Digital illustration DNA structure
DNA and the Origin of the Jews
Is there a genetic marker for kohanim, priests? Are Ashkenazi Jews descended from Khazars? Why is there such a close genetic connection between Samaritans and Jews, especially kohanim? A look at what genetic testing can tell us about Jews.
Published: October 1, 2017
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
In my The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), I lay out for readers the different methods that modern scholars have used to illumine the origin of the Jews—genealogy, philology, history, archaeology, genetics—and survey the various theories that have emerged from these different kinds of research. In addition, I try to explain why scholars haven’t been able settle on an answer—why there are so many scholarly theories. Although the book may be frustrating to some extent, since it does not “solve” the mystery of the origin of the Jews, I hope it does help readers understand what scholarship can and cannot say about the question, and to think more deeply about the question itself.
The original study was Michael Hammer, et al, “Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests,” Nature 385 (1997); For more recent bibliography, see the bibliography on Jewish genetics compiled by Noah Tamarkin for Oxford Bibliographies.
Since the Temple no longer stands, kohanim are limited to offering the priestly benediction during morning services (in Israel daily, in the diaspora only on holidays), receiving the first aliyah during the Torah reading ceremony, performing the redemption of the firstborn ceremony (pidyon ha-ben), and avoiding cemeteries. Being a kohen now still carries an honorific status, and it remains a status passed from father to son.
Sergio Tofanelli, et al, “Mitochondrial and Y chromosome haplotype motifs as diagnostic markers of Jewish ancestry: a reconsideration,” Frontiers in Genetics 5 (2014).
Doron Behar, et al, “The Genome-wide Structure of the Jewish People,” Nature 466 (2010): 238-242.
Era Elhaik, “Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and Khazarian Hypotheses,” Genome Biology and Evolution 5 (2013): 61-74. Elhaik has continued this argument in more recent publications; see, for example, “The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish,” Frontiers in Genetics (2017).
See Shaul Stampfer, “Are We All Khazars Now?,” Jewish Review of Books (Spring 2014).
Doron Behar, et al, “No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews,” Human Biology 85 (2013): 859-900.
See Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, and Eran Elhaik, “Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz,” Genome Biology and Evoluion 8.4 (2016): 1132-1149. For the reaction of Stampfer and others, see “Prominent Scholars Blast Theory Tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Turkey,” The Times of Israel (May 3, 2016).
See Nadia Abu El-Hajj, The Geneological Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). A number of Israeli and German historians of science level similar critiques.
Peter Oefner, et al, “Genetics and the History of the Samaritans: Y-Chromosomal Microsatellites and Genetic Affinity between Samaritans and Cohanim,” Human Biology 85 (2013): 825-838.
Editor’s note: For up-to-date discussions of Samaritan origins, see Gary Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and Early History of Their Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Reinhard Pummer, The Samaritans – A Profile (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2015).
