Origin of the Jews and the Arabs: Date of their Most Recent Common Ancestor is Written in their Y-Chromosomes - However, There Were Two of Them

A pattern of Y-chromosomal mutations in 37 and 67 marker haplotypes of the Jews and the Arabs indicates that their most recent common ancestor in haplogroup J1 (subclade J1e*) and that (a different one) in haplogroup J2 (subclade J2a*) lived 4300+/-500 years before present (ybp) and 4175+/-510 ybp, respectively, that is practically at the same time. Then a split between the Jewish and the Arabic lineages in both J1 and J2 haplogroups occurred, which is clearly visible on the respective haplotype trees. The data show that a common ancestor of Cohanim (Jewish High Priests) of haplogroup J1 lived 1070+/-170 ybp, while a common ancestor of Cohanim in haplogroup J2 lived 3300+/-400 ybp

Battle for the People: Ideological Conflict between Soviet Partisans, the German Military, and Ukrainian Nationalists in Nazi-Occupied Ukraine

Soviet historiography discusses the People’s War during the Second World War, the idea that all of the Soviet people rallied to the cause and fought off the Nazi invaders, but this is far from the truth. Within the western borderlands of the Soviet Union multiple conflicting groups fought for control of and support from the people. This was especially true in Ukraine where the German Army, Soviet Partisans and Ukrainian nationalists all fought ‘for the people’ and for their own ideologies. This paper is an attempt to discuss the ideological conflict between the Nazis, the Soviets, and the Ukrainian nationalists, and how the failure or success of these policies led to the legitimizing of policies of mass murder of the local Ukrainian, Jewish, and Polish populations, and how the tension from the partisan struggle continues to this day

Socialist antisemitism and its discontents in England, 1884–98

Virdee's essay explores the relationship between English socialists and migrant Jews amid the new unionism of the late nineteenth century: a cycle of protest characterized by sustained collective action by the unskilled and labouring poor demanding economic and social justice. Reading this labour history against the grain, with a greater attentiveness to questions of race and class, helps to make more transparent both the prevalence and structuring force of socialist antisemitism, as well as English and Jewish socialist opposition to it. In particular, the essay suggests that the dominant socialist discourse was intimately bound up with questions of national belonging and this directly contributed to a racialized politics of class that could not imagine migrant Jews as an integral component of the working class. At the same time, such socialist antisemitism was also challenged by a minority current of English Marxists whose conceptions of socialism refused to be limited by the narrow boundaries of the racialized nation-state. And they were joined in this collective action by autonomous Jewish socialist organizations who understood that the liberation of the Jewish worker was indivisible from that of the emancipation of the working class in general. With the help of Eleanor Marx and others, these latter strands entangled socialist politics with questions of combatting antisemitism, and thereby stretched existing conceptions of class to encompass the Jewish worker

David Patterson, Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)

This is a critical review of David Patterson's book Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins (2015). In this review, I present the author's new explanation of the roots of anti-Semitism, which he finds in the anti-Semite's desire to become like God himself. Patterson's explanation makes an anti-Semite of all those who partake in the "Western rationalist project," especially philosophers (including Jewish philosophers such as Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, and Marx), but also Islamists and anti-Zionist Jews. I criticize Patterson on two fronts: First, his "metaphysical" explanation relies on a petitio principii. Second, he should have argued his stance against that of Zeev Sternhell's thesis, according to which Western anti-Semitism is rooted, not in Western rationalism, but rather in the Western anti-rationalist (anti-Enlightenment) movement

A study of the spatial characteristics of the Jews in London 1695 & 1895

This paper suggests that the settlement pattern of Jews in London is in a distinct cluster, but contradicts the accepted belief about the nature of the 'ghetto'; finding that the traditional conception of the 'ghetto', as an enclosed, inward-looking immigrant quarter is incorrect in this case. It is shown that despite the fact that the Jews sometimes constituted up to 100% of the population of a street, that in general, the greater the concentration of Jews in a street, the better connected (more 'integrated') the street was into the main spacial structure of the city. It is also suggested here that the Jewish East End worked both as an internally strong structure of space, with local institutions relating to and reinforcing the local pattern of space; and also externally, with strong links tying the Jewish East End with its host society. It is proposed that this duality of internal/external links not only strengthens Jewish society but possibly contradicts accepted beliefs on the structure of immigrant societies

The Jewish 'ghetto': formation and spatial structure

Research into patterns of immigrant settlement has consistently indicated that certain areas of cities are prone to settlement by immigrant groups. This paper proposes that immigrant settlement of such areas may have a particular spacial pattern. Taking the case of the settlement of Leeds, England by Jewish immigrants in the latter six decades of the nineteenth century, we describe the formation of the immigrant Jewish settlement in the area called Leylands.The paper shows first, that Leylands was spacially segregated in comparison with the city overall; and second, that the pattern of settlement was one of intensification of particular streets through time, whereby initially the main, relatively integrated streets were settled, with occupancy moving as time went on to more segregated streets.Analysis of social class defined by occupation suggests that the whole population of Leylands was much poorer than that of Leeds overall. This paper suggests that since the poverty difference was present and possibly more pronounced for the majority, non-Jewish population, that the socio-economic form of the area settlement in Leeds was more likely to have been related to its spacial sgregation than to the social and economic segregation of the immigrant group. It is suggested that the particular characteristics special to certain immigrant groups allowed the Jews of Leylands to overcome their spacial segregation by employing strong social networks on the one hand and through economic mutual help on the other

Jewish Youth in the Minsk Ghetto: How Age and Gender Mattered

Explores how young Soviet Jews survived the German occupation of Soviet territories, specifically ghettoization and mass murder