New genetic evidence links Spanish Americans of Southwest to Jews

This article is originally from the jewish publication JTA and the original can be found here.

By Talia Bloch · September 28, 2011

Dr. Ostrer

NEW YORK (JTA) -- In 1995, Demetrio Valdez, his wife, Olive, and some of their neighbors in Conejos County, Colo., started a kosher food co-op.

“We wanted to harvest our own meat, but we couldn’t get a good price for it, so we decided to do it kosher to make more money,” said Valdez, 64, who has raised cattle all his life.

The co-op members, all non-Jews, flew in a rabbi from New York to instruct them in kosher slaughter. To Valdez’s surprise, many of the practices introduced by the rabbi were ones that Valdez, a Catholic, had grown up with and maintained on his ranch.

“I saw that we do a lot of things the same,” he recalled. “The rabbi was surprised, too.”

Financial woes and a fire forced the co-op to close soon after it started, but Valdez’s experiences with the rabbi -- the first Jew he had ever met -- lingered.

Since childhood he had heard rumors that his family had Jewish ancestors dating back to colonial New Spain when, as historical records show, a good number of Converso Jews -- Jews and their descendants forcibly converted during the Spanish Inquisition -- came to the New World. Many of the Conversos who had made the trek over had become Catholics in name only. They were Crypto Jews who in traveling across the Atlantic were attempting to flee the Inquisition.

The Secret of San Luis Valley

This is a critical review of an article which appeared in the October, 2008 issue of Smithsonian showing substantial evidence that the people we know today as "Mexicans" are indeed a racial admixture of the descendants of Central American Indians and Spanish Sephardic-jews. There is a big lie in this article found in the October, 2008 Smithsonian Magazine! It is stated therein that the Mexicans are descended from the Eastern Ashkenazi-jews, but they are rather sprung from the Western Spanish Sephardic-jews. Another big lie at the end of the article states: "Jesus was Jewish." The people with which the Mexicans are mixed are the Canaanites, Edomites & Kenites to mention just a few. See my articles Mexicans Traced To Cain, (Son Of Satan) and The Words Mestizo And Ladino. Otherwise the article is quite informative, yet every statement should be thoroughly scrutinized! - C. A. E.



THE SECRET OF SAN LUIS VALLEY

The discovery of a cancer gene among some Hispanic Catholics in southern Colorado supports the theory that they're descended from "secret Jews" who fled the Spanish Inquisition

BY JEFF WHEELWRIGHT

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SCOTT S. WARREN

 

ONE SEPTEMBER DAY IN 2001, TERESA CASTELLANO, Lisa Mullineaux, Jeffrey Shaw and Lisen Axell were having lunch in Denver. Genetic counselors from nearby hospitals and specialists in inherited cancers, the four would get together periodically to talk shop. That day they surprised one another: they'd each documented a case or two of Hispanic women with aggressive breast cancer linked to a particular genetic mutation. The women had roots in southern Colorado, near the New Mexico border. "I said, 'I have a patient with the mutation, and she's only in her 40s,''' Castellano recalls. "Then Lisa said that she had seen a couple of cases like that. And Jeff and Lisen had one or two also. We realized that this could be something really interesting."

Curiously, the genetic mutation that caused the virulent breast cancer had previously been found primarily in Jewish people whose ancestral home was Central or Eastern Europe. Yet all of these new patients were Hispanic Catholics. Genetic counselors (Teresa Castellano in San Luis) helped identify people who carried the gene mutation-and urged that family members be tested for it.

Semitic Genetics

This article originally from http://foundationstone.com.au/FoundationStone.html?./HtmlSupport/WebPage/semiticGenetics.html 

Semitic Genetics

With a new technique based on the male or Y chromosome, biologists have traced the diaspora of Jewish populations from the dispersals that began in 586 B.C. to the modern communities of Europe and the Middle East. 

The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries. 

Jews, Palestinians, and Syrians share a genetic link. 

Another finding, paradoxical but unsurprising, is that by the yardstick of the Y chromosome, the world's Jewish communities closely resemble not only each other but also Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, suggesting that all are descended from a common ancestral population that inhabited the Middle East some four thousand years ago. 

Dr. Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, said the study fit with historical evidence that Jews originated in the Near East and with biblical evidence suggesting that there were a variety of families and types in the original population. He said the finding would cause "a lot of discussion of the relationship of scientific evidence to the manner in which we evaluate long-held academic and personal religious positions," like the question of who is a Jew. 

The study, reported in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by Dr. Michael F. Hammer of the University of Arizona with colleagues in the United States, Italy, Israel, England and South Africa. The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism.