What ethnicity do the bulk of Ashkenazi (European) Jews look like to you?

Question

Russian? Syrian? Italian? etc etc etc...

This is a question out of a purely inquisitive and sociological nature. No offense is to be given by this, and no generalizations are implied.

The truth is that in today's world, as in the world of the past, Ashkenazi (European) Jews have been seen by many, by anti-semite and not alike, as more than a religion, but as a race with distinct physical characteristics.

Geneticists have concluded that many Ashkenazi Jews share a common gene pool originating in the Middle East, largely of the Fertile Crescent, but as is clear to the modern eye, we Jews don't seem to resemble any single ethnicity in particular anymore.

What do you think?

Answer 1

Italian Greek Albanian Lebanese

Answer 2

In general Jews tend to resemble the resident population of whatever nation they're in. Prior to the Holocaust a survey was done of Jews in Germany to show they were genetically inferior because they had a smaller proportion of Aryan's then rest of the German population - the results of the survey were suppressed when the results showed that more Jews were Aryan then the Germans.

The similarity is greater then can be excused through conversion, which in general has always been rather minuscule because Jews are forbidden to have missionaries.

It would seem reasonable that the genes for most phenotypes were extant in Jewish communities, even if not expressed, and became more prevalent due to their environment. An interesting demonstration of this would be the appearance of Israeli specific features - considering modern Israelis are a medley of all the groups which immigrated to Israel over the last 2 millennia along with those that never left.

Answer 3

The Ashkenazi Jews that I've seen look like any other European ethnicity.

Some of them have blonde hair and blue eyes, some have brown hair and brown eyes, some of their ethnic features are prominent (e.g. nose), and some of them don't have visibly different features.

I think that modern Jews don't resemble one single ethnicity.  

Answer 4

there  are also many die-hard 'bible scholars' who believe that all Europeans are desc. from the Israelites.  Believe it or not!

Answer 5

There are certain haplotypes that are likely direct lineages from the the patriarchs AND there may be matrilinial lines as well. However, one calculation is that just the line of Aaron is 106 generations old.

Of course, in 106 generations one person could have   8.112963841 +31. In other words, move that decimal point 31 spaces to the right if they just doubled each generation. That is more than our present world population by several powers of magnitude.

Were it not for intermarriage within national groups, we would have that many ancestors as well.

Personally, I think I look like a Darghistani Mountain Jew, but my father was adopted and my mother is mostly Scots-Irish from the South.