course, be required to oppose the belief that diaspora Jews, Jewish Americans included, are the descendants of the exiles. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"So why should wiki impose that categorization on him because he has Ashkenazi roots? This applies to an enormous number of Jews. Debresser reflects this trenchant commonsense view among you, and you won't accept his right to self-define his Jewishness."
Isn't that the same thing you are doing? What if Gilad, or Kitty, or Shalom11111, or AnkhMorpork (assuming all of the above are Jewish), or myself define ourselves as of SW Asian descent precisely because we have Jewish roots? Assuming I was of Ashkenazi descent, would it be ok for you to say "sorry, you're not Israelite/Middle Eastern anymore" because we spent the last 1,500+ years or so away from home (through no fault of our own, as history would attest), despite our own self-identity? If I recall correctly, there was one editor in the last thread who argued for inclusion, because removing them would threaten Jewish self-identity, and would also score political points for those who are currently attempting to erase or minimize Jewish history/ties to Israel (his arguments, not mine). Evildoer187 ( talk) 10:05, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Precisely, Nishidani, this category imposes nothing on no one. It merely affirms what a majority of Jews know to be true - Jews are from Judea. Individuals such as Debresser are free to define themselves as they like regardless of how ethnology, genetics or Halakha defines Jews as a whole or in part. No category of descent is absolute or mutually exclusive. Gilad55 ( talk) 15:23, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Just for starters.
"Jewish survival in the face of external pressures from Roman Catholic empire and Persian Zoroastrian empire is ‘enigmatic’ to historians."[Salo Wittmayer Baron, “A Social and Religious History of the Jews,” Volume II, Ancient Times, Part II. p 215 Jewish Publication Society of America, 1952.]
Baron explains it by eight factors:
1. Messianic faith. Belief in an ultimately positive outcome and restoration of Israel.
2. The doctrine of the Hereafter increasingly elaborated. Reconciled Jews with suffering in this world and helped them resist outside temptations to convert.
3. Suffering was given meaning through hope-inducing interpretation of their history and their destiny.
4. The doctrine of martyrdom and inescapability of persecution transformed it into a source of communal solidarity.
5. Jewish daily life was very satisfying. Jews lived among Jews. In practice, in a lifetime, individuals encountered overt persecution only on a few dramatic occasions. Jews mostly lived under discrimination that affected everyone, and to which they were habituated. Daily life was governed by a multiplicity of ritual requirements, so that each Jew was constantly aware of God throughout the day. “For the most part, he found this all-encompassing Jewish way of life so eminently satisfactory that he was prepared to sacrifice himself...for the preservation of its fundamentals.”[Baron, p. 216] Those commandments for which Jews had sacrificed their lives, such as defying idolatry, not eating pork, observing circumcision, were the ones most strictly adhered to.[Baron, p. 216-217]
6. The corporate development and segregationist policies of the late Roman empire and Persian empire, helped keep Jewish community organization strong.
7. Talmud provided an extremely effective force to sustain Jewish ethics, law and culture, judicial and social welfare system, universal education, regulation of strong family life and religious life from birth to death.
8. The concentration of Jewish masses within ‘the lower middle class’,[Baron, p. 217] with the middle class virtues of sexual self-control. There was a moderate path between asceticism and licentiousness. Marriage was considered to be the foundation of ethnic, and ethical, life.
Outside hostility only helped cement Jewish unity and internal strength and commitment.
Evildoer187 ( talk) 15:36, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Nishidani, The validity of this cat is not dependent upon all Jews being persons of exclusively South-western Asian descent. This would be true of any cat. For example, Palestinians are persons of Egyptian and Syrian descent among other descents. Yasser Arafat was born outside of Palestine and has only one parent of Palestinian birth whose mother was herself an Egyptian with no connection to Palestine. In spite of this, we can describe Arafat as a person of Palestinian descent. We can do this because categories of descent are not mutually exclusive. Gilad55 ( talk) 18:54, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Evildoer, That is precisely what I meant by 'double-standard'. Cats tend to have a functional purpose only when they are flexible. In the sciences, there are only a few cats that are mutually exclusive - animal, vegetable and mineral would be obvious examples. Cats of descent, on the other hand, are mutually inclusive. Gilad55 ( talk) 19:03, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, We are asserting that Jewish Americans are persons of South-west Asian descent, not Ashkenazim. You reveal a bias. Why, in your opinion, can Ashkenazi Jews be of only one descent? Gilad55 ( talk) 19:13, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
I self-identify as Jewish, not as Ashkenazi, Sephardi, etc. The recent descent of Jewish persons rarely enters into my thinking. Persons such as yourself are fond of characterizing Israel as an Ashkenazi enterprise while ignoring the reality that Ashkenazim make up only 20% of Israel's Jewish population. Meaning, 80% of Jewish Israelis are Jews of Arab descent! Moreover, many of these 'Arab Jews' also live in the US and France!
I'll put this question to you again. Why do you believe Ashkenazim can be of only one descent? Gilad55 ( talk) 23:14, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, There is no statute of limitations on descent. Descent is a far more inclusive category than you're allowing yourself to believe. One's descent is not determined just by where one's parents, grandparents and great-parents lived. One's descent is also determined by where one's kinship group established a long-standing presence and especially by where one's kinship group was formed. Gilad55 ( talk) 07:27, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
If you're struggling with the terminology, I could provide resources on terms such as descent, kinship group, etc. Gilad55 ( talk) 07:33, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Gilad, while I agree with what you are saying, the demographics of Israel are not particularly relevant here. Evildoer187 ( talk) 08:23, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Evildoer, I was pointing out that when we speak of Jewish Americans, Jewish Israelis, etc., we should not presume that we are speaking of Ashkenazim as Ashkenazim are not the be all end all of Jewry. Gilad55 ( talk) 16:24, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani appears unable or unwilling to engage in a debate based on reason and existing definitions of terms pertinent to this discussion. Instead, Nishidani is using rhetoric popular among anti-Israel agitators and dodging our points. Nishidani's purpose here may have nothing to do with promoting ethnographically correct categories of descent. Gilad55 ( talk) 16:24, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, My definition of who is a Jew is the one used by ethnologists. It is an inclusive definition that encompasses ethnic Jews like Ben Stiller, a popular actor/comedian who is not Halakhically Jewish, but of Jewish descent nonetheless. Your argument is based on a manufactured definition of descent - a definition tailored to fit your argument against keeping the category in place. I offered to provide you with the applied definition and explained that categories of descent are not mutually exclusive and subject to a statute of limitations. I provided the descent of Yasser Arafat as an example. Evildoer provided the descent of Romani as an example. You've been exposed as lacking the knowledge one would need to argue for or against the category or as being aware of the facts, but willfully ignoring them in order to pursue an agenda unrelated to an objective evaluation of the category. Gilad55 ( talk) 19:28, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
[Descent is what your family tells you about mum and dad, grandma and grandpa, and if you are lucky, their immediate heirs, if, as with most of us, you are not a member of an historically royal elite that history constantly noticed. - Nishidani] Once again, Nishidani is incorrect. In truth, Jews were constantly noticed in the countries we emigrated to and settled in. The paths of migration traveled by Jews in the diaspora have been well researched and documented. The consensus is that the diaspora, excluding the Babylonian exile, began in the Mediterranean. From the Mediterranean, Jews traveled to Eastern Europe then established colonies in Western Europe; most famously along the Rhine in Germany. Gilad55 ( talk) 19:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, An heir is a person who inherits something left to him or her by a parent or other family member belonging to a previous generation. I believe you were looking for the words 'immediate ancestors'. It's alright, though. I understood what you were trying to say. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:19, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
AGF certainly does have its limits. A larger issue is POV pushing regarding the definitions of terms this editor studied as an undergrad. This POV pushing was followed by a refusal to acknowledge correct definitions even when those definitions were accompanied by explanation and context. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:31, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Hard to believe this is still being discussed. I still don't see a reason to remove the categories. No serious historian or geneticist doubts the Levantine origins of most modern Jewry, and deleting them on the grounds that some Jews might not have Middle Eastern roots would not set a good precedent. It would also be WP:NOR. Ankh. Morpork 14:33, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
The laws mentioned by Nishidani were most likely motivated by Judeophobia. I wouldn't be surprised if there were Jewish cults that proselytized, but such cults (the Cult of Yahweh among them) shouldn't be confused with Judaism. Moreover, when Jews did proselytize, their targets were most likely other Jews - Jews who fell away from Judaism. Also, I challenge Nishidani to produce a true history describing a "vigorous proselytization" of non-Jews by authentic adherents to Judaism. True histories describe Jews as living in clusters or closed communities. In these histories, conversion is rare and accompanied by marriage. Gilad55 ( talk) 22:47, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Liz, AnkhMorpork merely pointed out that there is a minority of Jews who are not of Levantine descent (200,000 in the US). AnkhMorpork rightly assets that the existence of these Jews does not disqualify Jews as a whole from being categorized as being a people of Levantine descent. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:08, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
No, that's not how it works. A talk page conversation between 5 or 6 editors doesn't determine the basis of categorization of such a widely used category as "of descent". This disagreement needs to be the subject of an RFC or Dispute Resolution case. Many editors apply categories to articles and any decision that is considered definitive has to be more widely publicized otherwise, disputes will continue. No one editor can sum up a conversation, determine a result and declare an issue "closed". Liz Read! Talk! 16:29, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
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It looks like this issue will be going to Dispute Resolution so you'll all be able to present your arguments there (although I hope statements are limited to, say 500 words). I'll make sure a notice is placed on this talk page whenever the case is opened. Liz Read! Talk! 22:23, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
This is used de facto for all jews and people who don't consider themselves Jewish. I'm changing the description to work this apparent paradox out. -- Monochrome_ Monitor 15:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Classification: Article " David Ben-Gurion": Category:Polish Jews: Category:Polish people of Jewish descent: Category:European people of Jewish descent: Category:People of Jewish descent |
or
Classification: Article " David Ben-Gurion": Category:Jewish socialists: Category:Jewish activists: Category:Jews by occupation: Category:Jews |
So he's in both categories!-- Monochrome_ Monitor 20:12, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I think I see what you mean though. You mean that "Polish Jews" is in the category "People of Polish-Jewish descent" and that ethnic Jews will be in the umbrella category but not in the specific category. I get that. The problem is there are so many descent categories and most don't have "Jews" subcategories. And both give worthwhile information. For example Category:Democratic Republic of the Congo people of Greek-Jewish descent tells a lot more than Category:Democratic Republic of the Congo Jews. -- Monochrome_ Monitor 20:21, 24 January 2016 (UTC) I wish there were a way to preserve both. Many articles do preserve both, like this one Moïse Rahmani. It give both categories. A lot of pages do that, use them in a way that isn't mutually exclusive. -- Monochrome_ Monitor 20:21, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
You were being a bit mean. :( "Haven't you noticed yet that most of your edits to Jewish categories are reverted right away since they are incorrect or unnecessary?" Hopefully you see that many of my edits are just misunderstood... like one on world jewish population... the highest form of wisdom is kindness — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monochrome Monitor ( talk • contribs) 12:59, 29 January 2016 Why the hell aren't my squiggles turning into signatures?!!?!?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monochrome Monitor ( talk • contribs) 13:01, 29 January 2016
I just noticed that Debresser tried to remove the ME cat. This is very surprising, since he earlier acquiesced to an identical categorization here: Category talk:American people of Jewish descent. ??? What's going on? Musashiaharon ( talk) 03:27, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
Please do not remove the Middle Eastern Category from People of Jewish descent. Jews are predominiantly Semitic/ Afro-Asiatic/ Western Asian/"Middle Eastern"/etc. as per most Jews' dominant gene markers, Ethocultural/ Tribal customs/traditions, and more--all of which are cited on various related articles. Please include Middle Eastern, or you are contributing to racist rhetoric that aims to disassociate Jews from the Middle East. Jeffgr9 ( talk) 02:04, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm still not sure what changed since last year, since apparently Debresser saw some advantage to the extra precision offered by categorizing Jews as having "Middle Eastern descent." I'd like to know why that same precision is not advantageous here. Musashiaharon ( talk) 05:34, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
There is a huge talkpage discussion about this above. I see no need to repeat this. The conclusion there was the same as here and now: there is no consensus for addition of the Middle East category. Debresser ( talk) 16:20, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
Here's the deal... It seems as though only one side of this dispute has any interest in arguing out their points and seeing the discussion through to its conclusion (that is, until an agreement is reached or until one side comes out with a clearly stronger argument). Instead, Debresser wants to act as an impassable wall impeding any changes (or in this case, retaining a longstanding change) and/or strong-arming the other side via WP:MAJORITY and systemic WP:BIAS while refusing to provide rock-solid reasons for his proposed change. This is against Wikipedia policy, and I have no intention of letting it slide. Furthermore, relying on a two year old discussion to circumvent a more thorough examination of this dispute contravenes WP:CCC, and for that reason, I have decided to give Debresser (and anyone else on his side of the argument) three days to provide concrete, irrefutable, consistent, and policy based reasons for removing this category. No more discussion dodging. Otherwise, their complaints will be dismissed as WP:IDONTLIKEIT and their changes will be reverted. And should Debresser's edit warring continue beyond this point, he will be brought before an administrator for conduct review. It is clear to me now that a concerted effort at gaming the system is underway, and I refuse to play ball. The shenanigans end here. 2601:84:4502:61EA:203B:1B5C:2738:C1E9 ( talk) 05:09, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Who exactly could be excluded from Middle Eastern descent here? Consider the possibilities. First, a Jew could be convert themselves. If so, they would not fit in this category at all, since this cat is "People of Jewish descent." Similarly, if they were descended from two convert parents, they also would not belong in this category. However, if one parent is not a convert, the child would certainly belong in the category of "People of Jewish descent." All the more so if neither parent was a convert. As long as there is a single Jew in the lineage who is not a convert or descended entirely from converts, they would still be of Jewish descent, and hence also Middle Eastern. So there should be no problem adding the Jews of this cat to the Middle Eastern category. Musashiaharon ( talk) 05:23, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Jews are a Middle Eastern people, as per genetics, archaeology, culture, and history. centuries of diaspora doesn't negate that. And Ashkinazi Jews were never considered European hence their marginalization, genocide, and exile to the Pale. Several haplogroups in Ashkenazi populations have middle eastern / african origins (Nebel, A., Filon, D., Faerman, M., Soodyall, H., & Oppenheim, A. (2005). Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in ashkenazi jews. European Journal of Human Genetics : EJHG, 13(3), 388-91. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201319). 172.91.83.73 ( talk) 06:13, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
For the sake of reaching a fair, policy based conclusion to this saga, and to save people the effort of wading through the entire discussion again, I will use this space to address the other side's arguments in the order they appear. If you want to remove the Middle East descent category, the following points need to be grappled with and addressed with strong, irrefutable arguments. If you are able to successfully refute the points raised, I will gladly concede my argument and let you remove the category. Above all, consistency and adherence to facts and policy (NOT personal feelings and biases) must be the order of the day.
Now then, let's begin...
"There should not be a ME descent category here. Jews are not necessarily from the Middle East. I am not from the Middle East and in order to get some ME ancestor, I'd have to go back many generations. Far too many generations for it to be called ME Descent."
Then why does Wikipedia recognize the Romani as South Asian, despite being many centuries removed from the Indian subcontinent (almost as long as the Jews have been removed from their land)? Why do white American/Australian/Canadian/etc families have their descent recognized despite not having lived in their countries of origin for almost 500 years, if not longer? Why are Arabs considered to be "of Southwest Asian descent" even though a significant portion live in Northern Africa and haven't seen the Arabian Peninsula since the 7th century colonial conquests (hell, some might not have any actual Arab descent at all). Because ethnic origins and descent do not disappear with the passing of generations. Evidently, Wikipedia recognizes this as well, in all but one case: the Jews. This irregularity alone is particularly damning (see WP:BIAS and WP:CONSISTENCY).
If a WP:RS exists supporting your belief that ethnic descent eventually evaporates or expires, please link to it and apply it consistently across the board. Otherwise, there is no reason to remove this category. The Jews/Israelites are of Middle Eastern descent (the reason we are called Jews in the first place is *because* of our Middle Eastern descent, particularly from what was historically known as Judea, in the Middle East [1]), as a people and a nation. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] Many reliable sources, including genetic studies (see the above passage for some non-genetic sources) [21] [22] [21] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31], exist supporting this fact.
Jews are not predominantly middle eastern. They are from wherever they live. It's not racist to say that. IT makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category of "Middle Eastern descent." You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs we don't need to go down this road again.
"They are from wherever they live". And that is why their most recent/current countries of residence are also included in their respective subcats. This dispute is about people of Jewish descent as a parent cat. Someone of Ukrainian Jewish descent (to use one example) would be placed under people of Ukrainian descent and people of Jewish descent, and the people of Jewish descent cat would be a subcat of people of Middle Eastern descent, as it had been for well over a year now. This is because the Jewish people, as a nation and ethnic group, are indigenous to the Middle East (a quick link to the List of indigenous peoples page should suffice; look under South West Asia and you'll find Jews there. That page is very heavily monitored and thoroughly sourced, so it stands to reason that Jews would have been removed long ago if they did not meet the accepted anthropological criteria). Ethnicity does not disappear by virtue of prolonged separation from their natal land, as mentioned above. Following that logic, European settlers in North America would be Native American by now.
"It makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category" of "Middle Eastern descent." It does if this American immigrant also belongs to a Middle Eastern ethnic group, like say......Kurds, or Assyrians, or Jews.
"You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs". And that is why allegations of WP:BIAS were raised, because no valid, WP:RS based reasons as to why Jews as a people should not be categorized as Middle Eastern were ever put forward (and indeed, they still haven't). The arguments that were put forward were each thoroughly picked apart, but instead of acknowledging it, the involved editors on the other side of the fence ignored it and continued espousing the same misinformed claptrap that had already been addressed. That battle was "won" not by the strength of arguments, but by majority groupthink. I will not allow the same thing to happen again in this case.
"That's a whole lot of OR. What distinguishes a Jew is being a member of the Jewish faith. It has nothing to do with location. Someone born in the US to US parents can be Jewish without ever touching the middle east. Indeed, a convert to Judaism is not from the Middle East. This is not like Indians or NativeAmericans, where they are tied to a place. Being Jewish has zero to do with being of Middle Eastern descent."
Per the above citations, Jews are a nation and ethnic group. Even pushing all of those aside, the real fly in the ointment for the "Jews are a religious faith only" argument is that atheist Jews (and even Jews who practice other faiths) are recognized as Jewish under our laws. Judaism is simply our national faith, and observance is not a requirement for being a Jew. Furthermore, certain Native tribes, in addition to being removed from their lands (would anyone tell the descendants of Cherokee exiled via the Trail of Tears that they are no longer descended from Tennessee?), did make a habit of adopting outsiders into their fold and making them a part of their tribe. Conversion to Judaism is the same thing. It could also be compared to immigration to a foreign country, say....Ireland, or France, or the UK. Would we stop considering Irish, French, and English people "European" because they are open to newcomers?
I think that just about wraps it up. You have three days to provide a sufficient counter-response to the above points; if you fail or refuse to do so, the Middle Eastern category will be restored and any further protests on your end will be duly ignored and, should your edit warring continue, you will be brought before an administrator. Good luck. 2601:84:4502:61EA:203B:1B5C:2738:C1E9 ( talk) 07:19, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
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NOTE: The above active IP address was me. I had forgotten my password and saw no harm in editing without logging in. Apologies for the confusion.
I don't know how to install an RfC for this section, so someone else will have to help me with that. Anyway, here we will decide if Jewish descent is a valid subcat of Middle Eastern descent. I will open up this discussion with my case for the inclusion of this category (in the form of a rebuttal I had written earlier today in response to another editor), and my hope is that this time, the outcome will purely be on the basis of strong arguments. No more dodging, no more evasions.
OK then, let's begin...
"There should not be a ME descent category here. Jews are not necessarily from the Middle East. I am not from the Middle East and in order to get some ME ancestor, I'd have to go back many generations. Far too many generations for it to be called ME Descent."
Then why does Wikipedia recognize the Romani as South Asian, despite being many centuries removed from the Indian subcontinent (almost as long as the Jews have been removed from their land)? Why do white American/Australian/Canadian/etc families have their descent recognized despite not having lived in their countries of origin for almost 500 years, if not longer? Why are Arabs considered to be "of Southwest Asian descent" even though a significant portion live in Northern Africa and haven't seen the Arabian Peninsula since the 7th century colonial conquests (hell, some might not have any actual Arab descent at all). Because ethnic origins and descent do not disappear with the passing of generations. Evidently, Wikipedia recognizes this as well, in all but one case: the Jews. This irregularity alone is particularly damning (see WP:BIAS and WP:CONSISTENCY).
If a WP:RS exists supporting your belief that ethnic descent eventually evaporates or expires, please link to it and apply it consistently across the board. Otherwise, there is no reason to remove this category. The Jews/Israelites are of Middle Eastern descent (the reason we are called Jews in the first place is *because* of our Middle Eastern descent, particularly from what was historically known as Judea, in the Middle East [1]), as a people and a nation. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] Many reliable sources, including genetic studies (see the above passage for some non-genetic sources) [21] [22] [21] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31], exist supporting this fact.
Jews are not predominantly middle eastern. They are from wherever they live. It's not racist to say that. IT makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category of "Middle Eastern descent." You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs we don't need to go down this road again.
"They are from wherever they live". And that is why their most recent/current countries of residence are also included in their respective subcats. This dispute is about people of Jewish descent as a parent cat. Someone of Ukrainian Jewish descent (to use one example) would be placed under people of Ukrainian descent and people of Jewish descent, and the people of Jewish descent cat would be a subcat of people of Middle Eastern descent, as it had been for well over a year now. This is because the Jewish people, as a nation and ethnic group, are indigenous to the Middle East (a quick link to the List of indigenous peoples page should suffice; look under South West Asia and you'll find Jews there. That page is very heavily monitored and thoroughly sourced, so it stands to reason that Jews would have been removed long ago if they did not meet the accepted anthropological criteria). Ethnicity does not disappear by virtue of prolonged separation from their natal land, as mentioned above. Following that logic, European settlers in North America would be Native American by now.
"It makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category" of "Middle Eastern descent." It does if this American immigrant also belongs to a Middle Eastern ethnic group, like say......Kurds, or Assyrians, or Jews.
"You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs". And that is why allegations of WP:BIAS were raised, because no valid, WP:RS based reasons as to why Jews as a people should not be categorized as Middle Eastern were ever put forward (and indeed, they still haven't). The arguments that were put forward were each thoroughly picked apart, but instead of acknowledging it, the involved editors on the other side of the fence ignored it and continued espousing the same misinformed claptrap that had already been addressed. That battle was "won" not by the strength of arguments, but by majority groupthink. I will not allow the same thing to happen again in this case.
"That's a whole lot of OR. What distinguishes a Jew is being a member of the Jewish faith. It has nothing to do with location. Someone born in the US to US parents can be Jewish without ever touching the middle east. Indeed, a convert to Judaism is not from the Middle East. This is not like Indians or NativeAmericans, where they are tied to a place. Being Jewish has zero to do with being of Middle Eastern descent."
Per the above citations, Jews are a nation and ethnic group. Even pushing all of those aside, the real fly in the ointment for the "Jews are a religious faith only" argument is that atheist Jews (and even Jews who practice other faiths) are recognized as Jewish under our laws. Judaism is simply our national faith, and observance is not a requirement for being a Jew. Furthermore, certain Native tribes, in addition to being removed from their lands (would anyone tell the descendants of Cherokee exiled via the Trail of Tears that they are no longer descended from Tennessee?), did make a habit of adopting outsiders into their fold and making them a part of their tribe. Conversion to Judaism is the same thing. It could also be compared to immigration to a foreign country, say....Ireland, or France, or the UK. Would we stop considering Irish, French, and English people "European" because they are open to newcomers? ChronoFrog ( talk) 12:16, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
The last discussion we had on whether or not to include these categories to people of Jewish descent ended in somewhat of a stalemate. Neither side had consensus, either for removing the cats or for restoring them, and yet certain editors still took matters into their own hands. Let's settle this once and for all. Should the categories be added, or removed?
My opinion remains the same as before: the categories are appropriate. Statute of limitations on descent do not exist, and as shown through a litany of data, the overwhelming majority of modern Jews do trace their origins to the Middle East. Evildoer187 ( talk) 04:53, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Nishidani, Jews were formed as a people in the ME and began leaving their homeland one millennia before Jesus walked the earth. The Jewish diaspora is the largest diaspora known to ethnographers. Also, Jews do not proselytize and tend to live in isolated clusters, so how did so many groups of Jews emerge outside of the Levant if they did not emigrate from there? Gilad55 ( talk) 22:47, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
One has to wonder why an editor would oppose an ethnographically appropriate category. Ethnic Jews are of Middle Eastern descent, so why wouldn't we consider Jewish Americans to be persons of Middle Eastern descent? Anti-Semitism is defined as a hostility toward Jews as a people and toward the attributes of the Jewish people. The Levantine descent of ethnic Jews is certainly one of those attributes. Let's add the category and be done with it. Gilad55 ( talk) 22:39, 26 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Every reason given was contrived, so I am indeed still wondering why an editor would oppose including Jewish Americans in this category when Jews of so many other nationalities are included. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:12, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55 I would like to point out Debresser's hostility and failure to assume good faith. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
If by "loud and aggressive" you mean committed to civil discourse and abiding by Wikipedia guidelines, then yes, I suppose Evildoer and myself are completely out of control. You, sir, removed a category without consensus then violated 3RR. I would take some time to reflect if I were in your position. Gilad55 ( talk) 01:58, 27 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
You didn't have consensus to remove them, just as I didn't have consensus to add them,
A Jew is therefore a member of a people, by birth or by conversion, who chooses to share a common cultural heritage, a religious perspective, and a spiritual horizon derived uniquely from Jewish experience and Jewish wisdom
Nishidani, Identifying as a Jewish American of ME descent does not require a person to assume a set of religious beliefs. The Levantine descent of all major Jewish ethnic sub-groups is affirmed by science. Namely, the sciences of genetics and archeology. Genetics affirms that Jews, all Jews, share a common Levantine ancestry. Genetics also has revealed that the Khazar hypothesis is a myth. Archeology affirms that the oldest artifacts unearthed in Israel/Palestine are of Hebrew and Canaanite origin thus confirming the ancient presence of Jews and Jewish civilization in the Levant. A wholehearted belief in Torah is wonderful, but not necessary to claim one's Jewish identity and heritage. Also, one does not replace the other. The two are complementary. Gilad55 ( talk) 16:33, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
I won't address the second part of your post. Gilad beat me to the punch on that one. The categories in question had been there for over a year before there was any discussion, and had not been removed until last week, several months after it was established (albeit ambiguously) that nobody had consensus to change anything. And seeing as they didn't have consensus to remove it, they were reverted, and rightly so. This is a two-way street. Evildoer187 ( talk) 17:06, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Also, Nishidani, you used the phrase, "Zionism is not Judaism". Neither Evildoer nor myself are promoting Jewish nationalism and yet you used a phrase popular among persons who oppose the return of Jews to Israel and Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state. Are you here to promote scientifically appropriate categories or merely to oppose Zionism; central to which is the belief that Jews are indigenous to Israel? This is not a rhetorical question. Gilad55 ( talk) 17:19, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
The Levantine descent of all major Jewish ethnic sub-groups is affirmed by science.
Nishidani, When I speak of Jews, I speak of the Jewish people as a whole. Ashkenazim often link Israel to the West or act as the face of Israel, yet only make-up 20% of Israel's Jews. Also, it's interesting that when I say, 'Jewish American' you assume that I am referring to Ashkenazim. Anti-Zionists are preoccupied with Ashkenazim and with portraying Ashkenazi Jewishness as inauthentic. Yes, genetic studies suggest that Ashkenazim possess European maternal ancestors who likely married Jewish men who emigrated to Southern Europe from the Levant. Yes, these genes can be traced to four maternal ancestors. Yes, this would mean that the descendants of these women are not halachically Jewish, but Jewish in the secular and ethnic sense; which would make them eligible for inclusion in the category being discussed. We are not, after all, discussing the Orthodox definition of who is a Jew as this definition is far too exclusive to apply to any persons except the Orthodox. It would seem that the only person relating this discussion to Zionism and Jewish immigration to Israel is you. You've been observed employing anti-Zionist rhetoric while attempting to invalidate the ME descent of Jewish Americans. Gilad55 ( talk) 22:59, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Also, widespread conversion to Judaism is hotly contested. There are no reliable, true histories that attest to such conversion. You've employed yet another anti-Zionist meme. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:03, 28 February 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"Zionism is not Judaism." I am reticent to get into a political discussion on Wikipedia, as I don't find this to be the appropriate forum. That being said, Israel and a desire to return to it has been integral to Jewish culture long before these ideas manifested themselves in the Zionist movement. At best, your comment is ignorant. At worst, it is willfully disingenuous.
"Does anyone on earth actually disagree with that?" Actually yes, there are plenty of Jews who disagree with you. And if I am to wax anecdotal for a moment, the only Jews I've met who separate Zionism from Judaism are ultra right wing Hasidim and anti-Zionist leftist Jews. As for myself, I don't believe they are literally the same, but they are undeniably intertwined with one another. Evildoer187 ( talk) 11:39, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
"much of the 'science' over the past 15 years has been questioned as questionable." By whom?
"If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders". I think you mean "matrilineal".
"Behar and his team consistently came up with results that 'there is a likely Near Eastern origin for the maternal gene pool of Ashkenazi Jewry." His study does not arrive at this conclusion. In fact, the word "likely" does not appear even once in the entire paper. Or are you referring to Nadia's book (see below)? At any rate, genetic and historical consensus places the origins of Ashkenazim in the Near East, particularly the Levant.
Also, you cited Nadia Abu El Haj, a noted anti-Zionist whose very credentials have been repeatedly called into question. You say you are opposed to dragging ideology into this discussion, but then you cite her? Needless to say, that source by itself is not adequate. The DNA tests speak for themselves, and overwhelmingly in favor of Levantine origins for all Jewish groups. Evildoer187 ( talk) 11:49, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
As for Richard's study. "As might be expected from the autosomal picture, Y-chromosome studies generally show the opposite trend to mtDNA (with a predominantly Near Eastern source) with the exception of the large fraction of European ancestry seen in Ashkenazi Levites"
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131008/ncomms3543/full/ncomms3543.html Evildoer187 ( talk) 12:24, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
"If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders". I think you mean "matrilineal".
In fact, the word "likely" does not appear even once in the entire paper.
'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, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.
In the Ashkenazi Jews, this approach enabled us to reconstruct a detailed phylogenetic tree for the major Ashkenazi Hgs K and N1b, allowing the detection of a small set of only four individual female ancestors, likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool, whose descendants lived in Europe and carried forward their particular mtDNA variants to 3,500,000 individuals in a time frame of <2 millennia.
Also, widespread conversion to Judaism is hotly contested.
'The Jewish attitude toward proselytism apparently changed from a passive to a more active approach during the Hellenistic period. The chief reason for presuming that there were massive conversions to Judaism during this period is the seemingly dramatic increase in Jewish populations at this time. . .Only proselytism can account for this large increase'](pre-Exilic 150,000 to Ist century CE 8 million)
Some notable poskim, from non-Zionist Ashkenazi circles, placed a halakhic safek (doubt) over the Jewishness of the Beta Israel. Such dissenting voices include rabbis Rabbi Elazar Shach, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.[55][56] Similar doubts were raised within the same circles towards Bene Israel Jews,[57] and Russian immigrants to Israel in the 1990s.
"No I don't on the first count". In which case, you are wrong. The paper you linked to just now (your second link redirects to a barebones Wikipedia article) are clearly referring to maternal DNA, not Y-DNA. You said "If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders", to which I responded that the 4 founders were matrilineal. And you're accusing me of distorting?
"and you are wrong on the second." I believed you were referring to citation #16 on here ( /info/en/?search=Genetic_studies_on_Jews#Autosomal_DNA).
"Accusing me of being 'wilfully disingenuous while you now distort and misrepresent the relevant papers I cited is ironic." I haven't misrepresented a thing, and your accusation is doubly ironic given what I just point out above. My "willfully disingenuous" remark was direct at Alf.
"I.e. you dismiss peer-reviewed academic RS (Nadia Abu El-Haj) whose reportage you dislike, by adducing personal readings of the relevant primary literature." I was simply pointing out the irony of your complaints vis a vis ideological arguments, when you have cited someone who is both anti-Zionist and of dubious credibility. One look at her Wikipedia article is enough to verify this. Used by itself, her book is not sufficient to refute the mountains of DNA tests reaffirming Levantine origins for Ashkenazi Jews.
"Your personal readings are then shown to misrepresent both Nadia Abu El-Haj's reportage of Behar's paper, and Behar's paper itself." I mistakenly believed that Behar only released one paper, which I linked to. That was an error on my part. My mind is hazy at 3 in the morning, and I may have subconsciously conflated him with another geneticist. In any case, you referred to 4 patrilineal founders in your post, and that's what I was referring to. As for Nadia, what exactly have I misrepresented?
"Y-DNA , further, defines patrilineal descent, which is excluded as a criterion for Jewishness by rabbinical consensus. If the rabbis are right, Behar et al., are wrong. If Behar and co are right, then the relevant halakha must be rewritten. See? The conceptual paradigm is messy." Strictly speaking, if one is born to a Jewish father and gentile mother, he/she is still of Jewish descent. As genetic studies (including those you have cited) attest to, Ashkenazim have Levantine origins and varying degrees of European admixture. That is predominant narrative among scholars and geneticists. Therefore, European descent and Middle Eastern descent are applicable. However, given how Jews are defined both by themselves and by others, the latter would be more appropriate, in this case. Evildoer187 ( talk) 13:54, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, if one is born to a Jewish father and gentile mother, he/she is still of Jewish descent.
'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, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.
"Both of you, please refresh your reading of history, starting with the conversion of the Abiabene aristocracy; John Hyrcanus's conversion of the Idumeans; the conversion of the Himyarite aristocracy" Those are all Southwest Asian kingdoms. Adiabene was in Assyria, Idumea in the Levant (in what is now southern Israel and SW Jordan), and the Himyarite kingdom was in Yemen. Further, nobody is arguing that Ashkenazim or any Jewish group are purely Levantine, just that the Middle Eastern descent is clearly there, and it is not minor. Nobody is genetically pure. Moreover, Jews self-identify as Judeans (that's where "Jew" etymologically derives from), a tribe native to the Middle East. So long as that self-identity is preserved, and the ancestral links between modern Jewry and the Middle East have been proven time and again, the categories are applicable.
"ps. in this thread, 'reticence' is used as a synonym for reluctance (like the classic 'transpire' in the sense of 'happen'). We really should avoid solecistic usage, if only because it disturbs my sleeping pattern (esp. while I'm editing)" And I was reluctant to delve into a political argument. The word was used appropriately. Evildoer187 ( talk) 14:07, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
I am reticent to get into a political discussion on Wikipedia, as I don't find this to be the appropriate forum.
And I was reluctant to delve into a political argument. The word was used appropriately.
"strictly speaking is meaningless. Your position is entertained only by some schools of Reform Judaism. A sister in law of mine was denied that recognition by a rabbi of great distinction who said she required conversion in such a case. The rabbi was of great distinction and a wonderful man, - he went out of his way to help her with exceptional courtesy and humanity -but was under the constraint of halakhic law. You are prevaricating."
You ignore secular and atheist Jews as well. Further, we don't use Halakhic law to determine whether or not someone is Jewish by descent, and we never have. Anyone born to a Jewish or partially Jewish parent is listed under these categories. We even have Karl Marx and Heinrich Heine listed as Jews, even though both were baptized into Christianity, and certainly would not be considered Jews under Halakhic law. That's not prevarication. Sorry.
"Walls of text, poorly formatted, and going all over the place with 'arguments' that ignore, distort or talk round specific issues cannot, by their nature, be replied to. That you arer either totally confused, or out of your depth, or are playing games can be seen at a glance by comparing the following sequence of edits above."
Not only are these hypocritical accusations (most of them, anyway), they breach WP:NPA. I am a writer, and proofreading is par the course for us. I post responses as promptly as possible and then tweak them in the hopes they won't be lost in the shuffle.
As for the paper, I already confessed to making a mistake, which I ascribed to having just woken up. Posting on here when I was half-asleep was not a master stroke, in hindsight.
"If you use patrilineal descent, you have 4 founders"
This passage here is what I was referring to, when I said "I think you mean "matrilineal". What study says there are 4 patrilineal founders? None of the links you've posted make any such argument.
At any rate, the consensus among scholars, geneticists, et al is clearly in favor of Levantine origins for Ashkenazi Jews. Even Elhaik's controversial study concluded that Ashkenazim had "Semitic" ancestry. Nobody disputes that Ashkenazim have mixed with indigenous Europeans. However, the Near Eastern ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews is still significant, and pretty much fact at this point.
Descent categorization is contingent on nationality and ancestry. I've already addressed the latter. In case of the former, Jewish is a distinct nationality, originating in (yes) the Middle East. If Jews were merely Poles, Russians, Hungarians, Ethiopians, or what have you, that renders the entire family of "Jewish descent" categories useless. Evildoer187 ( talk) 16:40, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
All these DNA stories are no really relevant to the issue. Not because part of my blood can be traced to Spain (some of my ancestors were of Sephardic heritage) am I of Spanish descent. If this is how we categorize people, all of us would have a long list of descent categories. We usually go back only a few generations, as far as is relevant to the person himself. DNA studies show that all of the world has one ancestor in Biblical times. And where did this ancestor live, pray tell? There is no end to this argument, and that was one of the main arguments against these categories in the discussion. Debresser ( talk) 17:56, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
DNA studies show that all of the world has one ancestor in Biblical times.
What are "Biblical times" and how could a timeline not taken from a true historical record be relevant to science and to scientific studies? We don't even know for certain when Mosche wrote the Pentateuch let alone when the events of Genesis and Exodus took place. DNA, unlike timelines constructed to affirm stories found in religious texts, is relevant to this discussion. Genetic studies confirm that modern Jews, all modern Jews, share common ancestors - ancestors who were most likely Levantine in origin due to the genetic overlap between all modern Jews and other groups living in the Levant; namely Syrians, Druze and even persons who self-identify as Arab Palestinians. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:09, 1 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Debresser, Yes, all of humanity share common ancestors who can be traced to a point 400,000 years in the past. When geneticists like Ostrer identified the common ancestors of Jews, they were examining separate clusters of DNA; autosomal DNA to be specific. Jews share more autosomal DNA with each other than we do with non-Jews. We share so much of this DNA that many of us are third and fifth cousins. Yes, we are all distantly related, yet share more of our genes with some groups than with others. Also, I say, "most likely Levantine" due to the fact that the genes shared by Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrahim overlap with genes shared by other groups living in the Levant. This indicates that the ancestry shared by Jews is of Levantine origin. Gilad55 ( talk) 02:14, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Also, Debresser, science does not offer "proof". Science offers evidence. Gilad55 ( talk) 02:17, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"One is full of assertion, the other enlists evidence, and tries at least to construe it correctly, which cannot be said for what Evildoer has done above, visibly altering the evidence."
Asserting that I'm deliberately altering things does not make it so. The mistakes I have made, I have admitted to. You have done no such thing. Rather, you ignore relevant evidence to push a POV. Evildoer187 ( talk) 02:20, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
"We usually go back only a few generations, as far as is relevant to the person himself." Debresser, does that mean that an African-American whose family was brought over on early slave ships, and has been in America for many hundreds of years, is now white? Or Native American? And for that matter, are the descendants of the pilgrims now Anglo-Saxon? My husband is ethnically Chinese but his family has lived in Malaysia for as long as they can remember (at least 150 years) and thus has no record of ever having been in China... does this suddenly make him an ethnic Malay? And for all he knows, he could have some Malay blood in him... is he still Chinese? If only the last few generations is relevant, then we're basically negating the concept of ethnic groups at all. But as you're of course aware, in exile, we still managed to maintain our identity as a nation for 2,000 years, and did have distinct Jewish vernacular languages that incorporated Hebrew, and did maintain Jewish culture and customs... There is likely over a period of two thousand years to be some intermarriage with local populations, but there is enough Semitic Y-DNA markers to say that Middle Eastern descent plays a very substantial role in the DNA makeup of most Jews. After all, if you're asking for 100% of Jews to have 100% Jewish blood quantum before such a category could be used, then I'm afraid that you're really going to struggle to find ANY ethnic group that such a high standard could apply to... Kitty ( talk) 02:37, 2 March 2014 (UTC) Nishidani, re: "One could just as validly argue that Jews are people who subscribe to Judaism, a religion developed in the ME. The formula you adopt disenfranchises many Jews, for it has a logical entailment: Jews who do not hail from a semitic background in the Middle East are not in fact Jews." The traditional definition of a Jew is a person who is the child of a Jewish mother. Thus, one can join the tribe despite not being an original member of it (just as Native Americans adopted people into their tribes, or like I can gain citizenship into another country). Jews are both a religion or a people, there's no question of either-or. But while there have been some converts from outside of the ME, they would presumably either marry a Jew or their children or grand-children would or so on; the idea of someone being descended from 10 generations of only converts seems incredibly unlikely. There's enough Middle Eastern y-DNA markers within most of the Jewish people to indicate that this forms a very large part of our descent, and as I mentioned to Debresser, if you're looking to speak in absolutes (100% of Jews must have 100% blood quantum) then basically no ethnic groups are going to be valid. Not all Jews do have shared ancestry, but very many do, and I don't think we should be ignoring that or insisting that they all have to. Kitty ( talk) 02:46, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
The overwhelming majority of Jews share ancestry with each other, and with other Levantines. Especially given how the majority of Jews alive today are Ashkenazi, Sephardic, or Mizrahi. This has been affirmed time and again by DNA tests. Purity of blood should not be a prerequisite for inclusion in a category. Evildoer187 ( talk) 02:53, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
^ An ad-hominem attack and, worse, a display of ignorance. Jews are an ethnic group. Einstein was an atheist who, during adulthood, turned away from Judaism, a religion practiced by most, but not by all ethnic Jews, and embraced scientific inquiry and mathematics. The Honorable Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef was a Jew who emigrated to Israel from Iraq and, being Sephardi, would have shared no European ancestors with Einstein; who was Ashkenazi. But, yes, both men are of the same nation and shared Levantine ancestors. Gilad55 ( talk) 04:16, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"A groundbreaking paper published in 2000 by Harry Ostrer, a professor of genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer showed that most modern Jews are descended on their male side from a core population of approximately 20,000 Jews who migrated from Italy over the first millennium and eventually settled in Eastern Europe.
“All European [Ashkenazi] Jews seem connected on the order of fourth or fifth cousins,” Ostrer has said.
Known as the so-called “Rhineland hypothesis,” the consensus research holds that most Ashkenazi Jews, as well as many Jews tracing their lineage to Italy, North Africa, Iraq, Iran, Kurdish regions and Yemen, share common paternal haplotypes also found among many Arabs from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Only a small percentage of the Y-DNA of Ashkenazi Jews—less than 25 percent—originated outside of the Near East, presumably as converts.
This historical and genetic mosaic has provided support for the controversial concept of a “Jewish people.” The Law of Return, the Israeli law that established the right of Jews around the world to settle in Israel and which remains in force today, was a central tenet of Zionism. It is invoked by some religious Jews to support territorial claims (even though, based on this research, many Arabs, including Palestinians, where therefore also have a genetic ‘right of return’)." [1] The Genetic Literacy Project is a great source for unbiased information on this topic. Gilad55 ( talk) 04:34, 2 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
If you haven't figured it out by now Yuvn, I couldn't give a rat's ass about religious tradition. If someone is documented as having Jewish ancestors, then they are Jews as far as Wikipedia is concerned. And where do Jews trace their ethnic origins and descent to? The Middle East, as virtually all of the genetic papers agree on barring some minor quibbling over the extent of European admixture. Otherwise, these Jewish descent categories should not even exist. Evildoer187 ( talk) 04:48, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
No other ethnic group is required to provide academic sources as evidence of their descent. We trust that indigenous Mexicans are the descendants of the Incas, among other ancient South American indigenous civilizations, because Mexicans claim this descent as part of their national ethos. Similarly, Hebrew descent is part of the Jewish ethos. As there are no viable theories to counter the claim that all Jews share a common descent, the burden of proof falls on those who would have the cat removed, not on those who would keep it in place. To proceed in any other way, would be to enforce a double-standard and ignore the process by which any cat should be removed. Gilad55 ( talk) 04:40, 3 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Here are some genetic sources.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/tcga/tcgapdf/Nebel-HG-00-IPArabs.pdf
http://bhusers.upf.edu/.../uploads/2011/02/Behar2010.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12820706
http://www.nature.com/.../100603/full/news.2010.277.html
http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/Behar_contrasting.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032072/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S0002929707613251
http://forward.com/.../jews-are-a-race-genes-reveal/...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687795/
And one for women...
http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/43026_Doron.pdf
I'll be back with some non-genetic sources. Evildoer187 ( talk) 04:43, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
And here we have the unedited text of the Jewish Encyclopedia from 1906, with some statistics from both Josephus and Tacitus. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13992-statistics
"Tacitus declares that Jerusalem at its fall contained 600,000 persons; Josephus, that there were as many as 1,100,000, of whom 97,000 were sold as slaves. It is from the latter that most European Jews are descended."
I will post some more links tomorrow, as soon as I get out of class. Evildoer187 ( talk) 05:15, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
That is a good joke. :) Whether it is all, many or most, ethnic Jews hail from the Middle East. All, many and most would each merit a description of Jews as being persons of Middle Eastern descent. Jews do not proselytize and genetic studies affirm that ethnic Jews possess Levantine DNA. Science tells us that it makes no difference whether a Jew is Ashkenazi, Sephardi or Mizrahi. Members of each group are related as distant cousins within a family. Also, persons can be included in more than one category of descent. Many Ashkenazi Jews can claim Western European descent while simultaneously claiming Middle Eastern descent by virtue of the fact that their forefathers began their journey in Israel/Palestine. Were you under the impression that categories of descent are mutually exclusive? Gilad55 ( talk) 23:02, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
As an aside, inheritance in Ha'aretz Yisrael was based on tribal affiliation which is passed from father to son. The son inherits his share of the land from his father and so on. It's good that we emphasize the Mosaic covenant, but the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant of inheritance, is the foundational covenant of Judaism. This is perhaps why Jews do not and never proselytize. The inheritance of Ha'aretz Yisrael is limited to the children of Israel. Not the spiritual children, mind you, but the physical children. Judaism is very much a part of that inheritance. It is the thing that seals the child to the land. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:22, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, Please define "authoritative source". Gilad55 ( talk) 23:46, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"Israel Science and Technology Homepage is the national database and directory of science and technology related sites in Israel. The site also includes sections on Jewish scientists and students in the Diaspora.
I established the first version of this site during my term as The Science Adviser to the Prime Minister Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu during 1996-1999. Since then, the site has been vastly expanded."
From the ISTH: "After the exile by the Romans at 70 CE, the Jewish people migrated to Europe and North Africa. In the Diaspora (scattered outside of the Land of Israel), they established rich cultural and economic lives, and contributed greatly to the societies where they lived. Yet, they continued their national culture and prayed to return to Israel through centuries. In the first half of the 20th century there were major waves of immigration of Jews back to Israel from Arab countries and from Europe. During the British rule in Palestine, the Jewish people were subject to great violence and massacres directed by Arab civilians or forces of the neighboring Arab states. During World War II, the Nazi regime in Germany decimated about 6 million Jews creating the great tragedy of The Holocaust." [2] Gilad55 ( talk) 23:54, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Jews are a nation. Israel is our national home. Jews in Israel and in the diaspora define themselves as descendants of the tribes of ancient Israel. This definition is reflected in the abbreviated history above. Intermarriage and the conversion of European women certainly occurred in the diaspora, but mass conversion to Judaism in the diaspora is not related in any true history of the diaspora. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:04, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"We decide what we do here by consulting authoritative sources, not personal opinions." I provided you several, and you rejected all of them. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:15, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
And Debresser, personal anecdotes and ad ignorantium fallacies do not constitute an argument. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:16, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
"Genetic science on this is constantly revising its conclusions as one can see from the conflicts within it: Ostrer back Behar, and when Richards-Costa came out, agreed with them, though Behar et al and Richards-Costa have fundamental differences over origins." They all agree that Jews have Levantine origins. They disagree on the extent of foreign admixture. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:28, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
"What your CAT does implicitly challenge is a valid historically grounded hypothesis that large numbers of Jews descend from people who converted to Judaism, in Egypt, Africa, and Europe. CATs should not assert as a given 'fact' what is just an hypothesis." So is this a blood purity argument? Last I checked, nobody disputes that modern Jews are mixed. We're all mixed. An ethnically pure nation simply does not exist. In the end, Jews are self-defined, and defined by most others, as a nation in direct descent from the Hebrew tribes of the Middle East. The "hypothesis" I've laid out has significant from scholars, geneticists, archaeologists, and historians. The idea that most Jews today are descendents only of converts has no such support, and exists primarily in the fevered imaginations of....well, you know. What distinguishes Jews from other national groups is that a good portion of it spent the last 1,500+ years in diaspora. The very name "Jewish diaspora" implies a scattering; a dispersion from their land of origin, and that is how it is applied to other nations as well. Unless you can show me a source indicating that A) there is a statute of limitations on descent or B) all individuals within a nation must have blood ties to particular patch of land to be counted as "of that country", then I see no reason to remove the cats, other than for (possibly) ideological purposes. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:45, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
The idea that Jews are not a nation is a relatively recent one, dating back to the past couple of centuries, and arising mainly from a fear of persecution. But even this has failed to gain any serious traction, outside of Reform and "anti-Zionist" Jewish circles. Today, it is championed mainly by anti-Zionists, usually by people who are not Jewish. Evildoer187 ( talk) 06:52, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Shalom11111 ( talk) 08:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Shalom11111 did not allude to a double standard. Rather, Yambaran stated in plain terms that a removal of the cat would enforce a double standard. Also, genetics is one, but not the only pillar of the pro cat argument. Genetics is admissible as evidence supporting the concept of Jews as an ethnic group. This concept does not negate the concept of Jews as an ethno-religious group. In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive. Genetics affirms that Jewishness is as rooted in ancestry as it is in Judaism. Why else would a Jew who leaves the faith still be considered a Jew? Gilad55 ( talk) 22:21, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Debresser, What, according to you, does apply to Wikipedia categorization? What would you accept as evidence that Jews originated in the Levant as opposed to, let's say, your navel? Gilad55 ( talk) 22:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
As an aside, I was looking for a resource elaborating on a phenomenon I've long been aware of - religious Jews who oppose the secular Jewish state out of a belief that this state is an abomination before G-d. These persons are known to co-opt the cause of 'Palestinian human rights' to delegitimize Israel or to establish and live in unrecognized Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Persons living in these settlements are responsible for 'price-tagging' - attacks meant to heighten tensions between the Arabs of Palestine and Jews. From the Encyclopedia Britannica On-line:
"Jews hold widely divergent views about the role of Diaspora Jewry and the desirability and significance of maintaining a national identity. While the vast majority of Orthodox Jews support the Zionist movement (the return of Jews to Israel), some Orthodox Jews go so far as to oppose the modern nation of Israel as a godless and secular state, defying God’s will to send his Messiah at the time he has preordained.
According to the theory of shelilat ha-galut (“denial of the exile”), espoused by many Israelis, Jewish life and culture are doomed in the Diaspora because of assimilation and acculturation, and only those Jews who migrate to Israel have hope for continued existence as Jews. It should be noted that neither this position nor any other favourable to Israel holds that Israel is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy regarding the coming of the messianic era." [3] Gilad55 ( talk) 00:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
The Jewish state was established, in part, to accomplish the 'in-gathering of the exiles'. The effecting of this in-gathering is motivated by the belief that diaspora Jews are the descendants of persons who were forced into exile by a succession of conquests and occupations of Ha'aretz Yisrael. Anyone opposing the Jewish state would, of course, be required to oppose the belief that diaspora Jews, Jewish Americans included, are the descendants of the exiles. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
"So why should wiki impose that categorization on him because he has Ashkenazi roots? This applies to an enormous number of Jews. Debresser reflects this trenchant commonsense view among you, and you won't accept his right to self-define his Jewishness."
Isn't that the same thing you are doing? What if Gilad, or Kitty, or Shalom11111, or AnkhMorpork (assuming all of the above are Jewish), or myself define ourselves as of SW Asian descent precisely because we have Jewish roots? Assuming I was of Ashkenazi descent, would it be ok for you to say "sorry, you're not Israelite/Middle Eastern anymore" because we spent the last 1,500+ years or so away from home (through no fault of our own, as history would attest), despite our own self-identity? If I recall correctly, there was one editor in the last thread who argued for inclusion, because removing them would threaten Jewish self-identity, and would also score political points for those who are currently attempting to erase or minimize Jewish history/ties to Israel (his arguments, not mine). Evildoer187 ( talk) 10:05, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Precisely, Nishidani, this category imposes nothing on no one. It merely affirms what a majority of Jews know to be true - Jews are from Judea. Individuals such as Debresser are free to define themselves as they like regardless of how ethnology, genetics or Halakha defines Jews as a whole or in part. No category of descent is absolute or mutually exclusive. Gilad55 ( talk) 15:23, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Just for starters.
"Jewish survival in the face of external pressures from Roman Catholic empire and Persian Zoroastrian empire is ‘enigmatic’ to historians."[Salo Wittmayer Baron, “A Social and Religious History of the Jews,” Volume II, Ancient Times, Part II. p 215 Jewish Publication Society of America, 1952.]
Baron explains it by eight factors:
1. Messianic faith. Belief in an ultimately positive outcome and restoration of Israel.
2. The doctrine of the Hereafter increasingly elaborated. Reconciled Jews with suffering in this world and helped them resist outside temptations to convert.
3. Suffering was given meaning through hope-inducing interpretation of their history and their destiny.
4. The doctrine of martyrdom and inescapability of persecution transformed it into a source of communal solidarity.
5. Jewish daily life was very satisfying. Jews lived among Jews. In practice, in a lifetime, individuals encountered overt persecution only on a few dramatic occasions. Jews mostly lived under discrimination that affected everyone, and to which they were habituated. Daily life was governed by a multiplicity of ritual requirements, so that each Jew was constantly aware of God throughout the day. “For the most part, he found this all-encompassing Jewish way of life so eminently satisfactory that he was prepared to sacrifice himself...for the preservation of its fundamentals.”[Baron, p. 216] Those commandments for which Jews had sacrificed their lives, such as defying idolatry, not eating pork, observing circumcision, were the ones most strictly adhered to.[Baron, p. 216-217]
6. The corporate development and segregationist policies of the late Roman empire and Persian empire, helped keep Jewish community organization strong.
7. Talmud provided an extremely effective force to sustain Jewish ethics, law and culture, judicial and social welfare system, universal education, regulation of strong family life and religious life from birth to death.
8. The concentration of Jewish masses within ‘the lower middle class’,[Baron, p. 217] with the middle class virtues of sexual self-control. There was a moderate path between asceticism and licentiousness. Marriage was considered to be the foundation of ethnic, and ethical, life.
Outside hostility only helped cement Jewish unity and internal strength and commitment.
Evildoer187 ( talk) 15:36, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Nishidani, The validity of this cat is not dependent upon all Jews being persons of exclusively South-western Asian descent. This would be true of any cat. For example, Palestinians are persons of Egyptian and Syrian descent among other descents. Yasser Arafat was born outside of Palestine and has only one parent of Palestinian birth whose mother was herself an Egyptian with no connection to Palestine. In spite of this, we can describe Arafat as a person of Palestinian descent. We can do this because categories of descent are not mutually exclusive. Gilad55 ( talk) 18:54, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Evildoer, That is precisely what I meant by 'double-standard'. Cats tend to have a functional purpose only when they are flexible. In the sciences, there are only a few cats that are mutually exclusive - animal, vegetable and mineral would be obvious examples. Cats of descent, on the other hand, are mutually inclusive. Gilad55 ( talk) 19:03, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, We are asserting that Jewish Americans are persons of South-west Asian descent, not Ashkenazim. You reveal a bias. Why, in your opinion, can Ashkenazi Jews be of only one descent? Gilad55 ( talk) 19:13, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
I self-identify as Jewish, not as Ashkenazi, Sephardi, etc. The recent descent of Jewish persons rarely enters into my thinking. Persons such as yourself are fond of characterizing Israel as an Ashkenazi enterprise while ignoring the reality that Ashkenazim make up only 20% of Israel's Jewish population. Meaning, 80% of Jewish Israelis are Jews of Arab descent! Moreover, many of these 'Arab Jews' also live in the US and France!
I'll put this question to you again. Why do you believe Ashkenazim can be of only one descent? Gilad55 ( talk) 23:14, 6 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, There is no statute of limitations on descent. Descent is a far more inclusive category than you're allowing yourself to believe. One's descent is not determined just by where one's parents, grandparents and great-parents lived. One's descent is also determined by where one's kinship group established a long-standing presence and especially by where one's kinship group was formed. Gilad55 ( talk) 07:27, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
If you're struggling with the terminology, I could provide resources on terms such as descent, kinship group, etc. Gilad55 ( talk) 07:33, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Gilad, while I agree with what you are saying, the demographics of Israel are not particularly relevant here. Evildoer187 ( talk) 08:23, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Evildoer, I was pointing out that when we speak of Jewish Americans, Jewish Israelis, etc., we should not presume that we are speaking of Ashkenazim as Ashkenazim are not the be all end all of Jewry. Gilad55 ( talk) 16:24, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani appears unable or unwilling to engage in a debate based on reason and existing definitions of terms pertinent to this discussion. Instead, Nishidani is using rhetoric popular among anti-Israel agitators and dodging our points. Nishidani's purpose here may have nothing to do with promoting ethnographically correct categories of descent. Gilad55 ( talk) 16:24, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, My definition of who is a Jew is the one used by ethnologists. It is an inclusive definition that encompasses ethnic Jews like Ben Stiller, a popular actor/comedian who is not Halakhically Jewish, but of Jewish descent nonetheless. Your argument is based on a manufactured definition of descent - a definition tailored to fit your argument against keeping the category in place. I offered to provide you with the applied definition and explained that categories of descent are not mutually exclusive and subject to a statute of limitations. I provided the descent of Yasser Arafat as an example. Evildoer provided the descent of Romani as an example. You've been exposed as lacking the knowledge one would need to argue for or against the category or as being aware of the facts, but willfully ignoring them in order to pursue an agenda unrelated to an objective evaluation of the category. Gilad55 ( talk) 19:28, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
[Descent is what your family tells you about mum and dad, grandma and grandpa, and if you are lucky, their immediate heirs, if, as with most of us, you are not a member of an historically royal elite that history constantly noticed. - Nishidani] Once again, Nishidani is incorrect. In truth, Jews were constantly noticed in the countries we emigrated to and settled in. The paths of migration traveled by Jews in the diaspora have been well researched and documented. The consensus is that the diaspora, excluding the Babylonian exile, began in the Mediterranean. From the Mediterranean, Jews traveled to Eastern Europe then established colonies in Western Europe; most famously along the Rhine in Germany. Gilad55 ( talk) 19:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Nishidani, An heir is a person who inherits something left to him or her by a parent or other family member belonging to a previous generation. I believe you were looking for the words 'immediate ancestors'. It's alright, though. I understood what you were trying to say. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:19, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
AGF certainly does have its limits. A larger issue is POV pushing regarding the definitions of terms this editor studied as an undergrad. This POV pushing was followed by a refusal to acknowledge correct definitions even when those definitions were accompanied by explanation and context. Gilad55 ( talk) 00:31, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Hard to believe this is still being discussed. I still don't see a reason to remove the categories. No serious historian or geneticist doubts the Levantine origins of most modern Jewry, and deleting them on the grounds that some Jews might not have Middle Eastern roots would not set a good precedent. It would also be WP:NOR. Ankh. Morpork 14:33, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
The laws mentioned by Nishidani were most likely motivated by Judeophobia. I wouldn't be surprised if there were Jewish cults that proselytized, but such cults (the Cult of Yahweh among them) shouldn't be confused with Judaism. Moreover, when Jews did proselytize, their targets were most likely other Jews - Jews who fell away from Judaism. Also, I challenge Nishidani to produce a true history describing a "vigorous proselytization" of non-Jews by authentic adherents to Judaism. True histories describe Jews as living in clusters or closed communities. In these histories, conversion is rare and accompanied by marriage. Gilad55 ( talk) 22:47, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
Liz, AnkhMorpork merely pointed out that there is a minority of Jews who are not of Levantine descent (200,000 in the US). AnkhMorpork rightly assets that the existence of these Jews does not disqualify Jews as a whole from being categorized as being a people of Levantine descent. Gilad55 ( talk) 23:08, 8 March 2014 (UTC)Gilad55
No, that's not how it works. A talk page conversation between 5 or 6 editors doesn't determine the basis of categorization of such a widely used category as "of descent". This disagreement needs to be the subject of an RFC or Dispute Resolution case. Many editors apply categories to articles and any decision that is considered definitive has to be more widely publicized otherwise, disputes will continue. No one editor can sum up a conversation, determine a result and declare an issue "closed". Liz Read! Talk! 16:29, 21 March 2014 (UTC)
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It looks like this issue will be going to Dispute Resolution so you'll all be able to present your arguments there (although I hope statements are limited to, say 500 words). I'll make sure a notice is placed on this talk page whenever the case is opened. Liz Read! Talk! 22:23, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
This is used de facto for all jews and people who don't consider themselves Jewish. I'm changing the description to work this apparent paradox out. -- Monochrome_ Monitor 15:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Classification: Article " David Ben-Gurion": Category:Polish Jews: Category:Polish people of Jewish descent: Category:European people of Jewish descent: Category:People of Jewish descent |
or
Classification: Article " David Ben-Gurion": Category:Jewish socialists: Category:Jewish activists: Category:Jews by occupation: Category:Jews |
So he's in both categories!-- Monochrome_ Monitor 20:12, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I think I see what you mean though. You mean that "Polish Jews" is in the category "People of Polish-Jewish descent" and that ethnic Jews will be in the umbrella category but not in the specific category. I get that. The problem is there are so many descent categories and most don't have "Jews" subcategories. And both give worthwhile information. For example Category:Democratic Republic of the Congo people of Greek-Jewish descent tells a lot more than Category:Democratic Republic of the Congo Jews. -- Monochrome_ Monitor 20:21, 24 January 2016 (UTC) I wish there were a way to preserve both. Many articles do preserve both, like this one Moïse Rahmani. It give both categories. A lot of pages do that, use them in a way that isn't mutually exclusive. -- Monochrome_ Monitor 20:21, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
You were being a bit mean. :( "Haven't you noticed yet that most of your edits to Jewish categories are reverted right away since they are incorrect or unnecessary?" Hopefully you see that many of my edits are just misunderstood... like one on world jewish population... the highest form of wisdom is kindness — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monochrome Monitor ( talk • contribs) 12:59, 29 January 2016 Why the hell aren't my squiggles turning into signatures?!!?!?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monochrome Monitor ( talk • contribs) 13:01, 29 January 2016
I just noticed that Debresser tried to remove the ME cat. This is very surprising, since he earlier acquiesced to an identical categorization here: Category talk:American people of Jewish descent. ??? What's going on? Musashiaharon ( talk) 03:27, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
Please do not remove the Middle Eastern Category from People of Jewish descent. Jews are predominiantly Semitic/ Afro-Asiatic/ Western Asian/"Middle Eastern"/etc. as per most Jews' dominant gene markers, Ethocultural/ Tribal customs/traditions, and more--all of which are cited on various related articles. Please include Middle Eastern, or you are contributing to racist rhetoric that aims to disassociate Jews from the Middle East. Jeffgr9 ( talk) 02:04, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm still not sure what changed since last year, since apparently Debresser saw some advantage to the extra precision offered by categorizing Jews as having "Middle Eastern descent." I'd like to know why that same precision is not advantageous here. Musashiaharon ( talk) 05:34, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
There is a huge talkpage discussion about this above. I see no need to repeat this. The conclusion there was the same as here and now: there is no consensus for addition of the Middle East category. Debresser ( talk) 16:20, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
Here's the deal... It seems as though only one side of this dispute has any interest in arguing out their points and seeing the discussion through to its conclusion (that is, until an agreement is reached or until one side comes out with a clearly stronger argument). Instead, Debresser wants to act as an impassable wall impeding any changes (or in this case, retaining a longstanding change) and/or strong-arming the other side via WP:MAJORITY and systemic WP:BIAS while refusing to provide rock-solid reasons for his proposed change. This is against Wikipedia policy, and I have no intention of letting it slide. Furthermore, relying on a two year old discussion to circumvent a more thorough examination of this dispute contravenes WP:CCC, and for that reason, I have decided to give Debresser (and anyone else on his side of the argument) three days to provide concrete, irrefutable, consistent, and policy based reasons for removing this category. No more discussion dodging. Otherwise, their complaints will be dismissed as WP:IDONTLIKEIT and their changes will be reverted. And should Debresser's edit warring continue beyond this point, he will be brought before an administrator for conduct review. It is clear to me now that a concerted effort at gaming the system is underway, and I refuse to play ball. The shenanigans end here. 2601:84:4502:61EA:203B:1B5C:2738:C1E9 ( talk) 05:09, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Who exactly could be excluded from Middle Eastern descent here? Consider the possibilities. First, a Jew could be convert themselves. If so, they would not fit in this category at all, since this cat is "People of Jewish descent." Similarly, if they were descended from two convert parents, they also would not belong in this category. However, if one parent is not a convert, the child would certainly belong in the category of "People of Jewish descent." All the more so if neither parent was a convert. As long as there is a single Jew in the lineage who is not a convert or descended entirely from converts, they would still be of Jewish descent, and hence also Middle Eastern. So there should be no problem adding the Jews of this cat to the Middle Eastern category. Musashiaharon ( talk) 05:23, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
Jews are a Middle Eastern people, as per genetics, archaeology, culture, and history. centuries of diaspora doesn't negate that. And Ashkinazi Jews were never considered European hence their marginalization, genocide, and exile to the Pale. Several haplogroups in Ashkenazi populations have middle eastern / african origins (Nebel, A., Filon, D., Faerman, M., Soodyall, H., & Oppenheim, A. (2005). Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in ashkenazi jews. European Journal of Human Genetics : EJHG, 13(3), 388-91. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201319). 172.91.83.73 ( talk) 06:13, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
For the sake of reaching a fair, policy based conclusion to this saga, and to save people the effort of wading through the entire discussion again, I will use this space to address the other side's arguments in the order they appear. If you want to remove the Middle East descent category, the following points need to be grappled with and addressed with strong, irrefutable arguments. If you are able to successfully refute the points raised, I will gladly concede my argument and let you remove the category. Above all, consistency and adherence to facts and policy (NOT personal feelings and biases) must be the order of the day.
Now then, let's begin...
"There should not be a ME descent category here. Jews are not necessarily from the Middle East. I am not from the Middle East and in order to get some ME ancestor, I'd have to go back many generations. Far too many generations for it to be called ME Descent."
Then why does Wikipedia recognize the Romani as South Asian, despite being many centuries removed from the Indian subcontinent (almost as long as the Jews have been removed from their land)? Why do white American/Australian/Canadian/etc families have their descent recognized despite not having lived in their countries of origin for almost 500 years, if not longer? Why are Arabs considered to be "of Southwest Asian descent" even though a significant portion live in Northern Africa and haven't seen the Arabian Peninsula since the 7th century colonial conquests (hell, some might not have any actual Arab descent at all). Because ethnic origins and descent do not disappear with the passing of generations. Evidently, Wikipedia recognizes this as well, in all but one case: the Jews. This irregularity alone is particularly damning (see WP:BIAS and WP:CONSISTENCY).
If a WP:RS exists supporting your belief that ethnic descent eventually evaporates or expires, please link to it and apply it consistently across the board. Otherwise, there is no reason to remove this category. The Jews/Israelites are of Middle Eastern descent (the reason we are called Jews in the first place is *because* of our Middle Eastern descent, particularly from what was historically known as Judea, in the Middle East [1]), as a people and a nation. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] Many reliable sources, including genetic studies (see the above passage for some non-genetic sources) [21] [22] [21] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31], exist supporting this fact.
Jews are not predominantly middle eastern. They are from wherever they live. It's not racist to say that. IT makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category of "Middle Eastern descent." You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs we don't need to go down this road again.
"They are from wherever they live". And that is why their most recent/current countries of residence are also included in their respective subcats. This dispute is about people of Jewish descent as a parent cat. Someone of Ukrainian Jewish descent (to use one example) would be placed under people of Ukrainian descent and people of Jewish descent, and the people of Jewish descent cat would be a subcat of people of Middle Eastern descent, as it had been for well over a year now. This is because the Jewish people, as a nation and ethnic group, are indigenous to the Middle East (a quick link to the List of indigenous peoples page should suffice; look under South West Asia and you'll find Jews there. That page is very heavily monitored and thoroughly sourced, so it stands to reason that Jews would have been removed long ago if they did not meet the accepted anthropological criteria). Ethnicity does not disappear by virtue of prolonged separation from their natal land, as mentioned above. Following that logic, European settlers in North America would be Native American by now.
"It makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category" of "Middle Eastern descent." It does if this American immigrant also belongs to a Middle Eastern ethnic group, like say......Kurds, or Assyrians, or Jews.
"You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs". And that is why allegations of WP:BIAS were raised, because no valid, WP:RS based reasons as to why Jews as a people should not be categorized as Middle Eastern were ever put forward (and indeed, they still haven't). The arguments that were put forward were each thoroughly picked apart, but instead of acknowledging it, the involved editors on the other side of the fence ignored it and continued espousing the same misinformed claptrap that had already been addressed. That battle was "won" not by the strength of arguments, but by majority groupthink. I will not allow the same thing to happen again in this case.
"That's a whole lot of OR. What distinguishes a Jew is being a member of the Jewish faith. It has nothing to do with location. Someone born in the US to US parents can be Jewish without ever touching the middle east. Indeed, a convert to Judaism is not from the Middle East. This is not like Indians or NativeAmericans, where they are tied to a place. Being Jewish has zero to do with being of Middle Eastern descent."
Per the above citations, Jews are a nation and ethnic group. Even pushing all of those aside, the real fly in the ointment for the "Jews are a religious faith only" argument is that atheist Jews (and even Jews who practice other faiths) are recognized as Jewish under our laws. Judaism is simply our national faith, and observance is not a requirement for being a Jew. Furthermore, certain Native tribes, in addition to being removed from their lands (would anyone tell the descendants of Cherokee exiled via the Trail of Tears that they are no longer descended from Tennessee?), did make a habit of adopting outsiders into their fold and making them a part of their tribe. Conversion to Judaism is the same thing. It could also be compared to immigration to a foreign country, say....Ireland, or France, or the UK. Would we stop considering Irish, French, and English people "European" because they are open to newcomers?
I think that just about wraps it up. You have three days to provide a sufficient counter-response to the above points; if you fail or refuse to do so, the Middle Eastern category will be restored and any further protests on your end will be duly ignored and, should your edit warring continue, you will be brought before an administrator. Good luck. 2601:84:4502:61EA:203B:1B5C:2738:C1E9 ( talk) 07:19, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
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NOTE: The above active IP address was me. I had forgotten my password and saw no harm in editing without logging in. Apologies for the confusion.
I don't know how to install an RfC for this section, so someone else will have to help me with that. Anyway, here we will decide if Jewish descent is a valid subcat of Middle Eastern descent. I will open up this discussion with my case for the inclusion of this category (in the form of a rebuttal I had written earlier today in response to another editor), and my hope is that this time, the outcome will purely be on the basis of strong arguments. No more dodging, no more evasions.
OK then, let's begin...
"There should not be a ME descent category here. Jews are not necessarily from the Middle East. I am not from the Middle East and in order to get some ME ancestor, I'd have to go back many generations. Far too many generations for it to be called ME Descent."
Then why does Wikipedia recognize the Romani as South Asian, despite being many centuries removed from the Indian subcontinent (almost as long as the Jews have been removed from their land)? Why do white American/Australian/Canadian/etc families have their descent recognized despite not having lived in their countries of origin for almost 500 years, if not longer? Why are Arabs considered to be "of Southwest Asian descent" even though a significant portion live in Northern Africa and haven't seen the Arabian Peninsula since the 7th century colonial conquests (hell, some might not have any actual Arab descent at all). Because ethnic origins and descent do not disappear with the passing of generations. Evidently, Wikipedia recognizes this as well, in all but one case: the Jews. This irregularity alone is particularly damning (see WP:BIAS and WP:CONSISTENCY).
If a WP:RS exists supporting your belief that ethnic descent eventually evaporates or expires, please link to it and apply it consistently across the board. Otherwise, there is no reason to remove this category. The Jews/Israelites are of Middle Eastern descent (the reason we are called Jews in the first place is *because* of our Middle Eastern descent, particularly from what was historically known as Judea, in the Middle East [1]), as a people and a nation. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] Many reliable sources, including genetic studies (see the above passage for some non-genetic sources) [21] [22] [21] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31], exist supporting this fact.
Jews are not predominantly middle eastern. They are from wherever they live. It's not racist to say that. IT makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category of "Middle Eastern descent." You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs we don't need to go down this road again.
"They are from wherever they live". And that is why their most recent/current countries of residence are also included in their respective subcats. This dispute is about people of Jewish descent as a parent cat. Someone of Ukrainian Jewish descent (to use one example) would be placed under people of Ukrainian descent and people of Jewish descent, and the people of Jewish descent cat would be a subcat of people of Middle Eastern descent, as it had been for well over a year now. This is because the Jewish people, as a nation and ethnic group, are indigenous to the Middle East (a quick link to the List of indigenous peoples page should suffice; look under South West Asia and you'll find Jews there. That page is very heavily monitored and thoroughly sourced, so it stands to reason that Jews would have been removed long ago if they did not meet the accepted anthropological criteria). Ethnicity does not disappear by virtue of prolonged separation from their natal land, as mentioned above. Following that logic, European settlers in North America would be Native American by now.
"It makes no sense to have a person "from American descent" in the category" of "Middle Eastern descent." It does if this American immigrant also belongs to a Middle Eastern ethnic group, like say......Kurds, or Assyrians, or Jews.
"You already lost this battle at the template for ethnic slurs". And that is why allegations of WP:BIAS were raised, because no valid, WP:RS based reasons as to why Jews as a people should not be categorized as Middle Eastern were ever put forward (and indeed, they still haven't). The arguments that were put forward were each thoroughly picked apart, but instead of acknowledging it, the involved editors on the other side of the fence ignored it and continued espousing the same misinformed claptrap that had already been addressed. That battle was "won" not by the strength of arguments, but by majority groupthink. I will not allow the same thing to happen again in this case.
"That's a whole lot of OR. What distinguishes a Jew is being a member of the Jewish faith. It has nothing to do with location. Someone born in the US to US parents can be Jewish without ever touching the middle east. Indeed, a convert to Judaism is not from the Middle East. This is not like Indians or NativeAmericans, where they are tied to a place. Being Jewish has zero to do with being of Middle Eastern descent."
Per the above citations, Jews are a nation and ethnic group. Even pushing all of those aside, the real fly in the ointment for the "Jews are a religious faith only" argument is that atheist Jews (and even Jews who practice other faiths) are recognized as Jewish under our laws. Judaism is simply our national faith, and observance is not a requirement for being a Jew. Furthermore, certain Native tribes, in addition to being removed from their lands (would anyone tell the descendants of Cherokee exiled via the Trail of Tears that they are no longer descended from Tennessee?), did make a habit of adopting outsiders into their fold and making them a part of their tribe. Conversion to Judaism is the same thing. It could also be compared to immigration to a foreign country, say....Ireland, or France, or the UK. Would we stop considering Irish, French, and English people "European" because they are open to newcomers? ChronoFrog ( talk) 12:16, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
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