Ashkenazi Jews Are Middle Eastern
On a recent Friday night I learned about the Jews of Turkey at a Shabbat sponsored by JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) which took place at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. When I told the woman sitting across from me at the dinner following services that I am 100 percent Ashkenazi Jewish she seemed surprised and replied “but you look Middle Eastern.”
This response also occurred at a similar JIMENA Shabbat at the same Sephardic synagogue last year when we learned about the Jews of Libya. Same surprised look. Same response to me being Ashkenazi. That I look Middle Eastern.
My response is always that we are Middle Eastern. Many Ashkenazi Jews are phenotypically Middle Eastern or Mediterranean reflecting modern genetic studies that attribute at least half of our DNA ancestry to the East Mediterranean/Levantine Middle East which Israel is right in the middle of – where the ethnogenesis of the Jewish people took place thousands of years ago and where Diaspora Jews originated.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-are-middle-eastern/
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