Not long ago, genetics started being used on a smaller scale. Instead of analyzing human history and tracking down the earliest migrations of human species, scientists decided to concentrate also on living people and shed some light on their individual narratives. Exploring one’s ancestry has become increasingly popular, and genealogy services have mushroomed around the world. For an affordable price, home genetics companies would chart your genealogical tree, calculate a percentage of different races in your blood, determine the degree of consanguinity between you and another person, and even warn you about inherited genetic disorders. There are dissenting voices criticizing genealogy services for conducting inexact research, but if you are interested in digging deeper into your heritage, read the MyHeritage DNA review. It will help you decide whether you want to submit your saliva to this or any other DNA testing company and discover some missing information about your ancestry.
Despite occasional ( and usually widely publicized ) inexactness of their findings, DNA testing companies do often reveal hidden truths about our heritages. The latest genetic revelations that commanded a lot of attention around the world, especially its Jewish population, were announced last year. The research undertaken by dozens of scientists provided evidence that almost a quarter of Latinos and Hispanics carry significant Jewish DNA. Jews around the world are wondering now whether this news will affect the future of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
In a study that analyzed genome-wide variation from over 6,500 individuals from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, geneticists found that a large number of people living today in these countries had North African and eastern Mediterranean ancestry. This ancestry must have entered the regions of South America several centuries ago. Scientists also discovered that many of the genetic variants from these populations are found in Sephardic Jews presently living in Israel and other countries.
Anybody familiar with the history of the Middle Ages would not be surprised by the connection between Sephardic Jews and Latinos and Hispanics. In the 14th and 15th centuries, many Jews living on the land of the modern-day Spain and Portugal during the Age of Discovery converted to Catholicism in response to pogroms. Jews were given a choice either to live in exile or become Catholics, and, to avoid further persecutions, many of them chose another faith. Referred to as “conversos,” these Jews either upheld Christianity wholeheartedly or only ostensibly, still observing Jewish holidays and kosher in private. Those who remained openly practicing Jews were expelled in 1492, after the Christian Reconquest of Spain. Jews who stayed and converted to Catholicism left their genetic traces in contemporary Latin American population.
Nor did these revelations come as a complete surprise to Latin Americans who share ancestry with Sephardic Jews. Some of the Latino families preserve narratives about their Jewish origin and pass them over to next generations. The latest statistics make clear that as many as 30 percent of Latin Americans know about their Jewish ancestry, having found about their roots either through DNA tests, genealogical trees, or by tracing the origin of their family names. About 14 percent of these people would want to embrace their Jewish identity.
Scientists’ discovery of the genetic connection between people living these days in South America and Sephardic Jews begins to sound remarkable, when we count how many Latin Americans actually carry in their DNA genes of full-blown Jews. In 2016, the United Nation estimated that around 650 million people live in South America. About 60 million Latinos and Hispanics reside in the United States. If researchers are right that a quarter of these people are descendants of converted Jews, then there must be about 200 million of them today. The number is large indeed and can definitely gladden Israel, which has long been on the mission to bring Jewish posterity back to Abraham’s Promised Land.
But whatever consequences they have for the politics of Israel, scientists’ findings are crucial, first and foremost, for our better understanding of our past. The discovery that Latin Americans and Jewish people are related helps shift a focus from Spanish and Portuguese settlers to no less dark and pitiful history of Sephardic Jews’ forceful conversion to a foreign faith.
