JNS.org<\/a>. \u201cWhen they do the tests and find out they have Jewish-sounding relatives, it might spark their interest.\u201d<\/p>\nSlepkov performed serious research to validate the potential he saw in the tests, because otherwise, he says, \u201cWhen people hear about it, their immediate assumption, the skeptical people, is, \u2018It is snake oil\u2014how do you really know if these are your relatives?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Slepkov consulted with Bennett Greenspan, owner of Family Tree DNA, who explained that if one extrapolates from the number of Jews estimated by the historian Josephus to be alive in the first century A.D., then \u201cyou would expect to have more Jews than there are today,\u201d says Slepkov.<\/p>\n
Click photo to download. Caption: Noah Slepkov, an associate fellow of the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) think tank in Jerusalem and the author of \u201cCrowd Sourced Genealogy and Direct-to-Consumer DNA Testing: Implications for the Jewish People.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me realize how many people out there actually have Jewish ancestors,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you think about it exponentially, you can have one ancestor who is Jewish, and he could have hundreds of thousands of descendants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slepkov also conducted a personal DNA test, and the results were typical of such research. He cites a paper by Doron Behar in the scientific journal Nature that shows how the female lineage of Ashkenazi Jews is European, dating back 30,000 years, whereas the male lineage is from the Middle East and more recent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt suggests that men left the Middle East and married non-Jewish wives and converted them, and their descendants all became Jews,\u201d says Slepkov, noting that his own test matches Behar\u2019s data, which is included in the Family Tree DNA database.<\/p>\n
Slepkov says this DNA testing \u201chas huge geopolitical consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoron Behar wrote in his article that DNA tests confirm the Zionist narrative of Jews once living in the historic land of Israel and going through an exile,\u201d he says. A graph included in Behar\u2019s article shows where different Jewish communities fit genealogically within the global population. The graph also includes the Palestinians, who have more African ancestry in their genetic data than do Ashkenazi Jews.<\/p>\n
This data, suggests Slepkov, sheds an interesting light on a much-debated topic at JPPI\u2014the delegitimization of Israel and how to combat it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the narratives you hear is that Jewish people have no business being in the Middle East, and that they are European and should go back to Europe,\u201d Slepkov says. \u201cWith the exception of one scholar who has tried to suggest that Jews are really descendants of the Khazars, most scientists would agree that there is in fact evidence within the genome of the Jewish people that different Jews from around the world do come from the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n
These findings give Slepkov some ammunition in conversations with left-wing Jews who may reject Zionism and are surprised about why he made aliyah. The Canadian-born Slepkov tells them, \u201cOne of the reasons I made aliyah is because I believe I am actually from this area, and I do feel like I\u2019m returning home.\u201d Now, in response to the typical reaction he gets to that assertion\u2014\u201cYou don\u2019t believe that!\u201d\u2014Slepkov can inform the skeptics about the results of his DNA test.<\/p>\n
Slepkov ended up contacting three relatives as a result of his genetic test results. One was a second cousin of his father that he came across while working on the family tree.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had spent summers together in Crystal Beach and hadn\u2019t been in touch for 40 years,\u201d says Slepkov. \u201cI got them back in touch.\u201d<\/p>\n
But finding connections wasn\u2019t straightforward. Slepkov had to narrow these contacts down from 2,000 names of potential relatives, based on the DNA tests. \u201cWithout knowing exactly who your relatives are in advance, it\u2019s hard to know for certain how closely related you are or whether you are related\u2014unless they are second or third cousins,\u201d Slepkov says.<\/p>\n
In instances where the genetic tests showed very close relationships, Slepkov sent emails to the contacts he discovered, but sometimes he never heard back. \u201cIt could mean they are not interested, or they know for a fact that they are not related and don\u2019t want to respond,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Slepkov was raised in a small town in St. Catharine\u2019s, Ontario, Canada. Growing up in a small Jewish community had a profound effect on him.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudaism has always been a huge part of who I am and my identity,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing one of three Jews in your cohort really defines who you are, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a Conservative movement upbringing, Camp Ramah, Jewish studies at Toronto\u2019s York University, and Israel advocacy work, Slepkov was primed for aliyah\u2014for three reasons. One is Jewish continuity for his familial line.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter flirting with being religious, I found myself being more and more secular in my ideology and my view of the world, and I decided the best place to be a secular Jew and remain a Jew and live a \u2018Jewish life\u2019 is in Israel,\u201d he says. Israel also seemed to be a good place to satisfy Slepkov\u2019s interest in politics and foreign affairs. Thirdly, given the economic status of the Western world, he figured he and his future children would have as good a life in Israel as they would in North America.<\/p>\n
Slepkov met his current boss\u2014JPPI senior fellow and former MK Einat Wilf (Labor)\u2014while he was doing Israel advocacy work at the University of Western Ontario. After making aliyah, he became Wilf\u2019s assistant in the Knesset, and after she left the Israeli legislature he moved with her to JPPI.<\/p>\n
From his own experience with DNA tests, Slepkov has learned to be more open to emails from strangers who tell you they might be your relative.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be too dismissive of these people,\u201d he says. \u201cThey could be right, and you never know at what point they are in exploring their Jewish identity. We\u2019re not a proselytizing religion, but if there are people who are really interested in exploring what it means that they have Jewish ancestors, you shouldn\u2019t discourage them, but should help them and embrace their desire to search for their Jewish roots.\u201d<\/p>\n
www.jns.org\/latest-articles\/2014\/9\/19\/how-dna-testing-can-reveal-jewish-ancestry-and-bolster-the-zionist-narrative<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0Michele Alperin, Jewish News Service This summer, the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) presented a set of recommendations on genetic testing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and the Israeli cabinet (pictured here at its weekly meeting on June 29, 2014). JPPI recommended that the Israeli government, Jewish communities, and Jewish organizations provide information and points of connection for individuals…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-identity","library-media"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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