Post your Iberian Jewish results

[Hilary]

I am curious what a typical person from Iberia (Spain, Portugal) who has Jewish in their results looks like in their whole make up. Jewish came as a surprise for my catholic grandfather and was wondering how to tell how long ago it was.

My Madeiran grandfathers results:

56% SW European
6% Western Mediterranean
12% Asia Minor
16% NW European
8% Jewish Diaspora
1.4% Neanderthal
Haplogroup E-L542

 

[Carlos]

Me han dicho que mi genética Y DNA está muy cerca de los Ashkenazis; aunque todavía y hay distancia, pero en la España de hoy no tenemos conciencia ni herencia familiar oral de si un antepasado era judío o no, todo se borra de las mentes y las conciencias, otra cosa es el subconsciente.

View attachment 9680El gran artista gallego Moncho Borrajo. Desde mi perspectiva y punto de vista personal, vería un ibérico con un judío así.


View attachment 9681
Luís Zahera.

View attachment 9682
Sonia Castelo Pérez


http://www.tarbutsefarad.com/apellidos-judios/lista-apellidos-judios.html

There is a list that can be indicative, some are very common, most are not heard every day, there are some that in my life I have heard or found, but it may be a fact for someone who wants to know if their origins are Jewish.

 

[Angela]

I am curious what a typical person from Iberia (Spain, Portugal) who has Jewish in their results looks like in their whole make up. Jewish came as a surprise for my catholic grandfather and was wondering how to tell how long ago it was.

My Madeiran grandfathers results:

56% SW European
6% Western Mediterranean
12% Asia Minor
16% NW European
8% Jewish Diaspora
1.4% Neanderthal
Haplogroup E-L542

There was and perhaps still is a Jewish community in Madeira. However, the "Jewish Diaspora" figures which some testing companies produce are, in my opinion, almost always bogus, nearly as bad as Polako's "J" calculator on Gedmatch. Unless your grandfather has some known ties to the actual community, a certain surname or his mother had a certain surname, I wouldn't take it at all seriously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Madeira

There's also the Belmonte Jews, so people in that area might have some actual Jewish ancestry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Belmonte

 

[Jovialis]

There was and perhaps still is a Jewish community in Madeira. However, the "Jewish Diaspora" figures which some testing companies produce are, in my opinion, almost always bogus, nearly as bad as Polako's "J" calculator on Gedmatch. Unless your grandfather has some known ties to the actual community, a certain surname or his mother had a certain surname, I wouldn't take it at all seriously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Madeira

There's also the Belmonte Jews, so people in that area might have some actual Jewish ancestry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Belmonte

These look like National Geographic Helix 2.0 results.

Indeed, I think they may be bogus. From what I've seen, this company seems to heavily inflate, or dubiously assigns the autosomal percentage for "Jewish Diaspora".

 

[Hilary]

These look like National Geographic Helix 2.0 results.

Indeed, I think they may be bogus. From what I've seen, this company seems to heavily inflate, or dubiously assigns the autosomal percentage for "Jewish Diaspora".

Fascinating, thank you! yes these are NG 2.0 Helix results. Can you explain further why results may be bogus? Why would the results be inflated? Am I wrong to assume NatGen has more of a research focus to Southern European and Arabia and the Levant than does 23andme and ancestry and FTdna, which seem more Northern European focused?

And no, there's aren't any ties to the Jewish community. To our knowledge all were Roman Catholic. The paper trail end at his grandfather however. So pre 1850 is a mystery. Which is odd for a catholic family.

His paternal surnames are: de Faria das Neves, and da silva.
Maternal surnames: Lume (British?) and Luis and Fernandez (with a Z which is odd for Portuguese).

I believe I saw Fernandez on a Sephardi surname list, I'll have to recheck that.

With the the amount of Asia Minor however, could his Jewish have come from the ottomans?

It's striking he has no Arabia or NA. Or Eastern European to suggest a Baltic L542.

 

[AntonVila]

Carlos, this is embarrassing. Of course Galicians are the pure Jewish people of Iberia lol. A specialist from Santiago Compostela university quantified the total number of Jewish population in Galicia as less than 1000 individuals at the end of XIV century in its peak, following taxes records. For instance to compare in Seville 4000 Jewish were killed in one day during the pogroms. A really good friend of mine is specialist in the period, in Jewish and arabic history in Spain. She told me that there is no single clue of permanent Jewish population there. BTW I don't know why you have this interest about Galician artists being Jewish looking, but there is a big indirect mistake in your attempt, the only of the three actors "genetically Galician" and only partially is Sonia Castelo. Luis Zahera and Moncho Borrajo, being both Galicians of course, have their family origins in Catalonia and Andalucia, like at least 26% of all Galicians, Borrajo's family is from Tarragona for instance.
Moreover, I guess all this comments about Jewish diaspora in Portugal are because of the paper "Portuguese crypto-Jews: the genetic heritage of a complex history" by Nogueiro et al. (Front Genet. 2015 Feb 2;6:12.). I strongly recommend anyone with interest in the topic to read the commentary of Marcus et al. (Front Genet. 2015; 6: 261.) about Nogueiro's paper. I still cannot paste links but to make a long history short: There is no a reliable Jewish haplotype, marker or specific sequence specific to them, full stop. As Marcus pointed out in the comment:
"Jewish haplotype motifs in much previous work are inadequate for “forensic or genealogical purposes,” because ambiguity in the molecular clock, along with haplotype polyphyly, preclude their usage as “reliable Jewish ancestry predictors.” Many of the “Jewish” haplotypes cited by Nogueiro et al. (Gonçalves et al.,2005; Pacheco et al., 2005) are pan-Middle Eastern markers."

Please guys take care with this kind of argumentation in posts, I imagine Hilary happy finally having found a link with Jewish that is not, absolutely not, true. I think is crystal clear, isn't it?

 

[Angela]

@AntonVilla,

What's crystal clear is that a lot of Iberians on internet population genetics sites go bonkers whenever anyone suggests that there might be traces of North African or Jewish genes in modern Iberian populations. Some Nordicist Italians do the same thing.

To both groups: just give it a rest. Yes, a lot of these companies make mistakes and find autosomal "Jewish" ancestry where it doesn't exist, or at least vastly exaggerate it, as I said upthread. That doesn't mean that there aren't traces of this ancestry in southern Europe, and that you can't find it through, for example, yDna lineages.

We've come a long way since 2005 with subclade resolution, and there are indeed mainly Jewish sub-clades of numerous y lineages. If they're not "Jewish", they're predominantly Levantine or Arabic. Would that make you happier?

Another important consideration is that one "Jewish" ancestor on your direct y line four hundred years ago doesn't make a man "Jewish", and there may not be, in fact most probably isn't, any "Jewish" autosomal ancestry left, as I've tried to explain to some Italian posters.

I would suggest you do some reading to catch up.

If you guys think you can come back on here and start posting mis-information again, you are much mistaken. That applies to any Italian Nordicists lurking too.

Cut it out.

 

[Carlos]

^^ Antonvila


The author of the post has asked what could be the appearance of Jews mixed with Iberian, obviously you know that the current Spaniards are not aware that a relative had been Jewish, since there is no oral tradition, we are all Spanish, period, and there is no way to know it by documents, all are conjectures and hypotheses and I think Galicia should have been the perfect refuge for some of the escaped both Jews and Moors of the strong persecutions and expulsions that occurred in Spain especially in the peninsular south, so I think that Galicia is the best territory to find its trail.


I have my own hypothesis and I have shown the author of the thread more or less how it should look like, which is what he has asked for.


I do not know what's happening that seems to touch Africa and Jewish e.t.c. in relation to Europe it is a subject that raises blisters, because I am sorry it is what there is.

 

[AdeoF]

Looking at southern European admixture is more difficult due to the different types of DNA and haplogroups came in when there was the migrations from all of the timeline of Europe, even Angela has said this or something similar. Look i got galician admixture and i can say yes there is a mixed bag of different genes in modern Iberian populations. Yes it shows i got a tiny bit of North African but i don't have any Jewish but thats only me out of the 3 mil+ of them. There is still a mystery about northern Spain, that i can say

 

[Hilary]

Yikes I didn't intend to spark such conversation. I am not so interested in what they look like as in their phenotypic appearance. I am interested in what their autosomal ethnicity looks like. Their personal breakdowns. From my elementary research, charts I've seen from self described Portuguese has less Jewish and Asia Minor than we do, and also have small amounts of MENA, which we are lacking.

My surprise to a pp saying Helix is known to inflate their numbers does not indicate relief. It indicates frustration that we spent $150 to find out the ethnicity of my centerian grandfather and the results could be inaccurate or skewed. I don't care if we are Jewish, I care about accuracy. And since no platform analyzes Helix kits, it makes it even more frustrating.

Maybe we aren't crypto Portuguese Jews but rather a more recent arrival from say the Ottoman Empire in the late 1700s.

Kind regards to all!

 

[AntonVila]

Really I don't mind to have in my ancestry Jewish, Moorish or what else but claiming that there are good markers for Jewish population in Iberian populations is dangerous. I'm posting reliable information from 2015 not 2005 and about my concerns regarding the issue of Nogueira's papers and Jewish markers and admixture in Iberia you can ask Daniel A. Friedman, a Jew from Stanford university and discuss with him if he thinks they are reliable or not, I promise you the answer will be negative. Of course there are traces of North African and Jewish like admixture but it doesn't mean any cultural Jewish, most part of the admixture is older and not from the Muslim conquest. I think I'm quite updated about genetics in Iberian peninsula, or genetics in general. For instance and you will see the paper, there is one Nature on the way about the "genetics of reconquista" and the distribution map of the haplogroups and admixture is quite amazing and the genetic subestructure at population level is even more amazing. I have another still unpublished PhD thesis on my desk about the genetics of Berber settlements and tombs found in the south of Navarre with explanations about cultural change and genetics, intermixing of autochthonous women with allochthonous men and genetic discontinuity with later populations etc. I also have my own research about the internal roman limes in the NW of the peninsula with differences north and south of the Douro river and the redistribution and slave trade for mining after the Cantabrianwars. I have all this information but if sharing this kind of knowledge is a problem here I'm not doing this anymore and I will stick to technical discussions, and only technical discussions about population genetics. Sorry for the issue, it will not happen again, Iberian genetics seems more a political issue here and I want to keep my peace of mind and discuss peacefully without warnings. I'm definitely quitting. Best

 

[Hilary]

Really I don't mind to have in my ancestry Jewish, Moorish or what else but claiming that there are good markers for Jewish population in Iberian populations is dangerous. I'm posting reliable information from 2015 not 2005 and about my concerns regarding the issue of Nogueira's papers and Jewish markers and admixture in Iberia you can ask Daniel A. Friedman, a Jew from Stanford university and discuss with him if he thinks they are reliable or not, I promise you the answer will be negative. Of course there are traces of North African and Jewish like admixture but it doesn't mean any cultural Jewish, most part of the admixture is older and not from the Muslim conquest. I think I'm quite updated about genetics in Iberian peninsula, or genetics in general. For instance and you will see the paper, there is one Nature on the way about the "genetics of reconquista" and the distribution map of the haplogroups and admixture is quite amazing and the genetic subestructure at population level is even more amazing. I have another still unpublished PhD thesis on my desk about the genetics of Berber settlements and tombs found in the south of Navarre with explanations about cultural change and genetics, intermixing of autochthonous women with allochthonous men and genetic discontinuity with later populations etc. I also have my own research about the internal roman limes in the NW of the peninsula with differences north and south of the Douro river and the redistribution and slave trade for mining after the Cantabrianwars. I have all this information but if sharing this kind of knowledge is a problem here I'm not doing this anymore and I will stick to technical discussions, and only technical discussions about population genetics. Sorry for the issue, it will not happen again, Iberian genetics seems more a political issue here and I want to keep my peace of mind and discuss peacefully without warnings. I'm definitely quitting. Best

Im sorry did I miss something? My intent to learn Iberian genetics is certainly not political. I'm merely trying to learn more about my own genetic background. I welcome information from academic works on the subject.

 

[Angela]

Look, we're open to all sorts of information so long as it's accurate, and you're very welcome to present it.

What we don't want is a return to the bad old days when instead of science we had misinformation propagated by racists from various ethnic groups, certainly not Spanish in particular.

What should be done in terms of uniparental markers is what was done in this paper for mtDna U6. You have to get way down into the sub-clade level to track migrations through them. Unfortunately, in terms of the "y", all the money seems to go to R1b and R1a, not the other lineages.

https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-14-109

As for yDna I don't know if you've read Oster et al. I've found it very helpful.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3543766/

Yes, with some lineages they existed in the Middle East before divisions into relatively modern "ethno-religious" groups occurred. With other, more recent ones, it's pretty clear that they are "Jewish" clades.

I don't know if you've seen the following:
http://jewishdna.net/

It's a pity that the comparison of the yDna of the Belmonte Jews with those of other Portuguese people was done on such a broad y dna lineage level. If they still have the samples they should go back and snp test everyone.

At any rate, if anyone wants to know if they have actual autosomal Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, they should test at 23and me. You can take their results to the bank. Unfortunately, Sephardic ancestry isn't as distinctive, so it's harder to tell, but because of the intermarriage between the two groups, people with Sephardic ancestry sometimes get some Ashkenazi.

 

[Jovialis]

@Hilary,

These are the reference populations I have taken screen caps of for the Helix test. They seem to include "Jewish Diaspora" for what they consider the average person from those areas are. Obviously, this is absurd to say they have this much "Jewish diaspora" in Dutch, German or Greek populations. However, this is the kind of criteria the Helix test is using to assign autosmal results. Thus, I would not trust their assessment of Jewish ancestry.

These were my results.

I had even e-mailed Miguel Vilar a few months ago, the head scientist as to why those reference populations were getting such high Jewish Diaspora.

Also, their assessment of "Eastern European" is also a mess.

 

[Angela]

@Hilary,

These are the reference populations I have taken screen caps of for the Helix test. They seem to include "Jewish Diaspora" for what they consider the average person from those areas are. Obviously, this is absurd to say they have this much "Jewish diaspora" in Dutch, German or Greek populations. However, this is the kind of criteria the Helix test is using to assign autosmal results. Thus, I would not trust their assessment of Jewish ancestry.

These were my results.

I had even e-mailed Miguel Vilar a few months ago, the head scientist as to why those reference populations were getting such high Jewish Diaspora.

Thanks, Jovialis. That makes it even more clear.

 

[Hilary]

Yes thank you, what an interesting email. So the Jewish diaspora is taken from a small amount of Germans? Ha! And here I thought it meant Sephardic Jews in our case. It's been four months since that email, I do hope an update is near. Being E-V13 without Eastern European or Balkan is confusing unless it's from a different source.

 

[Hilary]

@Angela, Thank you. Yes I'm awaiting my 23andme results. I know none was inherited from my mother so if any shows up it's from my father. And since his brother from his mother's side also took a 23andme test, I know there isn't any Jewish or Eastern European from his mother.

Do do you know of any more recent studies on the horizon about iberians and Sephardi?

 

[Angela]

Yes thank you, what an interesting email. So the Jewish diaspora is taken from a small amount of Germans? Ha! And here I thought it meant Sephardic Jews in our case. It's been four months since that email, I do hope an update is near. Being E-V13 without Eastern European or Balkan is confusing unless it's from a different source.

Jovialis would know better, but perhaps they mean a group of Ashkenazi Jews? It doesn't make any sense to use Ashkenazim as a reference population, however, because they might be 50-60% "European" in ancestry. So are people matching the European or non-European ancestry. It might very well be picking up southeastern European ancestry which it would be totally normal for these people to have...

I don't know of any new studies coming up specifically on Sephardi Jews. It is problematic because Sephardi is often applied to most non-Ashkenazi Jews, when actually the people who should be tested are those with most of their ancestry coming from the people who were expelled from Portugal and Spain. Everyone is waiting to see the genome being studied from Israel from around the time of King David. Then we'll be able to see when the admixture occurred, in the Near East, or in Europe, or both. Then we can take it from there.

 

[Jovialis]

Jovialis would know better, but perhaps they mean a group of Ashkenazi Jews? It doesn't make any sense to use Ashkenazim as a reference population, however, because they might be 50-60% "European" in ancestry. So are people matching the European or non-European ancestry. It might very well be picking up southeastern European ancestry which it would be totally normal for these people to have...

I don't know of any new studies coming up specifically on Sephardi Jews. It is problematic because Sephardi is often applied to most non-Ashkenazi Jews, when actually the people who should be tested are those with most of their ancestry coming from the people who were expelled from Portugal and Spain. Everyone is waiting to see the genome being studied from Israel from around the time of King David. Then we'll be able to see when the admixture occurred, in the Near East, or in Europe, or both. Then we can take it from there.

Indeed, I believe the Helix test is conflating some Southeastern European ancestry which is indicative of the graphic National Geographic uses for Jewish Diaspora.

As well as conflating some Central and Eastern European which is also within Jewish Diaspora populations, as the description indicates. Assigning "Jewish Diaspora" to people that may not actually be Jewish, but happen to have the European ancestry that some of the Jewish people are intermixed with.

(Unfortunately, this is the best screen cap I could get which was from a youtube video)

 

[Jovialis]

Indeed, I believe the Helix test is conflating some Southeastern European ancestry which is indicative of the graphic National Geographic uses for Jewish Diaspora.

As well as conflating some Central and Eastern European which is also within Jewish Diaspora populations, as the description indicates. Assigning "Jewish Diaspora" to people that may not actually be Jewish, but happen to have the European ancestry that some of the Jewish people are intermixed with.

(Unfortunately, this is the best screen cap I could get which was from a youtube video)

I think perhaps they may not have sufficiently defined components to differentiate the European admixture shared between Jews and non-Jews. Which is probably an inherently difficult task, since European Jews have a large amount of European admixture.