Joe Rogan, Jewish Genetics, and an Ignorant Trope

I am not a fan of Joe Rogan and do not watch him, but about 11 million people listen to each episode, mostly young and middle-aged men. I have seen enough clips to know that he tries to be funny, but often swims in water that is well over his head, presenting as fact his thoughts about subjects he does not know well, and sometimes the result is harmful. This week, in a conversation with comedian Sam Tallent, he recklessly suggested that Israel restricts consumer DNA tests because most Israeli Jews are Europeans, adding that “the real Semites are the Palestinians” and that Benjamin Netanyahu’s family is from Poland. That claim is so grating that it is hard to type, let alone hear.

Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing in Israel

Investigating this claim, I learned that Israel does restrict direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Its Genetic Information Law of 2000 requires that genetic tests be performed in accredited laboratories with a physician’s referral, informed consent and, for many tests, genetic counseling. Paternity tests generally require a court order, even when everyone involved consents, because a paternity finding can affect a child’s religious status, including the right to marry. The law also prohibits employers and insurers from using genetic information. As a result, 23andMe sells Israelis its ancestry test but not its health reports, and MyHeritage, an Israeli company, does not offer its DNA test to Israeli residents. Clinical genetic testing, by contrast, is routine and largely covered by national health insurance, and Israel’s state-funded carrier-screening program is among the most comprehensive in the world.

I also learned that Israel is not unusual in restricting these tests. France has prohibited direct-to-consumer genetic testing since 1994, including ancestry kits. Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and Portugal generally require medical supervision and informed consent for health-related genetic testing, with Switzerland also requiring professional oversight of ancestry testing. The stated rationales include protecting genetic privacy, preventing genetic discrimination, and limiting the potential harms of unexpected findings, including revelations about biological parentage.

The Identity of Israeli Jews

The more disturbing and misleading claim is that Israeli Jews are not from the Land of Israel. Repeating it to millions of listeners while antisemitic attacks increase in frequency and severity is irresponsible, and the demographic and genetic data contradict it. I know more about genetics than about international law, since I formally studied it, have published some genetic research, and have followed the literature about Jewish genetics for over 40 years.

In a 2016 Pew survey, 45 percent of Israeli Jews identified as Ashkenazi and 48 percent as Sephardi or Mizrahi [1]. Mizrahi Jews descend from communities that lived for centuries, in some cases millennia, in Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Libya and Morocco. Most came to Israel between 1948 and the early 1970s, when roughly 850,000 Jews left or were expelled from Arab countries. Genetically, they cluster with other Middle Eastern populations. Whatever one thinks of Rogan’s argument, it does not apply at all to about half of Israeli Jews.

The Ashkenazi history is different; it is longer and more complicated than most people understand. Jews were living in Rome by the second century BCE, and their numbers in Italy grew after the Roman wars in Judea. By the 10th century CE, Jews from Italy and France had settled in the Rhineland (“Ashkenaz”) and later moved east into Poland and Lithuania. Along the way, the population genetically admixed with Southern Europeans, with a later and smaller Eastern European contribution [2]. But sometime before the 14th century, the Ashkenazi population passed through a severe “bottleneck,” which is a sharp reduction in population size that narrows the gene pool. Genomic data indicate that modern Ashkenazim descend from an effective founding population of about 350 people who lived 25 to 32 generations ago (roughly 600 to 800 years) [3]. Interestingly, ancient DNA from a medieval Jewish cemetery in Erfurt, Germany, confirms that the founder event and the main sources of ancestry predate the 14th century [4]. Crusader massacres and mass expulsions probably contributed, although the genetic data cannot identify the cause. Since then, this bottlenecked population expanded to more than 10 million.

The result is today’s population of mixed ancestry. Carmi and colleagues’ research suggests that Ashkenazim are an approximately even admixture of European and Middle Eastern sources [3], and Xue and colleagues estimated the Levantine share at roughly 30 to 50 percent [2]. These reports probably underestimate the Levantine component, because Southern Europeans, the usual European reference population, also have ancient Near Eastern ancestry. Because the admixture predates the bottleneck, it is distributed throughout the population rather than concentrated in some families. European and Levantine ancestry coexist in the same genomes.

The Word “Semitic”

Here, Rogan also shows his ignorance, and it is discouraging to have been rebutting comments about “Semites” since I was in kindergarten. So here we go: “Semitic” describes a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Amharic. In scholarly use, it is not a genetic, demographic or even an ethnic category. Hebrew is the native language of most Israeli Jews, so using the term to exclude them fails even on its own terms. And the word “antisemitism,” popularized in Germany in 1879, always has referred specifically to hatred of Jews. Playing loose with linguistic, genetic and legal knowledge may be entertaining, but it is deceptive and dangerous.

Why the Genetics Are Beside the Point

In the end, the genetics are beside the point. Jewish peoplehood never has been defined by DNA. I am among the many Jews interested in genetics for the story it tells, but people who convert to Judaism are full members of the Jewish people, and the admixture data likely reflect that history of conversion and intermarriage. But the key point is that we speak and pray in the language of ancient Israel and face Jerusalem when we pray, and our religious and historical sources, along with a substantial archaeological record, place our origins in that land. Denying it mainly serves to deny the legitimacy of Israel and of the Jewish connection to it. The argument is an old trope, and it is antisemitic in the precise sense of the word, not in the loose way the term often is used.

But this point is equally important: nothing in this historical and scientific record implies that only Jews have rights there, or that Arabs, Christians and others do not; many peoples and civilizations have lived in that land. The genetic data support that too: Jewish groups and Levantine Arabic-speaking groups, including Palestinians, both derive much of their ancestry from Bronze Age Levantine populations [5]. How this history and science should bear on today’s politics is a matter of legitimate debate. I have strong opinions on it but recognize that others disagree. That is fine and good, as long as we agree on the facts.

References

1. Pew Research Center. Israel’s Religiously Divided Society. March 8, 2016.
2. Xue J, Lencz T, Darvasi A, Pe’er I, Carmi S. The time and place of European admixture in Ashkenazi Jewish history. PLoS Genet. 2017;13(4):e1006644.
3. Carmi S, Hui KY, Kochav E, et al. Sequencing an Ashkenazi reference panel supports population-targeted personal genomics and illuminates Jewish and European origins. Nat Commun. 2014;5:4835.
4. Waldman S, Backenroth D, Harney E, et al. Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century. Cell. 2022;185(25):4703-4716.e16.
5. Agranat-Tamir L, Waldman S, Martin MAS, et al. The genomic history of the Bronze Age Southern Levant. Cell. 2020;181(5):1146-1157.e11.