Why are Eastern European Jews White?

Chloe

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 4:26 pm

Raisin wrote:

Chloe wrote:

Raisin wrote:

my ashkenazi son looks like he's from the middle east. He certainly doesn't look german or polish.

And its not like all jews are blond and blue eyed. Maybe 1% are. look at your kids school pics, if they go to a predominantly ashkenazi school, and count the blonds.

It's more than 1% according to the girls in my kids class, according to my neighbors and certainly according to my family. I'd say at least 40% have blue or green eyes and 30% have light color hair.

well, obviously if you are blond your family is more likely to be blond. saying that 50% of the people in one family has blond hair does not mean 50% 0f jews are blond.

How do you get that figure? I have green eyes and NOT ONE of my kids has green eyes. I am reconciled to the fact that it is a recessive gene and less likely to appear then brown eyes.

But even with my green eyes no one by the wildest stretch of imagination could possibly describe me as a blonde.

I often think israelis are sefardi when they are in fact ashkenazi. a suntan can do that.

I guess you based your 1% on your surroundings while I base my 30-40% on mine. I'm not saying that 30-40% of Jews are blonde-blue. I have no clue what the actual percentage is but it certainly can't be 1% according to my experience.

MiracleMama

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 4:27 pm

Tamiri wrote:

entropy wrote:

Right, that's common.

Does anyone know of 2 blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid?

Yeah, the kid is adopted. Even if the eyes LOOK brown, the child of 2 blue eyed parents can't have a brown-brown child.

Except for in a very, very rare case where there is a mutation.
Generally speaking, children will never have eye color darker then their parents. Meaning, two blue eyed people will only have blue eyes offspring. A blue eyed and green eyed couple (actual green, not nec hazel) such as DH and I will have only blue and green eyed children. There may be exceptions, but this is the general rule, or so I learned in my studies.

RachelB

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 4:31 pm

The Holocaust theory does make sense.
There was a research published a couple of years ago that all blue-eyed people in the world have on common ancestor - it was a mutation that was genetically passed down.
So blue eyed blond jews (myself included) have to be descendants of giyorim, unless this common ancestor was a jew to start with.

Raisin

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 4:37 pm

so I'd love for someone to make a study if descendants of holocaust survivors are blonder then other ashkenazim.

thanks for that eye colour predictor. Apparantly my kids have a 2 in 6 chance of having green eyes. I'll live in hope now.

Oh, and I probably meant 10% chloe, not 1%.

I'll admit, it is far far higher where I am now, but most of the Jewish kids in my city have a non Jewish father, or mother is a convert. so the results are skewed.

Ruchel

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 4:40 pm

We would need to compare the % of blue eyes before and after Shoah. Such numbers for like a century ago are on Jewish encyclopedia, online.
It's very old school, so don't be shocked by concepts such a purity of race, craniometry etc

http://www.jewishencyclopedia......ter=P
http://www.jewishencyclopedia......r=E#2
http://www.jewishencyclopedia......H#243
http://www.jewishencyclopedia......ter=T

solo

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 5:58 pm

" The once-held view that blue eye color is a simple recessive trait has been shown to be wrong. The genetics of eye color are so complex that almost any parent-child combination of eye colors can occur"
so thats copied from a wikepedia page.which isnt xactly accurate.
but interesting

ora_43

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 6:11 pm

I know conversion has been mentioned, but I just wanted to add that I think it's more common than people tend to think. When I was living in OOT America, I would guess that in about 20% of the families at shul at least one parent was a convert.

At the conservative shul, it was more like 30% where one parent was a convert, 10% where one was non-Jewish, and another few families who had adopted and converted children. Not all those people are halachically Jewish, but probably (hopefully) more than a few of them will still be part of the Jewish people in a couple generations.

I know that the numbers aren't so high areas with a larger Jewish population. And that conversion was a lot more rare than that during certain points in European history. But still, with numbers like that, or even one fourth of that, the "look" of the community would change pretty quickly. Just think how many grandkids each person has... one very pale, blond-haired convert in this generation could mean 20 or 30 or more people in two generations with at last some of those genes.

Rodent

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 7:58 pm

I don't think all Jews were always necessarily dark to begin with, I think there's an error in presumption based upon location. The tanach mentions many people who were red headed. And not only David's family who descended from converts, there's no reason to believe that the red didn't come from the "Jewish" side. And I think it's fairly safe to say that they didn't have dark olive skin to go with it. As for eyes, can't see any reason why blue eyes should not have been around. Many arabs also have blue eyes if you're going to be using location as an indicator.

Yes conversion has impacted. Yes location and weather conditions over thousands of years does impact. Yes, genetic purging and selection such as the holocaust has impacted.

But genetics is also interesting. I am a convert but being a convert doesn't mean fair and impacting on Jewish genetics in such ways. My skin is pale but features wise my family are ALL dark.
This is my child that looks like my (non-Jewish) family:

My husband is sepharadi. His father who lives in the US is originally from Panama, to Palestinian parents who we believe were probably originally Algerian (break in family history that we need to connect). He is dark. My husband's mother is ashkenazi - Polish, Russian, Austrian background and had been there for a LONG time with no signs of conversions, marrying out etc.
This is my little sepharadi child that takes after his "Jewish forever" side:

Genetics are strange.

joy613

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 3:17 am

entropy wrote:

Tamiri wrote:

Even if the eyes LOOK brown, the child of 2 blue eyed parents can't have a brown-brown child.

If it quacks like a duck..

Personally, ever snce learning this in HS biology I've bee on the lookout for a contrary example and the best I've managed is internet strangers who claim they are certain a child is legitimate. HLM, how can you be certain? maybe there was a mix-up in the ivf lab, or who knows what? People wouldn't advertise these things, would they?
(I have heard of more such cases btw, and I tend to believe there exists a very rare dominant blue gene somwhere, I just never saw it myself)

I know the couple well and I thought I was sure but if you're saying it's impossible I guess not. It's possible that the child's eyes are not really brown brown just a very dark hazel as someone mentioned.
I'll have to check into it more.

btw, does this same genetic rule hold true with hair color- if both parents are blond can they have a brunette child?

mimivan

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 3:25 am

elf123 wrote:

entropy wrote:

Rape

Is this based on any factual knowledge?

rape was a part of the progroms..a part of the oppression and psychological torture..it wasn't discussed much because, well..

where do I get this from? Oral history, some Jewish historians, and the most telling of all was before I became frum, reading a Kossack poet who glorified the "conquests" of "His people" bragging about women being raped..

the main victims of the Kossacks were Jews, as well as other peoples..

chanchy123

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 3:50 am

Hashem loves me wrote:

entropy wrote:

Right, that's common.

Does anyone know of 2 blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid?

Yes. and it's definitely their kid. legitimate

It is virtually impossible genetically.
lighter colors are recessive genes.

shalhevet

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 3:59 am

entropy wrote:

Right, that's common.

Does anyone know of 2 blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid?

Yes, me!!

Two of my kids have brown eyes. (But both my father and my dh's mother have brown eyes)

Also I have red hair and neither of my parents or their parents do/did - my mother was extremely surprised when I was born. But her father a"h had a gingery moustache.

chanchy123

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 4:04 am

I've researched this a bit (on the web - nothing academic).
Current researchers claim that surroundings change physical appearances in a much shorter time period than ever before. (think decades and centuries, not millenia).
I've read somewhere that the "red" hair in our sources is actually closer to a blond shade.
And as blond (or red for that matter) is recessive having David Hamelech's grandmother being a non Jew would not be enough for him to be born this way. It had to have appeared on both sides of his family tree. BTW it would be hard to believe that a Moavite from today's Jordan would be any lighter than a Jew from Bethlehem which is not so far away (only a few hours by car, and a few days walk).
It could very well be that many Jews before the churban were fare. Not to mention, many of the current dwellers of Europe were originally from Asia. The Aryan race was originally from Iran and before that they came from India! Who knows what people from Asia looked like then.
As for rape, I used to hear this claim very often, but it seems that the cossacks (who BTW were from the Caucus therefore probably dark and oriental looking) would usually kill their rape victims.

EDIT - I totally by into the evolutionary survival thing, where among Jews in the Holocaust and throughout European history, Jews who looked more like Europeans had a higher survival rate.

And one more thing - I have just read a report about a recent research that proves that all Jews (or most Jews) genetically originate in the ME.

chanchy123

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 4:08 am

shalhevet wrote:

entropy wrote:

Right, that's common.

Does anyone know of 2 blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid?

Red hair was probably recessive in your family until it finally came out by you.
When I told my mother that I was O positive my mother could not believe it, since my parents are A and B. But it turns out that both my grandmothers were O, so here I am. It would have worked the same way if two of my great grand mothers were O.

joy613

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 4:11 am

shalhevet wrote:

entropy wrote:

Right, that's common.

Does anyone know of 2 blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid?

Both you are your dh are blue eyed and 2 kids are brown? but someone just said that's impossible genetically? Even though I thought I knew someone that has the same in their family. I'm confused.

chanchy123

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 4:13 am

Hashem loves me wrote:

shalhevet wrote:

entropy wrote:

Right, that's common.

Does anyone know of 2 blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid?

Both you are your dh are blue eyed and 2 kids are brown? but someone just said that's impossible genetically? Even though I thought I knew someone that has the same in their family. I'm confused.

It is very unlikely, but as someone mentioned, eye color genetics are complex and perhaps there are other genetic factors in play here. The fact is this is extremely rare.

imamama

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 4:40 am

I think regardless of skin tone, which could be attributed to intermarriage, rape or simply just evolution, that Mediterranean Basin look is still pretty obvious among Jews. You can tell a non-Jewish Pole from a secular Polish Jew in ten seconds.

All my red-headed, blue-eyes siblings (and there are a lot of them), still have the big nose and the long face Smile

My kids have it a little less, but that's probably because one of their grandparents is not Jewish, and originally from Wales.