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Post by redbaron on Dec 8, 2005 8:58:38 GMT -5
www.jewlicious.com/index.php/french-canadians-are-jewlicious/#more-62Cajun or Jewish? Sandra DeVlin July 29, 2004 Thursday Final Edition Jackie Bourque is in the eye of a whirlwind of mixed emotions since discovering she and thousands of others in Atlantic Canada may have been misled over many centuries about their Acadian heritage. “I had been led to believe I was a Cajun girl and that we had to maintain our French … and not mix with the English,” says the Bathurst, N.B. native who is currently living in Quebec. “It took me several weeks to actually accept that I am Jewish more than I am Acadian,” says Jackie, who believes she has stumbled upon a little-known or little-discussed fact: that many of the familiar Acadian surnames are more likely of Jewish origin than of French. “People will not generally accept this,” she says, “because they have been brainwashed.” EVIDENCE CLINCHED IT Jackie was finally convinced by the evidence of “a Semitic stain,” a birthmark common among Acadians and which proponents claim identifies them with their Sephardic Crypto-Jewish ancestors who fled to southern France from Spain during the Inquisition (1478-808). The deal for the Jews fleeing to France was “change your name and convert” to the Roman Catholic faith, says Jackie. Our so-called French ancestors who immigrated here during the 17th and 18th centuries have surnames found among census of Jews who were condemned and sought by the Inquisition, she claims. NOTABLE NAMES Bourque is one, as is LeBlanc, Bourgeois, Landry, Mallet, Doucet, Vienneau, Lamarche and many more. “When the person has the name and the ’stain’ to boot, then how can they deny their identity?” says Jackie, who has the birthmark. “I’ve been doing my own personal research with all these names, just among the people I meet, or neighbours and, definitely, they all have either the pinkish dots in the neck at the hairline, or some browning/blackish splat on their back. “Others have it at the waistline. I have also found some have it on their arm at the shoulder level. “To prove my point, when I find out their names, I immediately tell them about the Semitic stain, otherwise, they could say, ‘Ah, you’re just making this up.’ ” Jackie refers us to French Sephard-im, one online source that backs this theory, located at www.geocities.com/sephardim2003/For more information contact: Jackie Bourque, 110-110 de Navarre, St. Lambert, QC J4S 1R6; telephone: (450) 923-3579; e-mail: jackie.bourque @sympatico.ca.
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Post by redwing on Dec 9, 2005 17:56:47 GMT -5
This article is nonsense. The Mongolian spot is visible on babies of all backgrounds.
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Post by ivyleak on Dec 9, 2005 18:12:19 GMT -5
Wow, very interesting. I've read about these kind of Christian Jews in the south of the US as well. I think the term 'Crypto-Jew' is a different category- that's a Jewish person who secretly adheres to Judaism while pretending to be Christian outwardly. Conversely, these people sound like true converts to Christianity especially considering that their descendants even forgot their Jewish roots. So basically, they are only genetically Jewish.
Contrary to popular belief, just because a person is born Jewish doesn't mean they are 'gung ho' zealous about their jewishness. Many didn't even want to be Jewish if it meant that their lives and their children's lives would be on the line. It was for many much easier just to 'become' a nice French Christian than to deal with the problems of being a hated minority.
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Post by anodyne on Dec 9, 2005 18:50:54 GMT -5
I'm not sure how ethnically jewish they actually are... I'd wait for more information. I have my doubts.
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Post by Yankel on Dec 10, 2005 0:29:42 GMT -5
Probably not very much. We're talking about centuries of admixture.
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Post by asdf on Dec 10, 2005 0:58:22 GMT -5
This article is nonsense. The Mongolian spot is visible on babies of all backgrounds. Actually, it's slightly more common in the French to begin with... so maybe there is almost no influence.
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Post by ivyleak on Dec 10, 2005 13:37:48 GMT -5
I read that Tay Sachs Disease is common among French Canadians in the same proportion as ashkenazi Jews. This I always found perplexing.
'Tay Sachs Disease -- People of both Ashkenazi Jewish and French Canadian ancestry have the greatest chance of being carriers of Tay Sachs disease, about 1/30 versus 1/250 in the general population. The disease results from a build up of certain substances in the brain, and is fatal in early childhood. There is presently no effective treatment for Tay Sachs disease.'
reviewed April 2002, UCSF children's hospital
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Post by Drooperdoo on Dec 10, 2005 14:55:02 GMT -5
There's one loophole in the logic of this article. The subject of the article is a woman and she's mentioning her surname. Problem: Her surname is from her father, yet--as a woman--she wouldn't have inherited his Y-chromosome. Why is this significant? Jews--especially Jews who assimilated--married local women, who were non-Jewish. As a woman, the subject of the article would have two X chromosomes--meaning: She'd only have the dna from her father's mother and her mother's mother. No male dna, and Jewishness traveled on the male line, not the female's. So a woman with her FATHER'S surname is meaningless. She doesn't have his Y-chromosome, so her "Jewishness" isn't even based on genetics.
P.S.--Every study on Jews says that the male line is Jewish, whereas the female lines are always non-Jewish. There is only one exception to this: Algerian Jews. Polish mtdna, by contrast, is Slavic, not Jewish. Spanish-Jewish mtdna is Iberian, not Jewish. French-Jewish mtdna is French, not Jewish. In other words--contrary to what had been taught in the past--Middle Eastern merchants entered Europe alone, not with families. So they took brides from among local populations. So this lady's "Jewishness" isn't even based on her dna. If she had a genetic test, her two X-chromosomes would be Western European. The real test would be males in her family. They should get their Y-chromosomes checked out. If she has a brother, she should ask him to see if he inherited a Palestinian Y-chromosome. But, as for her---- Such a test would be futile.
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Post by ivyleak on Dec 10, 2005 15:08:37 GMT -5
She doesn't have his Y-chromosome, so her "Jewishness" isn't even based on genetics. Maybe she wouldn't have the middle eastern Y-chromosome, but if she were Jewish she would have plenty of middle eastern autosomal DNA from both parents (if they are of Jewish origin). So, she is still genetically Jewish.
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Post by Drooperdoo on Dec 10, 2005 16:29:02 GMT -5
Lucille, I know about the autosomal dna. It's unfortunately not as reliable as Y-chromosome tests or mtdna tests. As for "Jewish dna" from both parents--- Jewish men took wives from among non-Jews. So that's going to massively cut down on the "Jewishness" of the female dna. It's going to be overwhelmingly--if not totally--Western European. And when you consider that these "crypto-Jews" were so assimilated that the descendants didn't realize that they had distant Jewish ancestry, that's going to further cut down on "Jewish purity". In other words, they're going to be marrying into Gentile populations for generations and further diluting the Middle Eastern genes. I mean, the genes are going to be washed out in massive waves of non-Jewish dna. It breaks down. Especially in the women. Men, at least, have the Y-chromosome, which is static. Female dna is different. So, chances are, if there is any Jewish ancestry it'll definitely show up by testing the men. With the women--due to historical factors--the persistence of anything Jewish will be far more unlikely, since the female population was non-Jewish to begin with. When you compound that with the fact that these half-Jews lost consciousness of themselves and kept breeding deeper and deeper into Gentile populations, it's not going to leave too much of a trace of the original Middle Easterners.
P.S.--By illustration: Geneticists were staggered when they did a dna analysis of a white Frenchwoman who had a black grandmother. She had 0% sub-Saharan dna. The genes were bred out. It's extremely unusual for it to happen so soon, so her case is exceptional. But it's not unheard of when you're dealing with dozens of generations in a time-span of hundreds of years. So, knowing this, I'm extremely skeptical of anyone asserting that a French Jew in 1695 who married a non-Jewish Frenchwoman, and whose children married a succession of Gentiles for the next 400 years would leave too much of a trace.
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Post by ivyleak on Dec 10, 2005 18:50:08 GMT -5
I know everyone seems to be skeptical, but this very same phenomenon happened in a town in the southern US. The babies were dying at around 3 from some mysterious illness. It was later discovered that most of the forebearers were Jewish settlers who converted to Christianity and the people completely forgot their Jewish roots. The disease was Tay-Sachs, a recessive disorder relatively bcommon (1 in 30 carriers) among the Ashkenazi. Strangely, as I wrote in an earlier post the French Canadians are also much more likely to be a carrier of Tay-Sachs - Strange, huh?
Before the Inquisition, Spain was full of Jews. So many left and formed new communities. The Jewish genes wouldn't just get bred out if so many Jews settled into a fairly closed community.
As for that woman who had one black grandmother, it would be impossible for all of her black genes to suddenly disappear (that would mean that she only had 75% of a normal human's DNA). What probably occurred was that the test didn't show any African markers. For whatever reason, she didn't receive those African markers that the scientists look for to determine African ancestry. Unfortunately, the tests are only so sensitive at this point. If she truly had one African grandparent (25%) then she would have loads of African DNA. There is no way around it.
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Post by Drooperdoo on Dec 10, 2005 19:10:49 GMT -5
Lucille, Your position actually has some merit. I mean, it's counter-intuitive to think that--after so much time and so much heterogeneity--the "Jewish genes" would survive. But it appears to be the case. Before reading the article you posted, I read studies that said that Tourette's Syndrome and Tay Sachs disease were largely considered "ethnic diseases" associated with Jews. But one article on the subject added, "Strangely, there are incidences of both diseases in Quebec". The Quebecois had suspicious rates of Tay Sachs and Tourette's Syndrome--as well as suspiciously high rates of breast cancer. [Jewish women are 16 times more likely to get breast cancer than Gentile counterparts.] So a lot of the same diseases were afflicting the Quebecois. So your article probably solves the mystery.
I just can't compass such a thought: That after centuries, and after generations of breeding with non-Jews, these "once-Jewish Quebecois" would still have the genes. They're so tenacious! I mean, my God: That Frenchwoman with the black grandmother had bred out the sub-Saharan genes in a mere two generations. Why are the Jewish genes more tenacious than negroid genes??? It boggles the mind.
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Post by ivyleak on Dec 10, 2005 19:16:15 GMT -5
The genes aren't special it is just that they remained in a closed community.
See my comment above about the quarter black woman who has no black DNA.
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Post by Drooperdoo on Dec 10, 2005 19:23:51 GMT -5
Lucille, I'll bet anything that the Frenchwoman's "black" grandmother had Caucasoid dna--like many "blacks" in Western nations. By a shuffle of the cards, she passed on largely--if not wholly--the Caucasoid genes. The chances are a billion-to-one against it. But it could happen, and--if this case is to be believed--it did. As I myself wrote, it's extraoedinarily unusual: I just wrote about it to illustrate a point. We can be related to a person, but, after so many generations, have 0% of their dna. Forget the French woman's case. Stretch out the time-scale to centuries, and add in massive heterogeneity, and one can easily see how a person can, say, have a British surname and have 0% British dna--especially after hundreds of years away.
P.S.--As to the "Jewish genes" debate. You said it's about, basically--and I don't mean to be coarse--inbreeding. Jews had small communities and didn't have the numbers to sustain notions of "racial purity," as set out by the Bible. As a result, their populations paid a massive price in genetic diseases. Granted. --But after the inbreeding ceases--- Are we still to believe that a person who is the result of heterogeneity for centuries AFTER the Jewish ancestor would still suffer the results of the inbreeding? I mean: These Quebecois were't part of any "Jewish community". Their ancestor bred into the Gentile population and remained there, breeding with Gentiles for hundreds of years. Wasn't that enough to reverse the effects of inbreeding half a millennium beforehand? It's mind-boggling.
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Post by yigal on Dec 10, 2005 21:52:35 GMT -5
The genes aren't special it is just that they remained in a closed community. See my comment above about the quarter black woman who has no black DNA. you are an idiot, they probably mean it doesnt show black Y or X which is 1% of dna and doesnt even effect phenotype if you have a ggggggg paternal grandfather who was Black and GGGGGGG maternal chinese grandmother and the rest of your ancestors where white u would test 50% Black Y and MTDNA 50% Asian but in reality you would be much less than 1/16 black
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