Open Thread: September 2011

Pavitra

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

If continuing the discussion becomes impractical, that means you win at open threads; a celebratory top-level post on the topic is traditional.

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

If continuing the discussion becomes impractical, that means you win at open threads; a celebratory top-level post on the topic is traditional.

(although to be clear Askenazim do not genetically look very European compared to most Europeans)

Really depends on who you compare them to.

Naturally American Whites with their predominantly Northern European (German, English, Irish, Scottish) origins aren't really that close to unmixed Askeanazi. But on nearly every study I've run into they are for example closer to Greeks and Italians than the Souther Europeans are to Austrians, British or Russians.

In any case regardless of their genetics, Askenazi Jews are European because:

They basically do come from Europe (in the geographic sense of where they really became a people different from other Jews complete with their own High German language)
In the first approximation they think of themselves and others think of them as European-derived/White or at the very least Western nearly anywhere in the world they live in (be it France, South Africa, the US or even, rather interestingly, in Israel).
Extensive memeplex exchange with the Christian peoples of Eu

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