The Challenges of Jewish DNA testing
By Kitty Munson Cooper
Blogging at blog.kittycooper.com
23 pairs of chromosomes
Image of painted (SKY) chromosomes - Courtesy of DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Museum of Medical Research
Questions people hope to answer with DNA testing are:
Where are my ancestors from?
Do I have any unknown relatives out there?
Am I related to ... those other ENGELs (or Schwartz or other family name)?
Three types of personal DNA tests
Y test for father's father's line
mtDNA for mother's mother's line
Autosomal DNA test for all your ancestors
Where to do an Autosomal DNA Test if you are Jewish?
My recommendation:
Test at 23andme and then upload those results elsewhere, that gets you high level haplogroups and some health results
- Upload those results to Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage, & GEDmatch
If you can afford it also test at Ancestry.com
- Problem: Ancestry removes population specific segments giving better matches but it is least likely to have matches for recent immigrants. It has the largest database and good tree matching.
If you can afford it also do Y testing of your male line(s) at Family Tree DNA. Start with the 37 marker STR test.
SNP - Single Nucleotide Polymorphism
a DNA mutation where a single letter chang3s
STRs are short tandem repeats
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
2 Types of Y DNA Tests
Deep ancestry - haplogroup
More recent ancestry - surname studies
Y Haplogroups from SNPs
Jewish Y Haplogroups: J1c3, J2a Cohanim
R1a1 most Levites
E1a1 is frequent
Others: various J subgroups, T1, and E1b
Sample Y DNA results at 67 markers for a Jewish man
Not a single surname in common among these close matches
Jewish E haplogroup Family Tree DNA project
A project at Family Tree DNA for Jewish Y markers
Mitochondria under a microscope
Jewish mtDNA
Near Eastern origin mtDNA Haplogroups:
K1a9 and N1b2
others are H variations, probably European
Your autosomal DNA results are about 700,000 lines of data in a spreadsheet
Inheritance from 8 g-grandparents,
courtesy of Angie Bush
Ancestry.com Ethnicity
Ethnicity Estimates for half Galician half Polish Jewish Person
23andme.com Estimate
Ethnicity Estimates for half Galician half Polish Jewish Individual
MyHeritage.com estimate for the same person: left tested there, right uploaded
The problem with Jewish Autosomal DNA matching is that we are all related!
MyHeritage Matches for our Galician and Polish Jewish person
You do not need to look at all those matches!
Start with the low hanging fruit, "extended family" estimated 3rd cousins or closer and large segments
Enter the cMs and get probable relationships https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4
Lara Diamond is collecting Ashkenazi data and her preliminary report is here: https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/05/ashkenazic-shared-dna-survey-data-by.html
Close relationships are within the normal range but at the high end, the average is about 100-200 cM larger than the norm
Above, results in my family, see also this paper
academia.edu/7236789/Why_Autosomal_DNA_Test_Results_Are_Significantly_Different_for_Ashkenazi_Jews
Kitty's Guidelines for Jewish DNA Matches worth following up on
- At least one segment > 20 cM
- Another segment > 10 cM
- Several more good sized segments
- Sort by the largest segment
Match to a maternal side Ashkenazi 3rd cousin
Comparison to a paternal side Norwegian 3rd cousin
Clustering tools often create one big blob for Ashkenazi Jews - this one used the range 90-250 to get past that
has not yet been useful
MyHeritage is the best place to work on Jewish DNA matches
Theory of Family Relativity for Steven and Stanley
Some of the items on the DNA match page for Steve and Stanley
The shared matches shows how they are related to each of you!
The MyHeritage Chromosome Browser lets you see a map of the DNA segments where you match.
Plus the segments which triangulate are outlined!
23andMe will also show how the shared matches are related
Getting New Cousins to Respond to You
- Have a family tree online
- Upload friendly picture of yourself
- Include details of who matches whom (they may have multiple kits)
- Offer them information when you write to them
Do not be disheartened by lack of responses, some rarely log in
Aunt Shaindel is found!
Israel Pickholtz documents his extensive family DNA project
He blogs at allmyforeparents.blogspot.com/
There is lots more information on my blog about Jewish DNA for example, read
https://blog.kittycooper.com/2014/11/using-ashkenazi-jewish-dna-to-find-family/
Challenges of Endogamy: Jewish DNA testing 2021
By Kitty Cooper
Challenges of Endogamy: Jewish DNA testing 2021
Working with DNA testing presents unique challenges to the Jewish genealogical community due to the close relatedness of their DNA and the lack of deep family trees
