Jerome Groopman: The Genetic History Of The Jews, And What It Says About Jews Today
... [David B.] Goldstein rightly reiterates the caveat that he made at the beginning of [his] book [Jacob's Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History]. "In general, genetic history has been successful only in contexts where nongenetic sources of information--for example, texts, oral history, or archaeology--specify mutually exclusive possibilities.... Working without such external information, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to tell a coherent story about the history of a population based solely on genetic data." And so sometimes the necessary research to make probabilistic conclusions about descent moves far out of a laboratory dissecting DNA and comes close to historical and archaeological inquiry.
In order to arrive at an accurate answer to the question of whether the oral tradition surrounding the Jewish priesthood was likely correct, Bradman and Goldstein first had to develop an estimate of the proportion of Jews who might be considered cohanim. "My solution was to keep reading books in the hope that someone had mentioned the issue somewhere," Goldstein writes. "Neil Bradman came up with the better idea: go into Jewish cemeteries and start counting all the headstones with the priestly hand symbol on them. Visit enough cemeteries, reasoned Neil, and you'd get a good idea of the proportion in the general population. In this way, Neil made a casual estimate based on cohanim symbols found in cemeteries in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. I myself spent a brisk morning wandering around the haunting and beautiful Jewish cemetery in Prague searching for the split-finger insignia and feeling a surprising sense of connection to this community of which I knew so little."
Goldstein, like many scientists, does not suffer fools lightly, and he finds much foolish in how this work was communicated to the public. "I keep a folder of various press clippings that mention my work, mostly because my mom and dad often send them to me but also because they are a powerful reminder of the ways in which even modest and speculative research findings get exaggerated and reported as fact," he writes. "For me, the cohanim study and the 'Aaron's Y chromosome' headlines it generated represent one of the more egregious examples of this phenomenon." The Independent on July 9, 1998, stated that "Jewish line traced back to Moses. The Jerusalem Report on May 10, 1999 said that there was "scientific confirmation of an oral tradition passed down through 3,000 years." In Goldstein's mind, "it is striking enough that the Y chromosome could provide any historical information at all. I thought the story was that genetic history was not total bunk and indeed could add to conventional history, archaeology, and anthropology. But the press has a weakness for grandeur."
There is no way to know whether today's cohanim are indeed carrying Aaron's Y chromosome. All that can be said--and it is quite a bit--is that "our best guess is that the priestly line was founded before the major dispersals of the Jewish populations--that is, certainly before the time of the Romans and perhaps before the Babylonian conquest in the sixth century B.C.E. Whatever their true origins, whomever they may trace to, the cohanim of today are descended from an ancient lineage." But whether that is Aaron, who is placed at the time of the Exodus (which Goldstein points out may not have occurred at all), remains an open question....
Read entire article at New Republic
In order to arrive at an accurate answer to the question of whether the oral tradition surrounding the Jewish priesthood was likely correct, Bradman and Goldstein first had to develop an estimate of the proportion of Jews who might be considered cohanim. "My solution was to keep reading books in the hope that someone had mentioned the issue somewhere," Goldstein writes. "Neil Bradman came up with the better idea: go into Jewish cemeteries and start counting all the headstones with the priestly hand symbol on them. Visit enough cemeteries, reasoned Neil, and you'd get a good idea of the proportion in the general population. In this way, Neil made a casual estimate based on cohanim symbols found in cemeteries in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. I myself spent a brisk morning wandering around the haunting and beautiful Jewish cemetery in Prague searching for the split-finger insignia and feeling a surprising sense of connection to this community of which I knew so little."
Goldstein, like many scientists, does not suffer fools lightly, and he finds much foolish in how this work was communicated to the public. "I keep a folder of various press clippings that mention my work, mostly because my mom and dad often send them to me but also because they are a powerful reminder of the ways in which even modest and speculative research findings get exaggerated and reported as fact," he writes. "For me, the cohanim study and the 'Aaron's Y chromosome' headlines it generated represent one of the more egregious examples of this phenomenon." The Independent on July 9, 1998, stated that "Jewish line traced back to Moses. The Jerusalem Report on May 10, 1999 said that there was "scientific confirmation of an oral tradition passed down through 3,000 years." In Goldstein's mind, "it is striking enough that the Y chromosome could provide any historical information at all. I thought the story was that genetic history was not total bunk and indeed could add to conventional history, archaeology, and anthropology. But the press has a weakness for grandeur."
There is no way to know whether today's cohanim are indeed carrying Aaron's Y chromosome. All that can be said--and it is quite a bit--is that "our best guess is that the priestly line was founded before the major dispersals of the Jewish populations--that is, certainly before the time of the Romans and perhaps before the Babylonian conquest in the sixth century B.C.E. Whatever their true origins, whomever they may trace to, the cohanim of today are descended from an ancient lineage." But whether that is Aaron, who is placed at the time of the Exodus (which Goldstein points out may not have occurred at all), remains an open question....