If you are a Barnard graduate, please contact me and take part in this effort to stop Barnard from granting Nadia El Haj tenure. You can get all the background on my website: www.paulasays.com.

Thanks to the Solomonia blog for posting this!

Paula

These "academics" are similar to the academics who proved the "superiority of aryans" and inferiority of Jews, Gypsys, Slavs.

Maybe someone can introduce Nadia El Haj to Norman Finkelstein and make a Shiddach. ;-)

They can honeymoon in Hell.

You know what scares me? It's the endgame - what is the goal here?

I don't think anybody can come to any possible conclusion but one: people are once again being indoctrinated to hate and despise Jews.

Where else can this possibly lead?

And why is this going on in our universities?

I've been reading about Carter's visit to Berkeley and also about the sickening state of affairs at UC Irvine - there must be SOMETHING we can do.

I have the worst feeling about all this. Our children are being prepared to turn on us and against Israel and there is going to be hell to pay.

I don't care what side of the political aisle we happen to be sitting on - Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Libertarian - this is just wrong and can lead only to catastrophe.

Is "Palestine" worth it I wonder, worth the deaths of millions and the destruction of a nation that rose from genocide and expulsion? Is this tiny strip of land worth the perversion of of morality that is entailed in this systematic demonization of a tiny state and a tiny, historically persecuted minority?

In the enormous Arab world, with all its land and resources, isn't there some better solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict than the destruction of Israel?

If so why aren't people seeking it? Working for it? And if not - I refuse to believe "not" - because it is utterly illogical. To believe "not" I have to believe that the entire Arab world is without wisdom, intelligence or compassion and I just am not ready to concede that.

Please somebody come up with something besides a homicidal cartoon mouse or imams preaching hate or a bunch of "intellectuals" who are perverting America in the name of "justice".

Have you noticed a certain attitude of "projection" here?

Nadia Abu el-Haj accuses the JOOOS of bulldozing archaelogical sites. The best-known example of this in the country, perhaps the only one, was done by the Waqf, a very Judenrein organization.

And now she's trying to throw out the findings of biology because they are, er, an "inconvenient truth".

It's a pity that the movie is out, I would like to see Borat interview her. ("In Kazakhstan we have proof that the Jews were responsible for extinction of the dinosaurs.")

Hmmm, using science to prove something. Now if they would use science/DNA for muslim rape cases instead of 4 men........

I don't understand the controversy regarding Lemba and cohanim. Can someone summarize each side of it? Why is Nadia's position on this subject wrong?

How timely Steven Plaut's article, The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism, is. Recommended reading.

Ron,

Nadia's position is wrong because being Jewish is, like any ethnic identification, a matter fo culture and the choice to identify, not of race. There is no ethnic group on earth for which a unique genetic marker has been identified that all members of that ethnic group share and only they have. Rather, among some but not all ethnic groups, geneticists have found markers that occur at statistically higher frequency.

Or, think of it this way. during the reformation thousands of Hugenots emigrated to England. they reared English children and disappeared into the population of England. If you could find a genetic marker identifying the descendants of those Hugenots, would you seperate them out now and label them French?

The Lemba are an Aftican people with a tradition of having descended form Jews. they have not, however, observed any aspect of Jewish law or religion, spoken a Jewish language, or participated in Jewish culture in any way for many, many generations.

Therefore, while everyone agrees that it is interesting that they have both a tradition of Jewish ancestry and a statistically significant incidence of the kohanic genetic marker, they are not Jewish. Just as the descendents of the Hugenot refugees are not French. Not even if they have kept a careful geneological record.

In a legal or halahic sense,of course, being Jewiish requires having proof of a mother who is undeniably Jewish. The Lemba have nothing of a sort.

So, if Abu El Haj had written that it is interesting that the genetics bears out the Lemba oral tradition, OK. But what she wrote is that they are Jewish - and that is not only wrong but eerily racially essentialist.

Culture, not descent, determines ethnicity.

I think culture AND descent determines ethnicity, but the boundaries of descent are necessarily fuzzy. Genetic studies have shown that Jews, and not just kohanim, do share a lot of genes. But there is some genetic inflow from other groups...and outflow. That's only natural, and healthy. But both culture and descent are factors. After all, people aren't just Chinese because they "choose" to be. Ethnic groups aren't just clubs that you can join or quit at will, although I guess you can let your membership lapse.

Sorry, I meant to say something else, as well. Diana still has a point. If a group that has not been a part of the Jewish people for umpteen quadrillion years boasts a few genetic markers, that isn't much of a link. She's right on that.

I think that El-Haj's goal with the Lemba is to dilute the meaning of Jewish identity, and therefore that of Israeli identity. This isn't nice. She seems to be attacking from all sides, using whatever amunition (however dubious) she can find.

After some initial controversy, Israel accepted Ethiopians (once labelled 'Falashas') as Jewish. Why are the Lemba a different case?

When descendants of Conversos rediscover their Jewish heritage (in Spain, New Mexico, or wherever), isn't this something we justifiably celebrate?

The Falasha or Bene Israel are different because are self-identified as Jews and as Torah-believers and they had, while in Ethiopia, been observing the Sabbath, holidays and much of the Torah. Most historians believe that they originated as a Judaizing group of Ethiopian Christians who sort of kept on reading the Tanach until they became Jewish.

They were accepted as Jews only upon formally converting to Judaism because of some doubts about the regularity of their halahic observance in Ethiopia.

Interestingly, the falasha do not bear the genetic markers that link most other Jewish populations. Absence of the markers has had no bearing on their status because Jewishness is a matter of culture, self-identification, and halacha, not genetics.

Certainly some descendants of Jews forced to cnvert in fifteenth and sixteenth century Spain and Portugal have rediscovered their Jewish roots. When they themselves find this delightful news, we share their joy. However, no one calls them Jewish until/unless they convert - as some have done. Nor does discovering a genetic marker make the descendent of a Marrano a Jew. Some Spaniards, Portugese, Catalans and, possibly, some Basques have Jewish ancestry. That does not make them Jewish.

I have an actaul Spanish ancestor. It goes back quite a few generations (we happen to have had some skilled geneologists and some meticulous record keepers in the family) I would have to figure out the fraction, something like half of a sixty-fourth, I think. but it doesn't matter. I am not Spanish even though there is that fraction because ethnicity is a matter of identity and of culture, not of genetic heritage.

Joanne is right,ethnicity is not a club you join, it it almost always determined by birth and, therefore, by upbringing.

Note the caveats, however. Historically, retaining the children of enemies defeated in war was a traditinoal way of enlarging a group, since upbringing not genetics determines identity.

Moreover, as Joanne says, you can let your membership lapse. You can also join. Sometimes this can take place in a single lifetime, it rarely takes more than three generations. that is, it is rare that the origins of an immigrant family will be remembered by the great-grandchildren's neighbors.

If a single lifetime sounds too brief, think of Joseph Conrad, one of the great English novelists, born born Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, he emigrated to London as an adult and became English.

you can let your membership