Jacob''s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History
ISBN: 9780300145106
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Jews -- History; Jews -- Origin; Human genetics;

Duke University geneticist Goldstein was part of a team that did groundbreaking, headline-making research on Jewish genetic history. Goldstein clearly and succinctly explains such concepts as "haplotypes" and "genetic drift" as he reviews such findings as that more than half of contemporary Cohanim, or priests traditionally believed to descend from the biblical Aaron actually share a genetic marker called the Cohen Modal Haplotype. Among other subjects, he also explores evidence consistent with the claim of the obscure Lemba tribe of southern Africa to be descendants of ancient Israel. Lastly, in taking on a 2005 study of a group of so-called Jewish genetic diseasessuch as Tay-Sachsand their putative evolutionary connection to high intelligence among Jews, Goldstein notes that this hypothesis is easily testable but firmly rejects "pseudoscientific genetic determinism." Goldstein's role in much of the research into Jewish genetic history, his sober, unsensationalist tone and his emphasis on the limited conclusions that can be drawn from such work lend credibility to his account of his stunning results. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

David B. Goldstein is professor of molecular genetics and director of the Institute for Genome Science and Policy's Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics, Duke University. He lives in Durham, NC.

hidden image for function call