The AvotaynuDNA-sponsored Genetic Census of the Jewish People enters its third year with active DNA testing being carried out within Jewish communities on six continents. As described previously in the pages of AVOTAYNU, the purpose of the project is to utilize DNA to illuminate the origins and migrations of the Jewish People over the last three millennia. As the Project continues in this worldwide endeavor, it has hewed to certain guiding principles.
Know what you are trying to achieve before you start, and have an organizing concept to manage your results.
From the beginning, we have aimed primarily to catalog the many different Y Chromosome lineages found among Jewish men worldwide and to trace their migrations. Thus far (as of Janurary 2019) we have cataloged 640 such lineages. You can find a list at our biostatistician’s website at www.JewishDNA.net.
Each specific YDNA lineage, by our definition, includes all men who carry the Y chromosome of a particular man who became Jewish, or whose children became Jewish, at a particular place at a particular time. We include in our catalog all demonstrable Jewish lineages whether their founders became Jewish in biblical times, by conversion in Hasmonean times, or during some other place or period during which Judaism embraced men from outside our community.
To each of these lineages our biometrician Wim Penninx assigns a sequential serial number, having started in 2016 with AB-001. While the genealogical organization known as ISOGG (International Society of Genetic Genealogy) has a system for assigning “haplogroup” identities such as J-M172 or R-M269 to DNA results, the recent discovery of tens of thousands of new YDNA mutations has led to a literal Tower of Babel of haplogroup descriptors. To avoid this confusion, once our Project has discovered a new lineage through statistical analysis, Wim assigns and publishes an exclusive “AB-000“ number that will be assigned to that lineage permanently regardless of how the testing companies and ISOGG may choose to describe it from time to time.
Partner with academic experts
In the main, these lineages are Middle Eastern in origin. However, there are exceptions. One example is my own, which based on the genetic evidence appears to have descended from a pagan who traveled from Scandinavia to England at the dawn of the Iron Age circa 1000 BCE and we see many of his descendants there today. One of the English descendants appears to have sailed across the Bay of Biscay to Iberia in a well-documented migration that followed the departure of the Romans during the 5th Century CE. This man, knowingly or unknowingly, became the founder of a Jewish lineage that 1,500 years later now includes Sephardi and Ashkenazi descendants on every continent. Wim has assigned our lineage the stable descriptor AB-084, which denotes the lineage without confusion, notwithstanding that the “scientific” name has changed repeatedly over the years as genetic testing has evolved, from R-M269, to R-BY3364, to R-BY5051, etc.
The world of genealogy is not immune to ethically unsound scientific practices and wishful thinking. Our antidote has been to include academic partners from the beginning of our study and to embrace the rigorous ethical practices of their institutions. Under international norms, academics engaged in human genetic research must obtain an IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval from the “Helsinki Committee” of their own institution, which by international convention must apply the principles of the “World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Using Human Subjects” (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/). The fundamental requirements for an IRB approval are informed consent and de-identification of DNA samples, although there are additional requirements. Because of the high standards applied by our academic collaborators, we were not impacted by the recently enacted General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) promulgated by the European Union, with which we were already in compliance.
Our academic partners have obtained IRB approval of our work from a number of institutions. The Technion, the University of Haifa, and NYU Winthrop Hospital have approved components of our YDNA study, as has the University of Colorado, which is collaborating in our autosomal study of Converso descendants in North, South and Central America. An academically approved mitochondrial study of the Sephardim is in the works. As our project expands to include additional academic participants, the list will surely grow.
In addition to ensuring high ethical standards, our academic partners have also added greatly to the rigor of our historical and bio-statistical analysis. There is no greater motivation for logical thinking and intellectual rigor than putting one’s academic reputation at risk. Our academic team thoroughly vets the genealogy of all potential participants in our study, and our statisticians are rigorous in ascertaining whether a particular DNA result from an outside participant “matches” one of our own.
Our default position is that without historical evidence or demonstrated DNA matching, a proffer of Jewish ancestry is “not proven” from a scientific standpoint until proven otherwise. This is not because we seek to exclude anyone, but we simply adhere to the notion that if our goal is to describe the genetic variation of the Jewish people, we must be reasonably certain that the individuals whose DNA we are depending upon have actual Jewish ancestry.
Plan on your project being successful, and garner sufficient funding to support it.
Running a scientific project in this technological age is not a venture that one can run on a shoestring. While inexpensive autosomal testing is peddled on television, the Internet and every other media source possible, testing of genuine historical usefulness requires that one employ the latest technology such as YDNA Next Generation Sequencing, and because a large segment of the overseas Jewish population has not joined the largely North American DNA testing craze, project organizers with a global view must be prepared to pay for it.
This is particularly true in our case. Because we operate under the auspices of academic institutions (see below), we are not permitted to ask our participants to purchase kits to participate. While we welcome participants who have commercially tested themselves to join their DNA results to our project, it is our policy that we pay for 100% of the cost for the participants whom we specifically recruit.
From the beginning, we have been blessed with strong financial support from several financial sources, and as we continue to grow and succeed, we continue to receive both solicited and unsolicited financial support from philanthropists.
In undertaking a population study, focus on specific communities and engage historians, genealogists and community leaders in the recruitment effort.
At the outset of the project, we found that the non-Ashkenazi communities worldwide were woefully under-represented among Y chromosome databases. To find more non-Ashkenazi participants, we ran articles in general-interest Jewish genealogical publications, and spoke at genealogy conferences, yet found in both cases we learned that these avenues did not reach a substantial number of non-Ashkenazi participants.
To meet this challenge, we realized that we would need to identify and recruit participants ourselves, and we developed a four-prong strategy:
- Work with historians to compile a list of historically important surnames from each community;
- Work with Jewish genealogists with expertise in each community to identify community leaders;
- Work with these community leaders to recruit men to be tested; and
- Take advantage of opportunities when they come your way.
We have been very fortunate in this respect. While too numerous to list in this summary, enthusiastic participants have stepped forward to assist at key stages, whether Hazzan Ike Azose delivering several dozen Greek and Turkish Jews for testing at IAJGS 2016 in Seattle, Sandra de Marchena testing over winter vacation the boys she grew up within Curacao, or a clinician of Bukhari descent stepping forward to test his community. Patiently building relations with opinion makers in each community is without question the key aspect of our success to date.
Focusing initially on the eastern Mediterranean, as of publication we have participants from these non-Ashkenazi populations, followed by the number of participants:
Eastern Mediterranean (Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Croatia), 194
Mizrahim (Iraqi, Persian, Afghani, Kurds/Nash-Didan), 85
Italkim (Italy), 81
Halabi (Syria, Lebanon and Egypt), 71
Western Sephardim (Curacao, Jamaica, Panama, London, Amsterdam), 55
North African (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya), 49
Kavkazi (Azerbaijan), 25
Bukhari (Uzbekistan), 20
Testing continues actively in each of these communities, and we continue to work with existing and prospective partners to identify under-tested communities and recruit participants. We describe our efforts in specific communities from time to time in the pages of AvotaynuOnline.com If you have connections to far-flung non-Ashkenazi communities, and wish to help us expand our reach, you are welcome to contact me at the Avotaynu Research Partnership LLC via Adam.Brown@AvotaynuDNA.org.
