One year ago we announced the new Avotaynu DNA Project AVOTAYNU, Fall 2016), an initiative managed by Adam Brown, Raquel Levy-Toledano and Michael Waas of the Avotaynu Research Partnership LLC that intends to compile a database comprising the DNA test results of Jewish participants from all over the world.  The purposes of the project are (1) to foster historical and scientific studies of the Jewish people by making the DNA results available to academics, and (2) to ascertain whether new testing strategies would result in Y-DNA lineages that are sufficiently precise and identifiable that they would roughly serve as the DNA  equivalent of surnames. We are pleased to report after a year that the DNA results of more than 4,000 individuals with Jewish ancestry are now linked to the project, that the project has attracted the attention of the academic community as we intended, and that test results of practical use to genealogists and family historians have been obtained.

Until relatively recently, the identification of such lineages depended upon an analysis of STR tests, a process that has two limitations. One limitation is the relative lack of precision of STRs as a technique for separating lineages of equivalent recent age. The second limitation is the absence of meaningful testing of Sephardim and Mizrahim, two ancient populations that comprised an estimated 97% of the worldwide Jewish population in 1100 CE and 16% today.

Fortunately, two recent developments have placed our goal of identifying the vast majority of Jewish Y-DNA lineages within reach.

The first development is the advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), recently described in our pages by genetic genealogist Rachel Unkefer in her article, “Y-DNA Evidence for an Ashkenazi Lineage’s Iberian Origin”, AVOTAYNU, Spring 2016. Simply stated, NGS is an advanced technique that permits the sampling of a larger portion of the Y chromosome than heretofore possible and that permits identification of unique SNPs that define lineages more accurately than is possible with STRs.

Researchers in the field have proven that it is possible in some instances to define Y-DNA subgroups reliably down to the last 500 years, well within the period when other European cultures had adopted surnames. In other words, in many cases, we may be on the verge of creating the DNA equivalent of surnames.

The second major development, a global sampling the Sephardi/Mizrahi population, is being facilitated by a partnership between the Avotaynu Research Partnership .

In the first phase of the Avotaynu DNA Project, we intend to obtain Y-DNA samples from a large cohort of Jewish men from non-Ashkenazi Jewish populations such as North Africa, Iraq, Persia, Afghanistan, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, Western Europe, and the Americas. This research is well under way. Through outreach via Internet resources such as Facebook and Sephardi organizations, during June and July 2016, the project identified and began to sample more than 50 men whose direct patrilineal ancestors were Jewish emigrants from the Iberian Peninsula who settled in Western Europe (in such places as Amsterdam, Hamburg and London), and in the Americas (in Curacao, Panama, and the eastern seaboard of the United States). 

At the August 2016 Seattle conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, AvotaynuDNA project volunteers collected an additional 60 samples from descendants of Jews from Izmir, Rhodes, Salonika and other communities in the former Ottoman Empire.

Because of the attention that the project has received, managers of other FamilyTreeDNA projects have encouraged their Jewish members to join us by simply logging in at www.JewishDNA.org.  As a result, we have obtained hundreds of samples without additional testing, saving the project enormous time and additional expense. The project plans to sample the Sephardi and Mizrahi descendants of additional communities from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Portugal, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. 

The project team invites the entire Jewish community to participate in ways both large and small. How can you participate?

• Whether you are of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi or other Jewish origins, link your existing FTDNA test results to AvotaynuDNA Project by simply logging in at www.JewishDNAProject.org.
• After conferring with us for the most appropriate test, upgrade your existing results by purchasing a SNP Test or BigY test from FamilyTreeDNA, the latter enabling our team to identify a new SNP defining your lineage.
• Help identify leaders of far-flung Jewish communities that we should test.
• Sponsor specific Jewish communities for testing by donating funds to the Avotaynu Research Partnership LLC (tax-deductible for those who pay American federal income taxes). 

This is a project of historic proportions with potential to describe our common Jewish history in a scientific way never before possible. Every Jewish genealogist and family historian can and should play a role.