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Jewish Heritage Proj

  • 3837 members

About us

The founders of the Ashkenazi population 1,000 years ago appear to have been a diverse lot, displaying a half-dozen or so y chromosome haplogroups: J, E3b, R1a1, R1b, I, and G, among others. Since the founding, however, the Jewish populations within these groups appear to have been isolated from the non-Jewish community, as few if any of the recent Jewish subsets (haplotypes)were shared by the surrounding non-Jewish population.

An included study of the chromosomes of the 16 great-great-grandparents of the Project Administrator revealed a haplogroup distribution that mirrored that of the Schechter school parent population and the published studies of Jewish origins, confirming that all Ashkenazi Jews are a genetic "mosaic" containing an inheritance from the broad spectrum of Jewish founders. This is not surprising, since 80 generations have passed since the exile and 40 generations have passed since the founding of the Ashkenazi population.

Please note: Some results in the Jewish Heritage Project are posted by individuals who are descended from a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, or vice versa. In other cases, a person with a suspected Jewish background may have joined the Project to learn more about his origins (particularly noticeable in the R1b results). I welcome both sets of participants as I am a firm believer that the most important part of my job is to foster the spirit of inquiry among our members, and part of this to enable individuals from hidden Jewish communities (esp. Spain and New Mexico) to rediscover their backgrounds.

NOTE: BY JOINING THIS PROJECT YOU ARE GIVING THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THIS PROJECT YOUR EXPRESS PERMISSION TO JOIN YOUR KIT TO THE FTDNA AVOTAYNU DNA PROJECT, AN UNPUBLISHED DATABASE THAT IS BEING USED BY ACADEMICS TO COMPILE A DNA CENSUS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. NO DATA IN THE AVOTAYNU PROJECT IS IS VISIBLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC OR OTHER MEMBERS OF THE PROJECT, NOR IS IT USED FOR ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS. YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE THE AVOTAYNU PROJECT AT ANY TIME. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT, PLEASE VISIT WWW.AVOTAYNUONLINE.COM OR CONTACT PROJECT ADMINISTRATOR ADAM BROWN AT AVOTAYNUDNA@GMAIL.COM