Talk:Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Article rename

This article needs to be renamed. We definitely should lose the "The".

Possible new names:

Anyone have any input? Editor2020 (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I renamed the article: Khazar theory. I'm not sure if it's ok do be so bold but I didn't like the title. Considering that there is no official term for the theory, I chose the simplest title. Khazar (talk) 00:14, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
'Khazar theory' is semantically obscure: no one will know what it refers to. (b)Nearly everything about the Khazars is 'theoretical' or 'speculative'. Perhaps the provisory title was unsatisfactory, but for clarity I think one must link the theory to the Ashkenazi. Otherwise, all the other tribes/peoples e.g. Russians,Karaites, etc.etc (nuymerous) who have at times claimed descent from Khazars would be understood to be covered by the 'theory', which is something the page does not (as yet at least) do. Something like 'The Ashkenazi-Khazar hypothesis', is straightforward and understandable at a glance.Nishidani (talk) 08:39, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
I think the title should start with the word Khazar. Anyone looking for the theory in likely to type that word first, rather than "Ashkenazi". We could go with Khazar origin of Askenazi Jews, though without "theory" or "hypothesis" I suspect this would be be criticised. Other possibilities: Khazar-Ashkenaski origin theory, Khazars as ancestors of Ashkenaski Jews, Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry.... Paul B (talk) 12:40, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
As long as the Ashkenazi connection is in the title, any of those are fine (I'd prefer the last). I might add that like the orthodox, implicitly 'pure (Israelitic) origin' theory, this theory suffers from the error of excluding conversion among early Ashkenazi populationss. In other words the theory mirrors its antithesis, with the one difference that the Khazar hypothesis is minoritarian, whereas the Israelitic-descent hypothesis is almost, if irrationally, mainstream. Straight monolinear descent theories of either kind are intrinsically dubious. Nishidani (talk) 13:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

If you have in the first line of the article what it's critics call it - it signals to all a strong bias against the hypothesis and it's where I stopped reading. One might expect an article on The Holocaust to have in it's first line that it's critics call it 'The Holohoax' and we would stop reading at that point as well - deeply shocking first line - sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.174.161.31 (talk) 08:23, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

No need to apologize, except to the English language for writing 'it's' for 'its' three times. 99.999% of those who know about the Holocaust recognize it as a fact: people who think it a hoax belong to the sicker side of the lunatic fringe. Historically, the Khazar hypothesis has a notable number of eminent and acutely intelligent supporters who have argued the case with vigour. At the same time it has a notable number of eminent and acutely intelligent deniers who have challenged the case with vigour. Hence we give in the lead sentence, both sides. There are lots of deeply shocking (in the sense of disconcertingly contrafactual) first lines: Genesis 1:1:'In the beginning God made the world'; or, for a factual example, the incipit of Anna Karenina. In any case, being disconcerted is the first positive step towards an intelligent approach to a nonsensical world. The onset of cognitive dissonance, finding our expectations disrupted, is what makes us think, or, more often, retreat in a panic to the prejudices nature and society suggest are safer conduits to social survival.Nishidani (talk) 08:34, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Since this is not an article and you understood me well enough to provide a rebuttal - You could have overlooked my ineptitude with language for the sake of decorum. Instead you undermined yourself by insulting me - so I cannot in all honesty thank you for your points. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.174.161.31 (talk) 13:58, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikilinking inside quotes

I'm generally reluctant to wikilink words inside quotes (and this is discouraged by some guideline I can't be bothered to look up right now) because it's a form of attributing meaning to the author being quoted without any authority for doing so. What I've done in the past is what the guideline recommends, i.e. "blah blah blah haplotype [haplotype] blah blah blah." On the other hand, I noticed a few words wikilinked inside quotes here already, so maybe it's not a priority? It seems less important for scientific topics than otherwise, but maybe it's something to consider. For instance, in the Haplotype R1a1a thing, I wikified "Haplotype" and then R-M17 rather than Haplotype R1a1a itself, which redirects to R-M420 rather than R-M17. I don't know enough to sort out what's right here, but it certainly seems to need wikifying, since how many people know what any of it means? Anyway, just soliciting opinions here.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 19:28, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Criticisms of Elhaik sourced to a Jewish Daily Forward article

Various criticisms of Elhaik, sourced to an article in the Jewish Daily Forward (JDF), have been added. Now, the JDF article also contains statements of support for Elhaik's work as well as Elhaik's opinion of other researchers who his results contradict; it would be nice if the editors who have added detail about the criticisms could add detail about the favourable stuff as well (it would also be nice if we can come to an agreement about whether the word hypothesis when used in the phrases Rhineland Hypothesis and Khazarian Hypothesis should be capitalised, as it is in the Jewish Daily Forward article, or not). I have to say that I think that a couple of statements made near the start of the JDF article are incorrect: the work of the Rhineland Hypothesis researchers was not unchallenged, particularly by linguists, and that work did not support the Rhineland Hypothesis, rather it was the other way round, it was assumed that the Rhineland Hypothesis was correct and the interpretation of results was based on that.     ←   ZScarpia   09:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC) -- (This article contains an explanation of Elhaik's motivations)

I created this page so enthusiasts for the argument could, as the original introduction of material re genetics asked, expand it. As soon as it was off the Khazar mainpage, none of the original editors who wanted to expand it appear to be interested. So I'll have to do it myself, eventually, unless assorted editors start chipping in.
  • The theory's history page will give details where possible, of all the people who helped create and elaborate the hypothesis
  • The genetics article should list, in chronological order, all genetic papers either (a) dealing directly with the issue b) or under them, genetic articles interpreted in the press as confuting the Khazar theory, even if those papers make no mention of it, properly formatted for aesthetic purposes and to fit a unified template.
  • The last three papers I am aware of are (1) Elhaik's (1912), (2)Behar et al., announced paper (Sept 2013) which has yet to be published, and may be late because (3)in the meantime de Costa and Richards' team's paper (October 2013) upset their general applecart, while also disowning the Elhaik-type Khazar hypothesis.
The most important thing is chronological order. The mess we have at that section at the moment just patches in 'criticisms' holus bolus without any attention either to chronology, the papers each critique replies to, and a neglect to add material responding in turn to the criticisms.
This will be slow work because it requires meticulous attention to complex matters. But it will be done over the following months.Nishidani (talk) 13:46, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

2016 article on the work of Dr Eran Elhaik of the University of Sheffield: The Independent, David Keys, Scientists reveal Jewish history's forgotten Turkish roots, 20 April 2016.     ←   ZScarpia   11:34, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

There are other sources confirming Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from Khazars.

Here is a comprehensize site that sources pretty much most genetic studies on Jews.

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html

Some of the results are as followed:

"About half of Ashkenazic Levites possess haplotypes belonging to the R1a1 haplogroup. This is almost never found among Sephardic Levites, and is rare in non-Ashkenazic populations as a whole, but the phylogeny of the branching out of R1a1 shows the Ashkenazic variety of R1a1 to be distinct from both the Eastern European and Central Asian forms of R1a1, contradicting the theory that Slavs or Khazars who converted to Judaism introduced this lineage into Ashkenazim. The actual source of Ashkenazic R1a1 was a population in Iran."

"The presence of the Y-DNA haplogroup Q1b1a (Q-L245) in Ashkenazi and Karaite samples is not indicative of Khazar ancestry but rather of Southwest Asian ancestry."

Also, a new archaeological study was recently done and found no evidence of this theory either.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/1.601287

"The Khazar thesis gained global prominence when Prof. Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University published “The Invention of the Jewish People” in 2008. In that book, which became a best seller and was translated into several languages, Sand argued that the “Jewish people” is an invention, forged out of myths and fictitious “history” to justify Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel.

Now, another Israeli historian has challenged one of the foundations of Sand’s argument: his claim that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the people of the Khazar kingdom, who in the eighth century converted en masse on the instruction of their king. In an article published this month in the journal “Jewish Social Studies,” Prof. Shaul Stampfer concluded that there is no evidence to support this assertion.

“Such a conversion, even though it’s a wonderful story, never happened,” Stampfer said.

Stampfer, an expert in Jewish history, analyzed material from various fields, but found no reliable source for the claim that the Khazars – a multiethnic kingdom that included Iranians, Turks, Slavs and Circassians – converted to Judaism. “There never was a conversion by the Khazar king or the Khazar elite,” he said. “The conversion of the Khazars is a myth with no factual basis.”" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Knightmare72589 (talk • contribs) 20:30, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

You evidently haven't read Stampfer, whose opening pages overline a short history of many Jewish scholars (there are many) who have underwritten the theory, which did not stand on 'the foundations of Sand's argument', a book you apparently have not read, because Sand also documents this as a frequently encountered theory in Israeli/Jewish historiography before his time. That paper has many problems - it's not an area where Stampfer has any professional competence being a specialist on the history of Lithuanian yeshivas) and, ignoring the odd premises he adopts, he misquotes a lot of things out of context (Mark Whittow's remark on p.6 is used against the thesis whereas Whittow (pp228-9) makes that remark to underline the possible that 'Judaism would be a natural choice for a Near Eastern great power' (esp. since Islam at that time was far closer to its Judaic roots,etc., to name but one of dozens of problematical things- but, still, has its interest. It is best to wait for review imput from Khazar specialists like Constantine Zuckerman, Dan Shapira, and David J. Wasserstein, who disagree with him.Nishidani (talk) 21:10, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
As the comments under the Haaretz article say, it's odd that Stamfer would claim an absence of documentary evidence. The article misrepresents Sand's book.     ←   ZScarpia   21:51, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

IP/Galassi

Please don't revert like that. These are the objections to the inane passage that reads:

The Khazar theory is often associated with antisemites and/or anti-Zionists, who espouse it to emphasize the foreign (i.e. non-European) ancestry of European Jewry, and to disprove the genetic studies on Jews|ancestral connection between Ashkenazi Jews and Israel. It is considered a pseudohistorical fringe theory by mainstream scholars of Jewish history, but has not been entirely dismissed.[2][3]

  • The history of the Khazars page show that it is not often associated with antisemites and/or anti-Zionists, but to the contrary has had a notable place in Jewish histories.
  • often was used yonks ago to replace sometimes and editorial consensus indicated sometimes was more appropriate.
  • The sentence is WP:OR. What source says those two categories of people 'espouse' the theory 'to emphasize' the foreign ancestry of Ashkenazim?
  • That sentence is inept stylistically. 'Espouse' a theory means adopting an idea. You don't 'adopt' an idea to 'emphasize' another idea. Use 'emphasize' in this context means laying stress on a fact, 'the foreign ancestry of European Jews'. That is not a fact, it is a theory. It's clunky prose and hardly encyclopedic.
  • They 'espouse' it to 'disprove the ancestral connection bertween Ashkenazi Jews and Israel'. Again the second thing is assumed to be a fact. The theory is used to disprove a fact. Dreadful prose because only an idiot would use a theory to disprove a fact.
  • the link for 'the ancestral connection bertween Ashkenazi Jews and Israel' is Genetic studies on Jews, which is supposed to show that the 'ancestral connection' is a fact. That article says no such thing. We are in the realm of hypotheses, the most recent being the obverse of that fact.
  • Mainstream scholars of Jewish history like Peter Golden do not consider it a 'pseudohistorical fringe theory'. It would be fringe but for the fact many notable Jewish scholars in the past have 'epoused it'. It is not 'pseudohistorical' because some serious scholars still think the idea cannot be excluded from scholarly consideration.

Therefore the whole sentence was written by someone with a drum to beat, without careful examination of the relevant sections of the Khazars page. To repeat, when writing wiki articles and making a lead generalization, you must have (a) a relevant book or books and articles at your elbow to back your statement, which should be a paraphrase or (b) sum up what the lower content of the article states. In the IP edit, neither of those two conditions was satisfied. There, you've made me waste 20 minutes stating the obvious. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 20:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

"Dispute settled"

"The TAGC team's findings also shed light on the long-debated origin of Ashkenazi Jews and Europeans. The genetic data indicates that the Ashkenazi Jewish population was founded in the late medieval times by a small number, effectively only hundreds of individuals, whose descendants expanded rapidly while remaining mostly isolated genetically. 'Our analysis shows that Ashkenazi Jewish medieval founders were ethnically admixed, with origins in Europe and in the Middle East, roughly in equal parts,' says Shai Carmi, a post-doctoral scientist who works with Pe'er and who conducted the analysis. 'TAGC data are more comprehensive than what was previously available, and we believe the data settle the dispute regarding European and Middle Eastern ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews.'"

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-09-dna-sequence-ashkenazi-jews.html

Keith McClary (talk) 03:45, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Not at all, the paper is riddled with enigmas, not least of which 'Middle East' is undefined (as 'Khazars' 28 distinct ethnic/tribal groups on the edge of Anatolia, is undefined), as usual, and the usual bottleneck theory, which uses a minimum of 15,000 Jews for the start of the late medieval 'demographic miracle' that produced 7 million Jews by the 19th century, is reduced even further to 350, in the face of medieval demographic indications (after Crusader pogroms and the Black Death, which latter however affected all groups). Benjamin of Tudela counted around 3,500 Jews in Italy alone around 1150, and they are telling us that the core population of Ashkenazi Jews was 150 people two centuries later, based on a sample of 128 self-defined Ashkenazi in New York compared to (why there) a couple of dozen people in Ghent, when other research says the major component of Ashkenazi Jews has a close 'Italian profile' in its genetic admixture? At a first reading the whole paper looks designed to produce the results required, and the restrictions on the authors involved doesn't bode well. In short, just one more paper in an endless line of mutually challenging 'scientific' results. We need a secondary source by a molecular biologist+historian which sums up the conflict, not individual papers.Nishidani (talk) 10:43, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
I do not think you understand how this works. Basically, if none of your male successors survive you are no longer counted among the core population as you do not produce any progeny alive today. It may well be possible that the ashkenazim among us (like myself) represent only the progeny of those 150 Jewish men centuries ago. The same would apply to mitochodrial studies of female descent. 74.120.45.97 (talk) 22:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

"The theory is met with scepticism or caution by most scholars"

The second reference given for this statement (Golden 2007a, p. 56) does absolutely nothing to support it. Ought the reference be removed? Surely the Wexler quotation is sufficient? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.103.210 (talk) 10:11, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

No. Golden doesn't say, of course, 'most scholars' (which Wexler does), but the comment Golden makes of Wexler's development of the theory, on which he comments:'I think that his conclusions have gone well beyond the evidence.

Nonetheless, these are themes that should be pursued further,' is preceded by a survey of several prominent thinkers who advocated a Khazar-Ashkenazi connection' reflect back through Wexler, to Salo Baron, and others, whom he names. Golden is one of the doyens of the field, he is balanced and fair-minded, and his two studies, in their general overview, show him as open-minded but cautious. I was thinking of his 'caution' in drafting that statement.Nishidani (talk) 10:27, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Removal of my improvement to the lede

I was wondering exactly what characterizes my additions as a "rant" worthy of removal? I was merely summarizing the article and adding helpful categories and templates. Hebrew Warrior (talk) 07:58, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

  • ).This is sheer nonsense. You don't know the subject, haven't read the scholarship of this page, are blithely unaware that many major Jewish scholars, also in Israel, have endorsed the theory, right or wrong, and therefore it cannot be described as an 'antisemitic' theory. And writing that it is a 'conspiracy theory espoused by certain racists who seek to deny the Jewish people's divine right to the land of Israel', is wrong on all counts, POV-pushing of cant theological notions. I'm sure you know this, and made the edit to provoke some controversy, since my reply states what is obvious to any wikipedian editor. This is not a sandpit for playing games or killing other people's time. So, drop it.Nishidani (talk) 09:29, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Please calm down. You seem to be ranting a bit yourself there. There's no need to go slinging such accusations. We're all on the same team here and you have to learn to work with others, even if they have perspectives which differ from yours. Jews are perfectly capable of being antisemitic themselves, so your point does not stand. My edit was merely intended to summarize the contents of the article and provide an opportunity to incorporate the title into the text and bold it, which seems to be the style. If you have any issues with the wording which you think could better summarize the contents then please propose an alternative and I'd be perfectly happy to discuss this like rational human beings. Hebrew Warrior (talk) 09:59, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
I.e. you are trying to elicit an emotional reaction, by saying I edit in an agitated fashion. I've seen this game scores of times over 8 years, and its purport is to poke and fish for some phrase in the exchange to be later used in an AE complaint against me. Yawn. Several such attempts, successively by different editors, have been made these last months. I've replied, neutral editors will agree your edit was POV pushing. Talk away. I've said my piece.Nishidani (talk) 10:11, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm just trying to get you to calm down. There's no reason to be so hostile and dismissive. I'm not out to get you. You're coming across as paranoid. And now you're refusing to even engage in dialogue about how to improve the lede. I'm bewildered. Hebrew Warrior (talk) 10:34, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
No. You are attributing to me a state of agitation I don't have (as opposed to the boredom of reverting bad edits), which is personalizing a difference in editorial views and is a form of personal attack (WP:NPA). This dialogue is closed.Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
This dialogue is open. Okay, I'll take your word for it that the seething hostility and dismissiveness in your tone, the personal attacks you've uttered against me, and your assumption of bad faith aren't attributable to agitation but to boredom. That still doesn't commend your behavior here. Hebrew Warrior (talk) 12:20, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
(a)'You're coming across as paranoid' (b)'the seething hostility and dismissiveness in your tone, (c)the personal attacks you've uttered against me'. . .
You are very close to the red line in persisting with such language in trying to provoke another editor.Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Please stop threatening me. Hebrew Warrior (talk) 15:00, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
I was going to revert you anyway. See WP:NPOV - your edit broke that policy in a variety of ways. For instance, our articles can't say things such as "The Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry is an antisemitic conspiracy theory espoused by certain racists who seek to deny the Jewish people's divine right to the land of Israel". This is an encyclopedia, we don't say that anyone or any group has any divine rights. Nor do we label anyone who agrees with this hypothesis a racist or an anti-Semite. Etc. Dougweller (talk) 10:20, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
What would be a better way to summarize the article? Hebrew Warrior (talk) 10:34, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
The current version of the introduction is the best. It has the least amount of bias and your rude entourage into this page's edit history is unpleasant to say the least. PS: don't ask someone else to not "threaten" you when you yourself already threatened the NPOV policy of this article and Wikipedia. You've been warned by two editors now. Khazar (talk) 17:34, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Your message is hostile and entirely unnecessary. Hebrew Warrior (talk) 17:40, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
"The Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry is an antisemitic conspiracy theory espoused by certain racists who seek to deny the Jewish people's divine right to the land of Israel" is a good summary of what the article implies by innuendo. Keith McClary (talk) 02:52, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

New source

Mitchell Bryan Hart (ed.) Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference,1880-1940 UPNE 2011 pp.xxiv, 16-17,49-50, 69, 163, 176-177,199 Nishidani (talk) 13:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I am working on a new book and I would love to talk to the author of this post. Here's my email. la@lamarzulli.net There is a new movement that is ganging traction that espouses the Khazarian mythos. I would like to be able to copy verbatim, your wiki article and include it in my book. Are you available for an interview? Best. L.A. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lamarzulli (talk • contribs) 18:35, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't espouse the Khazarian mythos. I simply fought to obtain a neutral survey of the whole subject that included what scholarship says. I am attracted to this for several reasons: an academic interest in tribal histories; a lifelong interest in historical byways, an attraction to theories that 'worry' people for their possible political implications. The last-named is useful for understanding the sociology of knowledge, the various ways people react to cultural tabus, defending them, or breaking them, which is part of the politics of thinking one thing or another.
My views are quite simple:(a) the Khazarian-Jewish connection is grounded in medieval traditions of good standing (b) this has given rise to intensive studies, sympathetic and otherwise, by scholars of the subject.(c) anti-Semites have used it to claim the majority of modern Jews don't descend from the Jews of ancient Palestine, which has (d) created a defensive response by people who can only think of Israel politically and who challenge the theory as nothing but anti-Semitic in order to buttress the theoretical claim underpinning Zionism, that Jews are lineal descendants of the Israelites, or Jews expelled from Judea after 70 C.E (e) Many theories discuss these claims, but mostly, we are dealing with hypotheses (f) the further back you go in history, the more the intrinsically theoretical interpretation of facts becomes sheer, often unverifiable hypothesis (g) in lieu of new evidence, no one can state with certainty anything.(h) Only people who can entertain, with equanimity, several hypotheses contemporaneously, while examining evidence, should get interested in this, or any other topic. That's all I would have had to say, so an interview is pointless.
I don't think wiki holds copyright on its articles, but any admin can clarify that. I didn't write the article either. I redrafted it to wikify it so that it had all the required qualities of a good article, and potentially might qualify for Featured Article status (I don't care to push those things: but I like to think one should edit with those severe criteria in mind). My redrafting was tweaked, added to, overseen, and corrected by several other editors. No one can claim to have written an article here because it is a collaborative endeavor, and what stays stable, does so by consensus, which implies equal rights as co-authors. That's all.Nishidani (talk) 19:17, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Article does not reflect the scientific consensus

This article as it stands does a very poor job indicating that the general scientific consensus is rather firmly against the Khazar hypothesis, especially when considered in light of a whole series of genetic studies demonstrating again and again the Mideast origin of Ashkenazi Jews. Gerontodon (talk) 12:56, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

@Gerontodon: i think an issue is that the proposal is presented as theory, but it is in fact a hypothesis (if not a conspiracy theory, but i would leave it for now). It might indeed be better to name this "Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry".GreyShark (dibra) 16:56, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
@Greyshark09: I actually think that's a great idea, I'll move it. --Monochrome_Monitor 01:24, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Eastern Eurasian DNA?

Ashkenazi Jews are probably not descended from the Khazars: "The Khazars were Turkic, and as such they would have had substantial proportions of East Asian ancestry. This is evident in the modern Chuvash, who have had a thousand years to admix with surrounding Slavic populations (and have). There are reasonable explanations for the “Caucasian” ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews which do not make recourse to the Khazar hypothesis. But a Mongoloid element is almost certainly feasible only through Turks of some sort, and the coincidence of a Judaized Turkic populations on the fringes of Europe is far too coincidental. There are some suggestive results which indicate small components of Mongoloid ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews, but the proportions are low enough that they may be some artifacts. This is one area where more investigation is warranted. For example, whole-genome analyses which look at “East Asian” segments in Ashkenazi Jews, and match them to various East Asian populations. That would almost certainly answer the Khazar question, as there are relatively undiluted Turkic populations, such as the Kirghiz, that one could use as a reference". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.129.141.246 (talk) 12:07, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

ДАННЫЕ АНТРОПОЛОГИИ К ЭТНОГЕНЕЗУ ТЮРКСКИХ НАРОДОВ В.П. Алексеев, 1971, (Russian) - V.Alekseev, Antropological materials that related to Turkic ethnogenesis" : "Те черепа, которые происходят из хазарских кладбищ, или, лучше сказать, из вероятных хазарских, ибо точной, стопроцентной уверенности нет при расстоянии в тысячу лет и немом в прямом смысле (при почти полном отсутствии письменности - найдены лишь отдельные знаки) археологическом материале, - это черепа людей-европеоидов с небольшой, но четко заметной определенной монголоидной примесью. У караимов этой примеси нет". "The Khazars were mixed Caucasoid-Mongoloid people. There is no Mongoloid component among Crimean Karaites". Also read В.П. Алексеев. «Очерк происхождения тюркских народов в свете данных краниологии. The Jewish people are Caucasoid people and Mongoloid component is not major haplogroup for them. Medieval Georgian sources say Khazar soldiers who attacked Georgian cities, were rare bearded people. Also, Jewish language is not influenced by Turkic language. Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry is fake theory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.160.4.130 (talk) 05:30, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Recents edits

  • Renan . .racially antisemite.
    • (a) This is stupid. Renan renounced his Catholicism, which was the crucible for the vicious antisemitism that exploded a decade later, because it was incompatible with reason (Souvenirs d’Enfance, pp.219, 275) His reasoning on Jews 'as a race' is of course prejudiced and defective, esp. at the outset of his career. But if the Protocols thought of an antisemitic elite destroying the world through finance, Renan thought a cultured elite of Jews active in all spheres of modern life a positive thing for the modern world. His editor Michel Lévy (of the Calmann publishing house) was Jewish, and even changed his contract with Renan to give the latter better terms, a gesture acknowledged by Renan. The issue is finely analysed in Laudyce Rétat’s L'Israël de Renan, Peter Lang, 2005
    • (b) Renan is singled out, whereas his notions of race were standard for the time, shared even by Jewish scholars who studied the question.
    • (c) Had he been an antisemite in the modern acceptance he would not have expended his name, prestige and efforts in rallying funds to assist the plight of Ostjuden hit by pogroms.
    • (d) There is no doubt that Renan’s views were derogatory of Jews generally, but many sources (Robert Wistrich, Pierre Birnbaum et al. do not think this can be configured as classic racial antisemitism). They argue, for example, that:

(i)It must be emphasized that Renan was never an antisemite in the full sense of the word; he never drew the logical conclusions from his criticism of the Jews nor did he advocate any measures against them.( S. Almog, ‘ The Racial Motif in Renan's Attitude to Jews and Judaism", in S. Almog, ‎Merkaz Zalman Shazar (eds.) Antisemitism through the ages, Pergamon Books/Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Jerusalem 1988 pp. 255–278, p. 275)

    • (e)Worse still, this paper by Almog is cited for the view Renan was a racial antisemite, when the paper itself (pp.257ff.) is far more nuanced, despite the note in our article. Almog argued that he was unaware of being ‘antisemite’, which was totally different to what Edouard Drumont did with the ideas Renan had pronounced 2 decades earlier and which he modified and at times retracted later.

(ii) 'Renan lived to witness the crude, populist anti-Semitism of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and was repelled by it.'(Albert S. Lindemann, Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews, Cambridge University Press, 1997 p.92).

Since scholars dispute this (Renan =racial anti-Semite) we cannot state it as an established fact, and in any case, it is giving Renan prominence among several scholars at the time, some preceding him, Jews included, who advanced the same theory.
    • 'scientific hypothesis'. It was and remains an historical hypothesis, and historical hypotheses are not scientific because in these cases, the basis for verifiability (the discovery of substantial archaeological/material evidence and DNA evidence for it 1in a Khazar graveyard ) doesn’t exist (as yet).
    • I’ve removed the 3 weasal word tags. Leads summarize and there is nothing controversial saying the theory has a long and intricate history, within and beyond Jewish scholarship. That is obvious from the history of the subject.Nishidani (talk) 11:40, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

  • but the paper also states that 78% of the K lineages of Ashkenazi Jews (the lineages studied in Costa's work and found to be European, that is K1a1b1a and K2a2) cannot be derived from the near-Eastern Neolithic samples (PPNB) they studied. The paper says that 20% of Ashkenazi K lineages (K1a9) may be derived from PPNB K lineage, but this cannot be shown by the present study. Thus, rather than proving that Ashkenazi mDNA derives from Near East, the paper only shows that the argument in Costa is not fully demonstrated concerning K1a9 lineage. The paper does present support to the claim of Eran Elhaik that Ashkenazi Jews are related to Georgians and Armenians: the paper groups Ashkenazi Jews to Cluster 2 that contains Caucasian peoples ARM, CHE, BAL, and also Cypriots

As this is written, it is WP:OR.Nishidani (talk) 12:14, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Both Elhaik and Wexler are WP:UNDUE.--Galassi (talk) 23:39, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Wexler

Don't revert with uninformed assertions as if you knew the state of the art. Wexler's work is still sufficiently recognized for it to be mentioned in the up-to-date literature on Yiddish, and not, as you say, discredited, as opposed to being a notable but minority view, something normal in scholarship, and, in regard to the Khazars, it is less 'minor' because scholars of that field take it as worth study and attention, even if they are not convinced (Peter Benjamin Golden). See here, here (Beider is certainly dismissive), but Neil Jacobs is not see acknowledgements, and pp.6ff, 14ff.. He's been around for 3 decades with these ideas, and the literature regularly credits him with a mention. It is a radical theory, certainly, but not as is usual with discredited fringe theories, killed with silence. Most theorists discuss it. And his most recent paper, 2016, gives the linguistic rethinking to fit Elhaik's northern Turkey Ashkenazi hypothesis. Nishidani (talk) 21:25, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:WEIGHT and WP:UNDUE. Wexler has been exposed as a fraud.--Galassi (talk) 21:51, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
I don't see any evidence Wexler "has been exposed as a fraud." Ijon Tichy (talk) 22:21, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
Galassi. Branding the Professor Emeritus of linguistics at Tel Aviv University a person who has been exposed as a fraud is a classic example of a WP:BLP violation, and a rather serious one at that. I suggest you just retract that. Academic fraud borders on criminal behavior. Throwing around policy flags like WP:WEIGHT and WP:UNDUE is both lazy and pointless, when it is just, apparently, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and does not answer the points raised here. Thirdly, you didn't examine MM's edit, which was blatant POV pushing.Nishidani (talk) 07:46, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
It is inappropriate to have him in the lede.--Galassi (talk) 23:11, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Nish, you are consistently committing the fallacy of appealing to authority. It doesn't matter what position he has, he is looked at as a crank within the field. As is Elhaik, who's rather deceptive interpretation of data in his own genetic study was disproved thoroughly. Both are ideologically committed to providing some shred of credibility to a myth, and each piggyback's on the other. He is not radical, he is definitely fringe. Saying "Jews don't exist" is fringe. I'm not pov pushing, I'm npov pushing. It's WEASEL to say "some support the theory, others don't". 99% don't support it, only two or three do and their work is thoroughly disproven by their peers in the field --Monochrome_Monitor 23:19, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
And I'm pretty sure what galassi means by "a fraud" is him writing a psuedonymous letter trashing other's work and praising his own and then continuing to lie about it, saying he met the guy 25 years ago but doesn't know what happened to him. (The guy doesn't exist) --Monochrome_Monitor 23:42, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Authority is one thing I don't appeal to. What I am doing is ensuring that all sides of a debate among competent scholars be represented. Cranks are everywhere, in the highest places, but it's far harder to be a crank in a peer-reviewed world than in one dominated by the polling booth. If you are talking about ideological commitments then the whole discursive field on this is contaminated by a strong impetus to obtain a desired result (all Jews descend by a lineal DNA chain from one unified population that existed in Judea/Samaria - that's utter nonsense, and it's blathered everywhere by the dilettanti who inform public 'awareness'): All you are doing is adopting the standard narrative and joining in lockstep with the 'official' consensus, which, note (1997-2016), keeps tweaking its actual results but harping on the invariable conclusion (for all this see Nadia Abu El Haj, and how much idiotically venomous invective and attempts to destroy her career possibilities arose simply because she has Palestinian origins). My personal skepticism regarding all of this comes from historical training.Harry Ostrer's 'historical' knowledge in his books and papers regarding the 'facts' of Israelitic-Jewish history are chock-a-block with dumb fundamentalist clichés, as I have occasionally noted. Not for that do I consider him a crank. I note things like Behar 40% of Ashkenazi Jews originate maternally from just four Levantine female founders in 2008 and 5 years later Richards come up with an estimation that80% Ashkenazi maternal ancestry hails from indigenous European women. That astounding dissonance in a scientific discipline means only one thing: the interpretative parameters and methods are so mixed and in flux you have to exercise extreme caution in talking of a consensus.
When I read Wexler and Elhaik, I note that they too tend to use older historical sources selectively. You cannot cite Salo Baron on the Khazars, and form a thesis on the latter being the germinal element in the formation of Ashkenazim, while ignoring his documentation that Jews were in Metz around 888, i.e., almost a century before the collapse of the Khazar empire, and they had had indubitably communities throughout Italy and before then, as for example, I have consistently added to articles by citing Michael Toch's The Economic History of European Jews. The technical problem there, as not only Wexler points out, is that the expected Loter-romance element in Yiddish is very weak compared more eastern sources (hence the Bavarian hypothesis, or his own) I.e. in my editing practice I am regularly adding data that give a variety of facts each of which conflicts with interpretations in the mainstream and minority narratives. People identify my editing as 'biased' because I basically wrote the Khazar article from top to bottom, and have regularly added to several articles, the work by Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin, Wexler and Elhaik et al., which points up problems in the standard model. 99% of editors in these articles underwrite and have a faith commitment to the standard Zionist model, which is far more restrictive of what one may say or conclude than what you get in an earlier tradition of (Jewish) scholarship which worked essentially independently of the kinds of pressure that arose after the establishment of Israel. Neither side in this dispute looks comfortable with the conflicting but densely documented details of the historical records regarding Jews in Europe. I have an historian's bias: deep suspicion whenever I scent 'nationalism' in the air, or a complaisant 'consensus', and that indeed does feed into a decided openness in looking at respectable scholarship which is attuned to some of the anomalies in the field. But my dictum, taught to me at an early age is: whenever those you sympathize with get into power, politically or discursively, put up your guard - they're going to spin things, rather than stare at the contradictions they often recognized before they had a personal investment in survival or a career at any cost.
Neither Elhaik nor Wexler would have their careers if they had consistently been found out tampering with the evidence. If you had any inkling of the inside politics of genetics, and who is allowed and who not allowed to look at certain data bases, you'd be more skeptical. Personally I have absolutely no decided opinion as to who is right. I don't believe in the 'truth' in these things: there are only competing hypotheses for these things, with a short or long life. If you prefer to situate yourself in a comfort zone intellectually in controversies like this, grasping cognitively at Peanut's blanket, then you're going to miss a lot of the stimulation of dissonance in your life. Nishidani (talk) 08:00, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
It's not a matter of "standard zionist model". If sources show some khazars converted, so be it. Much stronger evidence shows the Himyarites converted, yet no one pushes the theory that Mizrahi Jews are not real Jews and are actually Arabs. It's totally political. Genetics conclusively disproves the theory. It's really settled, it's a myth. Now there are things that are up for debate with differing results in research, like the mtDNA of Askhenazi Jews and whether the founding mothers were south italian converts or israelites, which you mention. Personally I think most were Italians or other medeterrainian europeans. But, that's not specific to Ashkenazi Jewry at all. The maternal ancestry in pretty much every Jewish group is significantly non-Israelitic. --Monochrome_Monitor 15:08, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
You're not thinking before you write, and you are not thinking through what you write if you ever reread it. No scholar favouring the Khazar hypothesis 'pushes the theory that Ashkenazi Jews are not real Jews and are actually Khazars'. You've created, to adopt the jargon, a strawman antagonist on this. It's a disturbing lack of attention, almost as worrying as my increasing tendency to misspell. I plead age for these. What's your excuse?. Nishidani (talk) 20:20, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. Looked like a clear case of WP:ILIKEIT, IMO.--Lute88 (talk) 16:06, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Is anyone editing here to try and 'prove' the majority hypothesis is 'true' (against wiki policy) reading the sources, all of them: all of the genetic section reads like a sheet of internally contradictory adventitious crap, The source citing the many scientists Elhaik challenges, asserts on the one hand that most scientists disagree with him (true perhaps) but then goes on to state the remarkable idea that:'Ashkenazi Jews descended from Jews who fled Palestine after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century '. Gee whiz. First the myth had it they fled the Roman destruction post70 AD and were transported as slaves by Romans to Italy and then went over the following millennium north. Now, discussing Ostrer and Feldman's dismissals of Elhaik, we have that contextualized in a wonderful fantasy of huge boatloads of Jews crossing the vast Mediterranean before the Carolingan era to repeat the same wave migration of expelled indigenes. The bullshit's left out, the choice banter kept in. Secondly, no genetic paper that fails to mention specifically the Khazar hypothesis can be introduced on this page, as has been done repeatedly. It's late here, but the only interesting and intelligible sections here are the history of the theory section under development. The rest is just POV pushing.Nishidani (talk) 22:49, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Both Elhaik and Wexler are WP:UNDUE. You are pushing the POV envelope way too far. Cease and desist.--Galassi (talk) 23:41, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

What are you doing, Galassi?
  • You’re on the edge of edit-warring because your most recent revert was done without examining what you were reverting out
  • You have no talk page presence but one liner obiter dicta.
  • Wexler and Elhaik have to be in the lead because they are the major contemporary proponents of the argument and per WP:LEDE summary, since they are given large attention in the article, are to be mentioned in the opening paras.
  • You restored: ’Notable scholars of Turkology and Jewish studies have refuted the Khazar theory’. Well there is no evidence given for this in the lead or the subsections. It is (a) pure WP:OR and is (b) contradicted by the doyen of turkology Peter Benjamin Golden, who has reservations over the theory as propounded by Wexler but considers it worth further exploration
  • The counter-evidence for that gross assertion about ‘refutation’, namely a quote from Golden, was removed, cancelling evidence that contradicted the assertion this was a disproven theory.
  • The word ‘refute’, devoid of sources, in either Turkology or genetics as the consensual view is impossible because it violates WP:NPOV, by siding with one of several opinions
  • I formatted links to give author, publishing venue, etc. Your revert cancelled these uncontroversial improvements. My finessed ‘DNA research sheds light on Ashkenazi origins,’ Science Daily October 2013 was turned back to [1]. Why did you degrade this improvement, and erase Rita Rubin, 'Jews a Race' Genetic Theory Comes Under Fierce Attack by DNA Expert,' The Forward 7 May 2013 which I added to replace a simple untitled link to the same source?
  • The iron rule forbids WP:OR. I removed three sources that are introduced but which are either by scholars who are not RS for this or who don’t mention the Khazars. The Jared Diamond paper is a University school handout photocopy link. It preceded the DNA research we cite extensively and makes high school blunders like identifying the Merneptah stele with the earliest mention of the Jews, and underwriting as an historical fact the theory that the Bible got things literally correct about David and Solomon’s kingdom. It has errors like confusing ‘setting’ for ‘settling’, and imagining that Jewish merchants settled in France under Charlemagne when modern research shows they were long settled in France before that period. He even argues that no one questions that the Khazar rulers converted: wrong, that is indeed challenged. He even writes: ’Ashkenazi Jews might conceivably be converted Khazars.’ Aside from the link to a teaching handout photocopy (not RS) it does not support what it is being used for
  • (ii) hammer et al. idem Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes:’ The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population. I can’t see any mention of the Khazar hypothesis, hence WP:OR
  • (iii)Idem Shriver, Tony N. Frudakis ; No mention of Khazars on that page or in the book.
  • Fernandez has to be taken out as well. No mention of Khazar hypothesis
  • The worst thing about your and MM's edit warring is that you are both looking at the text and expressing likes or dislikes, without looking at the source content supposedly supporting the article. Nishidani (talk) 13:55, 26 April 2016 (UTC)


  • "I don't believe in the 'truth' in these things: there are only competing hypotheses for these things, with a short or long life. If you prefer to situate yourself in a comfort zone intellectually in controversies like this, grasping cognitively at Peanut's blanket, then you're going to miss a lot of the stimulation of dissonance in your life." -- Nishidani
  • "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." -- Laurence J. Peter. (I also recommend reading L. J. Peter's quotations on Wikiquote)

Ijon Tichy (talk) 23:23, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Homework assignment for revert eager beavers

Problem detected.

  • In 2000, the analysis of a report by Nicholas Wade named Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora
Can anyone fix this to avoid implying that Wade's paper is being analysed, and (b) can anyone provide a direct link to Wade's article, rather than citing it from an omnium-gatherum blog whose link to Wade doesn't work.
Well, I shouldn't be mean. I'll do half of the homework, but I do expect those who edit this page so vigorously when they see contention to do some of the housekeeping mainteaace

(a)=?

(b) Nicholas Wade. "Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora." The New York Times 9 May 9 2000.Nishidani (talk) 20:39, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Lead section

@Nishidani: You are removing sources and details from the lead section. You claimed that it is not true. However, its summary from the article sections. Could you please explain which part of those statements are not true?Ferakp (talk) 16:27, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

A very clear case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT.--Galassi (talk) 16:28, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Please take some time to read the discussion above. Above all, it is simply an outright violation of WP:NPOV to espouse one of several views as a truth, or say something whose status is disputed, has been definitely buried, or 'refuted'. This is a lie, and it cannot stay in the text. As to Galassi, he reverts instinctively - it suffices for him to see me have a disagreement with another editor, to back the other person. He never engages on the talk page, as should be obligatory for a person with his automatic revert practice.Nishidani (talk) 16:34, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Using refuted is not against WP:NPOV. As article mentions, all notable experts refute and also see it as baseless, some of them see it as a myth as article mention. You are removing the most important part of the article with its sources. Ferakp (talk) 16:38, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
The user is not explaining changes and removing sources. The user has been previously blocked several times. If user continues like this, I will have to report him/her.Ferakp (talk) 16:30, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Nope. You clearly have not read the preceding sections, where this was explained in great detail. You're completely at liberty to report me, if you like to test WP:BOOMERANG.Nishidani (talk) 16:36, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Nishidani: I removed "refute" and added their personal views even though they have refuted it with scientific studies. Also, I added linguistic part. Do you like it now? Ferakp (talk) 16:43, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Who are 'they' in 'Notable scholars of Turkology . . see the Khazar theory as a myth and baseless.'
Do you realize that this paragraph repeats (in leads you must not repeat) wshat was stated in the preceding paragraph?
Do you realize that you cannot have a lead paragraph which stacks an ensemble for the negative position without balancing it for NPOV, as the preceding paragraph did?Nishidani (talk) 16:49, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I realize. The last paragraphs are not against NPOV. About Turkology, I don't know who added it, it should had be only Jewish scholar even though there is one source which shows that a one Turkology is againt the theory, I can't show him as a notable since we don't know much about him. Ferakp (talk) 16:56, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Turkology part has been removed. Ferakp (talk) 16:58, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Wouldn't it have been simpler, rather than ignoring the talk page and reverting, simply to have outlined where you disagree and where you agree. Now you have admitted, by trimming, that many of those objections I made were reasonable. All you needed to do was to address the talk page. You've caused needless fuss, while undoubtedly making one and perhaps two editors content, while it remains a silly paragraph, even if trimmed.
eg.(a)Major scholars have either defended its plausibility or dismissed it as a pure fantasy. The theory had been received with skepticism or caution.[5] by most modern scholars.
(b) Notable scholars of Jewish studies see the Khazar theory as a myth and baseless.
This last statement (b) is already in (a) and therefore is repetitive. Worse, it singles out 'Jewish scholars' as notable for seeing it as baseless, while ignoring that 'Jewish' academics (Elhaik and Wexler most recently) who are notable do not regard it as a myth. Therefore this too is clunky if not downright stupid in a lead.Nishidani (talk) 18:54, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Jonney. You removed a genetics paper documenting that this is a controversy. Your edit retained a secondary source, written by someone without any credentials in scientific reportage, Yori Yanover (thus failing RS), which paraphrases a genetics paper to support this crazy assertion.

The theory has been used by antisemite and anti-Zionists to claim that Ashkenazi Jews in Israel have no genetic connection to ancient Israel and thus are not a people Indigenous to Palestine

The assertion is stupid because, as I documented for months as numerous editors just kept playing revert games, anti-Semites and anti-Zionists used the Khazar thesis against Ashkenazi Jews decades before Israel's establishment. Secondly, no genetic papers establish a basis for linking Ashkenazi to the Israelites: they all, anti-Zionist or pro-Zionist, establish what is obvious, that there is a link between Jewish populations like the Ashkenazim with the Middle East (Behar's paper reported by Yanover states:'We and others have argued on the basis of genome-wide data that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to both Europe and the Middle East.'). It openly implies that, unlike Ashkenim in Israel, Ashkenazim outside of Israel may have a genetic connection to Israel. In other words, using a speculative genetic mix is not science but politics.
However Yanover tries to spin Behar et al, his text does not support that extraordinarily specific and silly statement and the editor who wrote it was indulging in WP:OR.
So, before meddling in articles, ll, read closely the argument, its history, and the page sources. This edit whoring is absurd. There is not a deep level of contention here: there is just fiddling superciliously with the ostensible POV spin of a complex argument, and editors should try to be more curious, and less quick on the revert trigger, i.e., try placing a query on the talk page for once.Nishidani (talk) 19:44, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Nishidani: you obviously have no consensus to push that POV. Cease and desist.--19:56, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Galassi. You have not read Yanover's article, which nowhere, as I showed above, supports the WP:OR spin on it placed in the text you restored. You are becoming an intolerable presence on this page. I'vfe spend my fucking time trying to reason, and you persist in reverting with almost zero comment on the talk page regarding the merits. Worse still, by jumping the gun just after I made one of several needed corrections, uncontroversial, you have no stopped the patent confusion of that lead from being fixed for at least a day. If you persist in no talk page exchanges while indulging in reverts, I'll report you. So tell me, and others, where in the fuck on Yanover's incompetent article is there the basis for the statement I elided?Nishidani (talk) 20:06, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
And drop the 'cease and desist'. It is a moronic pleonasm.Nishidani (talk) 20:07, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Please abstain from obscenities. As to the article - it is a sizeable POVfork, because it gives a benefit of doubt to a daft myth promulgated by antisemites. The whole article should probably be deleted per WP:FRINGE. --Galassi (talk) 20:14, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

And read up on WP:NPA.--Galassi (talk) 20:15, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Answer the question. You restored a source and a statement from it that has no objective correlative in the source itself. This was stated clearly on the talk page. You keep reverting, and refusing to explain how the source you restore justifies the crazy statement putatively based on it. I.e. you are wilfully putting back material known to be false, WP:ORa and failing WP:RS.Nishidani (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
1: I agree with changing the antisemitism and anti-Zionist part.
2: The main controversy with Ashkenazi Jews is not their origin but rather how many Europeans they have recruited. Which I guess would be their genetic origins.
3: Personally I think many older Jewish historians exaggerate the impact of Hellenism. I would be happy with a large Iranian contribution. Elhaik now says Iranian Jews are from Turkey which seems strange.Jonney2000 (talk) 03:45, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't think the origins of Ashkenazi are particularly important. We have a Jewish population in Europe from classical times, and a Jewish population attested relatively widely if dispersed from 900-1,000 CE. It may matter to some what the bloodline was, though even blind Freddie and his dog would accept that the culture is distinctly connected to the Middle East: on that all sources agree, from Wexler and Elhaik to the rest. All I think is appropriate is to delineate the various hypotheses per due weight. My bias is towards complexity, which is in the literature, and I am wary of cartoon simplifications, and a certain adamant attitude to the 'truth', which is a problem here.Nishidani (talk) 07:14, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate the fact that finally one other editor is showing a willingness to discuss the only thing that counts here, writing an article strictly according to the content of sources per WP:RS, and WP:Due, rather than playing games. How Elhaik's recent work is to be used here should depend on the critical response (rather than quoting newspaper tidbits from phoning his colleagues who disagree with him) of scientists to his joint paper. I'm still waiting for Galassi to explain why he keeps reintroducing s text from Yanover with a statement that can nowhere be found in Yanover's article. I'll say 'fuck' whenever I feel like it, because I regard the word as less 'obscene' than the contempt for accuracy and clarity his reverting behavior shows. Nishidani (talk) 06:21, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
[Re-indenting] @Nishidani: I likewise regard the whole notion of profanity and obscenity as a rather ridiculous construct, but let's be honest: it does convey a certain sense of combativeness in a collaborative environment like this. I'm certainly not here to police you or anything of the sort, though. As to content, I will say this: Elhaik is indeed a reliable source. Without question. But proper weight should definitely be applied to Wexler, who is not particularly well regarded. By that, I specifically mean his work, which is pretty much soundly rejected; I've personally never read anything aside from a couple of scholars conceding that a few of his ideas are "interesting", in that there was possibly some early influence, but that the majority of his recent work has little merit. There's no doubt that Slavic has had an influence on Yiddish, but I don't know of any other scholar that thinks there is an "original" Slavic or Turkic substratum on which Yiddish was later added. I definitely think that his ideas should be cited, especially in this article, as proponents of the theory have seized upon his work as bolstering their position, but it should probably be weighted as WP:FRINGE given its reception in academia. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 21:27, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
The precise title of this article is Khazar theory of Ashkenazi ancestry. It was forked off from the Khazar main page because this aspect always invites edit-warring that clogs up a section with blobs and counter blobs of hostile or favourable opinion. There was need to resolve that, and get this page to give the details, basically, of the history of how the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory developed. I have most of the data to do this, but little time to work it in. In other words, the article is supposed to expand this, among which Wexler figures. As we have it
Anyone could do it by following up on the names mentioned in the Khazar article section and researching them to give more information here per thinker/author. No one does. Nearly everyone editing here concentrates on refutation, which is a violation of policy by the way. I think this is a small but fascinating episode in the history of ideas, and worth delineating in all of its aspects. I don’t personally believe the Khazar theory (but then again, I don't believe most of the 'stuff' I see by ethnic aficionados about their ostensible pure origins -history is promiscuous): I do react strongly when I see ill-informed editors with some anxiety problems over their identity, thinking it an offense to their dignity, rushing in to make caricatures of the topic. That gets my Irish up, and when I do edit, many editors tend to think:’there he goes, the anti-semite is trying the old ruse of delegitimating us by ‘defending’ the theory’. Really puerile.
Since this is an expansion of the K-A theory, and Wexler is a major proponent of it, there can by definition be no principle of exclusion or minimalization to 'cut him down'. One requires a neutral exposition of his contribution, and one or two sentences, saying, using a half a dozen strong Yiddish-studies experts views, that his thesis has not won any degree of approval. Such a section should not be used to jimmy in newspaper crap hostile to Wexler. This is an encyclopedia.
Finally, note that, no editors care to actually build the article but expend their efforts in playing what they think is a scientific trump card against it by putative genetic disproofs of the theory, by plopping a mishmash of indigestible genetic blobs that now constitute by a rough calculation 40% of the page. I can’t see signs of anyone diligently expanding the article: all I see is monitoring it to see any treatment of the subject keeps the exposition of its expositors to a minimum while guarding the unreadable bullshit clipped from scientific abstracts from being tampered with. That is a serious abuse: the majority of contributors at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups with the POV pushing and incompetence behind this kind of material. I could sum up the genetic stuff in, I think, 4 lines, readable to the passing eye. I won't do it until people on this page calms down. I appreciate your reasoned, independent and serene intervention here.Nishidani (talk) 11:30, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Quinto Simmaco. Your remarks generated these wider reflections on another page, which you should however not feel obliged to read per WP:TLDR. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 13:20, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Problems

  • Khazar myth. This is referenced to Steven Plaut. "The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism". The Jewish Press 9 May 2007.
Plaut has been convicted of libel by an Israeli court and forced to pay damages. He is a teacher of business administration and not an historian. At the RSN board he has been rejected as a source for anything other than his own opinions, and even attribution would not change the fact that with his record for polemical and politicized prevarication, he has no place as a source for a controversy like this.
  • In the late 19th century, Ernest Renan and other scholars speculated that the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe originated among Turkic refugees who had migrated from the collapsed Khazarian Khanate westward into the Rhineland, and exchanged their native Khazar language for the Yiddish language while continuing to practice Judaism.
The proposition in bold can't be documented. In fact it is a confusion between the Khazar origin theory (19th century), and the Yiddish origin theory (late 20th century). It's no use tagging it. The sentence requires remodulation.
  • 'Some scholars defended its plausibility, but many dismissed it as a pure fantasy.'
Note the past tense, inappropriate to a theory which has been around for about 150 years, and still finds scholarly advocates. (b) The idea that 'many' scholars from 1869 to 1958 at least found this to be pure fantasy is ubndocumented and counter-factual. From the 1950s (Salo Baron) to the present day, it has found (prononents, detractors and neutrals. The word 'fiction' to my knowledge was first used of the hypothesis by Bernard Weinryb (1962). From Koestler's 1976 work onwards, the word 'fantasy' was more frequently used of it, in the face of other scholars willing to entertain it as one of several possible theories. The word 'fantasy' came into real vogue in response to Elhaik's 2012 paper. Nearly all of the recent examples are in polemical literature by the pulp-popular press.
  • (a) 'Modern geneticists, historians, and scholars of Jewish studies now largely see the Khazar theory as a baseless myth.'
  • (b) 'it’s fallen flat among established scientists, who peer reviewed his work and found it sloppy at best and political at worst.'
These come from the source Jon Entine

which historians and scientists now believe should more accurately be called a myth

That article (Jon Entine, "Israeli Researcher Challenges Jewish DNA links to Israel, Calls Those Who Disagree 'Nazi Sympathizers'". Forbes 16 May 2013) is problematical for several reasons.
The whole community of modern geneticists turn out to be Marcus Feldman and Michael Hammer, together with a blog by Razib Khan, whose contract to write op-eds was cancelled by the New York Times just as Jon Entine's contract with ABC was terminated after they concluded his methodology was at fault. He is a philosophy graduate, neither a historian nor a geneticist, and writes with a decided, highly opinionated POV, esp. on questions of race.
In this same paper, Entine cites historians dismissing the Khazar hypothesis by citing just one, Michael Berkowitz, in a review of Shlomo Sand. He ignores the many historians in Turkology and Jewish studies who have discussed the theory's merit and problems. Entine is not, in short a reliable guide.
  • There is no mention in Entine of 'largely see'/'baseless myth'. He says 'myth'. Where the baseless comes from is unknown.
  • As to the unfootnoted assertion Elhaik's work was peer-reviewed and found to be 'sloppy' at best, and 'political at worst', this is a reference not to any technical analysis by Elhaik's peers of his paper, but to comments to the press by a handful of geneticists. The problem is that it passed peer-review to get published in a major genetics journal, and was greeted by one of the foremost molecular biologists on the planet Dan Graur, who happened to have supervised Elhaik's thesis and is hugely intolerant of any hokum or fraud (see his blog).

'Graur is not surprised that Elhaik has stood up against the “clique” of scientists who believe that Jews are genetically homogeneous. “He enjoys being combative,” Graur said. “That’s what science is.” "Graur calls Elhaik’s conclusion that Ashkenazi Jews originated to the east of Germany “a very honest estimate”.' (Rita Rubin, ‘Jews a Race’ Genetic Theory Comes Under Fierce Attack by DNA Expert,' The Forward 7 May 2014.)

  • 'The theory has been used by antisemites and anti-Zionists to claim that Ashkenazi Jews in Israel have no genetic connection to ancient Israel and thus are not a people Indigenous to Palestine.'
The source for this pure WP:OR is Yori Yanover writing for The Jewish Press.com, who writes

This theory has been used by antisemites to suggest that European Jews stem from a barbaric Asiatic race, and to disprove their ancestral connection to the land of Israel.

the analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe

No mention of Israel, Ashkenazis in Israel, 'people indigenous to Palestine'.
Yanover, a reporter, novelist and author interested in the Lubavitch Rebbe, doesn't understand that both Elhaik and all other geneticists accept that the Ahkenazi Jews have elements of their DNA identity indicating a Middle East origin, not an origin in 'Israel'. No genetic theory I am familiar with argues that the Ashkenazi Jews in Israel are 'indigenous to Palestine'. If anyone can find a scientific source which argues this weird proposition, then they are welcome to notify this page.
  • If editors want to get criticism of Elhaik in to suggest that he is pandering to racists,a and making political spin of the theory, then they are obliged, it is an unavoidable obligation per WP:NPOV, to balance this with his personal views:'it also bothers him, a veteran of seven years in the Israeli army, that anti-Zionists have capitalized on his research';'proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis also have a political agenda, he said, claiming they “were motivated to justify the Zionist narrative.”
  • 'Eran Elhaik is also known for his personal attacks on more mainstream scientists who have eviscerated his work. He has called the world’s top geneticists “liars” and “frauds.” '
Elhaik used these words once in a polemical exchange with three specific individuals. To draw from this, in the lead, the conclusion that he is 'known' not for his views, but 'for his personal attacks on more mainstream scientists' is contrafactual. He has worked intensely and co-authored with many mainstream scientists for several years.
The phrase' 'who have eviscerated his work' is Entine's wholly undocumented assertion or claim. No evidence or no source is given showing precisely where a scientific paper in a respectable academic venue 'eviscerated' his work (which work? the 2012 paper or everything he has written?). It is thus a plagiarism of a primary source, which is written by an activist author with no competence in the field that cannot be independently confirmed, as far as I can see.Nishidani (talk) 14:10, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I can't really comment on the subject, but only on sources. It has been suggested that WP:MEDRS should be used for pages like that. Yes, this is definitely a good idea. However, the essence of WP:MEDRS is very simple: one should not rely on a single (or a few) original research papers because they are primary sources. Therefore, some of the arguments by Nishidani above do not look convincing. Quite possibly, an article in Forbes is even better because this is a secondary source. I am not telling it is actually better because I know too little about this. At the first glance, it does appear the "Khazar theory" has no solid scientific support - as reflected in the current version.My very best wishes (talk) 19:14, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
I've one basic editing principle. A high bar for WP:RS, and secondary sources. Entine's record is one of being a polemicist in controversies with a decided take on everything. Entine's op.ed. in Forbes is not adequate as a source for the state of the art in genetics or history, in fact he is an interested party. In this case for 'Khazar myth', one has Boris Zhivkov, Khazaria in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, BRILL, 2015 ppvii-viii, which supplies a contextualized example of that usage (which is minor, and has a nuance in Russian in any case one should not overlook). Why use crap when one has compost?
Generally I'd appreciate if co-editors could be very specific, not generally dismissive. If I question the use of a source like Steven Plaut, noting the record in RSN, editors should do the page the courtesy of evaluating the merits of the proposal. Otherwise, the page can't be edited collegially. When you say 'some of the arguments by Nishidani above do not look convincing' because one should not rely on a single primary source, well, that has been my principle from the outset. I don't add material from primary sources, except to correct editors who do, and who cite a primary source partially or selectively thus distorting them. Nishidani (talk) 07:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
An example of the selective use of primary sources, and reverting me when I fixed the resulting distortion, examine the following
My edit added what MM’s prior edit left out in adding a huge blob from a genetics paper. I used exactly the same source MM used.
Rootsi, Siiri; et al. (17 December 2013). "Phylogenetic applications of whole Y-chromosome sequences and the Near Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levites". Nature Communications. 4. doi:10.1038/ncomms3928.
MM added this:

Previous Y-chromosome studies have demonstrated that Ashkenazi Levites, members of a paternally inherited Jewish priestly caste, display a distinctive founder event within R1a, the most prevalent Y-chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europe. Here we report the analysis of 16 whole R1 sequences and show that a set of 19 unique nucleotide substitutions defines the Ashkenazi R1a lineage. While our survey of one of these, M582, in 2,834 R1a samples reveals its absence in 922 Eastern Europeans, we show it is present in all sampled R1a Ashkenazi Levites, as well as in 33.8% of other R1a Ashkenazi Jewish males and 5.9% of 303 R1a Near Eastern males, where it shows considerably higher diversity. Moreover, the M582 lineage also occurs at low frequencies in non-Ashkenazi Jewish populations. In contrast to the previously suggested Eastern European origin for Ashkenazi Levites, the current data are indicative of a geographic source of the Levite founder lineage in the Near East and its likely presence among pre-Diaspora Hebrews

I added this further bit, which actually regards the Khazars:

The greatly elevated frequency of haplogroup R1a-M198 within Ashkenazi Levites, their compact network of STR haplotypes and the recent coalescence time, suggest a founder event specific to the Ashkenazi Levites and a paternal ancestor shared by more than half of contemporary Ashkenazi Levites. The long residence of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe and the high frequency of haplogroup R1a in the same region suggested that the founder might be of non-Jewish European ancestry, whose descendants were able to assume Levite status. However, because of the paucity of distinctive internal substructure of haplogroup R1a, it was not possible to suggest a particular European source population nor to test the hypothesis of a Turkic-speaking Khazar ancestor, which has been proposed in light of the narrative that members of the Khazar ruling class may have converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century.

MM clearly wanted it stated that

a geographic source of the Levite founder lineage in the Near East and its likely presence among pre-Diaspora Hebrews

I thought it equally important to note that the same scientists also commented that

. The long residence of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe and the high frequency of haplogroup R1a in the same region suggested that the founder might be of non-Jewish European ancestry, whose descendants were able to assume Levite status. However, because of the paucity of distinctive internal substructure of haplogroup R1a, it was not possible to suggest a particular European source population nor to test the hypothesis of a Turkic-speaking Khazar ancestor, which has been proposed in light of the narrative that members of the Khazar ruling class may have converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century

The second edit was rejected as WP:SYNTH. The only rational way of explaining this antic discrimination is to note MM added stuff from Rootsi that links Ashkenazi to the Near East, and Galassi excluded information in Rootsi that the founder might be of non-Jewish European ancestry, and that the paper can't test the Khazar hypothesis.
Now, it is obvious that, if no one, and I have asked repeatedly, will explain why when I add material from a source it is WP:SYNTH, but when MM adds material from the same source it isn't, I don't know how to resolve this or any other problem here. Nishidani (talk) 07:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Can you just tell me: do I understand correctly that "Khazar theory" (or rather hypothesis) has no solid scientific support? I have an impression this is something you and another "side" actually agree about. If so, this should be easy to fix. My very best wishes (talk) 19:00, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
The Khazar theory could be broken down to two meanings: (a) the theory that the Khazar elite converted to Judaism, which is well reported in medieval Jewish sources, and (b) the modern theory, since 1869, and first proposed by a Jewish scholar, that Europe's Ashkenazi population derived from the dispersed remnant of the Khazar Empire after its destruction by Slavic armies. So just "Khazar theory" itself is ambiguous, as is "Khazar myth" (which? that they converted to Judaism, or that some of them constituted the core of the Ashkenazi -unlike hothead editors I tread very warily through this minefield, and try to find out what each source actually means). If you mean (a) then this is an hypothesis well grounded in scholarly debates, for which there are pro and contra positions. If you mean (b) then we have an old dispute, with a long history of reasoned argument in favour (Salo Wittmayer Baron).
I am personally sceptical of the core Ashkenazi population =Khazars theory, for the simple reasons that (a) conversion was widespread in antiquity, (b) genetics show a strong European presence in Ashkenazi female descent,(c) there is documented evidence of Jewish populations in Europe from Roman times onwards, through the Dark Ages, until post Carolingan times, but all that is neither here nor there. Editors must not allow their personal assumptions to interfere with fair representation of views per WP:Due. Editors here are trying to decide an issue which is open-ended, by citing second rate material in polemical op-eds. I vigorously defend the right of scholars who argue what is a minor perspective with a long and honourable tradition in Jewish scholarship, to have their work, be it in genetics, or history, or linguistics duly represented in a clear and neutral fashion, without hysteria. As to genetics (‘scientific’), all genetic arguments, pro and contra the Khazar hypothesis, concur in noting a Middle Eastern element in the genome. The only difference in Elhaik and Wexler’s theory (2016) from this consensus is that they place that among a Jewish population in Iran/northern Turkey. Molecular genetics cannot solve historical puzzles like this (at least not yet). And the historical debates are still an open field, with no iron consensus.
Any one with a Slavic mother tongue, in coming to this, should take care that the Khazar theory within that world has often been connected, even in eminent historical circles, with Slavophile and Soviet antisemitism, and thus take into account that circumstances there are different from those holding in the West, where the antisemitic aspect has almost invariably been pushed by the fringe paranoid antisemitic right, and has had almost no purchase on scholarship, as it did in Russia. I often think several editors here misread the Western debate in terms of what Khazarism sounds to them in their Slavic mother tongues, i.e. as a code term for some medieval antecedent to the Protocols of Zion, used by Russian antisemites to interpret the medieval period as one of a victory against some ‘Jewish’ plot against the Rus’, a battle they think still underway. Any Slavic speaker who hears 'Khazars' in a local conversation has more than a good reason for reading very attentively pricking up his ears, gazing into his interlocutor's eye, and seeing if the usual anti-Semitic paranoia is getting a foothold on the conversation. This is not about that: it is about a series of theories that have had and still do have some purchase on serious scholarship, outside of that toxic context.Nishidani (talk) 20:10, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
So, OK, this is a highly questionable hypothesis. Yes, some of the sources may be questionable, but there is no dramatic dispute or misrepresentation. Obviously, you are welcome to correct a few things. BTW, for a typical Russian, Khazars are not associated with semitism/antisemitism at all. They are associated with a poem by Pushkin, a patriotic song and a parody by Vysotsky. Please take it easy, My very best wishes (talk) 20:36, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
It is a controversial hypothesis, 'questionable' is another matter. All good hypotheses are controversial.Nishidani (talk) 21:21, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Antisemites, that is, are not 'typical Russians'. Fair enough. However, what you imply is widely disputed by specialists on the topic:Vadim Joseph Rossman, Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the Post-Communist Era, ‎Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of jerusalem 2002 pp.72-100 ;Victor Shnirelman, The Story of a Euphemism: The Khazars in Russian Nationalist Literature, in Peter Benjamin Golden 2007 pp.353-372 pp.356, p,371;'Thus since the 1970s, a euphemism the “Khazars” became an integral element of the Russian nationalist lexicon and is used to mark the Jews and their “thirst for world power.” p.369.
Try to avoid condescension and misreading 'Please take it easy'. Scholarly details delight me, and put me at ease. Misprisions just waste my time) I admire the fact that you retain a traditional love of Russian literature, but as you admitted, of this subject your knowledge is negligible. Unless you have some concrete suggestions, we should not let this problem-solving series of questions degenerate into chat.Nishidani (talk) 21:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
1: Salo Wittmayer Baron was not a specialist he wrote broad history and much has become outdated. In many ways he was closer to the 19th then the 20th century.
2: A reoccurring theme in Jewish discussions of the Khazars is also based on polemics. Namely the attempt to prove that Jews are not a race. Thus it’s a deeply racial topic in the West, East, North and South.
3: In America the Khazar theory is not really associated with racial anti-Semitism anymore. Its more associated with Revelation 2:9 and 3:9 and the “Fake Jews.”Jonney2000 (talk) 20:55, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Keep to scholarly citations, and try to address the specific issues I raised. As to Baron, well, he had read everything there was to be read on the subject in any of 20 languages, and we call him 'dated' whereas I don't see anyone objecting to the numerous journalists from Plaut Entine, etc., used on this page, though they have no grasp of the history of the topic. Even Stampfer, whose critique of the theory I added to the Khazar page, has no specialist knowledge of the Arabic, Turkish, Byzantine world, and goes against a very notable number of scholars who do not contest that there is a core to the strong Jewish tradition of a Khazar conversion. Nishidani (talk) 21:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Simply to summarize your own words above, it follows that (a) genetic evidence indicates Middle East (not Khazar) origin of European Jews, (b) there is no solid historical/humanitarian evidence of the Khazar hypothesis either, (c) the hypothesis is used by racists to justify their nonsense. Well, but that is exactly what this page tells right now. My very best wishes (talk) 14:43, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Nope. (a)The racist use of the Khazar-Ashkenazi link is an historical relic, surviving in a few weirdoes' web-sites (b) It is an hypothesis with a long history in Jewish scholarship(c) Several scholars still give it a hearing, though they think the evidence tenuous (Peter Benjamin Golden); (d)two scholars, who happen to be Jewish, have recently revived the idea, from the perspectives of the linguistics of Yiddish and genetics (e) Wexler's theory is minoritarian but widely discussed still (e)Elhaik's paper was supported by one of the foremost molecular biologists in the world, Dan Graur(Graur calls Elhaik’s conclusion that Ashkenazi Jews originated to the east of Germany “a very honest estimate.”), but (f) was criticized widely verbally in snippets by other Jewish geneticists (g) both Elhaik and Wexler reformulated the theory in 2016, notably by erasing the specificity of Khazars, and locating a foundational population for Yiddish Ashkenazi Jews south of Khazaria, and identifying them as Irano-Turkic trading communities in northern Turkey.(h) There has been no serious response to ((g) so far: it is too early in the piece (h) but the blogosphere has repeated desultory dismissals made of the distinct Elhaik-Wexler theory of 2012, ignoring the new paper and relying on hearsay. (h) the editors here have taken the blogosphere hysteria (Plaut, Entine, Yanover, Kutzik -neither historians nor geneticists) as the last word, and tried to (i) assert that the new paper presented in 2016 has already been 'refuted' by off the cuff comments made in 2012 about a different paper, (j) by selective citation from a handful of genetic papers challenging the results of Elhaik's 2012 paper (Behar) (k) and by smearing Elhaik. The editors doing this generally think Israel's credibility is at stake in this obscure nook of research, and suspect anyone who wishes to apply rigorously WP:NPOV, which means not taking sides but presenting a field of research's majority and minority views fairly with due weight, somehow devious ('disingenuous') POV pushers. What the page does now lacks an expansion of the historical discussion of the hypothesis, which is given succinctly at Khazars; has a huge unreadable blob of partial selective comments from geneticists who oppose the theory or see no evidence for it; no exposition in detail of the reasons why its two most recent defenders support the hypothesis. We have a caricature posing as the 'truth', which is not something which Wikipedia is supposed to allow. Antisemitism has absolutely nothing to do with either Wexler or Elhaik's ideas, whereas every blog criticizing it raises this spectre obsessively, and this is reflected on our page.
Please be specific. Is a man convicted in an Israeli court for libel, over deranged remarks he made of another scholar, a reliable source for an intricate historical puzzle? get back to me when you have examined Steven PlautNishidani (talk) 16:31, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
OK. I am sure that no one will object to including more materials if the sources satisfy WP:MEDRS, i.e. they are scientific reviews or scholarly manuscripts on the subject. Honestly, the first place where I read about this Khazar hypothesis was fiction by Edward Topol. That would not qualify of course. My very best wishes (talk) 21:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Fine. I take that to mean that no one will object to excluding existing materials whose sources don't satisfy WP:MEDRS, namely anything that fails to be a scientific review or a scholarly manuscript on the subject. This happens to be my default approach to all articles, wherever possible.Nishidani (talk) 22:22, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Personally I don't think a philosophy graduate, with Jon Entine's record, is an appropriate source, but I'm not going to be adamant about this, though I may take it to RSN. What is questionable is the title of the article attributing by implication to Elhaik the view that fellow geneticists are 'Nazi sympathisers'. This is in the title of Entine's op-ed. There is no confirmation of it in the text itself. Per WP:BLP, attribution of opinions to a living person that cannot be multiply sourced are to be removed at sight. See User:Number 57's arguments on the Yisrael Katz talk page. So, those who want to retain that should cross-document it, from RS, pronto.Nishidani (talk) 12:05, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Note for example that when Entine states:'In the face of overwhelming evidence from dozens of studies over twenty years from geneticists and historians around the world,' he sources this to his own book, Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen people, a work by a non-geneticist, and non-historian written 6 years before Elhaik's paper came out. That is, to put it lightly, fraudulent sleight-of-hand by a journalist.Nishidani (talk) 12:24, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
  • No, that would be against WP:NPOV. In effect you are telling: "I want to dismiss this WP:RS because it uses other sources, some of which do not qualify as WP:RS". No, that kind of things is actually POV-pushing. You should simply say: this source tells such thing, but another source tells something different. I think the publication in Forbes should be used along with other sources per WP:NPOV, especially if you are going to use original research papers, which is your intention if I understand correctly. My very best wishes (talk) 14:16, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
I'd remind you that you are not Galassi's proxy, and that you have no supervisory rights here. This is quite simple, but I'll take it to RS/N. Entine is not a geneticist. He is citing himself in 2007, in a book which concludes it has been proven Jews are a 'race' and regards this as 'incontrovertible'. Elhaik is a geneticist, trained by one of the foremost molecular biologists alive, who, like his mentor, opposes the ideas of a 'Jewish race', and notes that when people speak, as does Entine, of Jewishness as a threefold (a) belief in God (b) belief that Israel is the founding ground of Judaism (c) belief in bloodlines, this language overlaps precisely Blut und Boden ideology of Nazism. That in no way means he is saying Entine is a Naszi sympathizer. It says that Jews who are pushing this triple definition should address the problem of defining Jews as the Nazis defined them. Nishidani (talk) 15:25, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
  • OK, I quickly checked a few scientific refs about this. The publication by Elnaik "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses" is a very brief paper where he is the only author. It was cited only 8 times in ISI index and disproved in a later and a much more detailed study by a large group of authors, "No Evidence from Genome-wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews", published in Human Biology, Volume: 85, Pages: 859-900 . And I do not see any more recent publications which would challenge this latest work published in 2013. So, yes, the "Khazar hypothesis" is apparently a myth, scientifically speaking. My very best wishes (talk) 05:36, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
I work slowly. Wiki articles glossing scientific reports are supposed to mediate their results through reliable secondary sources which interpret them. What we have on this page is a combination of poor secondary sources, and selective citation from primary scientific reports, all enlisted to disprove the argument of the page. This is methodologically extremely dicey. This, furthermore, is not about 'scientific proof'. It is about historical conjectures, in which an ensemble of historical, linguistic and scientific arguments are interwoven. The words 'myth' and 'disproven' are nowhere in Behar. They come from cheap inferior newspaper sources, none of them written by competent scholars from any of those disciplines. Meditate on what, say, John Entine asserts. The record shows him both subscribing to part of the Khazar hypothesis, and then going ballistic over Elhaik for arguing that:-

Entine insisted that the evidence is “incontrovertible”: “Ashkenazi Jewry is a coherent population, much like blacks descended from western Africa, the Amish or Icelanders.” Pointing out the Caucasian/Asiatic markers on his own chromosome – which he says typically makes up 20% of Ashkenazi genes – Entine says this might be because of the Khazar conversion, which took place among the elites of Khazaria and not the general population, as Elhaik contends. “When Khazaria collapsed, a fraction of the elite integrated themselves into the then tiny Eastern European Jewish communities,” Entine notes. “Today’s percentage of Khazarian like markers is congruent with the extrapolation of that core group to the founding of Ashkenazi Jewry in the 12-14 centuries, when Jews in Eastern Europe numbered only 15,000-20,000.” In other words, he writes, “Elhaik is just wrong.”(Gal Beckerman 'Researchers Feud Over Jewish Genes,' The Forward 20 May, 2013 )

According to Jon Entine, historians and scientists believe the Khazarian theory should more accurately be called a myth.

If you can make head or tail of this, you're a better reader than I. Entine subscribes to the 'myth' while disowning it.(One could conjecture that his bizarre contradiction is psychologically coherent: elsewhere Entine speaks of a distinctive Jewish 'race' of which he is proudly part, and selecting the word 'elite' as part of his putative Khazar heritage confirms his sense of being part of some exclusive racial elite. This kind of supremacy implication and nonsense is precisely what gets other Jewish scholars like Elhaik and Dan Graur pissed off. They have better memories of what that kind of language produced among Nazis).

The last 15 years has seen a plethora of genetic research on Jewish populations worldwide. Harry Ostrer and Michael Hammer concluded in 2000 that most modern Jews are descended on their male side from a core population of approximately 20,000 Jewish emigrants from Italy to Central Europe over the first millennium.[1]

This is how,2 years after Entine wrote his tirade, which editors have jumped on to press home their own belief that this is a cut-and-dried issue because genetics has trumped the 'game' ,(refuted/myth/incontroversible genetic proof etc), one of the cutting edge masters of the controversy, the linguist Alexander Beider (who strongly disagrees with Elhaik and Wexler please note) surveyed the same results Entine boasted of as being uniform in their conclusions:-

Unfortunately, genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews, numerous since the 1990s, often provide contradictory information. Related methodological issues are huge: no access to the genetic pool of populations who lived centuries before us, the possibility of the genetic variation related to national selection, etc. To these objective problems one should add striking subjective elements: for certain authors, the way they proceed in their investigation and their interpretation of obtained results are clearly skewed by their political and/or religious feelings. Every new publication in which their authors give a numerical estimation is immediately followed by numerous articles in the non-academic press written by journalists who in a highly vulgarized manner present them to the general public. Several factors contribute to this situation including the high prestige of genetic studies in our day (many people feel fascinated when they hear such terms as “chromosomes” and “gene pools”, “Y-DNA” and “mitochondrial DNA,” “haplotypes” and “haplogroups”) and the impossibility for laymen, even those with a high level of general culture, to verify the validity of the results presented. As a result, it is customary to see articles that explain to readers that, for example, (i)a majority of people considered to be of Jewish priestly descent indeed have the same paternal ancestor. (ii) for about forty percent of modern Ashkenazi Jews their matrilineal ancestry can be traced to just four women who lived about 2,000 years ago and, most likely, had Middle Eastern roots, (iii) more than eighty percent of Ashkenazi lineages have European sources, (iv) the genetic distance between modern Ashkenazic Jews, and non-Jewish Italians is rather small, while the distance between Jews and Palestinian Arabs is tiny or huge, depending on the author and the time and the place of the publication.’ Alexander Beider, Origins of Yiddish Dialects, Oxford University Press, 2015 p.553.

Beider sees complete dissonance in the genetic field and contamination by secondary popular news reports garbling complex issues. We are using Entine for what you say is 'scientifically established'. The language Entine uses is nowhere in the scientific literature you rightly mention. Entine is a very confused man, and as just the quote from Beider suggests, is spinning the controversy, not explaining its multiple confused state of inconclusiveness.Nishidani (talk) 09:56, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
  • One more comment, Jonney, your tweaking didn't get closer to the source, it distorted it.

According to Bernard Spolsky, Eran Elhaik's genetic evidence itself remains uncertain.

This is a total distortion of Spolsky, who wrote.

‘Recently, Elhaik (2013) claims to have found evidence supporting the Khazarian origin of Ashkenazim, but the whole issue of genetic evidence remains uncertain.’

Spolsky is saying exactly what Beider says above. Grammatically, there is no way that ‘the whole issue of genetic evidence’ can be spun to mean Spolsky is referring only to Elhaik’s work. To the contrary, right or wrong, Spolsky is characterizing the genetic papers in general as leading to uncertain results so far. What I wrote:'According to Bernard Spolsky, genetic itself remains uncertain,’ undoubtedly is what Spolsky is saying, indeed I underplayed its force by omitting ‘whole’. Your edit overplayed its hand by making ‘whole’ refer to Elhaik, while making the decisive adjective disappear.Nishidani (talk) 10:33, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
  • My comment was only about one very specific issue. I agree that many scientific questions become extremely complicated when they became political, and the publication in Forbes (for example) obviously belongs to the popular science and politics, even though such sources can be used per WP:RS. Therefore, I simply checked in Science Citation Index database. When someone publish an unusual findings which goes against previous knowledge, it is very common that another lab is trying to independently reproduce such results using a much larger set of data/experiments, a more rigorous or well-established methodology of statistical analysis, etc. It is exactly what had happened in this case, and the results were not reproduced ("No Evidence from Genome-wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews", published in Human Biology, Volume: 85, Pages: 859-900). This has nothing to do with any public discourse. This is not anything unusual. That's why using a single research publication is not a good idea. That's why we have WP:MEDRS. This is all I wanted to say.My very best wishes (talk) 15:00, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
User:Zero0000 if my memory is not totally corrupt, once cautioned against using the Science Citation Index as a guide rather than simply using the definition of RS as set forth at WP:RS. Elhaik was reliably published. In this article his argument must be summarized neutrally. Behar et al's 2013 critique must then be referenced, summing up its conclusion that Elhaik's thesis is flawed,etc. We don't go further than that, unless we have a secondary source from a competent specialist in the field saying that the argument of Elhaik is now buried as science.
(a) Did you read either paper (Elhaik 2012, Behar 2013)? Elhaik was actually developing a suggestion by Behar (2003) which suggested that

'a specific R1a1 Y-chromosomal lineage, comprising 50% of the Ashkenazi Levites and observable in non-Jewish eastern Europeans, could represent either a European contribution or a trace of the lost Khazars.'(Behar 2013)

(b)Behar et al. did not 'disprove' Elhaik's thesis (except in Entine and co's imagination). They (rightly) said his use of proxy populations ()Armenians and Georgians) for Khazars was flawed, since they were southern Caucasian, not as the Khazars, northern Caucasian populations. They concluded:

Furthermore, among populations of the Caucasus, Armenians and Georgians are geographically the closest to the Middle East, and are therefore expected a priori to show the greatest genetic similarity to Middle Eastern populations. Indeed, a rather high similarity of South Caucasus populations to Middle Eastern groups was observed at the level of the whole genome in a recent study (Yunusbayev and others, 2012).

For the significance of this remark by Behar and co. see the last quote below
Behar et al simply challenged (2013) Elhaik's findings(2012), which developed Behar's 2003 'suggestion' and which were a critique of their 2010 findings as Elhaik and others have challenged theirs (2016). On a topic as recondite as Khazar genetic theory you are not going to get a huge literature of scientific commentary in 4 years. This is an ongoing scientific dialogue, and cannot be described by jumping at journalistic reviews of 2003, 2010, 2012,2013, or 2016 because the results are under constant review in a new field like population genetics.
(c) There is a very simple conceptual issue at stake between the two: the distinction between Near East and Middle East. Elhaik and others are arguing that Behar et al., are describing as 'Middle Eastern' in the sense of Palestine/Israel etc. what their data show to be 'Near Eastern' (more northwards, embracing Anatolia etc.)

(c) Our findings are also consistent with the vast majority of genetic findings that AJs are closer to Near Eastern (e.g., Turks, Iranians, and Kurds) and South European populations (e.g., Greeks and Italians) as opposed to Middle Eastern populations (e.g., Bedouins and Palestinians). Remarkably, with only few exceptions (e.g., Need et al. 2009; Zoossmann-Diskin 2010), these findings have been consistently misinterpreted in favor of a Middle Eastern Judaean ancestry, although the data do not support such contention for either Y chromosomal (Hammer et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2001; Rootsi et al. 2013) or genome-wide studies (Seldin et al. 2006; Kopelman et al. 2009; Tian et al. 2009; Atzmon et al. 2010; Behar et al. 2010; Campbell et al. 2012; Ostrer and Skorecki 2012). To promulgate a Middle Eastern origin despite the findings, various dispositions were adopted. Some authors consolidated the Middle East with other regions whereas other authors abolished it altogether. For example, Seldin et al. (2006) wrote that the “southern [European]” component is “consistent with a later Mediterranean origin,” whereas Rootsi et al. (2013) declared it as part of the Near East, which is “the geographic location for the ancient Hebrews” and, apparently, Ashkenazic Levites. A common fallacy is interpreting the genetic similarity between AJs as evidence of a Middle Eastern origin. For example, Kopelman et al. (2009) advised caution when considering the similarity between AJs with Adygei and Sardinians and since Jewish communities clustered together they “share a common Middle Eastern ancestry.” Tian et al. (2009) dismissed similar findings for AJs, denouncing them as the only population that “appears to have a unique genotypic pattern that may not reflect geographic origins.” A newly emerging trend is partial “Middle Easternization.” For example, Behar et al. (2013) traced AJs to eastern Turkey but argued in favor of a shared Middle Eastern and European ancestries based on the shared ancient Middle Eastern origin, common to most Near Eastern populations. This approach assumes undisturbed genetic continuity of AJs since the Neolithic Era along with the existence of a Middle Eastern ancestral component—both are unsupported by the data. In fact, all western and central Eurasians share similar admixture components (fig. 2A) and “Middle Easternalizing” is uninformative to study recent origin, particularly when applied selectively to populations who exhibit similarity to AJs. Similarly, Atzmon et al. (2010) have reported that Northern Italians show the greatest proximity to AJs, followed by Sardinians and French, in support of non-Semitic Mediterranean ancestry, but the coloring patterns of their admixture plot (which are similar to our fig. 2A) persuaded them that AJs have “demonstrated [a] Middle Eastern ancestry.” Most innovatively, the authors have then interpreted the differential patterns of genetic segments that are identical-by-descent (IBD) in AJs as consistent with a bottleneck paradigm citing a “demographic miracle” to support this claim. To the best of our knowledge, no large-scale study has reported that AJs are genetically closer to German or Israelite populations compared with Near Eastern and Southern European populations. Bedouins and Palestinians are the only populations localized to Israel (fig. 3).

Until the scientific literature shows otherwise, none of us have any reason to challenge this summation by Elhaik and his geneticist colleagues, which says there is interpretative dissonance in the field of AJS origins, as a falsification of the state of the art. We can't choose sides, and, with the downdumbing fans of pop journalism, reduce this ongoing controversy to 'victory' for one group. Beider and Spolsky rightly argue the same thing. Nishidani (talk) 16:44, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Can anyone point out where Elhaik stated his adversaries were, literally , 'Nazi sympathisers'. It is documented he spoke of liars and frauds, but 'Nazi sympathisers' is a synthetic judgement in a title, implicitly attributing by its quotation marks, that to him whereas it appears to be an toxic editorial summary of a far more nuanced and complex statement he made regarding the overlap between Nazi doctrines and genetic theories that relate Jewish identity to land and blood. Unless one can source this directly to Elhaik, it must be removed per WP:BLP. Indeed procedurally, it should be there until some RS can show these are Elhaik's ipsissima verba.Nishidani (talk) 18:16, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Sorry, this is all a little tl;dr for me, and I am not an expert in this. Yes, this is something I also thought: Elhaik did not conclusively claim that he proved the Khazar theory. His results were apparently distorted in the publication in Forbes, and there are no significant disagreements between work by Elhaik and the later publication by another group. However, all of that only enforces the final conclusion by these researchers: "No Evidence from Genome-wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews" (Human Biology, Volume: 85, Pages: 859-900)". My very best wishes (talk) 01:41, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
My apologies for the length, and thanks. One final point on this. The 2012 Elhaik argument was reworked, to take in Behar et al's criticisms, and the result is Ranajit Das, Eran Elhaik, Mehdi Pirooznia, Paul Wexler,'Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval villages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz genome,' Biology and Evolution 3 March 2016 (2016) doi: 10.1093/gbe/evw046). That won't show up in your index, because it will take some time for scholarly research to respond. But it does mean that Elhaik is not buried, or out on a limb, post Behar 2013. He has reformulated the Khazar theory in geographic terms, has 2 other geneticists endorsing that result, and adopts a model he himself created with a highly respected Russian scientist,Tatiana Tatarinova. So Behar's conclusion cannot be final, since it is not the last word in an ongoing debate, which hasn't had time to reverberate in the Science Citation Index. Thanks for your care in probing this with me. I haven't time to work this article much, being more or less off-wiki, but this has been most helpful.Nishidani (talk) 07:33, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Bernard Spolsky missed used

‘Recently, Elhaik (2013) claims to have found evidence supporting the Khazarian origin of Ashkenazim, but the whole issue of genetic evidence remains uncertain.’

He clearly talking about Elhaik’s evidenced. It’s from a foot note and has no period. Do you see the comma? He clearly saying that Elhaik’s evidence is uncertain. You are reading something into the sentence that is not in it.

Where do you think he is talking about genetic evidence in general? He is talking about genetic evidence for the Khazars not the Ashkenazi!!!!Jonney2000 (talk) 19:11, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm a linguist. I've been entrusted to edit a complex book on logic. I've spent a half a century construing sentences in several languages. There are several ways an author can say what you suggest Spolsky is saying.
Recently, Elhaik (2013) claims to have found evidence supporting the Khazarian origin of Ashkenazim, but his genetic evidence remains uncertain.
Recently, Elhaik (2013) claims to have found evidence supporting the Khazarian origin of Ashkenazim, but uncertainty surrounds his genetic results.
Recently, Elhaik (2013) claims to have found evidence supporting the Khazarian origin of Ashkenazim, but the status of genetic evidence he provides remains uncertain,etc.etc.
When you use 'the whole' in these cases, all English grammars and English usage tell you to take it to refer to the topic it is predicated of. If you don't even believe that, you examine usage. I.e.
the whole issue of genetics and behaviour is best understood by examining the inheritance of many different behaviours in organisms ranging from bacteria to man.David A. Hay, Essentials of Behaviour Genetics, Blasckwells 1985 p.1
Others may try hard to avoid the whole issue of philosophy altogether either by denigrating its importance in life, or by denying that there is anything "higher" or anything "out there" to believe in. This is called nihilism.' Liz Greene, ‎Howard Sasportas,Dynamics of the Unconscious: Seminars in Psychological Astrology,Weiser Books, 1988 p.197
Assuming one could conclusively prove that Judaism was not as immutably tied to its initial revelation as its critics claimed and hence perfectible after all, the whole issue of Judaism's alleged inferiority would have to be revisited'. Lars Fischer, The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany, Cambridge University Press 2007 p.96
'Because the whole issue of Islam and dakwah is so intricately linked to issues of ethnic identity (Shamsul 1994) and the political survival of the nation, it is no surprise that the government has taken the matter seriously.' Robert W. Hefner, ‎Patricia Horvatich, Islam in an Era of Nation-States: Politics and Religious Renewal in an Era of Nation States, University of Hawai'i Press 1997 p.221.
'As for the internal structure of works written in the West, it varies in different types of works, and there are certain differences among works of the same type, even those that treat the whole issue of logic in the form of a textbook.' Amir Ljubović,The Works in Logic by Bosniac Authors in Arabic, BRILL 2008 p. 152
'Marx and Engels saw two sides of the whole issue of democracy, consistent with their concept of the class nature of the State, but it is in the two-sidedness of the issue that the ambiguity lies.' Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory, Princeton University Press 2014 p.51.
By rewriting it as you did, you assumed a personal pronoun the author could have, but did not use, construed the sentence against the natural logic of English grammar and contradicted usage of the adjective 'whole' which is extensive over all elements in the set denoted by the noun. (Why do I have to do this? Yeah, Wikipedia...). Spolsky, you omitted to take into account, says exactly what Beider (and many others) says. Nishidani (talk) 19:52, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
I don’t care about your qualification. This is not so clear it is a freaking foot note. One sentence long and should not be in lead.Jonney2000 (talk) 19:59, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Look. I spend a lot of time trying to clarify complex issues, mistakes, oversights, bad sourcing, and 99% of those who edit here just jab a comment in and revert, with no rational explanation given. Your 'should not be' is an opinion. I gave you linguistic evidence, you reply with 'it should not be in'. By the way, footnotes are standard modes of qualifying with more precision what the author left out of the main text, so that argument doesn't stand. If you wish to challenge my construal, get a grammar book that says the opposite, as long as it is written by a speaker with a native Sprachgefühl.Nishidani (talk) 20:06, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

MM

Most of those edits were outrageous POV pushing, indifferent to textual justifications. Just POV rewrites off the top of the head to spin your personal take on the topic.

  • Way too wordy quote. False. The quote is not in the lead, nor in the body of the article. It gives the textual basis for a few words in the lead, which were introduced to balance the other POV. I gave the full quote because I see no evidence that people are reading sources.
  • there is no excuse here to elide ‘unproven’. The problem is in the verb. Dunlop, Golden and others, all specialists, don’t quite dismiss it. They have said it is unproven, and/or unlikely. They haven’t said it is a fantasy, as some others do. So dismiss as a fantasy is one thing (Stampfer, whose own paper goes against the scholarly consensus), to regard it as unproven another.
  • Not a journalist a geneticist.
Entine has a BA in philosophy. Unless you have proof he ever graduated in genetics, what you claim is one more proof you don’t read much, and can’t distinguish aa businessman running a genome literacy project from a scientist studying genomics.
  • changing many (documentable) to ‘most’ (scholars) is again WP:OR.
  • This is sheer mendacity, or cantankerously illiterate lipservice to a floating meme that is just bullshit. Yanover, the source, is not worth a nob of goats’ shit, but I leave it in as a sop to POV pushers. But no scholar, no geneticist, has yet to publish work stating that the 1,000 year old Ashkenazi population of Europe is ‘indigenous’ to Palestine. Behar, Elhaik, Hammer et al argue that the founding fathers come from the Middle East, using that term to encompass anywhere from northern Anatolia to the southern Levant. It is like saying (Mayflower-descended) Americans are indigenous to the British isles, a complete travesty of the accepted meaning of ‘indigenous’. If any of these scientists want such a proof, all they need do is get the DNA from the thousands of Israelite skeletons stored in Israel, and test its genetic material, and show the correspondence with Ashkenazis. Have you ever asked yourself why this is not done. The French do that, it's done for ancient skeletons in Germany, in Ireland, in Scandinavia, in Russia, in Egypt etc.etc.etc.
  • this is a rational edit, unmotivated by your POV obsession.Nishidani (talk) 11:37, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
    • You repeat that Jon Entine is a geneticist. I asked you above to give evidence of his qualifications ('Jon graduated from Trinity College (1974, philosophy) and earned a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Michigan in 1981-1982.'). Nicholas Wade, like Entine, wrote a book on genetics and the Jews. Neither are geneticists. Both are journalists. Writing about genetics doesn't mean you acquire a doctorate in the subject. So drop spitting-the-dummy- reverts, and give the details where Entine got his PhD in genetics.Nishidani (talk) 13:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

One edits according to the language in each source

    • 'The theory has been used by antisemites and anti-Zionists to deny that Ashkenazi Jews have an indigenous connection to Palestine.[11]'
Source Yanover:
(a) 'So now, not for the first time, a new study, available here, the work of a large group of scientists, finds once again that the Khazar theory is baseless, driven, like Prof. Sand, by a burning desire to invalidate the Jewish Zionist narrative
(b)This theory has been used by antisemites to suggest that European Jews stem from a barbaric Asiatic race, and to disprove their ancestral connection to the land of Israel.
This is pure editorializing by Yanover. Behar did not conclude it was baseless, nor driven by a burning desire to invalidate the 'Jewish Zionist narrative'. That is Yanover's spin. It is also true that a notable literature exists arguing that Ostrer, Hammer, Behar et al are driven by a desire to prove 'the Jewish Zionist narrative'.
Behar et al., as geneticists are arguing that the Ashkenazi Jews have two ancestral components, one in Europe one in the Middle East. They have an ancestral connection in this view to both geographic areas, not one.
(c) 'We and others have argued on the basis of genome-wide data that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to both Europe and the Middle East.'(Behar 2013)
  • 'Modern geneticists and historians now largely see the Khazar theory as a myth.[4]'
(d)The Khazarian theory–which historians and scientists now believe should more accurately be called a myth.(Entine).
Entine would like to believe this. He names no names. It is his point of view, and if you want that to stand you should have a competent source making that point.Nishidani (talk) 13:43, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

NPA please

No personal attacks, please. There are good sources and bad sources. Elhaik is a terrible source but he's still quoted here. You're trying to prove a point which you think is relevant to the article because of your personal views on the subject. This article isn't and I believe it shouldn't dwell(ing) on the politics, but rather the data. Entine is perfectly valid source, he authored a major paper on jewish genetics that has been cited by studies. The jewishpress source is certainly less valid, but you're the one who insisted on using his exact words. --Monochrome_Monitor 16:46, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

You've been consistently reverting and rewriting without addressing one, not one, point raised on the talk page. It means work, actually doing some reading widely on the subject, rather than continually remodulating the text according to the second hand opinions of selective poor sources as is being done now. So I'm putting the text back to what it was, and ask you to hold off until you can justify on the talk page what you are unilaterally doing. Your edit summaries are useless.Nishidani (talk) 16:50, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I'll address them. Ahem.--Monochrome_Monitor 16:54, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
One: they aren't exactly unilateral. You should arguably be the one justifying your edits as they diverge from the status quo/consensus. Next, lets put away that argument that all mainstream geneticists are motivated by the jewish zionist narrative. It's not what you said but it's where the slippery slope is headed, and it's nonsense. This page is not currently and arguably should not be injected with politics, but rather data and responses to the data. Yes, ashkenazi jews also have a european component. but that's not the point of the khazar theory, which is that the khazar is the primary component. Khazar ≠ European. Every jewish group has admixture. The source of admixture varies. I have done PLENTY of research, and seen how incredibly tightly sephardic, ashkenazi and north african jews cluster genetically. All have admixture (whether southern european or arab or persian etc) but they share a common levantine component. This levantine component is the basis of jewish culture. It's a diaspora. But no one is saying and it would be incredibly insensitive to say that african americans should also feel tied to europe because of their considerable european admixture. Same with Afro-carribeans, afro-germans, afro-arabs.... but all are the african diaspora. I know ashk jews aren't "pure" israelites. The irish aren't pure celtic, in fact, unlike the various jewish groups who show a common origin, most studies show that welsh/scots/irish have no common origin, and celtic identity (tying modern "celts" to the ancient ones) is rather tenuous. All have significant neolithic french admixture. But is their culture french? Do they identify as french? Likewise the jews long separation from the middle east has nothing to do with jewish identity. So lets stop speaking of european admixture. No one is denying the very apparent ashkenazi affinity to southern italians. There are different components to this, one is the obvious that many italian/roman women converted, the other is that the pre-islamic middle east was genetically much more "european". Behar's study is enlightening. [2] Looking at Cypriot dna, and lebanese dna, and druze dna, its clear the jewish europeaness is not quite european. Lebanese cluster very closely to Jews, which validates the maronite/phonecian connection (Which i used to think was nationalistic christians-who-dont-want-to-associate-with-dominant-arab-muslim-culture crap. The pops around the seph/ash/na cluster form a sort of diagonal line towards the bedouin- ie the purest arabians... roughly in the order of druze, lebanese, syrians, palestinians, saudis, bedouins. But I digress.--Monochrome_Monitor 17:27, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

The interesting thing about that study is it's basically the same data Elhaik got. He just looked at it through bullshit colored glasses. Ahk. Jews are close to Azerbaijani jews and a few are near armenians, all askh cluster much closer to those than to beduoins and jordanians. But so do all sephardic and north african jews, which is where the bullshit is evident. Jordanians bedouins and palestinians are not an authentic proxy for the ancient middle east, none cluster with the levantine populations but rather form their own arabianish group. That's not saying it's mutually exclusive with the ancient and modern levantines, since yemeni jews cluster near them, but it means it would be much better to use lebanese rather than jordanians. --Monochrome_Monitor 17:33, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

But that's just genetics which as this article establishes are firmly in the theory's disfavor. I'll look for a better source than entine. A cool thing about the picture, you see how closely hungarians, germans, basically all central europeans cluster toward eachother? That's because those populations only fully diverged like a thousand years ago. Jews form a tight cluster too but this cluster diverged mostly 2500 to 1500 years ago.--Monochrome_Monitor 17:53, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Okay. We rely (a) on sources. I don't argue for a position, I argue for respect for all sources, per the usual weighting. At the moment we have trivial self-serving journalists documenting the lead. (b) There is no status quo/consensus: for either, on this page we had only edit-warring, ignoring talk page and sources (ii) in science the status quo/consensus is not stable. (c)I have absolutely no interest in adjudicating the merits of the dozens of papers here (I've read 20 of them over 15 years and as Beider notes they keep stating contradictory things while harping on a final conclusion, the desired result to confirm a premise), or discussing who is right or wrong. The task of an editor is to, yes, read the primary reports but look for good (I.e. informed, and not POV-pushing) secondary sources reporting them. (d) we have at least one extensive review of this whole debate at it is, Nadia Abu El-Haj, The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology, University of Chicago Press, 2012 pp.120ff., which deals with the journalist Entine, the press coverage of the debate, how the solutions are provisory, challenged, overturned, and the ideological pressures that lead Jewish ancestry claimants to get enthusiastic over the Y-chromosome results, while burying in silence the mitochondrial results, which totally conflict with the former; and Behar's attempt to try to get the mitochondria to conform to the results inferred re the patrilineal model. Now go and read that text closely, and get back to me. Because unless you do, arguing is pointless, because we are arguing about inferior and POV-pushing papers by people with inadequate academic preparation engaged in spinning a topic, and always waffling on about anti-Semitism, rather than trying the grasp the flow and state of technical issues.Nishidani (talk) 18:42, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
As to decades long efforts in Israel to try and work out the problems of Jewish identity with concepts of race identification, that has been studied by many scholars, from Kirsch to Nadia Abu El-Haj (see her preliminary remarks pp.18f), and it has arguably inflected this issue. Most genetic papers on this come from 'Jewish' scholars (no problem: they have a natural interest in this), pro and con, with the pro-group getting huge positive newspaper coverage.
Elhaik's papers got HUGE coverage, so don't say the pro ones are all jewish controlled or influenced. El-Haj is a big SYNTH of other sources, and it's selective to use a specific synth as a source. I'll read it but I have the sneaking suspicion it equivocates and obsfucates. --Monochrome_Monitor 19:16, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Wow. I was right. The source isn't even about Khazars, its about whether the jewish people as a whole constitute A: a people connected eachother B: a people linked to ancient israel. This argument is mostly based around prioritizing patrilineal dna, which is crap. Patrilinieal dna is half of the jewish genome, if the other half is different it doesn't mean the whole is rendered invalid. The article is certainly not even handed and it certainly is, ironically, politically motivated. --Monochrome_Monitor 19:27, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
It argues that genetic evidence of a patrilineal connection has created a paradime shift where jewish history focuses on the patrilineal. That is demonstrably false. Jews have always focused on the patrilineal, we used patrynomics and associated with patrilineally descended tribes. In ancient jewish history females were often converts and males were israelite. --Monochrome_Monitor 19:31, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
She's not a geneticist. She's an anthropologist. She's as credible as ervine in this regard. Except he focuses on all genetics, jewish or not, whereas her research is focused on "revisioning" jewish peoplehood and archeological evidence.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:34, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
(ec)I too can read a dozen pages in 26 minutes, but unlike you, I spent one and a half crosschecking all of her statements against other sources, and then thought about them while defrosting an ice-encrusted refrigerator for some 2 more hours. In other words, you are scanning texts rapidly, making a call, and doing zero thinking. If you have a problem as an editor, it is this (a) you have your mind made up on extremely complex issues of which you have no background knowledge or expertise (b)you have problems distinguishing text and context. The text is anything one reads, the context is the discursive framework within which that text is embedded. For you, the latter consists of a simpleton pro-Israel/anti-Israel grid. For scholars, it means that when Entine or Nicholas Wade is used for an article like this, one looks where they are coming from, what their qualifications are for commenting, and what secondary sources, written by peer-reviewed scholars, might say of their journalism. Elhaik's paper got little scientific coverage, as My Very Best Wishes noted. It got extensive negative popular press coverage. When you state that 'El-Haj is a big SYNTH of other sources, and it's selective to use a specific synth as a source', you are demonstrating that you have no grasp of what scholars do: they write up by primary research, interviews, and secondary source input, what the state of a particular issue is, and add their interpretation. So your objection has no weight, because what you take to be 'SYNTH' is a caricature of the normal process of academic scholarship. And you show that you fail to understand how Wikipedia functions by asserting that 'it's selective to use a specific synth as a source' (and self-contradictory, since you support the use of Entine who has been selectively used for his 'specific synth' as a source). Please think before you reply.Nishidani (talk) 19:39, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
ps. it is pointless offering your views on whether El-Haq is correct or not (and paradime is spelled paradigm). The fact that she is not qualified in genetics is irrelevant. She, as an anthropologist, studied the sociological framework of theories of genetics, and had that work peer-reviewed. It is considered an important contribution, not least by Jonathan Marks, 'Review of a Troublesome inheritance by Nicholas Wade,' Human Biology 86(3):221-226. 2014 , who also remarks that another of our journalistic sources, Nicholas Wade has waded way out of his depth and is totally ignorant of the discursive field in which this research is embedded. Marks is a professor with graduate degrees in both anthropology and genetics, unlike you or me.Nishidani (talk) 19:47, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
1. please give me a bit of time before you add another paragraph. edit conflicts are the bane of my existence. I agree about entine. It's better to have multiple sources. I'll look into it. Beider's account seems very even-handed, hers does not. She's very controversial and I assure you I have done quite a bit of research. If you're saying its been politicized on both sides and genetics may be less important than other factors, I agree. I agree that jewish history is oversimplified to 1. we were there 2. we got exiled. 3. we are back. It's much more complex than that. For one the notion that jews were exiled en masse when the temple was destroyed is false. What did it was the bar kochba revolt and after that little exiles due to byzantine shenanigans. But her views are not balanced in that way, they are that jewish history has been entirely politicized and we can never know if jews are really jews and therefore it all is irrelevant. She's not unbiased as you know. She's part of an "orientalist" stream of "middle eastern studies" that conveniently eliminates jews (including middle eastern ones) and most non-arab muslims from "middle east". She thinks israel is an apartheid state. If a jewish source said something like "all palestinians are terrorists", I would also say they are biased and unreliable. As for paradime, yes, if you haven't noticed english orthography is not my strong suit. Sometimes I just say "fuck it" and write it like it sounds. Have you seen this poem? I think you would love it. :) [3] --Monochrome_Monitor 19:52, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Have you read facts on the ground, her other major work? It's revisionism. It basically says Israel and Judah never existed. --Monochrome_Monitor 19:57, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't know where you googled that deplorable judgement from. You haven't read it, and neither have I, but I trust in Samuel Z. Klausner's judgement Academics and Politics in Academics July 14, 2008, since what he says is judiciously informed, critical yet positive. Try not to scatter the argument: she is RS for what geneticists argue about Ashkenazi origins.It's very simple. If a scholar consistently gets things wrong, and misrepresent their sources repeatedly those errors are noted by those misrepresented. I checked and cannot find any geneticist complaining that their views have been grossly distorted. Any in any case, her politics is a matter of indifference to me: the views she espouses seem mild compared to what dozens of Jewish and Israeli scholars, from Dov Waxman to Rabbi David Gordis argue. Let's keep this focused on the editing issues.Nishidani (talk) 21:17, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

If you are going to summarize your position with a source, I pray it's not her. --Monochrome_Monitor 19:57, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

What's sad is that the poem is meant for english language learners but some of it was news to me. (Bade is pronounced like bad?!!) The foibles of an autodidact. --Monochrome_Monitor 20:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
  • You removed:and 'invalidate the Jewish Zionist narrative' as 'unnecessarily politicized quote'. Well, Entine, Yanover, et al., are cited for politicized quotes (Yanover is a complete nong, by the way). You can't have it both ways, using a source to 'get at' a person, while cutting out stuff that shows their POV in the same article. It's true that Yanover gives the game away by effectively saying that Elhaik and his ilk's science is objectionable also because it 'invalidates the Jewish Zionist narrative'. That only proves that Yanover is, like Entine, a completely useless source, except for spiteful point-scoring. Ands Entine is primarily a journalist, he is thus described in numerous sources, even in those that discuss his genetic stuff. He has no intellectual or scholarly autonomy in the subject he descants on. Now, young lady, let me get back to that fucking iceberg in my fridge that is still refusing to melt after I put a basin of hot water, left over from cooking myself some pasta, underneath the freezer.Nishidani (talk) 21:53, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I wasn't the one who added yanover to the article! The fact that the theory is favored by antisemites for those reasons is mentioned further below. Also, don't conflate entine and him. Entine WRITES about science and genetics. The other guy writes about jews. --Monochrome_Monitor 21:56, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Wishing you luck. Do you have calcium chloride? It both has an exothermic reaction with water and raises its melting point. --Monochrome_Monitor 21:58, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

If you don't have CaCl2 you can make it with some drawing chalk and battery acid. --Monochrome_Monitor 22:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC) Shit no that's calcium sulfate. I thought battery acid was hydrochloric for some reason. Well, you could induce vomiting and purify your stomach acid. --Monochrome_Monitor 22:04, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. I see you weren't raised doing kitchen chores. Some homework, and easy math.'For one the notion that jews were exiled en masse when the temple was destroyed is false. What did it was the bar kochba revolt and after that little exiles due to byzantine shenanigans.' Calculate the Jews in voluntary diaspora before 70 CE.as a percentage compared to the Jews in Palestine, and you may just see how much 'myth' surrounds the popular narrative (and inflects genetic papers who ritually cite that meme re 70CE)Nishidani (talk) 18:44, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
There were 7 million jews in the world at the time, or 10% of the population of the roman empire. 580,000 were killed in the bar-kohchba revolt and more died of famine and disease, so we'll say a million, add another million or so survivors most of whom were enslaved. Now those were just the jews in judea and jerusalem. There were many more Jews in the Galilee, with major cities like Tiberias. Lets say about 1.5 million. So that's 3.5 jews in "palestine", or 50% of the world's jews, which sounds about accurate. There were huge hellenistic jewish communities like Alexandria and Antioch. And of course there's the Jews who remained in Babylon. It's not a myth though. Keep in mind this 50% was the heart of the world jewish community. The vast majority of the hellenized jews became christians. So it's not at all an exaggeration to say the Jewish people were exiled. The majority of today's Jews are descendents from exiles.--Monochrome_Monitor 00:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Then again that 10% figure might be bs. [4] We don't have any figures and it seems entirely likely that a plurality if not majority of jews lived in eretz israel. --Monochrome_Monitor 00:43, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
You googled an answer and looked at Wikipedia articles, which, on this, all reflect memes and not the scholarship, so you get the anomaly of treating Josephus's figures as close to a real estimate, while Philo's figures are a wild exaggeration. In science, skepticism runs across the board, it is not something used selectively. The consensus is that all ancient figures of this kind are gross overestimates, and one arrives as reasonable guesstimate simply by looking at the carrying capacity of the land's agricultural productivity at any one time. By any calculation on the demographics, before the myth of the great 'diaspora' of post 70 CE, the majority of the world's Jews were already in diaspora, and not there from compulsory exile. But to realize this means looking at at least a dozen specialist books and articles published after the lost decades. Nishidani (talk) 08:08, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Monochrome Monitor

I thought it was generally agreed that Entine was borderline (you never admitted what I showed, that your assertion he was a geneticist was false. Yanover is a pup reporter who knows zilch. Now you introduce a predictable smear piece by Cnaan Lipshiz. You don't know who he is. He is a freelance journalist, a front for an activist propaganda group, has no academic background, is uncredentialed except as a pusher for a point of view. Some of the details can be found in Electronic Intifada, but is researched in detail, the result of extensive checking with the available newspapers who have hired him, etc.

Cnaan Liphshiz is JTA's news and features correspondent in Europe. Based in the Netherlands, he covers the mosaic of cultures, languages and traditions that is European Jewry. Born in Israel, he used to work as foreign news editor for Ma'ariv and as a reporter for Haaretz. . .His background in journalism grew out of serving in the Israel Defense Forces during the second intifada, first as a special forces combatant and then, following an injury, as an intelligence corps researcher in a unit monitoring the intelligence apparatuses of hostile and rival entities.

It is simply sub par to use 'chat' and 'quips' from telephone conversations or email responses, to document an idea's reception. To each of those smears, be they by Della Pergola etc. the authors have replied, but their replies are ignored. To do that, showcasing a 'criticism' without noting the replies to those criticisms, is sheer POV pushing. So as it stands, though I've tolerated the presence of incompetent journalistic smearers (Entine, Yanover, with no competence to judge, and the evidence on hearsay of Della Pergola whom Elhaik challenged (no mention of that here), and Stampfer, who just spouts, i.e. the use of gossip to get at the neutral presentation of Elhaik et al's ideas, this is just too much.Cnaan Lipshiz's piece is inane. It is the second time he's recycled his May 3 article for the JTA. Not to speak of the many other unilateral changes you made.--Nishidani (talk) 13:02, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

It wasn't agreed he was borderline. He has written numerous books and papers about genetics. He's sort of like a neil degrass tyson of genetics, he's definitely a reliable source. I find it absurd that you cite electronic intifida, created by abuminah who calls wannabe jew-killers "martyrs",[5] as a reliable source and cnaan as not because he's "freelance". It's worse than a double standard. Also I find it disturbing that you read electronic intifada. :( WHY Nish!?! Can't you stick to mainstream anti-israel sites like the guardian?--Monochrome_Monitor 14:31, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
The Guardian 'Anti-israeli'? Evidently, you don't read it every day, and for the nth time, hosting articles critical of the Likud government's policies is not ipso facto 'Anti-Israeli', I read everyday Arutz Sheva. I look at Electronic Intifada only rarely. AS occasionally gives background I am interested in, though it patently goes overboard in its spin. Electronic Intifada is far more informative because it often hosts intelligent minds and competent journalists (not frauds like Giulio Meotti), unlike ASheva. But I cite neither for Wikipedia articles because both are not accepted as RS. The piece on Lipshiz is very well researched, and as often it tells you background the mainstream never mentions.Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
We have two technical papers in genetics. In the normal world, what should happen is for peers in that discipline to make reasoned, technical objections. When they do, we have clarity as to what scholars competent to judge think. We don't have that here. We have kibitzers,2 of which have no knowledge of the topic, Yanover and Lipshiz, making either (a)assertions of their own, or (b) citing one or two geneticists for statements like -'It's nonsense', or 'He's wrong' or (c) citing people who are not geneticists, such as the historian Stampfer, who dismisses a fairly reasoned consensus that the evidence points to a conversion at least of the Khazar elite and Della Pergola, who is a demographic authority, but is not competent to judge a genetic paper. We then have Entine, who, like Lipshiz and the other chap, has an undisguised POV, whose ideas of a Jewish 'race' are highly contentious, and who does not have any qualification, as opposed to business interest, in genetics.
Anyone in academia knows that most news reportage of theories is skewed, haphazard, and with controversies, almost useless, particularly when the journalist sides with one of the parties. Almost nothing has come out regarding Elhaik's 2016 paper from specialists. Whether the algorithm he and Tatiana Tatarinova does what it, since 2014, proposes to do, with success, is, as far as I can see, unknown to date. It's been applied to the Sardinian population, but reading it leaves someone like myself wondering whether it will do the job on a farflung population like the Ashkenazi. I can't judge. I can judge when I see journalist tripe, which so far the three sources we have turn out to be. I'm not rushing my edits on this page because, with technical controversies, I stand aside and just wait for competent judges to give their opinion. To leap at the cheap smearing of known POV pushers for a cause, be it racial genetics, or whatever, is to defraud the aims of an encyclopedia by allowing prejudice to prejudge things, prejudices that might actualkly just groom one's own private views. Unless you distinguish hack sniping (of which wiki in the I/P area has a huge abundance) from informed views, you are just going to play POV games. There is, finally, a generational issue here, young geneticists and mathematicians coming up with ideas that disrupt the complacencies of peers who are a generation or two older than they are. This doesn't mean they are to be taken as having an edge. It simply means caution is demanded.Nishidani (talk) 15:48, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
We have Elhaik saying others are 'frauds' or 'liars', as if he alone used such language. The sources have Sergio Della Pergola charging Elhaik with 'fabrication', which basically means he is going public with his view that a young scientist manipulates his data. Were that proven, Elhaik would not get peer-reviewed publications in the relevant scientific literature. It's Della Pergola mouthing off.
(b) We have Stampfer saying Elhaik's genetic paper is nonsense. No word that Stampfer has no competence to judge Elhaik et al.s work.
(c) Cnaan Liphshiz Prominent scholars blast theory tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Turkey Jewish Telegraphic Agency 3 May, 2016 provides Della Pergola's criticism that 'the “great genetic similarity” between Ashkenazim and the Jews of Rome, who came from the Land of Israel and later from the Mediterranean. In no way the explanation that Elhaik gives of the origins of the Jews in Europe can apply to the Jews of Rome. Therefore his explanation is wrong.'
We ignore what Elhaik the geneticist says in direct response to Della Pergola: 'studying the DNA of non-Ashkenazic Jews would not change the DNA of Ashkenazic Jews nor the predicted origin of their DNA (i.e., ‘ancient Ashkenaz’ in northeastern Turkey).'
In other words, Elhaik is making a technical objection to what he takes to be the error of a non-geneticist trying to critique his paper by a remark that shows no knowledge of the specific genetic issues.
All our articles harvests from this is 'Yay! Della Pergola!'. That kind of lopsdided editing is really jejune.Nishidani (talk) 16:12, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
1: For what it is worth Lawrence J. Epstein 2015 p73 also says genetics and history is generally thought by most scholars to be against the Khazar theory.
The pssage is

‘The principle scholarly conclusion..is that the story of the Khazars is in fact, exaggerated, centered on the elite, and maybe even a created Jewish fable. As noted earlier, current DNA theory is generally assumed to be opposed to a Khazarian origin to Ashkenazi Jews and to support the notion that Ashkenazi Jews had Middle eastern origins.73

This is unfortunately ambiguous. It reads as suggesting on the one hand (a) the scholarly consensus is that the whole story of the Khazars is exaggerated, and maybe even a fable, and (b) DNA studies is assumed to be opposed to the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory. (a) and (b) are connected. Or , the story of the Khazar conversion is rejected by most scholars, and it is assumed that recent genetics is opposed to the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory, in which case (a) and (b) are 2 different things. One of the problems in Epstein's book is that he makes frequent errors, in details. One on pp.70-73 is that Mountain Jews trace their descent from Khazars. They don't. They have 3 separate traditions, only one of which links them to Khazars (Sascha L. Goluboff, https://books.google.it/books?id=R_5lXa9TEEwC&pg=PA125 Jewish Russians: Upheavals in a Moscow Synagogue University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012 p.125)
So I don't think Epstein can be used as the source requested for the 'general consensus the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory is a fantasy' (Epstein's fable:'genetics and history is generally thought by most scholars to be against the Khazar theory' since the former phrase refers to a tradition of conversion, and only the latter to the Khazar-Ashkenazi theory. Unfortunate. It's slipshod syntax puts editors at risk of WP:OR in using it to infer Epstein says historians are against the K-A theory when he might be simply saying historians are generally skeptical of the conversion tradition (untrue) Nishidani (talk) 13:05, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
2: Also Elhaik and even contemporary Wexler are not advocating for the Khazar theory as it is commonly understood. They are arguing for something else.
3: In modern Statistical genetics how you sample and what populations you use matters a great deal it’s like a survey. There are actual mathematically rigorous proofs on how to sample correctly.
Many scholars call it a myth, having no scientific basis or at best unproven.Jonney2000 (talk) 18:42, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Agree completely. I don't think they said the data was fabricated, but rather his theory was. More in the sense of "contrived." I'm fine giving elhaik's response airspace.--Monochrome_Monitor 06:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
On points 1-3 I generally agree with Jonney. I added Epstein to the article some time ago, though I don't consider him as a strong source for the claim that 'most scholars are againsdt': most scholars are skeptical; we concur that Elhaik/Wexler in their new paper are saying something quite distinct (and therefore the criticism that fails to note this should be used very carefully if at all?); all people in on this, from Behar, Atzmon, Ostrer, to Elhaik and his team are thoroughly versed in statistics. I don't see any contention in this. How samples are being made is of course a point of dispute. On 4, I don't see area specialists calling it a myth. A myth is something, in this sense, definitely buried by a disproof that earns an overwhelming consensus. So far (perhaps it is too early in the piece for a new science like pop genetics) we have a majority conclusion, and a minority view, as I stated years ago on the Khazar article.Nishidani (talk) 19:17, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
A myth, for a theory thought (perhaps wrongly) by numerous scholars, many of them Jewish, for 200 years, to have some chance of being true, is not an appropriate word here. You can use any number of paraphrases from sources ('generally discredited', ' a minority theory', 'not widely embraced now' etc.etc. The scholars who embraced the idea argued for it in terms of linguistics and history, and this spilled over into genetics: when Hammer, Behar, Nebel, Goldstein and others mentioned it in their works they do not mention it as a 'myth', but as an hypothesis worth entertaining: this is what they state:

There is uncertainty concerning the relative contributions to Ashkenazi Jewry of, on one hand, western versus eastern immigration of Jews and, on the other hand, internally generated population growth versus conversion to Judaism. In particular, it has been suggested that subjects of the Khazar Empire (located to the northeast of the Black Sea), who had adopted Judaism in the last quarter of the first millennium c.e., were an important constituent of the nascent Ashkenazi community (Encyclopaedia Judaica 1972).

If a European origin for the Ashkenazi Levite haplogroup R1a1 component is accepted as a reasonable possibility, it is of interest to speculate further on the possible timing, location, and mechanism of this event. Because the modal haplotype of haplogroup R1a1 found in the Ashkenazi Levites is found at reasonably high frequency throughout the eastern European region, it is not possible to use genetic information to pinpoint the exact origin of any putative founder from the currently available data sets. Intriguingly, the Sorbian tongue, relexified with a German vocabulary, has been proposed as the origin of Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazim, but there has been no suggestion of an association between Ashkenazi Levites in particular and the Sorbian language. One attractive source would be the Khazarian Kingdom, whose ruling class is thought to have converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century (Dunlop 1967). This kingdom flourished between the years 700 c.e. and 1016 c.e. It extended from northern Georgia in the south to Bulgar on the Volga River in the north and from the Aral Sea in the east to the Dnieper River in the west—an area that falls within a region in which haplogroup R1a1 NRYs are found at high frequency (Rosser et al. 2000). Archival material also records migration of Khazars into the Hungarian Duchy of Taskony in the 10th century. The break-up of the Khazar Empire following their defeat by invading Rus led to the flight of some Khazars to central and northern Europe. Although neither the NRY haplogroup composition of the majority of Ashkenazi Jews nor the microsatellite haplotype composition of the R1a1 haplogroup within Ashkenazi Levites is consistent with a major Khazar or other European origin, as has been speculated by some authors (Baron 1957; Dunlop 1967; Ben-Sasson 1976; Keys 1999), one cannot rule out the important contribution of a single or a few founders among contemporary Ashkenazi Levites.'"Multiple origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y chromosome evidence for both Near Eastern and European ancestries". American Journal of Human Genetics. 73 (4): 768–779. October 2003. doi:10.1086/378506. PMC 1180600. PMID 13680527. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help)</ref>

Goldstein speculated in 2008 that there might well be a Khazar component:'Could Khazaria, I wonder to this day, be the source of Ashkenazi Levite R-M17 Y chromosomes?/As with much else of genetic history, there is no way to be sure'.'the Khazar theory "now seems to me plausible, if not likely".Goldstein, David B. (2008). "3". Jacob's legacy: A genetic view of Jewish history. Yale University Press. pp. pp.72ff., p73, p.74. ISBN 978-0-300-12583-2. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
I.e., no one got hysterical in the genetic scientific community over this 'theory'. It was identified as an hypothesis, and treated as such. When first Sand made his case (2008) hysteria broke out. Elhaik then took up those hints and developed his own model (2012), and, lo and behold, you got further popular press panic, pro and con. Harry Ostrert (Legacy pp.23ff.,) dismissed it: Behar et al., also responded to all of this. Shaul Stampfer went out on a limb espousing a version of a theory only Moshe Gil among historians appeared to argue for, denying even conversion. Elhaik and Wexler came back in 2016, with, as I have repeatedly said here, a theory that no longer singles out the Khazars but replaces them with a 'Turkic and Iranian' component.
So all I can see here is that from 1808 to 2008, it was treated as an hypothesis that unnerved no one to the extent you see in the popular press attacking it as a 'myth' and its proponents as lunatics. If I am wrong, correct me, but I've gone patiently through the literature and seen it consistently treated with a certain equanimity, even by those who, in the new science of genetics, discountenance the idea. In science, things simply do not change overnight from hypothesis to 'myth', as has been done in the last 8 years.
That is why we should not be using so disingenuously the word 'myth' for 'hypothesis', leaping at inferior hack journalism (Lipzhiz, Entine, Yanover) which can only think in terms of anti-Semitism, delegitimization of Israel, and see all sorts of shady implications lurking with menace to their private ideological views. As an hypothesis it is a distinct minority view, certainly. But Wikipedia's policy of WP:NPOV demands we do not lard the page with prejudgemental language that assumes what, in the record, is only a recent polemical popular dismissal.Nishidani (talk) 10:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)


Monochrome wrote on the journalist Jon Entine "He's sort of like a neil degrass tyson of genetics, he's definitely a reliable source." Putting aside Entine's questionable political linkages from the American Enterprise Institute through to the JNF, comparing a journalist with a philosophy BA like Entine to Neil DeGrasse Tyson is frankly ridiculous. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has sterling academic credentials with degrees specifically as an astrophysicist, Jon Entine has a BA in Philosophy and made a career in television news journalism as a producer. I don't remember seeing Neil DeGrasse Tyson's 'credentials' including having helped produce the Miss America Pageant.Avrahambeneliezer (talk) 04:21, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Be kind to the geezer as he waffles on in his anecdotage, but slip back all the stuff that gets the article to say what you want it to say

MM. You're polite but appear to adopt the above strategy. You refuse to budge an inch from your adamant certainties, give a nod on the talk page and keep making an utter illiterate source-insouciant POV mess on the article. Take the lead. I'm exercising great restraint in editing an article I think badly organized and composed. My interest is not in the theory, but in the genealogy of the concept (this fits a professioanal habit of mine: before one can make an informed judgement on controversies, you must, in the humanities, master its origins and development and contexts. The journalists you enthusiastically cite are lazy in this regard.

A journalistic hack, and known paidup POV-pusher with the right connections is used 6 times to document the standing of an historical hypothesis. That is massive overrepresentation of a dubious source.

Cnaan Lipshiz as I outlined on the page is probably not RS for anything but his own views, which in any case are not notable. Even if one could make a case, it is absurd that he is massively overrepresented here. He makes egregious mistakes in both articles that would embarrass even the cause he defends..Lipshiz is so out of his depth that he can write this crap:

Like most scholars, DellaPergola believes Ashkenazi Jews descend from those who migrated from the Middle East to Europe hundreds of years ago.

Jeezus! Most scholars think Ashkenazi basically descend from an admixture of Jews who came from the Near East and European converts (women) as far back as 2,000 years ago. If he can’t get such a simple issue right, and distnguish centuries from millenia, why is he to be trusted on anything else?.

Again:

Khazars — an extinct multi-ethnic kingdom of Iranians, Turks, Slavs and Circassians

That will be news not only to me, but to the schollarly world. All specialist sources state the Khazars were a Turkic tribe that ruled over a kingdom where pagans, Jews, Muslims and Christians coexisted. Where in the fuck did he get the idea Circassians got in there, or the rest. We know of the religious mixture: we know nothing of the ethnic composition other than it was probably composite.

(A)’its critics say it is scientifically weak’ (nota bene. No mention of myth)

(B)’But some of the world’s most prominent scholars in the fields of both Yiddish and on Jewish genetics quickly rejected the study and condemned its outsized claims as reflective of deteriorating scientific standards and the politicization of research questions about Jewish history.’(Cnaan Lipshiz, 'Prominent scholars blast theory tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Turkey,' Jewish Telegraphic Agency 3 May 2016).

Evidence for this statement is self-referential, the link taking us to the May 3 article by the samwe Lipshiz. What then is his evidence for (B) in that earlier article?
  • The most prominent scholars in Yiddish are Dovid Katz. One Yiddish scholar.Lipshiz, unlike you or the article as we edit it, registers Wexler’s reply in the same article:’

In response, Wexler called Katz’s criticism “totally false” and ignorant — and “more of an emotional tirade than a scholarly statement” by someone he said made research breakthroughs in the 1980s “but did not live up to his promise.”

  • The most prominent scholars on Jewish genetics (sic) are Sergio DellaPergola, a (distinguished) demographer, not a geneticist, and Shaul Stampfer, an historian, not a geneticist.
In other words, Lipshiz is inventing stuff. You can’t see it because, and it is becoming farcical, you don’t read the content closely, or in context. You trawl for stuff that confirms your superficial impressions about this topic’s ‘truth’.

Other problems with what you did, as I tried to set forth a series of arguments on the talk page.

  • writing ‘often critically referred to as the "Khazar myth”.’ For ‘viewed by its critics as a myth’
This is just inept English. It implies that all criticism refers to it as a myth, and that those who subscribe to it are not ‘critical’. That spin is inane, and an abuse of the adverb.
  • ’Some scholars still defend its plausibility, but most dismiss it as a fantasy.’
So far despite requests, no one has provided evidence that ‘most scholars’ regards this as a ‘fantasy’ rather than ‘discredited’, ‘unproven’, ‘going well beyond the available evidence (Dunlop 1954;Golden 2007)’ or ‘fringe hypothesis’etc.
  • Modern geneticists and historians now largely see the Khazar theory as a myth
have given extensive evidence from geneticists that does not say it is a myth. It has been given above. Geneticists in their papers refer to it as an hypothesis.
You removed both Spolsky and Beider from the lead. Why? Because you think that genetics has resolved the problem.People who are scholars disagree with the deeper wisdom of your 19 years, so you remove their objections?
  • ’The theory has also been used by antisemites and anti-Zionists to deny the notion of Jewish peoplehood, presenting it as a hoax.
This is textual plagiarism, since it is verbatim lifted from Cnaan Lipshiz May 3:

Largely unsupported by genetic studies, it is popular in anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist literature because it “is seen to dispel the notion of Jewish peoplehood, presenting it as a hoax,” DellaPergola said.

Della Pergola is saying Elhaik is fabricating his science (no geneticist has made that charge ) and denying ‘Jewish peoplehood’. Where in the fuck does Elhaik say Jews are not a people? Elhaik is arguing Jews are ethnically diverse in origin. He is not denying Jews exist as a people, nor denying that Jews have middle eastern connections (Our findings support the Khazarian hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries.) That position, go tell it to Entine, Yanover, Lipshiz et al., differs only marginally from the standard genetic models by adding a Near Eastern-Caucasus component (2012), now an Iranian-Turkic element (2016), the latter on the basis of the historical claim that the majority of the world's Jews existed inside the Persian-Sassanid empire prior to the Khazar kingdom. I don't have a clue as to where the truth lies, or the lie truths. And I don't really care. Nishidani (talk) 12:57, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Della Pergola is a demographer he uses rigorous mathematical techniques. Elhaik method is not like that if you read his nature paper the math part is at the level of a gifted computer science undergraduate.
Now that not necessarily a bad thing. Elhaik claims that without sampling he can compare individuals to populations in a data base. Then find linear distance and project that into longitude and latitude. He claims far better accuracy then other methods, 50 km vs 700 km.
None of this makes Elhaik necessarily wrong but it is a computer science type algorithm. It could have applications is say a mall kiosk. From the view point of a demographer it could look like falsification.Jonney2000 (talk) 04:53, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, privately, we all can use our particular professional talents to critique something. Most genetic papers I read on topics like this make serious historical errors: Ostrer's book is an egregious case - he mathematically accepts the figures for a standing army in the time of David/Solomon to deduce the size of Palestine/Israel's population, which is hilarious, for example, and one wonders when one sights stuff like that why didn't he just consult the standard demographic hypotheses for the carrying capacity of the land in the early Ist millennium, instead of behaving like a fundamentalist believer. Or why has no one thought it odd that we get a 'split' in Jewish populations precisely confirming a 600 BCE exile narrative when the second exile (Babylonia) was not of all Israelites but of a restricted number, etc.etc.etc. Elhaik likewise uses historical sources that are somewhat dated. As to statistics, I gather Tatiana Tatarinova closely collaborates with him, and co-developed the algorithm. Her background in mathematics is extremely strong. So I, for one, just watch and aspire to get the arguments published by participants in the dispute right, which you are not going to get in the cheap press. DellaPergola is mathematically adept, but if he makes an argument on genetics (Ashkenazi DNA must be evaluated by comparing also Misrachi/Sephardim samples, and Elhaik replies that a criticism like this is flawed, I wait until some competent scholar irons out the dissonance in the respective premises. Overall, having read roughly 20 papers published over 15 years my impression is that results coming out are under constant revision, and I think Beider is correct that the notable confusion in deductions points to an unstable and thus so far indeterminate methodology in a young science.Nishidani (talk) 07:38, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Jonney2000 Rather than read my frustrated blather, it's perhaps best to simply read a scientist saying, in reviewing all of these issues, what an amateur like myself has long thought for historical reasons. I.e.,Raphael Falk, 'Genetic markers cannot determine Jewish descent,' Frontiers in Genetics 2014; 5: 462. (21 January 2015). If the metacritique he makes of all of this literature were absorbed and used by editors, we would have far less conflict, and less rashness in playing politics (since political fallout is unfortunately inevitable for any of these theses, and not just one side) on a dozen articles it applies to, articles which show no trace of what his overview argues respectfully. Note the absolute equanimity in which he comments on Elhaik, Sand, Behar et al. I just happened on it this morning.Nishidani (talk) 10:31, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Examine this to ensure it is not WP:OR

All sources, Elhaik to Hammer, Ostrer, Goldstein,Nevel, Behar state that there is a Near/Middle Eastern factor in Ashkenazi. Therefore the following appears pointless, since that is not disputed.

In addition, Ashkenazi Jews have been found to have a strong genetic connection to the Middle East, Sources

  • Diamond, Jared (1993). "Who are the Jews?" (PDF). Retrieved November 8, 2010. Natural History 102:11 (November 1993): 12-19.
As pointed out WP:RS does not admit photostatic redproductions for class use. Jared Diamond's paper in any case both predates the most recent genetic work by a decade, and does not discount the Khazar hypothesis (from memory). By consensus, JD's similar paper on the Japanese was eliminated consensually from the Japanese people article for its lack of competence. The same applies here.Nishidani (talk) 13:20, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Frudakis nowhere mentions Khazars, therefore this source is WP:OR.Nishidani (talk) 13:26, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, Wade once more fucks up. The 3,000 years ago comes from para 1, which he invented out of whole cloth, while admitting that the research by Atzmon and Ostrer suggests a shortfall of 400 years
(a)Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East share many genes inherited from the ancestral Jewish population that lived in the Middle East some 3,000 years ago, even though each community also carries genes from other sources — usually the country in which it lives.
(b)Dr. Atzmon and Dr. Ostrer have developed a way of timing demographic events from the genetic elements shared by different Jewish communities. Their calculations show that Iraqi and Iranian Jews separated from other Jewish communities about 2,500 years ago. This genetic finding presumably reflects a historical event, the destruction of the First Temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. and the exile of many Jews there to his capital at Babylon.Nishidani (talk) 14:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
This article mentions the Khazars but is very odd, Behar is quoted as contradicting Harry Ostrer
(a)'But Doron Behar, a geneticist at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel, and lead author of the second report, argues that genes do not necessarily make the Jew. There is no “metaphysical” difference between someone born Jewish and a convert to Judaism, Behar says.'
(b)Behar's 2013 study 'found that all three groups genetically clustered with non-Jewish Ethiopians and Indians rather than with the Diaspora groups. However, analysis of the Y chromosomes of the Bene Israel Jews showed paternal links to the Middle East, suggesting that they might share ancient roots with Jews from that region. So it’s possible, Behar and other researchers say, that the Ethiopian and Indian Jewish groups were founded by Jews from other regions who then intermarried and/or converted many local non-Jews to Judaism, thus expanding their numbers but diluting their Jewish genetic signatures.'
(c) 'Sand counters that the whole concept of identifying Jews genetically is fallacious.“No study … has succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews,” he insists.'
All this mishmash means is that Sand and Behar are quoted as saying similar things. Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
therefore it "does not support this [Khazar conversion] idea (Alla Katsnelson, 'Jews worldwide share genetic ties,' 3 June 2010 Nature doi:10.1038/news.2010.277)
You delete those because they "aren't disputed" but cite in the lede a nature article which is notable for not finding middle ancestry as representative of studies conducted on ashkenazi jews? And not even a study of autosomal dna? Adding haj as a source is also suspect. You consider a scholar who calls the destruction of jewish antiquities resistance yet denies that jews and judah exist(ed) a reliable source? You keep pushing the idea that ashkenazi origins are a huge mystery when they are not. The khazar theory is not taken seriously in mainstream scholarship. No study "proving" khazar origins has even been successfully replicated. I respect you but it kills me to see you shower praise on fringe scholars favored by skinheads and esoteric cults.--Monochrome_Monitor 23:58, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Sand is not a geneticist and it shows. He makes his career out of explaining why jews don't exist and yet calls people who point out the genetic studies disproving this nazis. There is no gene specific to jews, nor should there be. If I have a sister and we both have brown hair, must every other woman in the world have blonde hair for us to be related? Jewish groups are related to eachother despite being separate for millennia, that's more than enough to expose his imbecility. --Monochrome_Monitor 00:37, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
  • No. I didn't 'delete' anything, I transferred a dubious peace of research here for discussion and await a reasoned assessment as to its merits. I made the observation that some of this was WP:OR months ago, and the objection was ignored, and the blob put back uncritically by edit-warriors. They like it - it looks like a 'proof'. It is the handiwork of an editor contriving a result by selective use of a mix of genetic papers and newspapers reports.
  • 'Sand is not a geneticist and it shows. He makes his career out of explaining why jews don't exist'
How off pat! How confidently superior! Ostrer is not an historian, and it shows; Entine is neither a geneticist or historian and it shows; Cnaan Lipshiz and Yanover are donkeys, and it shows; Nicholas Wade's 'science' is regarded as suspect by notable geneticists, and it shows. (b) You haven't read Sand, and it shows: you cite the meme '(Sand believes) 'Jews don't exist', and I yawn, remembering numerous nuanced arguments in his books, of the kind:With the exception of Eastern Europe . . .no Jewish people- as a single cohesive entiuty -ever appeared. (Sand 2008:322), which means that for Sand the Ashkenazi were a cohesive people of Jews. He also stated :'History has left its mark on Jews…Hostility towards them in modern times has given Jews a specific identity, which has to be taken into account and respected'. But no! You have your newsy snippet from an outraged popular press, and get agitated, and that guides your pseudo-judgements on everything else in this topic.
  • You consider a scholar who calls the destruction of jewish antiquities resistance yet denies that jews and judah exist(ed) a reliable source?
  • I don't know what you are talking about, because you are smearing Nadia Abu al-Haj by taking at face value a selective quote from Campus Watch, while ignoring the extensive looting of Palestinian antiquities and their destruction by Israelia archaeologists. Sand was outraged as a child that his mamaloshen, Yiddish,(a Jewish 'antiquity') an intrinsic part of Ashkenazi cultural identity was not allowed to be spoken in public recitals in post-Holocaust Israel, or that the immensely diverse traditions of numerous 'members of the tribe' were all to be forgotten by generations trained to think of themselves as homogeneous, however varied their respective cultures, languages, and values might have been in their far-flung homelands. WP:RS doesn't mean that because a book is peer-reviewed, written by a tenured academic, and reliably published, that the editor citing it subscribes to everything that writer says. I cite numerous sources mechanically though I privately disagree with many things said by the scholars in question. If you think editing means assent, you shouldn't be on Wikipedia.
  • 'Imbecility?' At your age, I read about 400 books a year, and had no time to read newspapers. Eduard Fraenkel's commentary -480 close printed pages on just 1673 lines of Greek- made it hard for me to take at face value any comment that shows no trace of close reading and even closer thinking. I had no 'attitude' about everything, only a wonderful sense of how distinct the world of complex controversies was from the clichés of public debate. You are of course at complete liberty to think you know everything,by embracing the commentariat's advice to think in terms of second-hand caricatures, but the 'rush to judgement' after a glancing acquaintance with topics, shows. You're the only nationalist I have tried to take seriously here - but it seems rather pointless. F Scott Fitzgerald once stated that 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' That is not quite correct: it is the ability to entertain with equanimity several interpretations in one's mind while thinking through each, and waiting for that moment for a conclusion to crystallise that throws light on the logic(s) within the dissonant mosaic. I don't think you understand this yet. I hope one day, early, you will grasp its purport, if only because, failing to grasp that as an early age condemns one to be a sutler of the unsubtle second-rate (I commend your change of title) Nishidani (talk) 08:34, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
It bothers me when you tell me why or how I did things. I didn't take the quote from a search engine, rather from the google books preview. I read the beginning and end of the preview and found that apologism for archeological destruction particularly appalling. I can mention other things I find objectionable if you like. The paper basically asserts that invoking historic presence is colonialism (can one colonize a place where they have historic presence?) and that in any case this presence is exaggerated. Evidence of jewish history are "facts on the ground" used to expand israel's influence. It's an arab-centric and insecure worldview, the same insecurity that motivates Jordan to ban selling land near historic sites to Jews. Israelis delve into the land for the same reason as any other nation - to learn about the past, not to spite palestinians or jordanians or anyone else. Its Jew's celebrating Jewish history, not irredentism. Showing an open mind is admirable but it's important to distinguish between good and bad scholarship. I don't make a judgement about the validity of scholarship by reading reviews or appealing to degrees and titles, I do it by reading the scholarship. I may be a kid but the published work of intellectuals is not beyond the cognition of mortals, I don't need a degree to use common sense and identify fallacious arguments. I don't flirt with scholarship that isn't up to snuff because I'm a cynic, I find enrichment not in cognitive dissonance but in rigorous debate that arrives at a logical conclusion. If I want to suspend disbelief I read fiction and watch plays and films and such. That's enrichment. Lastly, what specifically do you refer to when you mention looting and destruction of palestinian antiquities? --Monochrome_Monitor 17:25, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
No. You didn't read the two pages from where that quote comes from, and didn't construe the sentence correctly. I have many objections to al-Haq's book, but it is perfectly consonant in approach with a vast literature on colonialism, and if anything I dislike the lack of originality, and overreliance on 'postmodernist' tropes. But that is neither here nor there. The point is, you see nothing wrong in 3 fatuously written newspaper caricatures (Lipshiz, Entine, Yanover) and voice distaste for a scholar with two significant peer-reviewed books to her credit, on the basis of a single passage ripped from one page of her book, which you, like the numerous websites citing it, don't construe correctly grammatically, nor in the context of the overall argument. When I talk of readerly inexperience it is this gullibility for bad press quotes, side by side with hostility to the contents of a work of serious study. I dislike Benny Morris's views: had I the time, or passion, I believe I could rip to shreds the construction of his The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. It is nonetheless a book to be taken seriously, and used without POV nagging on the talk page. I have cited it dozens of times without demur. Read Raphael Falk's analysis of the respective premises, and assumptions, underlying all of this genetic history: it is basically, but with infinitely greater technical mastery, making the same arguments I have been making all over this page and contiguous ones. He is a Zionist, and I agree with everything he writes there. You are time and again failing to understand what he, and anybody with the appropriate reader training, can see at a glance, that all arguments are embedded in contexts, political, social, ideological and methodological, and woe to those who can't see these aspects, but only fish for 'stuff' that confirms their prejudices.Nishidani (talk) 18:13, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
  • 'Lastly, what specifically do you refer to when you mention looting and destruction of palestinian antiquities?'
601 Palestinian villages many going back to medieval times, bulldozed in 1948 and afterwards, among them 450 mosques. Vast parts of the traditional landscape, its irrigation systems, have been utterly ruined to make Israeli parks, that have no continuity with the indigenous ecology of ancient biblical Palestine; over the Mamilla cemetery, the bulldozing of 1,500 Muslim tombs, and failure to excavate it to ascertain what historical truth there might be to traditions Jews and Persians slaughtered 60,000 Christians there (that's the primary source, and like all ancient figures(Josephus etc suspect): but 4,518 bodies were exhumed and reburied there when the city was taken back) in 614CE and Crusaders 70,000 Muslims in 1099, all so we can have a lovely 'House of Tolerance'etc.etc.etc. This is not the place to discuss that though. Nishidani (talk) 20:35, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

The place or not: if I got it right, it was at least planned as a "House of Inter-Jewish Tolerance". Probably the best joke in Jewish history, and competition for the title is fierce. (Sorry to bump in.) ArmindenArminden (talk) 23:27, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Cohen Modal Haplotype

Why I deleted your edit: showing both sides is not what wikipedia is supposed to do. It's supposed to give ideas DUE WEIGHT. Not an equal amount for positions regardless of their significance. You added thousands of characters to support a conclusion that diverges from the genetic consensus- studies upon studies have affirmed the cmh. I'm afraid you have an agenda. This page as all controversial ones is a fragile balancing act. As it is you're about to violate 3RR.--Monochrome_Monitor 21:38, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

The CMH is often overstated for biblical literalism but you're diminishing it entirely. It's widely used as a tool for testing potential israelite descent. More lineages have been found and its not assumed that most descend from one lineage, but they descend from a limited number of lineages, much more limited than the wider jewish population, with the predominant variation of J-P58 being virtually absent in non-jews.--Monochrome_Monitor 21:53, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Zoossmann-Diskin and Tofanelli's studies are all key links debating the supposed 'Cohanim modal haplotype', clearly relevant alongside the work of Skorecki et al [2][3][4]Avrahambeneliezer (talk) 23:53, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Entine2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20020615144935/http://www.ariga.com/genes.htm
  3. ^ http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v17/n11/full/ejhg200958a.html
  4. ^ http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fgene.2014.00384/full
I have suggested that, rather than engaging either in hack journalist I-like-it quotes or primary source quoting, that one use

Raphael Falk, 'Genetic markers cannot determine Jewish descent,' Frontiers in Genetics 2014; 5: 462.

This is a metacritical overview of the whole field, it takes into account the Khazar hypothesis, and doesn't throw around hostile adjectives. It is precisely the kind of secondary source WP:RS advises we use. The genetics section, as written, is not going to be read by anyone or, if read, not understood. So I propose that (a) we cite all genetics articles from Hammer and Behar onwards from 2000, which refer to the idea, stating their conclusions generally (b) use Falk and another other similar overview of the said literature, (c) add the 2016a article, briefly stating its argument. I'm not doing this myself until we have some clarity on how to write that section, which is bloated and not reader-friendly, and out of proportion to the rest of the article (which admittedly is as yet underdeveloped because no one seems to be interested in adding more meat to the historical development of the notion, and I lack time, so far.Nishidani (talk) 12:29, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Your ideas sound like a good option Nishidani, specifically about citing all the the genetic articles from 2000 onwards; rather than just highlighting the original claims while showing nothing of the challenge against it, as some specific people here are trying to do.Avrahambeneliezer (talk) 04:25, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Nish he's a disruptive sock.[6]--Monochrome_Monitor 08:25, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
May well be, but my proposal has nothing to do with User:Avrahambeneliezer. It emerged independently, and concerns the proper method for dealing with this material, to make it readable.Nishidani (talk) 09:01, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Raphael Falk is a good source I generally agree with his POV and secondary sources are good. He does have a definite POV, although he makes no definite conclusions. Relying too heavily on a single source should be avoided.Jonney2000 (talk) 19:47, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
All scholarly overviews have, by necessity, a POV of course -it's instinct in the nature of synthesis - so in that there's nothing exceptional. I'd like to have a few more articles of this depth and quality, metacritical overviews, before proceeding, but at least one knows that we are getting informed specialist review, which is a vast improvement on the secondary sources we have used so far.Nishidani (talk) 20:00, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Note about references

Monochrome Monitor you removed some references that are used, for example. 

  Notes

^ Sand 2010, p. 234. 

  References

Sand, Shlomo (2010) [2009]. The Invention of the Jewish People. London: Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-84467-623-1. Retrieved 10 February 2013.


The reference gives the name of the work and the notes have page number etc. You are right that not all are used. I would prefer if everything was inline cites, which are easier to use and maintain. The current style is date dependent and potentially confusing for prolific authors and reprints.Jonney2000 (talk) 18:50, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

The inline ref has "Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, Verso p.243." I thought that gave similar info?--Monochrome_Monitor 22:25, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Wexler came first

Paul Wexler wrote his work first in the 1990s which in turn influenced Shlomo Sand and Eran Elhaik. So Wexler came first. The history section should be clearer on this.

Sand cites Wexler as having reviewed his manuscript and cites him for "The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity" and "The non-Jewish origins of the Sephardic Jews".Jonney2000 (talk) 19:04, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes. That's very helpful. I haven't had much time to get back to this, but it is the history of the concept that interests me, and Wexler needs a short section after Koestler. Elhaik, however, somewhere mentioned that he first read and was deeply impressed by Koestler as a boy, at an age I doubt he was dabbling in the abstrusities of Wexler's linguistics. I have a few bios of Koestler, but they are not very good secondary sources for his theory, but that section needs expansion above all, since it more or less brought the hypothesis back to attention. We also need a section of Lev Gumilev and Russian theories of the Khazar hypothesis in the Soviet Union, where the elements of traditional Russian anti-Semitism are evident, something not true of that debate in Jewish and Western scholarship, where the anti-Semitism tended to be limited to the lunatic fringe.Nishidani (talk) 19:32, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Oh that's interesting, I didn't realize wexler came first. Funny how three wayward jews have come to represent the pro-khazar position.--Monochrome_Monitor 22:22, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
wayward Jews? Chin up. With the way things are going, no doubt we'll have a bet din asking for the implementation of a kherem for such prodigal sons, who dare think for themselves and break with a herd mentality, and who join a tradition stretching from the remonstrative prophets through to Spinoza, and virtually the whole of the Haskalah. Catholics had their wayward ('lapsed') sons burnt at the stake, as Calvinists had the Martyrs of Gorkum lynched on beams for refusing to step in line with the new orthodoxy. Like the history of art, or philosophy, or civilization itself, communities flourish when they tolerate dissonance, and wither when the ruling dictum is that anyone who steps out of the fold, breaks with groupthink or walks out beyond the Pale, doesn't merit respect.Nishidani (talk) 07:50, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Wexler has been in the popular press for a long time. He also shows up in older website from the 1990s although they are disappearing.
George Johnson, 'Scholars Debate Roots of Yiddish, Migration of Jews,' New York Times 29 October, 1996
I am just saying it would be wrong to under estimate his impact.Jonney2000 (talk) 22:51, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes you're right.--Monochrome_Monitor 23:17, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Notes

1. @Nishidani: It is not original research to mention linkage of the khazars to the lost tribes. It's background information. 2. You put in the beider quote to "provide pov balance", when it doesn't. Entine says most think it's a myth. Beider/spolsky don't even mention the khazar theory, they talk about genetic studies in general. Since it has nothing to do with the khazar theory, by your logic, it's original research. You're shoe-horning in a quote which is way too long to give false balance. The quote doesn't say "some studies are contradictory so the khazar theory might be true". It rightfully notes that genetic studies are less clear-cut than the way they are portrayed in the media, which is how I summarized it, rather than the vague "the whole genetics issue". descriptor. It doesn't fit directly into the lead, "historians and geneticists" to "genetic studies". It's much better for it to be in the body in the genetics section, where it does fit. WP:LEAD- "According to the policy on due weight, emphasis given to material should reflect its relative importance to the subject, according to published reliable sources." The quote doesn't even mention khazars.--Monochrome_Monitor 18:33, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

  • WP:NOR-'To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented.'

  • (a)According to science writer Jon Entine, modern geneticists and historians now largely see the Khazar hypothesis as a myth.[4] (b)According to the historian Bernard Spolsky and the Yiddish scholar Alexander Beider, the whole issue of genetics itself regarding these origins remains uncertain

  • 'Beider/spolsky don't even mention the khazar theory'.

They do. Don't prevaricate.Nishidani (talk) 18:53, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Do they? Honestly I didn't realize if they did. I feel that they're mentioning the controversy about european admixture in general, nothing about the caucauses.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:02, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Anyway, that's not what they're saying, they aren't saying the whole issue of genetics itself remains uncertain. They're saying unfortunately many studies are contradictory. It's a step from there to say it's all uncertain.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:03, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
As for MOR... I'll try to find a source connecting the two directly.--Monochrome_Monitor 19:04, 12 June 2016 (UTC) :/

Further notes

When I get time I'd like to slowly overhaul this. I tend to find myself editing topics that generate a high-anxiety level. My approach is to try and sift sources so that the popular press reportage yields ground to what the scholarly community with familiarity with a subject says. Another point is that one should prefer sources that reflect recent scholarship, and avoid WP:SYNTH. Here I am removing any sources that come from the popular press or that do not specifically mention the Khazar-Ashkenazi hypothesis. Today I removed:

This is a poor nondescript source, pure provincial journalism. Nishidani (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
Not absolutely convinced by this. First it is a virtual copy of a Photostat for private use apparently for class work, as linked. It does mention to Khazar connection (and positively, nota bene) but predates the extensive genetic work by several years. Diamond is an erudite scholar, but a consensus took him off the History of Japan page, because he got the topic wrong.Nishidani (talk) 16:34, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
This keeps being plunked back in. I've protested that it never appears to mention anywhere in the book the Khazar theory, certainly not on the cited page, and therefore its use here is WP:SYNTH.Nishidani (talk) 16:40, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
This is borderline. I have placed it here because it was used partially to state in the lead:

According to Martin B. Richards, presently available genetic studies "thoroughly debunk" the Khazar theory.

The text is taken to actually attributes to 2 people, Harry Ostrer and Martin B. Richards, identical phrasing "thoroughly debunk". This is an extraordinary coincidence, and coming from an inferior source, demands caution. The whole context on examination shows that it has been put in quotes on wiki and accredited to Richards when the words are those of the reporting journalist, Martin Gershowitz :-

Richards and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which is contained in the cytoplasm of the egg and passed down only from the mother, from more than 3,500 people throughout the Near East, the Caucusus, and Europe, including Ashkenazi Jews.The team found that four founders were responsible for 40 percent of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA, and that all of these founders originated in Europe. The majority of the remaining people could be traced to other European lineages.All told, more than 80 percent of the maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews could be traced to Europe, with only a few lineages originating in the Near East.Virtually none came from the North Caucasus, located along the border between Europe and Asia between the Black and Caspian seas. The finding should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that flourished during the ninth century in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, Richards and Ostrer said. The genetics suggest many of the founding Ashkenazi women were actually converts from local European populations.

One can ascertain both what Ostrer and Richards say of this theory in their published works, and these are far more nuanced than what journalists normally allow, understandably, because their work caters to a public need for certainties and assurances.Nishidani (talk) 13:08, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

The view that the Ashkenazi female line is mostly Roman converts is mainstream- why else are they so close to southern italians? Putting that in is one thing. The fact that a study arguing that Askhenazi Jews have non-Middle Eastern lineages but that none are from the Caucausus (why can't I spell that) is itself significant. I think its an important quote. It's one of many made by geneticists in their studies against the hypothesis.--Monochrome_Monitor 02:35, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Please take some time off, and study the topics you are interested in by reading a dozen or so fundamental "books" from cover to cover. Try to memorize the key details so that when you write, your remarks reflect several texts, rather than skewing one and presenting it as a 'consensus'. When you write:
'The view that the Ashkenazi female line is mostly Roman converts is mainstream'.
You are actually referring vaguely to a text which says something else:

These analyses suggest that the first major wave of assimilation probably took place in Mediterranean Europe, most likely in the Italian peninsula ~2 ka, with substantial further assimilation of minor founders in west/central Europe. . .Therefore, whereas on the male side there may have been a significant Near Eastern (and possibly east European/Caucasian) component in Ashkenazi ancestry, the maternal lineages mainly trace back to prehistoric Western Europe. These results emphasize the importance of recruitment of local women and conversion in the formation of Ashkenazi communities, and represent a significant step in the detailed reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history.'

Ashkenazi communities were formed over a 1,000 years, and not by some Jews in Rome who married Roman women post 70 CE, converted them and then spread out.
Just take a complete break from these articles. Try not to keep worrying about them. During my permaban, I ignored 700 articles and did something else. It did me the world of good, because articles don't depend on one person or another. Reading deeply into a subject without thinking of Wikipedia is what makes good editors. reading Wikipedia while googling only leads to confusion. Nishidani (talk) 10:47, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Whenever I say something you think is inaccurate you are sure to tell me I'm ignorant, whenever you say something I know is inaccurate you pretend it never happened. I know quite a bit about the subject, thank you. Ashkenazi Jewish communities were formed over a thousand years but the admixture events happened at very specific points, specifically during the early roman empire when Judeans converted Roman women before conversion was outlawed. Many studies come to this conclusion.--Monochrome_Monitor 11:59, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Jeezus! WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT Nishidani (talk) 14:01, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Do you deny that the conversion of Roman and Greek women is proposed by numerous geneticists to explain southern european admixture in Ashkenazi Jews, particularly the women? I didn't hear that is about failing to fall in line with a consensus after being proven wrong. There's no consensus and you haven't proven anything. But thanks for teaching me a new policy aptly describing a certain user. --Monochrome_Monitor 22:44, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Ancora! A year ago I repeatedly told you what everyone bar yourself knows. The structure of historical events is not the domain of, is excluded from the remit of, geneticists. Genetic determinations are the theoretical ancillae of historical analysis, not the domini, and, -it is becoming repetitive,- you can't understand basic issues. They always have to be minutely explained to you, and you come back dragging out your own views, which lack depth, and familiarity with details. So stop it. Take your 2 months break, and by all means come back unchastened to nag the obvious while playing the bull in a delicate china shop. That's it, for the nth time.Nishidani (talk) 09:16, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Arminden.this is material that best goes into the section of Elhaik, where it should be reformulated neutrality. As you put it you had the lead stating, 'Ah, there's this Israeli public health worker with a freako theory who was rubbished by all and sundry' (it's much more complex than that). Per WP:Lede you don't focus on one of several people mentioned and develop a sentence or two to rubbish his conclusions, Stampfer also perhaps deserves a section (why does every editor (bar Jonney) tend to be tempted to exasperate the lead by stating a partisan conviction and thrusting the truth on the article? There are big gaps: no exposition of Weinryb(1962), of Koestler, or Elhaik/Wexler . What Stampfer says about the theory is, within the context of Turcology an extreme position by the way (and it is not his area of expertise) he may well be right, but the only other scholar I've seen who shares his total dismissal of the Khazar conversion itself is Moshe Gil, and his views are fringe. The genetic stuff is an unreadable mishmash, etc. When writing a genetics section, one should not go into the details - they will be missed by most readers. One should (a) cite all genetics papers that have mentioned the theory since 1999 at least (b) in chronological order (c) paraphrase briefly their remarks on the hypothesis, and conclusions (d) where available then, introduce an overview by a geneticist who have examined this same literature and drawn conclusions, if possible.Nishidani (talk) 20:12, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
Arminden. Come on. Adding back to the lead '(see his professional CV' is utterly pointless (a) One doesn't make requests to a reader, esp. in the lead (b) why one should add a request in the article for readers to examine Elhaik's curriculum vitae is obscure.

(c) Am I missing something? If there something in that CV that clues us into something important the lead or article can't do without?

Elhaik plays a major role here, and is completely anonymous to the user. // He's not a geneticist either. At least he's closer to it than Sand. // Won't start a ridiculous fight, but Stampfer does rebuff point by point.)

That is deceptive, when not contrafactual (I have linked to his page with his published work on molecular genetics). It implied Stampfer rebutted (not rebuff) Elhaik point by point. He doesn't do that. He mentions Elhaik once, en passant. What he tries to do is to vindicate a fringe theory by Moshe Gil, a theory so fringe that Stampfer also admits that:'His article was translated into English, but it seems never to have been cited by any researcher.' Stampfer attempts to dismiss a consensus that the Khazars converted. We'll see in the future if his fringe view overthrows the consensus. But please note that irony of citing a paper with a fringe interpretation to rebut a paper (by Elhaik) with a fringe status. Nishidani (talk) 07:46, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Genetics and Criticism

As I suggested earlier, this needs to be reorganized. My usual approach, as an intellectual historian, is to go chronologically through the genealogy of a concept, and I think this would work better here.

  • The Genetics and criticism material is 40% of the article. There is no need to be so nervous in proving Jewish identity. The point here is not to establish some 'truth', but to document a minor but ongoing theory and the criticism it has met with.
  • Order the genetic sequence papers that mention the Khazar hypothesis.
  • So far, extensive material, all likely to bewilder the reader, is introduced from papers for their general results, even though some of those papers did not discountenance the Khazar theory. Behar 2003 is a good case. I will therefore elide the general content of each such paper and just make a generalization concerning the specific points made about the Khazar hypothesis.
  • A difference exists between papers that mention the Khazar hypothesis en passant, and those that specifically address it, as a proposal or only to dismiss it, should influence the rewriting. Behar 2003 for that reason gets less space.
  • Given the nature of the broad commentariat, anyone can introduce opinionizing by people with no knowledge of history or no competence in the highly recondite world of DNA sequence genetics. I think this is all trivia. An encyclopedic article should deal with those with some informed competence, and those who just write up their impressions for a newspaper or journal are WP:Undue. There is ample critical material from specialists in genetics, without seeing kibitzaers muddle things.
  • The coverage of this material should be exhaustive, but not rise to 40% of the article.Nishidani (talk) 10:18, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Removed

Nadine Epstein, an editor and executive publisher of Moment magazine said

"When I read Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe, I bought his theory that Ashkenazim were descended from the Khazars ... But in 1997, Karl Skorecki in Haifa, Michael Hammer in Tucson and several London researchers surprised everyone by finding evidence of the Jewish priestly line of males, the Kohanim. Half of Ashkenazic men and slightly more than half of Sephardic men who claimed to be Kohanim were found to have a distinctive set of genetic markers on their Y chromosome, making it highly possible that they are descendants of a single male or group of related males who lived between 1180 and 650 B.C.E., about the time of Moses and Aaron."[1]

  1. ^ "Jewish Genetics: Abstracts and Summaries". Retrieved 9 November 2013.
Nadine Epstein's personal views on genetics are not news, neither is the source. Secondly, as elsewhere this page uses the summary of results at khazaria.com (taking it on trust). That page is a useful guide but not RS. What one does is scour it for sources, then google for the original source and venue, and, if applicable to the Khazars, cite that (ad fontes).Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry/Archive_1&oldid=789395011"