Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.221 February 8, 1994 1) Origins of Eastern European Jewry (Jules F. Levin) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Feb 7 21:06:00 1994 From: Subject: Origins of Eastern European Jewry Several points: 1. The Huns DIDNT become the Hungarians. The Huns left Europe mid-fifth century after the death of Attila. End of NINTH century Europe was invaded by the Magyars, who grew up to become the Hungarians, who speak a Finno-Ugaric, not a TURKic language. 2. In my current class "Intro to Slavic Langs", I was surveying the ethnographic and national scene in 7th c. East-Central Europe and after listing all the various groups I was asked by one of my [gentile] students where or if the Jews were there... Having to answer extemporaneously, I pointed out that a) there were certainly Jewish communities in the Greek cities around the Black Sea, and b) the Khazars would not have converted to Judaism if there had been no Jews around already. 3. There are the beginnings of scholarship on the early presence of Jews in Russia. Toporov, I believe, published something on the pre-Slavic city of Kiev, which apparently was an outpost of the Khazar empire. There is a letter in Hebrew which describes the city (a Jewish traveler), with a Jewish mercantile class and a Turkic [Muslim?] military garrison. There were Yeshivas! All this is pre-988--the conversion date of Rus'. The famous (to all Slavic grad students) Sermon of Ilarion on Christian love and Jewish law, etc., sounds like a real polemic, not a mere hypothetical discursis. And there are refs to Judaizing (zhidovstvujushchie) tendencies in Kievan Rus'. So there were certainly Jews already in the East. 4. Koestler's theory is cockamamie; I believe he was trying to reconcile his Jewish identity and his origin in Budapesht. But has anyone brought up Wechsler's theory of a West Slavic substratum as the basis of Yiddish? He also I believe argues for conversion, but of Slavs, not Khazars! This is the theory that must be engaged, not AK's! 5. Finally, the genetic angle. The distinction someone was reaching for is between genotype and phenotype. I am skeptical about someone's recollection that Jews have the same bloodtype distributions as co-territorial Gentiles. This runs counter to my own memory of a college text that described the classic example of geno- and pheno- difference--the Jews of Rome! While *phenotypically* identical to their Italian neighbors, they were genotypically distinct in blood type distribution, despite over 2000 years of co-territoriality! Now how could Italian Jews be distinctive, while Jews in other European communities, with much shorter durations of co-territoriality, be the same. Check your reference again. Recently the local Jewish press ran a story about a Hispanic person who is desperately searching for a bone-marrow donor. After failing to find a match in the Hispanic community, specialists are advising him to extend his search to the Jewish community, since his DNA profile most closely resembles those of Eastern European Jews! They suspect Marrano ancestry. Now this story, which I have no reason to doubt, tend to support my view, that the key to all this discussion is in genetic studies, not linguistics or whatever. But we need to bring in a real geneticist. I'm willing to bet 10 bucks that it will turn out that E-E Jews are statistically, DNA-wise, closer to Arabs than to co-territorial Slavs! Like it or not, folks, we are Semites. 6. Regarding all the raping and other forms of exogamous activity referred to by fellow Mendeleans, my hunch is that much of the resulting issue would move from the Jewish group to the surrounding non-Jewish group. Of course halachically the offspring of a Jewish woman is Jewish, which made it convenient in the case of rape. No doubt there was genetic inflow, but it was never enough to overwhelm the basic Semitic gene-pool. On the other hand, outflow was probably greater, and I suspect that some areas of East Central Europe have a substantial Jewish genetic substratum in the Gentile population. Of course, there are no genetically pure ethnic groups, and the Jews of EE are certainly as Jewish as the Germans are German (a substantial Slavic substratum there!), the Poles Polish, and the Hungarians Hungarian. Jules F. Levin ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.221 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files