Art By Tyler Honeywell
OUTLOOK
Are Jews Different.
A Stanford University Reseamher is looking
to the roots of lift DNA, for the answer
WINSTON PICKETT
Special to The Jewish News
A
re Jews genetically dif-
ferent than non-Jews?
The question has
long been controversial for
some, conjuring up disturb-
ing notions of race, heredity
and sociological distinctions,
sometimes even horrifying
memories of Nazi atrocities.
For Marcus Feldman, head
of Stanford's Institute for
Population and Resource
Studies, however, the ques-
tion is too simplistic, its
answer complex.
Although Jews and non-
Jews can't be told apart by
examining their genetic
makeup, he says, Jews do
share common characteristics
with each other that show up
through their blood types.
Still, he indicates, Jewish
subgroups, statistically
speaking, definitely stand out
from one another.
Regarding blood types,
Feldman points out that on
the subcellular level where an
individual's genes reside, cer-
tain biochemical markers
show up, usually in the form
of specific blood cell proteins,
enzymes, or different kinds of
DNA.
By running a cross-section
of those chemical fingerprints
through an elaborate statis-
tical analysis, he adds, it is
possible to find the common-
alities.
It also is possible, through
the same means, to distin-
guish among three separate
Jewish population groups:
Ashkenazic, Sephardic and
non-European.
In the same breath, how-
ever, Feldman cautions that
statistics cannot be used to
tell a Jew from a non-Jew or
even members of those three
groups of Jews from one
other.
Always, he emphasizes,
"it's a question of popula-
tions, not of an individual's
genes."
Feldman also warns
against taking a lone Jewish
genetic trait, such as Tay-
Sachs disease, which afflicts
Eastern European Jews, as a
means of tracking down pop-
ulations.
"If a Jew has Tay-Sachs,
you know he's not Sephardic,"
Feldman explains, "but if he
doesn't have it, you don't
know who he is."
Feldman's aim is to in-
tegrate the biological, social
and economic aspects of pop-
ulation research on issues
threatening human, animal
and plant life.
Whether it is hereditary di-
seases such as Tay-Sachs, or
the latest research pointing to
a link between genetic vari-
ants and linguistic changes
among European popula-
tions, Feldman says, he is in-
terested as a biologist in "any
subgroup that has been
separated, either culturally or
physically, in history."
But as a Jew and the
author of Population Gene-
tics and Cultural Trans-
mission and Evolution, he
adds, he is intrigued with
Jews as a population group
for other reasons, too.
"What piques my interest,"
he says, "is that most biolo-
gists who study human gene-
tics have not confronted the
power of cultural forces in af- .
fecting the biology of the
traits they're examining."
Are there, Feldman won-
ders, genetic characteristics
shared by Ashkenazic, Sep-
hardic and non-European
Jews? If there are, do they
stem from inbreeding and the
biblical injunction against
intermarriage? Is it possible
to speak of a Jewish gene
pool?
lb test the possible ex-
istence of a Jewish gene pool,
Feldman says, he would have
to run a cross-check on the
distribution of biochemical
traits, or genetic markers, of
Jewish subpopulations.
He'd have to count, for in-
stance, how many of the
genetic markers found in
modern-day Ashkenazi Jews
match up culturally with
Jews a world away, such as
Iraqis. Then he'd have to com-
pare the same markers with
those of each Jewish group's
non-Jewish neighbors.
If he discovered a statisti-
cal match between European
and Mideastern Jews, he
says, it would support the
traditional assumption that
Jews remained culturally iso-
lated from the host societies
they lived with because they
followed the dictates of Jew-
ish law and married mostly
among their own.
And if that were found to
be true, Feldman says, it
might mean Jews had pre-
served a gene pool that, in
fact, survived the Jewish
Diaspora following the Baby-
lonian exile 2,500 years ago.
Yet if the data show Jews
genetically have more in corn-
mon with their non-Jewish
counterparts, he suggests, an
even more enticing picture
would emerge: The amount of
cultural interchange and
genetic mixing between Jews
and their neighbors could
have been greater than ever
suspected.
Scientists have advocated
both theories, based on a
wealth of data collected in
Israel in the 1960s and ana-
lyzed in the 1970s. Feldman
admits that although he is
fascinated with the subject,
he and other researchers have
been concentrating recently
on other aspects of the
genetic puzzle.
One of the researchers, and
a pioneer in the field, is Feld-
man's former mentor and col-
league, Samuel Karlin, a
mathematics professor at
Stanford.
Dean of mathematical
sciences at the Weizmann
Institute in Jerusalem from
1970 to 1976 (a half-year posi-
tion he held while at Stan-
ford), Karlin co-authored a
major study of genetic simi-
larities and differences among
subpopulations of Jews.
That study became widely
accepted in scientific circles
and was highly publicized in
the Israeli press. Few of his
conclusions, however, have fil-
tered down to the general
public in the United States.
Karlin himself, in a recent
interview, calls the research
"old hat" but, he says with
some animation, he continues
to be fascinated by the results
that Ashkenazi and Sephardi
Jews have genetically more in
common with each other than
with their Western European
or Middle Eastern non-Jew-
ish counterparts.
Even though Karlin
warned that those characte-
ristics are biochemical, and as
such, invisible to the human
eye, his conclusions caused
quite a stir for Israeli Jews
who learned of his research.
Could it really be that one
of the subgroups he studied,
the Moroccan Jews, with
THE DETROIT JEW
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