The Computational Jew

What is the genetic essence of Jewishness?

This post will mostly concern the majority of Jews – the Ashkenazim, that branch of Jewry that Whites are most familiar with.

Now, these Jews have been shown to be a mix of Middle Eastern, Southern European, and Eastern European ancestries, in proportions such as shown here.  However, as I have written before, Jews are more than this; they are more than merely a mix of these ancestries, as they have gone through genetic bottlenecks and have been subjected to selective pressures that have resulted in a unique suite of mental and physical traits that constitute the essence of “Jewishness” – e.g., relatively high intelligence, particularly of a verbal nature; a tropism toward achievement; a tropism toward neuroses and paranoia; greediness; misanthropy toward Gentiles; ethnocentrism and collectivism; dual morality; overall unpleasantness; a tropism toward exploiting and harming the host peoples among which they live; a particular physical appearance and traits; various genetic disorders, etc., much of which no doubt has a strong genetic component.  Some researchers have studies the genetics of, e.g., Ashkenazi intelligence, associating it with certain genetic disorders; thus, there is precedent in attempts to understand the genetic basis of the Jewish phenotype.  However, such studies were targeted to particular traits and not to the entire suite of traits that constitute “Jewishness.”

Now, simply mixing Middle Easterners, Southern Europeans, and Eastern Europeans would not reconstitute Ashkenazi Jews as we know them, even if such hybrids would no doubt have PCA and admixture profiles similar to Jews since the broad overall genomes would be similar.  But the specific genetics encoding the essence of Jewishness would not be present.  Thus, such non-Jewish hybrids would serve as a good baseline comparison to compare Jews to, in order to identify the specific genetic variations that differentiate Jews from simply hybrids of their ancestries.

If such non-Jewish hybrids exist in significant numbers, then their genomes can be used for comparison.  But it is not strictly necessary to find such hybrid.  Instead, I propose the methodology of determining The Computational Jew – using computational genetics of in silico modeling of non-Jewish hybrids in order to determine the genetic essence of Jewishness.

There are databases in which the genetics of Middle Eastern, Southern European, and Eastern European peoples are known – for example, one can use as the parental populations here Palestinians (and other Levantines such as Lebanese and Syrians, etc.), Italians, and Russians/Poles.  One could then use computational methods to model hybrids of these peoples in proportions similar to the range of ancestries found in Ashkenazi Jews.  Then one can compare actual Jewish genomes (of which there is plenty of data) to the in silico computational models of the non-Jewish Middle Eastern, Southern European, and Eastern European hybrids.  Genetic differences could then be identified, which can serve as the basis for identifying gene frequencies that determine “Jewishness” above and beyond the foundational baseline of a mixed Middle Eastern, Southern European, and Eastern European ancestry. These genetic variants and their frequencies can be then associated with function and phenotype, followed by gene expression studies of Jews (at the mRNA and protein levels) to correlate expression of relevant identified genes with phenotypes of interest.  In this manner, one can begin to build a tentative catalog of a specifically Jewish functional genetic distinctiveness – the genetic basis for the essence of “Jewishness.”  Again, the key point is the comparison between Jews as they exist today and the ancestral baseline of their derivation – that baseline being most practically created in silico, but any actual living non-Jewish people with such proportions can be used. One reason why the computational method would be superior is that actual people with the ancestry may be more recent mixes and thus would have larger chromosome blocks derived from their ancestries, compared to Jews in which the mixing took place earlier and thus the blocks would be smaller (and more inter-mixed).  This earlier mixing could be modeled via the computational method, yielding a fairer baseline comparison.

Once the genes and gene expression patterns defining the essence of Ashkenazi Jewishness are identified, and properly correlated to the associated phenotypes, a variety of follow-up questions can be evaluated.  Are Jews with certain ancestral profiles more or less likely to demonstrate the essence of Jewishness?  Which of the ancestral components of Jews is most associated with Jewishness; for example, are Jews that are “more Middle Eastern” more likely to manifest traits associated with Jewishness?  Or is it specific ancestral combinations that are more “Jewish?”  In addition, full Jews can be compared to part-Jews to determine the extent to which these genes and their consequent traits are dominant or recessive, and how they are modified by the ancestral components derived from the non-Jewish ancestors.  Do part-Jews resemble their Jewish ancestors; is a “Jewish taint” a dominant?  One could also compare the genomes of today’s Jews with those of Jewish remains from past eras, to understand how selection and genetic drift have influenced stereotypical Jewish traits over time.  For example, one theory suggests that ethnocentrism among full-blooded Jews has been increasing, since less ethnocentric Jews have out-married and became assimilated into the Gentile population. With identification of the proper genetics, such hypotheses, and others of a similar nature, can be tested.

The same methodology could be used for other Jewish groups, such as the Sephardim, if the founding populations and their percentages are identified. Non-Jewish groups can also be analyzed; for example, are American Negroes merely West African-British Isles hybrids or a selected population derived thereof, possibly enriched in gene variants encoding obesity, violence, and stupidity.

One criticism of this plan is that the traits in question may be due to a large number of genetic variants that each have a small effect and thus it may be difficult to identify the genes influencing certain phenotypes.  However, the only way to find this out is to do the experiment and given the distinctiveness of the Ashkenazi (and previous studies about them) it is more likely that valuable information will be obtained.  Another criticism is that epigenetic influences would not be identified by this method.  What is proposed here is the first step of analysis; no doubt other analyses would follow, possibly including epigenetics.  In addition, given that the phenotypes in question have been stable over long periods of time and in different environments they are most likely to be predominantly of genetic origin.

In any case, the approach is theoretically feasible and possibly could yield interesting and useful data.