I'm not sure if he'll delete my comments, but here is the video anyway:
It seems to me that you imply that eastern Mediterranean peoples in the ancient world were as dark skinned as the ones you find there today. As a Greek, I think you can appreciate the possibility that people in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean were considerably fairer skinned before being colonised by Arabs and Turks. Having said that, Ashkenazim are quite probably very mixed with Europeans. I can see this in my own family, I am quite pleased to say.
What is your definition of the adjective "ethnically"? Do you mean genetically? An ethny can comprise various genetic groups. Of course it's true that 99% of the time, being genetically X means ethnically X, but to say that an ethny can't comprise groups with different genetic markers is to reduce ethnicity — language, culture, traditions, shared history — to simple shared genetics. Take for example Maimonides, a famous Sephardic Jew, whose theological work is the backbone of Ashkenazi religious doctrine.
No Jews — Ashkenazim, Sepharadim, Yemenites, Mizrahim — spoke Hebrew as their quotidian language for over two thousand years. By the time of Jesus, Hebrew had already long since acquired the status of "Leshon haKodesh" (look it up on Infogalactic), and the quotidian language of the day was Aramaic. Ashkenazi Jews always learned Hebrew, but only as a language for religious study. There are mountains of works written by Ashkenazi rabbis dating back deep into medieval times in Hebrew. In fact, medieval Hebrew written by Ashkenazi writers has identifiable linguistic features that place it in a continuum of linguistic development that traces its way back all the way to Biblical times, and the modern Israeli teenager would have a hard time reading it, in much the same way that a modern English speaking teenager needs to get used to Shakespeare's English and has to work even harder to read Chaucer. In short, the fact that Ashkenazis spoke something other than Hebrew in their everyday lives is evidence only of their being exactly like all the other Jews around the world. In fact, if Ashkenazis were some other ethnicity LARPing as Jews, they would have made Hebrew their home language.
7:44 "Yiddish, a language originating around north-eastern Turkey". WTF is going on in this video? Yiddish is so obviously a GERMAN dialect with a large injection of Hebrew vocabulary that a German and a Yiddish speaker can spend hours of fun comparing how things are said in their respective languages. Your absurd proposition that a medieval German dialect can originate in north-eastern Turkey tells me that you have not the slightest idea what you're talking about here. Here is a useful video on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exc7GY7k7Y4
I can tell you from growing up as an Ashkenazi in an Ashkenazi community, that one thing Ashkenazim do NOT do is try to muddy the waters about where we're from. I don't think there is a group in the world more interested in scientific research on where we came from. The fact of the matter is that we're very mixed with Europeans (not a bad thing in my books!) and we don't know exactly how much of our ancestry traces directly to ancient Israel and how much to the Europeans (and maybe central Asians) our ancestors had children with. However, the argument of this video is fallacious: to say that Ashkenazim are not ETHNICALLY Jewish because we are not PURELY RACIALLY Semitic is to confuse race for *ethnicity*. Although in practice the genetic component of ethnicity is usually the first building block, to which are added language, culture, religion, traditions, shared history, etc, it is neither necessary nor sufficient. Even if we go by the bizarre narrative of the Kingdom of Khazaria, even within this very video the narrator says that Jews moved to Khazaria and lived there for centuries, before fleeing into Europe when it was overrun. Well, this means that the Ashkenazis who left Khazaria were a mongrel of "authentic Jews" (to go by your implication) and whatever the Khazars were. To say therefore that Ashkenazim are not "real" Jews is to hold Ashkenazim to an impossible standard: it would be akin to saying a Greek is not a "real" Greek because he is not purely descended from the ancient Greeks, or that an Italian in Lombardy is not a "real" Italian because his ancestors were the Germanic Lombards. Also, genetic testing of Ashkenazim generally shows a lot of overlap with Italians and Greeks, i.e. Judeans who moved around the Roman empire, and Persians, i.e. Judeans from Babylon.
The most plausible theory I know about where we, Ashkenazim, came from, is that our ancestors were a clan of Judeans of the Babylonian exile who didn't return to Jerusalem (refer to the books of Nehemiah and Ezra in the Bible), but centuries started a migration that ended in eastern Europe. Along the way, they settled in north-eastern Anatolia and seemed to create a genetic bottleneck (perhaps married within the same gene pool for a while), and then instead of returning to the Middle East, continued to Eastern Europe. These days, Jewish law on intermarriage is very strict, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that medieval Judaism was much more flexible when it came to marrying and converting a non-Jewish woman, which would have been rather important given that the migrations usually started with young unmarried men venturing into unknown territory to set up small fledgling communities before the extended family followed. This would also explain why Ashkenazim adopted YIDDISH, which I repeat is a GERMAN dialect as their mother tongue: many of the wives of the early Jewish settlers in eastern Europe were Germans. And, if you ever acquainted yourself with the language, it would strike you as the sort of language that a German speaker and an Aramaic or Hebrew speaker would arrive at — a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
@RockingMrE, I'm really sorry to say this, because we go back and I've always rated your channel as one of the very best on YouTube: your last two videos, on the Talmud and Ashkenazim, make irremediably fallacious arguments. These two videos represent such a drastic deviation from the rest of your work, which has always been rock solid, that I can't understand how this came about. I know that when it comes to the JQ there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, and most Jews get triggered when confronted with this material, so it's always hard, even for a Jew, to get at the truth of the matter, but if you had contacted me I would have loved to give you an informed perspective. I'm not saying I'm right on all these things, but I do know much more about them and I am far more inured to disconcerting facts about Jews than most. At the very least, you could have taken my objections to your arguments, responded, and strengthened your own position before putting out these videos. The fact that all sorts of people believe these nonsensical theories about Jews is not a problem to me — I've triggered plenty of Hitlerfags by simply responding to their shoddy arguments calmly and rationally. I'm not disappointed that you put forward an argument I disagree with, but that it's so obviously shoddy.
It seems to me that you imply that eastern Mediterranean peoples in the ancient world were as dark skinned as the ones you find there today. As a Greek, I think you can appreciate the possibility that people in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean were considerably fairer skinned before being colonised by Arabs and Turks. Having said that, Ashkenazim are quite probably very mixed with Europeans. I can see this in my own family, I am quite pleased to say.
What is your definition of the adjective "ethnically"? Do you mean genetically? An ethny can comprise various genetic groups. Of course it's true that 99% of the time, being genetically X means ethnically X, but to say that an ethny can't comprise groups with different genetic markers is to reduce ethnicity — language, culture, traditions, shared history — to simple shared genetics. Take for example Maimonides, a famous Sephardic Jew, whose theological work is the backbone of Ashkenazi religious doctrine.
No Jews — Ashkenazim, Sepharadim, Yemenites, Mizrahim — spoke Hebrew as their quotidian language for over two thousand years. By the time of Jesus, Hebrew had already long since acquired the status of "Leshon haKodesh" (look it up on Infogalactic), and the quotidian language of the day was Aramaic. Ashkenazi Jews always learned Hebrew, but only as a language for religious study. There are mountains of works written by Ashkenazi rabbis dating back deep into medieval times in Hebrew. In fact, medieval Hebrew written by Ashkenazi writers has identifiable linguistic features that place it in a continuum of linguistic development that traces its way back all the way to Biblical times, and the modern Israeli teenager would have a hard time reading it, in much the same way that a modern English speaking teenager needs to get used to Shakespeare's English and has to work even harder to read Chaucer. In short, the fact that Ashkenazis spoke something other than Hebrew in their everyday lives is evidence only of their being exactly like all the other Jews around the world. In fact, if Ashkenazis were some other ethnicity LARPing as Jews, they would have made Hebrew their home language.
7:44 "Yiddish, a language originating around north-eastern Turkey". WTF is going on in this video? Yiddish is so obviously a GERMAN dialect with a large injection of Hebrew vocabulary that a German and a Yiddish speaker can spend hours of fun comparing how things are said in their respective languages. Your absurd proposition that a medieval German dialect can originate in north-eastern Turkey tells me that you have not the slightest idea what you're talking about here. Here is a useful video on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exc7GY7k7Y4
I can tell you from growing up as an Ashkenazi in an Ashkenazi community, that one thing Ashkenazim do NOT do is try to muddy the waters about where we're from. I don't think there is a group in the world more interested in scientific research on where we came from. The fact of the matter is that we're very mixed with Europeans (not a bad thing in my books!) and we don't know exactly how much of our ancestry traces directly to ancient Israel and how much to the Europeans (and maybe central Asians) our ancestors had children with. However, the argument of this video is fallacious: to say that Ashkenazim are not ETHNICALLY Jewish because we are not PURELY RACIALLY Semitic is to confuse race for *ethnicity*. Although in practice the genetic component of ethnicity is usually the first building block, to which are added language, culture, religion, traditions, shared history, etc, it is neither necessary nor sufficient. Even if we go by the bizarre narrative of the Kingdom of Khazaria, even within this very video the narrator says that Jews moved to Khazaria and lived there for centuries, before fleeing into Europe when it was overrun. Well, this means that the Ashkenazis who left Khazaria were a mongrel of "authentic Jews" (to go by your implication) and whatever the Khazars were. To say therefore that Ashkenazim are not "real" Jews is to hold Ashkenazim to an impossible standard: it would be akin to saying a Greek is not a "real" Greek because he is not purely descended from the ancient Greeks, or that an Italian in Lombardy is not a "real" Italian because his ancestors were the Germanic Lombards. Also, genetic testing of Ashkenazim generally shows a lot of overlap with Italians and Greeks, i.e. Judeans who moved around the Roman empire, and Persians, i.e. Judeans from Babylon.
The most plausible theory I know about where we, Ashkenazim, came from, is that our ancestors were a clan of Judeans of the Babylonian exile who didn't return to Jerusalem (refer to the books of Nehemiah and Ezra in the Bible), but centuries started a migration that ended in eastern Europe. Along the way, they settled in north-eastern Anatolia and seemed to create a genetic bottleneck (perhaps married within the same gene pool for a while), and then instead of returning to the Middle East, continued to Eastern Europe. These days, Jewish law on intermarriage is very strict, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that medieval Judaism was much more flexible when it came to marrying and converting a non-Jewish woman, which would have been rather important given that the migrations usually started with young unmarried men venturing into unknown territory to set up small fledgling communities before the extended family followed. This would also explain why Ashkenazim adopted YIDDISH, which I repeat is a GERMAN dialect as their mother tongue: many of the wives of the early Jewish settlers in eastern Europe were Germans. And, if you ever acquainted yourself with the language, it would strike you as the sort of language that a German speaker and an Aramaic or Hebrew speaker would arrive at — a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
@RockingMrE, I'm really sorry to say this, because we go back and I've always rated your channel as one of the very best on YouTube: your last two videos, on the Talmud and Ashkenazim, make irremediably fallacious arguments. These two videos represent such a drastic deviation from the rest of your work, which has always been rock solid, that I can't understand how this came about. I know that when it comes to the JQ there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, and most Jews get triggered when confronted with this material, so it's always hard, even for a Jew, to get at the truth of the matter, but if you had contacted me I would have loved to give you an informed perspective. I'm not saying I'm right on all these things, but I do know much more about them and I am far more inured to disconcerting facts about Jews than most. At the very least, you could have taken my objections to your arguments, responded, and strengthened your own position before putting out these videos. The fact that all sorts of people believe these nonsensical theories about Jews is not a problem to me — I've triggered plenty of Hitlerfags by simply responding to their shoddy arguments calmly and rationally. I'm not disappointed that you put forward an argument I disagree with, but that it's so obviously shoddy.
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