This section is the most comprehensive summary of Jewish genetic data. In recent years, advances in genetic technology and the broadening in scope of genetic studies to encompass more ethnic groups have allowed scientists to come to more accurate conclusions. Now that we have the benefit of more than a decade of comprehensive genetic testing of Jewish populations using modern techniques, we have finally come close to answering all the questions about Jewish ancestry. Part of the story is that Eastern European Jews have significant Eastern Mediterranean elements which manifest themselves in close relationships with Kurdish, Armenian, Palestinian Arab, Lebanese, Syrian, and Anatolian Turkish peoples. This is why the Y-DNA haplogroups J and E, which are typical of the Middle East, are so common among them. Jewish lineages from this region of the world derive from both the Levant and the Anatolia-Armenia region. At the same time, there are traces of European (including Northern Italian and Western Slavic or Eastern Slavic) and Khazar ancestry among European Jews. Many Greek and Roman women married Jewish men before conversion to Judaism was outlawed by the Roman Empire, and many of the Southern European ancestral lines in Ashkenazic families come from these marriages. Ethiopian Jews mostly descend from Ethiopian Africans who converted to Judaism, but may also be related to a lesser extent to Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Jews descend from Arabs and Israelites. North African Jewish and Kurdish Jewish paternal lineages come from Israelites. Jewish Y-DNA tends to come from the Middle East, and that studies that take into account mtDNA show that many Jewish populations are related to neighboring non-Jewish groups maternally. All existing studies fail to compare modern Jewish populations' DNA to ancient Judean DNA and medieval Khazarian DNA, but in the absence of old DNA, comparisons with living populations appear to be adequate to trace geographic roots.
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"Still more, it has been resolved to put bones found in those sites through genetic testing. DNA studies... will reveal the mystery of the ghost ancestor..." - "El fantasma de los jázaros" by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, in La Nación (Buenos Aires, Argentina), August 14, 1999 issue, Opinion section."Certain scholars in addition appear much to await genetic tests of the DNA of the bones taken for the study of the migrations and the authentication of the sites." - "L'histoire retrouvée des Khazars" by Nicolas Weill, in Le Monde (France), July 9, 1999 issue, page 12.
Unfortunately, as Bennett Greenspan pointed out, Y-DNA doesn't usually last more than 100 years in the remains of a dead person, so direct testing of Khazar bones may be impossible.
In 2012, Dr. Eran Elhaik of Johns Hopkins University formally launched a Khazar DNA Project that intends to search for any traces of the Khazars in Jewish and non-Jewish populations, concentrating on autosomal DNA. He is particularly interested in a Caucasus-specific ancestral component he identified and wants to discover whether it is found in any Jewish populations. Update: He published some results online on August 6, 2012 in the draft article "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses"; its abstract concludes "Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry." An excerpt from the body: "Central and Eastern European Jews differ mostly in their Middle Eastern (30% and 25%, respectively) and Eastern European ancestries (3% and 12%, respectively), probably due to late admixture. [...] The close genetic distance between Central European Jews and Southern European populations can be attributed to a late admixture." But also see this commentary against the study's consideration of Armenians as a fundamentally Caucasus-based people and this commentary about its mistake in using Armenians as "a proxy for the gene pool of the Khazar Empire" as well as Seth Frantzman's commentary mentioning a possible problem relating to the Druse among other concerns.
The DNA of the Egyptian Karaites remains to be studied on a large-scale basis. The DNA of the Crimean Karaites is currently being studied. Small-scale testing of Lithuanian-Polish and Crimean Karaites occurred during the years 2005 and 2006 and the results were published in the 2nd edition of The Jews of Khazaria in October 2006. More Crimean Karaite samples were tested later. The tests were upgraded to 37 markers in 2009-2010 and yielded more precise results, and more matches were located as well. Five tests were upgraded to 67 markers in 2011. As of August 16, 2011 we have 28 total participants in our Lithuanian-Polish and Crimean Karaite Y-DNA and mtDNA projects. The latest analysis will be published later.
The website Genetics and Human Migration Patterns was recommended to me.
Aish HaTorah exposes the myth of a separate Jewish race: "Jews are not a race. Anyone can become a Jew - and members of every race, creed and color in the world have done so at one time or another. There is no distinguishing racial physical feature common only to Jews."
Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis explains the nature of Judaism: "One of the unique aspects of Judaism is its rejection of Judaism as a biological entity, an inherited spiritual DNA, racial or ethnic. The point is that being a Jew is not a matter of genes and chromosomes. To the contrary, Judaism is the first religion to recognize the 'ger', the stranger who chooses to identify himself with Judaism. Judaism is not rooted in race or clan or in a genetic matter but a religious tradition of choice."
In Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's book Future Tense: Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-First Century (2009) on page 62 briefly mentioned (and almost endorsed) Arthur Koestler's theory of Khazar origins for Ashkenazim and wrote: "Judaism is not an ethnicity and Jews are not an ethnic group. Go to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and you will see Jews of every colour and culture under the sun, the Beta Israel from Ethiopia, the Bene Israel from India, Bukharan Jews from central Asia, Iraqi, Berber, Egyptian, Kurdish and Libyan, the Temamim from Yemen, alongside American Jews from Russia, South African Jews from Lithuania, and British Jews from German-speaking Poland. Their food, music, dress, customs, and conventions are all different. Jewishness is not an ethnicity but a living lexicon of ethnicities."
The answer is that Jews are a religion and a civilization, but not a race or singular ethnic group (the latter two definitions marginalize proselytes). As Rabbi Rami Shapiro said: "There is only one response to Who is a Jew? that works: A Jew is one who takes Judaism seriously. One who takes Judaism seriously studies it, argues with it, and lives it." The proper name of the separate ethnic group that most Jews descend from is Israelite.
For historical and archaeological perspectives on these issues, visit our companion pages Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars? and Are Russian Jews Descended from German and Bohemian Jews?.
Ancestry.com's Jewish Family History Collection - searchable databases
