The Challenges of Jewish
DNA testing: a Q & A
Questions people hope to answer with DNA 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)?
Ancestry.com Ethnicity
Ethnicity Estimates for half Galician half Polish Jewish Person
23andme.com Estimate
FamilyTreeDNA.com Ethnicity
Ethnicity Estimates for half Galician half Polish Jewish Person
MyHeritage.com Estimate
Ethnicity Estimates for half Galician half Polish Jewish Person
MyHeritage.com estimate for the same person: left tested there, right uploaded
We Found South African 3rd cousins with DNA!
The "G" trick
The cousin level = the number of "G"s , else the greats plus one
If you are in different generations take the shorter path and the other is removed by the generation difference
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
Mitochondria under a microscope
Near Eastern origin mtDNA Haplogroups:
K1a9 and N1b2
others are H variations, possibly European
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
Kitty's Guidelines for Jewish DNA Matches worth following up on: sort by LARGEST SEGMENT if you can
- At least one segment > 20 cM
- Another segment > 10 cM
- Several more good sized segments
- Review what Gil Bardige said in his DNA session 1396 with Adam
blogger Lara Diamond is collecting Ashkenazi data and her most recent report is here: https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/09/ashkenazic-shared-dna-survey-september.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
Match to a maternal side Ashkenazi 3rd cousin
Comparison to a paternal side Norwegian 3rd cousin
Enter the cMs and get probable relationships https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4
but for Jewish matches further away than 2nd cousins,
remove 10%
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
Israel Pickholtz documents his extensive family DNA project in his book
He blogs at allmyforeparents.blogspot.com/
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
One other reason to test DNA is if you are adopted or have an unknown father. These cases are very difficult in Jewish DNA, you need 2nd cousin matches to solve them
https://blog.kittycooper.com/2017/01/a-jewish-adoptee-finds-his-birth-family/
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/
The Challenges of Jewish DNA testing
By Kitty Cooper
The Challenges of Jewish DNA testing
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. Short presentation for the IAJGS Ask the DNA Experts Q&A session
