Are Jews genetically homogenous? Though it’s certainly been a loaded question historically, the quandary has been the domain of scientists for a number of years now, all of whom have pretty much come up with the same answer: yes. But that was before Eran Elhaik entered the picture. An Israeli molecular geneticist, Elhaik is interested,…
The persistent debate over the “racial” origins of the Jewish people makes a mockery of scholarship, trivializes history and perpetuates conceptions of identity that have been misused to justify everything from violent repression to affirmative action. It is hardly surprising that Johns Hopkins’s Eran Elhaik “stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy,” as the Forward…
Scientists usually don’t call each other “liars” and “frauds.” But that’s how Johns Hopkins University post-doctoral researcher Eran Elhaik describes a group of widely respected geneticists, including Harry Ostrer, professor of pathology and genetics at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and author of the 2012 book “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish…
Back when he was Israel’s Minister of Justice, the irrepressible and ever-creative Yossi Beilin put forward a proposal for secular conversion to Judaism. As he explained, “It is simply unimaginable that in the 21st century, a time in which most of world Jewry is not religious, we should continue to grant certain religious establishments the…
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday is set to hear arguments on whether colleges and universities can continue to favor minority candidates in admissions policies. Given that the court in 2003 approved such policies, its decision to take up the issue again suggests it may be looking to cut back on affirmative action. The case…
My first visit to South Africa, and the impressions were jarring. I grew up in liberal America, where apartheid was a curse and a cause rather than a way of life. I knew very few South Africans, Jewish or otherwise. And then I moved to Israel, and then Nelson Mandela whooshed to president from prisoner,…
In the May 11 edition of the Forward, Jon Entine, founder and director of the Genetic Literacy Project at George Mason University, reviewed the book “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” by Harry Ostrer, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In the review, Entine summarized Ostrer’s major finding: Most, but…
Many little girls grow up on Disney princess cartoons. I grew up on Bollywood films, dancing to the Hindi music, the lyrics to which I had memorized by the time I was six. I was raised in the 1980s in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and Bollywood’s charming wholesomeness was imported in droves. I’d…
סאָװעטיש־ייִדיש איז געװען אַ ראַדיקאַלער עקספּערימענט, װאָס פֿאַרנעמט אַ װיכטיקן פּלאַץ אױף דער װעלטמאַפּע פֿון ייִדישער קולטור
