Uncategorized
A German town built a granary atop its Jewish cemetery. Now the bones are yielding insights about Ashkenazi DNA.
BERLIN (JTA) – The city of Erfurt in central Germany is home to an impeccably restored medieval synagogue made possible because local Jews had been expelled long before the Nazis began their campaign to destroy Jewish sites.
Now, Erfurt’s long-hidden Jewish past is again offering new insights — this time about the genetic history of Ashkenazi Jews.
Human remains from a medieval Jewish cemetery in Erfurt have allowed what researchers say is the largest ancient Jewish DNA study to date. Conducted without disinterring any remains, in keeping with Jewish law, the study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Cell found that Erfurt’s medieval Jewish community was more genetically diverse than their modern-day cousins, and carried many of the same Jewish genetic diseases — such as Tay Sachs and cystic fibrosis — that affect Ashkenazi Jews today.
“There have been many previous DNA studies, but not of Jews,” said geneticist Shai Carmi, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose search for study material led him to an archaeological dig at the Jewish cemetery in Erfurt. He and his collaborators were able to analyze DNA of 33 individuals who died between 1270 and 1400, using teeth they found there.
The study follows a similar analysis revealed in August by researchers in England, who studied the DNA from skeletons found at the bottom of a medieval well and concluded that the remains were likely of victims of an antisemitic massacre in 1190. Analysis of six individuals prior to their identification as Jewish revealed that Ashkenazi Jews developed a unique genetic variation centuries earlier than realized.
The Erfurt analysis also includes samples from before the epidemic of Black Death that was until recently understood to have created the genetic “bottleneck” that created the genetic markers common among Ashkenazi Jews today.
Erfurt’s Jewish settlement existed from the 11th to 15th century, with a brief gap following a 1349 massacre perpetrated after the Jews were falsely blamed for causing the bubonic plague. Surviving Jews returned there, but after all Jews were expelled once and for all in 1454, the city built a granary on top of the Jewish cemetery.
Karin Sczech participates in the excavation at the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt. (Courtesy of TLDA Ronny Krause)
In 2013, the city approved the repurposing of the unused granary into a parking lot. Because it was an historic site, a rescue excavation was initiated, overseen for the State of Thuringia by German archaeologist Karin Sczech.
Meanwhile, Carmi had been looking for Jewish cemeteries anywhere in the world “where we could analyze remains already excavated,” he told JTA in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. “I consulted historians and eventually reached the archeologist in Erfurt.” Fortunately, he said, “they still hadn’t reburied the remains.”
He approached Sczech, who later became a co-author of the new study. In 2018, with a supportive judgment from Rabbi Ze’ev Litke — an Israeli expert on genetics and Jewish law — and permission from Erfurt’s then-rabbi, Benjamin Kochan, work began to extract and analyze DNA from detached teeth found in the graves. (About 500 Jews live in Erfurt today, most of them having migrated from the former Soviet Union since 1990.)
American geneticist David Reich picked up the teeth and brought them back to the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where drilling and DNA extraction took place.
While the skeletons were reburied, the teeth are still stored at the research institutes where they have been analyzed, in case scientists need to retest to verify the result.
The project provides an ethical basis for studies of ancient Jewish DNA, Carmi said. “Of course we couldn’t just go to a cemetery and dig and take out skeletons; this would be prohibited,” he said, referring to Jewish law prohibiting the removal of bones from where someone was buried.
But Litke opined that the study could be done, because the bones already had been disturbed for an unrelated reason. “He recommended using teeth, as the analysis does almost no damage,” Carmi said.
There are many motivations to study Jewish DNA: One can find lost relatives going back a few generations, and answer questions about Jewish origin of partners intending to marry. But the goal of Carmi’s team was “to fill the gaps in our understanding of Ashkenazi Jewish early history.”
There are several non-destructive ways to obtain DNA from human remains, said Carmi, who also works as a consultant to an Israeli firm that helps clients trace their genetic roots.
“You can take an almost microscopic slice of bone and extract DNA in a solution, or put the entire bone in a solution and extract the DNA without drilling, without disturbing the dead. This opens the way to doing studies even without teeth,” he added.
His team found that the Erfurt community appeared to fit into two genetically distinct groups, descending either from Middle Eastern or European populations. This genetic variability no longer exists, Carmi said.
At the same time, Carmi said, the analysis found remarkable continuity in the local community, as well. “One third of the Erfurt individuals descended from one woman through their maternal lines,” he said, adding that evidence suggested that she lived between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago.
In a press statement, geneticist Reich of Harvard said the work “also provides a template for how a co-analysis of modern and ancient DNA data can shed light on the past. Studies like this hold great promise not only for understanding Jewish history, but also that of any population.”
The research team, with more than 30 scientists, included Hebrew University’s Shamam Waldman, a doctoral student in Carmi’s group, who performed most of the data analysis.
—
The post A German town built a granary atop its Jewish cemetery. Now the bones are yielding insights about Ashkenazi DNA. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Don’t dismiss Israel’s most rage-baiting minister as fringe
As Israel drifts toward another election campaign, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir this week offered voters — and the world — a grotesque glimpse of where a large branch of Israeli politics is heading.
Touring a detention facility holding activists from a Gaza-bound flotilla intercepted by Israel, Ben-Gvir waved a large Israeli flag before rows of bound detainees forced to kneel, mocked them as cameras rolled, and declared Israel was “in charge here.”
The images sparked domestic and international outrage. European governments summoned Israeli ambassadors. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of the Israeli right, charged on X that “Ben-Gvir betrayed” the “dignity of his nation.” Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a rare move, publicly rebuked his own minister.
That rebuke should not be taken as a signal that Ben-Gvir may fade in power. Because while many Israelis still prefer to think of the controversy-courting minister as a fringe embarrassment attached awkwardly to an otherwise respectable nationalist movement, he is the true face of the Israeli right today.
A week ago, Ben-Gvir ascended the Temple Mount in Jerusalem — one of his many violations of longstanding norms governing the holy site — as tens of thousands of ultranationalist Israelis marched through the Old City in an annual celebration of its 1967 capture, many chanting “Death to Arabs.” The rabble rouser — whose multiple convictions include support for terrorist groups — recently celebrated his 50th birthday with two cakes adorned with nooses, a nod to the death penalty legislation for terrorists that he played a major role in getting passed. No surprise: The law is worded in a way that makes clear it is aimed at Palestinians only. Legislators allied with his camp wore noose-shaped lapel pins while promoting it.
This madness is not some accidental byproduct of the right-wing movement Netanyahu has led for decades, but its natural consequence.
For years, the mainstream nationalist camp, with Netanyahu as its most prominent figure, has sold Israelis an illusion: Israel can permanently control the West Bank — and perhaps Gaza, once more, as well — while forever suppressing Palestinian national aspirations, and still somehow remain both democratic and fully accepted by the democratic world.
The terminology changes: “managing the conflict,” “security control,” “economic peace.” But the underlying proposition remains the same. And it is a fantasy.
A country that indefinitely controls millions of disenfranchised people — where almost half the population does not have the right to vote — does not remain a true democracy. A state ruling another nation forever does not remain democratic either, even if elections formally continue among the population allowed to vote.
There are now roughly 15 million people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. About half are Jews, and half are Arabs. That demographic reality sits at the center of every serious discussion about Israel’s future. Yet much of the Israeli right pretends this reality barely exists, and ignores the increasingly brazen Jewish terrorism and the illegal seizing of outposts in the West Bank. Netanyahu himself speaks the language of caution, realism and statecraft, striving to reassure centrists and foreign governments alike that Israel remains fundamentally part of the democratic West.
Not Ben-Gvir.
Ben-Gvir speaks for those on the right who see only two possibilities when it comes to Palestinians: permanent Israeli domination without equality, enforced by as much violence as needed — or expulsion. Officially, much of the far-right prefers the former; once the cameras stop rolling, almost all of them predict the latter.
I was speaking to one prominent right-winger the other day, and asked what they had in mind for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. “Those who don’t want to destroy Israel can stay,” they said.
Obviously, that definition might include none of them, I noted. “Then get the trucks,” was the reply.
That wasn’t moral, I said. The reply: “Is it moral to force my children to fight forever?”
Ben-Gvir’s outrageous behavior is meant to appeal to people with this mindset. And it’s working. Polls show his Otzma Yehudit party expected to get perhaps 13 seats in the next Knesset — more than double their current six.
Moreover, Netanyahu’s Likud party itself has undergone a gradual shift to the right, with many of its Knesset members starting to sound little different from Ben-Gvir. That is why Ben-Gvir was able to ram through the disgraceful bill mandating the death penalty for terrorists.
This political calamity was not unexpected. The occupation of the West Bank, like unchecked power everywhere, was always bound to corrode political culture over time. The sleight of hand of non-annexation is growing old — in part because of Ben-Gvir’s influence, the number of settlements is expanding rapidly — and much of the Israeli right, consumed by hubris, wants to rip off the mask. Ben-Gvir is the most authentic expression of that transformation.
That is the dark reality hanging over the coming election, and the flotilla episode revealed the zeitgeist in its purest form. Israel already had complete control over the activists. They posed no meaningful threat. The performance was about domination, a theatrical display for a domestic political audience increasingly drawn to the aesthetics of vengeance and submission.
Challenged on Israel Radio about the wisdom of such a stunt at a time when Israel is facing a crisis in global public opinion, Yitzhak Kroizer, a Knesset member from Ben-Gvir’s party, offered this: “We’re done bowing our heads and apologizing.” He said the flotilla members were terrorists themselves for wishing to harm Israel, and that there is “great public support for an uncompromising stand.”
He’s right on that last point. Israel faces genuine enemies and genuine trauma. Hamas massacred civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. Hezbollah and Iran openly seek confrontation. Israelis have every reason to fear for their security.
But those realities still leave unanswered a central strategic question: What kind of country emerges from such prolonged conflict?
Ben-Gvir has given us one unsettling answer.
In 1995, a teenage Ben-Gvir famously brandished the hood ornament ripped from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car and declared on Israeli television: “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.” Weeks later, assassin Yigal Amir did just that, and murdered Rabin.
Today, the target in Ben-Gvir’s sights isn’t Israel’s leader, but instead all of Israeli democracy.
The post Don’t dismiss Israel’s most rage-baiting minister as fringe appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Gaza and Israel go unmentioned in Democrats’ 2024 election autopsy report
(JTA) — Gaza and Israel go unmentioned in the Democrats’ 190-page autopsy of Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential election loss that the Democratic National Committee released to CNN on Thursday.
Critics of the Biden administration’s support for Israel during the war in Gaza that began on Oct. 7, 2023, have alleged that the party was suppressing its internal findings about the election, which returned President Donald Trump to office, because it would show that Biden’s stance was deeply unpopular.
Axios reported in February that the top Democrats who worked on the report concluded that Harris “lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza.”
If that’s the case, it’s not reflected in the document that CNN published on Thursday morning. Portions of the document were not included, however, with notes saying that the executive summary and conclusion had not been shared by the authors.
The report points to 10 different “strategic implications” for Democrats, including that “anti-Trump sentiment has limits,” male voters “require direct engagement,” and that voter demographics are not enough to determine which candidate they’ll prefer.
CNN reported that the document was written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera and annotated by the DNC. The DNC released the document following questions raised by CNN, the network reported.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin told CNN that the report was not yet ready to be publicly released, but concluded that withholding it would create a larger distraction than releasing an incomplete version. “I sincerely apologize,” he said.
“For full transparency, I am releasing the report as we received it, in its entirety, unedited and unabridged,” Martin said. “It does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards, but I am doing this because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”
Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said she’d expected to see analysis related to Gaza and Israel in the report.
“As soon as it arrived in my inbox I immediately searched for the word ‘Gaza’ expecting there to be an entire section focused on this issue,” Soifer said in an interview. “So I was surprised that, in fact, there was nothing — on Gaza, Israel, Jewish voters, non-Jewish voters, it was just nothing.”
Though rumors had swirled about the role that Gaza played in the autopsy, Soifer said she heard from a DNC official that there was “never” a section focusing on the issue, “at least not in writing in this report.”
Meanwhile, the Institute for Middle East Understanding, a pro-Palestinian nonprofit, called on Martin to release “the information that the author of the autopsy told us clearly and unambiguously, which is that DNC officials’ review of their own data found Biden’s support to be a net-negative for Democrats in 2024.”
Rivera, the report’s author, met with the IMEU and told them that the war in Gaza hurt Democrats in the 2024 election, according to reporting by Axios.
Soifer said the JDCA was not contacted by Rivera, and did not meet with him.
The pro-Israel lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel also said it had not met with Rivera. “Our current leadership has not met with the author and hasn’t been contacted,” communications chair Rachel Rosen told JTA.
While Soifer was surprised by the report’s omission of Gaza and Israel, DMFI took it as a sign that support for Israel does not have a detrimental effect on Democrats’ chances in elections.
“We need to learn the lessons of 2024 so we can be successful in 2026, 2028 and beyond,” said Brian Romick, DMFI’s president.
“What is clear — autopsy or not — is a majority of Americans, including Democrats, support the U.S.-Israel relationship, and that support was not the reason Vice President Harris lost the election,” he said.
A DMFI staffer pointed to polling from last fall showing that a majority of Democrats support the U.S.-Israel relationship.
And Soifer pointed to a poll published Friday by the Jewish Voters Resource Center, a nonpartisan firm, that found that more than two-thirds of Jewish voters plan to vote for Democrats this November — suggesting that Israel was not significantly moving votes in one of the demographics most likely to be invested in the issue.
“The poll also demonstrated that the top issue driving the Jewish vote in 2026 – just as it was in 2024 – is the future of democracy, followed by the cost of living. While 70% of Jewish voters have an emotional attachment to Israel, 55% opposed Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza,” she said. “There is little evidence that the war in Gaza has impacted the Jewish American vote.”
A spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition pointed to the episode as an example of infighting among Democrats.
“The Democrats are tearing themselves apart as they appease the ascendant far-left extremists in their party, from Maine to Pennsylvania,” wrote Sam Markstein, alluding to candidates Graham Platner and Chris Rabb.
“It’s bad policy and it’s bad politics. The GOP is the only party where it’s safe to be proudly Jewish and pro-Israel,” Markstein wrote. “Republicans are righteously taking on the tough fights and winning, while Democrats continue to whistle past the political graveyard.”
The post Gaza and Israel go unmentioned in Democrats’ 2024 election autopsy report appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Argentine official who investigated death of AMIA prosecutor charged with covering up evidence
(JTA) — The former prosecutor who led the investigation into a mysterious 2015 death that unnerved Argentina’s Jewish community has been charged with concealing evidence in the case.
Viviana Fein was indicted on May 12 on charges of “aggravated concealment” over her handling of the investigation into the death of Alberto Nisman, a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.
On Jan. 18, 2015, Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment with a bullet hole above his right ear, having been shot at point-blank range. His body was discovered hours before he was scheduled to present evidence before Argentinian lawmakers accusing then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and other senior officials of allegedly covering up Iran’s role in the AMIA attack.
At the time, Fein declared Nisman’s death a suicide, but in May 2016 she slightly amended her view saying that he may have been forced to kill himself. Then, in 2017, forensic investigators issued a report stating that Nisman was assassinated. Jewish institutions have also maintained that he was murdered.
Under the Argentine Penal Code, a person charged with aggravated concealment must not have actively participated in the original crime but joined in the aftermath, and Judge Julián Ercolini ruled that Fein allegedly failed to properly preserve the crime scene at Nisman’s apartment.
According to court filings, dozens of people entered and exited the apartment without proper controls, potentially contaminating evidence and compromising the investigation.
The controversy surrounding the handling of the original crime scene has persisted for years. Judicial investigations and expert reports described the apartment as chaotic in the hours after Nisman’s death, with allegations that evidence may have been mishandled or destroyed.
Fein, who could face up to three years in prison if found guilty, has denied any wrongdoing. A week prior to her indictment, her attorney, Lucio Simonetti demanded the charges be dropped, stating that in the case of a cover up, “There must necessarily be a connection between the perpetrator of the underlying crime and the person covering it up, since it is absurd to assume that someone would cover up for a complete stranger.”
He added that the ruling “says nothing about any prior relationship existing between my client and the individuals who allegedly took part in the supposed murder of Natalio Alberto Nisman.’”
The prosecution comes as Argentina’s government takes a newly aggressive stance against Iran and Hezbollah, which are widely understood to have planned the bombing. Since Javier Milei, a conservative supporter of Israel, was elected in 2023, the country has officially declared Iran and Hezbollah responsible for the AMIA attack and another attack two years earlier on the Israeli embassy; designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization; and decided to pursue a trial in absentia for suspects implicated in the case.
The post Argentine official who investigated death of AMIA prosecutor charged with covering up evidence appeared first on The Forward.