Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T17:31:50.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lineage Matters: DNA, Race, and Gene Talk in Judaism and Messianic Judaism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Sarah Imhoff  and
Hillary Kaell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Based on ethnographic and archival research conducted on North American Judaism and Messianic Judaism, this article argues that each group uses DNA in what appear to be sociologically similar ways but that actually differ profoundly at the theological level. Our analysis moves beyond DNA testing per se to focus on what anthropologist Kim Tallbear calls “gene talk,” referring to “the idea that essential truths about identity inhere in sequences of DNA.” Contrasting Jews and Messianic Jews, we demonstrate clearly what scholars have only begun to recognize: how theological commitments may drive investments in genetic science and interpretations of it. Further, we show how religiously significant identities associated with race, ethnicity, or lineage interact with DNA science, coming to be viewed as inalienable qualities that reside in the self but move beyond phenotype alone. Finally, we argue that gene talk in these contexts is a religiously inflected practice, which serves to binds communities and (implicitly or explicitly) authorize existing theological ideals.

Keywords

raceJudaismMessianic Judaismgeneticsscienceidentity
Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Winter 2017 , pp. 95 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. “Jewish Voice with Jonathan Bernis: Your Jewish Identity” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O42hXF6RB3U (Accessed March 22, 2015).

2. Two denominational associations (UMJC, MJAA) formed in the 1970s, with which many congregations affiliate. Although Messianic Judaism is clearly growing, estimates of adherents vary widely from thirty thousand to three million. The number of GBs is also persistently debated and downplayed. Recently, historian Yaacov Ariel estimated the number is 25–50 percent, relying on a two-decades-old source by Schiffman, Messianic rabbi Michael, Return of the Remnant: The Rebirth of Messianic Judaism (Baltimore: Lederer Publications, 1992)Google Scholar. Nearly all scholars cite 50 percent in part because they echo Messianic Jewish leaders (for whom it is the acceptable limit in a “Jewish” movement) and because ethnographers, especially, have studied flagship congregations with high Jewish involvement. A broader demographic survey is needed; however, based on this study of five sites, it seems clear that in most cases GBs account for at least 70–80 percent of attendees. Ariel, , An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 233 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaell, Hillary, “Born-again Seeking: Explaining the Gentile Majority in Messianic Judaism,” Religion 45 (2015): 43 n. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Tobin, Jonathan, “Jews for Jesus and Santorum,” Commentary, March 22, 2012, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/22/jews-for-jesus-and-santorum/. Accessed October 5, 2014.Google Scholar

4. Guttman, Nathan, “Jewish Lawyers Take Forefront in Representing Gitmo Detainees,” Jewish Daily Forward, October 2, 2009 Google Scholar. “The Genesis of Our Future,” http://urj.org/about/union/leadership/rabbijacobs/?syspage=article&item_id=109240.

5. Hirschman, Elizabeth and Panther-Yates, Donald, “Peering Inward for Ethnic Identification: Consumer Interpretation of DNA Test Results,” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 8 (2008): 48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Data on Messianics is based on twelve months (2012–2013) of participant observation by the authors and two research assistants at five sites in three mid-sized North American cities. Besides attendance at worship, Bible studies, and other activities, we conducted fifty-six-long-form conversational interviews with GBs and congregational leaders. Research also included periodical reviews of conservative Christian media and the full run of the Messianic magazine Kesher, as well as six interviews with Messianic denominational leaders in 2010. The research on Jews consisted of participant observation in three online Jewish genealogical groups (2013–2014) and data analysis from twenty-nine Jewish websites, including those highlighted in Ari Y Kelman, “The Reality of the Virtual: Looking for American Jewish Leadership Online” (AVI CHAI, Foundation, 2010), http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=12881. Historical and archival work complement the contemporary studies.

7. Tallbear, Kim, Native American DNA (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The first commercial DNA testing service began in 1998. For a list of some media related to genetic testing, see Hirschman and Panther-Yates, “Peering Inward for Ethnic Identification,” 49.

8. Kahn, Susan Martha, “The Multiple Meanings of Jewish Genes,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 29 (2005): 179–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kahn, Susan Martha, “Are Genes Jewish?” in Boundaries of Jewish Identity, ed. Glenn, Susan and Sokolov, Naomi (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), 12–26.Google Scholar Abu El-Haj, Nadia, The Genealogical Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Kahn cited above; Wahrman, Miryam, “Fruit of the Womb: Artificial Reproductive Technologies and Jewish Law,” Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 109 (2005–2006): 109–37.Google Scholar

10. On debates about gentile conversions see volume 6 of Kesher: A Journal of Messianic Judaism (Winter 1998).

11. Imhoff, Sarah, “Traces of Race,” in Who Is a Jew? ed. Greenspoon, Leonard (Purdue University Press, 2013), 1–20.Google Scholar

12. Appiah, Kwame Anthony, My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 13.Google Scholar

13. Jacobson, Matthew Frye, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 6.Google Scholar Sociological texts promoting this idea include Waters, Mary C., Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar and Nagel, Joan, American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture (1996).Google Scholar On Jews in this ethnic revival, see Jacobson, Roots Too, 18–70.

14. Waters's Ethnic Options directly influenced early studies of Messianic Judaism, including Feher, Shoshanah, Passing Over Easter: Constructing the Boundaries of Messianic Judaism (Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press, 1998)Google Scholar, Harris-Shapiro, Carol, Messianic Judaism: A Rabbi's Journey through Religious Change in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999)Google Scholar, and relatedly, Jacobs, Janet, Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto Jews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Feher, Passing Over Easter, 48.

16. An exception is Fenella Cannell who parses the intersection of race/ethnicity, religion, genealogy, and to some degree genetic testing in her studies of Latter-day Saints. Cannell, , “The Blood of Abraham: Mormon Redemptive Physicality and American Idioms of Kinship,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (2013): 577–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sylvester Johnson is another exception, although his interest lies not in gene talk but in the relationship between black ethnic talk and religion. Johnson, , “The Rise of the Black Ethnics: The Ethnic Turn in African American Religions, 1916–1945,” Religion and American Culture 20 (2010): 125–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Anidjar, Gil, Blood: A Critique of Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 49, 83.Google Scholar

18. Kidd, Colin, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Smedley, Audrey and Smedley, Brian, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 154–55.Google Scholar

19. Circe Sturm, Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-first Century (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2010).

20. Beth El Synagogue Genealogy Club, “DNA and Jewish Genealogy,” http://www.jewishpmb.org/jewish-federation-of-princetonmercer-bucks-calendar/633. Accessed March 22, 2015.Google Scholar

21. “iGenea,” sidebar ad at google.com. Accessed September 4, 2012).Google Scholar

22. “Family Tree of the Jewish People,” http://www.jewishgen.org/gedcom/. Accessed March 22, 2015.Google Scholar

23. The CMHis present in other populations, in particular among Arabs and Kurds. Skorecki, Karl et al., “Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests,” Nature 385 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hammer, Michael A. et al., “Extended Y Chromosome Haplotypes Resolve Multiple and Unique Lineages of Jewish Priesthood,” Human Genetics 126 (2009): 707–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. “Is Aronson a Cohen or a Levi?” http://boards.ancestry.com/thread.aspx?o=10&m=15.19.21.22&p=surnames.aronson. Accessed March 22, 2015.Google Scholar

25. Kleiman, Yaakov, “The Cohanim – The DNA Connection,” http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48936742.html. Accessed March 22, 2015.Google Scholar

26. Rozovsky, L., “Raise Your Hand if You’re a Kohen,” 2013, http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/762109/jewish/Raise-Your-Hand-If-Youre-A-Kohen.htm. Accessed January 11, 2015.Google Scholar

27. Kelly, D., “Clearing the Fog over Latino Links to Judaism in New Mexico,” Los Angeles Times. December 5, 2004.Google Scholar

28. Parfitt, Tudor and Egorova, Yulia, Genetics, Mass Media, and Identity: A Case Study on the Genetic Research of the Lemba and the Bene Israel (New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar. Thomas, M. et al., “Y Chromosomes Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba”—the “Black Jews of Southern Africa,” American Journal of Human Genetics 66 (February 2000): 674–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. “Jewish Genealogy by Genetics,” http://www.jewishgen.org/DNA/genbygen.html. Accessed March 23, 2015.Google Scholar

30. Henry Marcus post on “Tracing the Tribe – Jewish Genealogy on Facebook.” Accessed January 13, 2015.

31. Comments to Jiang-Stein, Deborah, “For Crying Out Loud, It's a Culture, Not a Race!” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/jewish-and/2014/04/. Accessed March 23, 2015.Google Scholar

32. “75 Percent of Today's Jews Have Middle Eastern Origins, Says DNA Pioneer,” November 13, 2014, http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/15353/75_percent_of_today_s_jews_have_middle_eastern_origins_says_dna_pioneer. Accessed November 15, 2014.

33. Maltz, Judy, “DNA Tester: 75 Percent of Jews Trace Ancestry to Middle East,” Haaretz, November 13, 2014, 1, 3.Google Scholar

34. Laskin, David, The Family (New York: Viking: 2013), 9.Google Scholar

35. Greenbaum, Elisha, “The Cohen Gene” http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/652568/jewish/The-Kohen-Gene.htm. Accessed September 1, 2014.Google Scholar

36. Ibid.

37. Joffee, Alex, “Jewish DNA Speaks” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Theology/Who_is_a_Jew/Types_of_Jews/jewishdna.shtml. Accessed October 5, 2014.Google Scholar

38. Comments to Koffmann, David, “Native Americans and Jews: The Lost Tribes Episode,” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1700–1914/America_at_the_Turn_of_the_Century/Regional_Judaism/Peddlers_and_Frontier_Judaism/Native_Americans_and_Jews.shtml. Accessed October, 5 2014.Google Scholar

39. Entine, Jon, “Israeli Researcher Challenges Jewish DNA Links to Israel, Calls Those Who Disagree ‘Nazi Sympathizers,’” Forbes.com, May 16, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/05/16/israeliresearcher-challenges-jewish-dna-links-to-israel-calls-those-who-disagreenazi-sympathizers/. Accessed September 1, 2014.Google Scholar

40. Harris-Shapiro, Messianic Judaism, 73.

41. Feher, Passing Over Easter, 48.

42. About 85 percent of U.S. Messianic Jews are charismatic, as are 65 percent of congregations, according to Hocken, Peter, Challenges of the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Messianic Jewish Movements: The Tensions of the Spirit (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2009), 97.Google Scholar Four out of five leaders in this multisite study received ordination from Pentecostal seminaries. “Charismatic” means adherence to Pentecostal beliefs, regardless of denominational affiliation.

43. Cannell, , “The Blood of Abraham,” S91.Google Scholar

44. Jewish organizations that propagate these discoveries include Be’chol Lashon (San Francisco), Kulanu (New York), Amishav (Jerusalem), and Shavei Israel (Jerusalem). Each organization has clear ideological/ theological reasons for finding “lost tribes”– ranging from wanting to grow Judaism in the wake of the Holocaust to a Zionist apocalypticism similar to premillennialist Christian theology.

45. Rausch, David A., “The Emergence of Messianic Judaism in Recent American History,” Christian Scholar's Review (1983): 44–45 Google Scholar; Winer, Robert I., The Calling: The History of the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, 1915–1990 (Wynnewood, Pa.: Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, 1990), 9, 11 Google Scholar; Ariel, Yaacov, Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880–2000 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 224–25, 229Google Scholar; Ariel, , An Unusual Relationship, 218–21.Google Scholar

46. Conversion has long been contentious in Messianic Judaism; as early as 1983, the UMJC released a paper on the topic. Fisher, John and Urbach, Chaim, “Messianic Conversion: Is it Viable?” Kesher 6 (Winter 1998): 30–49.Google Scholar This is another difference with the LDS, mentioned above: although less popular an idea today, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young believed that “Gentile” converts’ blood would be physically changed during Mormon baptism so that after the ritual they too would have the blood of Abraham. Nyman, Monte S., Shute, R. Wayne, and Bott, Randy L., Ephraim: Chosen of the Lord (Salt Lake City: Millennial Press, 1999), 63.Google Scholar

47. Kidd, The Forging of Races, 204.

48. British Israelism influenced U.S. Pentecostalism through the theology of Charles Fox Parham (Kidd, The Forging of Races, 209, 214–16) and, more directly, through Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God in California. While few GBs seem to come directly from this church (which dispersed in the 1990s), it has influenced the diffuse “Hebraic roots” movement. GBs access both Messianic and Hebraic roots websites on “reclaiming Judaic roots,” before and during their affiliation with Messianic Judaism.

49. This is not “classic” replacement theology, whereby the church becomes Israel. It is more closely linked to what Messianics often call Twohouse theology (or the “Ephraimite movement”), a kind of replacement in reverse that says the descendants of Ephraim became “the nations” foretold in Genesis 48:19—that is, the lost tribes of Israel—who will now join the Jews (descendants of Judah) to share in the eschatological promises.

50. See, for example, Gannon, Ray, Richardson, Sam, and Stokes, Bruce, “Gentiles in the Messianic Community,” Kesher 6 (Winter 1998): 61–78.Google Scholar Also, Strum, Becoming Indian, 9.

50. This pattern is found among crypto-Jews, too: Jacobs, Hidden Heritage, 96. Kaell,“Born-again Seeking,” 17.

52. Cannell, , “The Blood of Abraham,” S88.Google Scholar

53. Angier, Natalie, “Do Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows,” New York Times, August 22, 2000, F1, F6.Google Scholar

54. Weisenfeld, Judith, “On Not Being Jewish … and Other Lies,” Soundings 1 (2003): 3–11 Google Scholar; Kaye-Kantrowicz, Melanie, The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 33–46.Google Scholar

55. Magid, Shaul, American Post-Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).Google Scholar

56. Comments to Bernard Lewis, “Who Are the Semites?” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Theology/Who_is_a_Jew/Types_of_Jews/Semites.shtml. Accessed October 5, 2014.

57. Goldschmidt, Henry, “Religion, Reductionism, and the Godly Soul: Lubavitch Hasidic Jewishness and the Limits of Classificatory Thought,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 77 (2009): 547–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58. Ariel, An Unusual Relationship, 146. Among crypto-Jews: Jacobs, Hidden Heritage, 141, 174 n. 20.

59. Fredrickson, George, Racism: A Short History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 5 Google Scholar; Orni, Michael and Winant, Howard, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994), 55.Google Scholar

60. Kidd, The Forging of Races, 43–45; Benite, Zvi Ben-Dor, The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61. Griffith, R. Marie, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. Based on averaged estimates by the five rabbis/pastors in this study, 48 percent of their congregants are non-white and 38 perrcent foreign- born. Scholars have noticed this increasing diversity. Shoshanah Feher's study of a California congregation tracks it between 1992 and 2000. Feher, , “Challenges to Messianic Judaism,” in Voices of Messianic Judaism: Confronting Critical Issues Facing a Modern Movement, ed. by Dan, Cohn-Sherbok (Clarkesville, Md.: Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2001), 226.Google Scholar

63. Of forty-nine interviews with congregants, the self-defined racial breakdown is 59 percent white (29), 18.4 percent black (9), 8 percent Hispanic (4), 8 percent Asian (4), 4 percent biracial/black (2), 2 percent Arab (1). Whites are slightly overrepresented in this sample and blacks/Hispanics underrepresented, partly because some congregational leaders discouraged our interviews with non-whites, for reasons noted in this article.

64. GBs use “scientific” as shorthand for something that, no matter how hard one prays or wills it, cannot be changed, such as bloodline (though prayer may lead to discovering a hidden lineage).

65. Rubin, Rita, “Tapping into Growing Lure of Hidden Jewish Heritage Online,” Jewish Daily Forward, June 18, 2013, http://forward.com/articles/178628/tapping-into-growing-lure-of-hidden-jewish-heritag/?p=all Google Scholar; Romero, Simon, “Hispanics Uncovering Roots as Inquisition's ‘Hidden’ Jews,” New York Times, October 29, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/national/29religion.html Google Scholar; Greenspan's tone changes when he is not addressing crypto-Jews and other Jewish roots seekers: see, for example, RonNixon, , “DNATests Find Branches but FewRoots,” New York Times, November 25, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/business/25dna.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Google Scholar. All sites accessed January 23, 2015.

66. Sturm, Becoming Indian, 41.

67. Johnson, , “Rise of the Black Ethnics;” Goldschmidt, Henry, “Introduction: Race, Nation, and Religion,” in Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas, ed. Goldschmidt, and McAlister, Elizabeth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 3–34.Google Scholar

68. Kidd, , The Forging of Races, 20, 35–41.Google Scholar

69. Anidjar, Blood, passim.

70. Moore, Scott, “Gentiles and the Spirit of Adoption,” Kesher 11 (Summer 2000): 102–16.Google Scholar

71. The reference to these tribes likely comes from British Israelism, which focused on Ephraim in particular, and later Menasseh (Kidd, The Forging of Races, 204, 213). For this reason, the “two-house” movement may be called “Ephraimites” (see note 44). On parallels with Latter-day Saints, Mauss, Armand L., All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (University of Illinois Press, 2003), 161–65.Google Scholar

72. Admittedly immigrants are a small percentage of this sample; however, many did hail from independent churches with Jewish-like rituals and/or replacement theologies. Scholars have also engaged in acrimonious debates about whether the prevalence of such churches among Hispanics is driving the discovery of anusim. See Neulander, Judith, “The Crypto-Jewish Canon: Choosing to be ‘Chosen’ in Millennial Tradition,” Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 18 (1996); 19–59 Google Scholar; Hordes, Stanley, “The Sephardic Legacy in New Mexico: A History of the Crypto-Jews,” Journal of the West 354 (1996): 88 Google Scholar; Seth, D. Kunin, “Juggling Identities among the Crypto-Jews of the American Southwest,” Religion 31(1) 2001: 45, 58 n. 5.Google Scholar

73. Harris-Shapiro, Messianic Judaism, 73.

74. Egorova, Yulia, “The Proof Is in the Genes? Jewish Responses to DNA Research,” Culture and Religion 10 (2009): 159–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75. See, for comparison, Sturm, Becoming Indian, 61.

76. Mauss, All Abraham's Children; Murphy, Thomas, “Simply Implausible: DNA and a Mesoamerican Setting for the Book of Mormon,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36 (2003): 109–31Google Scholar; Southerton, Simon, Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004).Google Scholar

77. Cannell, , “The Blood of Abraham,” S87 Google Scholar; Mauss, , All Abraham’s Children, 34–35 Google Scholar. Both authors note that these ideas about racialization have changed significantly in the last generation and also that they are not crudely racialized; for example, uncommon tribal ascriptions, such as Isaacher or Asher, are expected to emerge in the End Times and are not connected with any known contemporary “race.”