Ancestral Origins And Genetic Diversity of Moroccan Jews

Jews have been present in North Africa for more than 2,000 years. Moroccan Jewish oral tradition claims that they originated in the Holy Land. Some European historians and travelers of the 19th and early 20th centuries thought they were mostly natives - Berbers - who converted to Judaism. Another hypothesis is that part of Morocco's Berber population descends from former Jews who converted to Islam. Some of the Moroccan Jews, the Toshavim, have been living in Morocco since ancient times, others, the Megorashim, came to Morocco after having been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century.
What are the ancestral origins of Moroccan Jews? The study on the Y chromosome of nearly 250 Moroccan Jewish men carried out as part of the Avotaynu DNA project will try to answer this question. It will be supported by an empirical comparison of the ethnic origins of Moroccan Jews and those of Ashkenazim and non-Jews from Morocco.
Raquel Levy-Toledano is a French MD, PhD, Sephardic Jew, born in Morocco and very much involved in research on Moroccan Jewish genealogy. She is a board member of the Cercle de Généalogie Juive where she leads the North African group, a co-administrator of Avotaynu DNA, the founder of a genealogy society, NAJMA (Nos Ancêtres Juifs Marocains et Algériens) and of the Généalogie des Juifs Marocains Group on Facebook, and a volunteer curator at Geni.com. Because there are few sources and documents on Moroccan Jews, to promote Moroccan Jewish genealogy, she set up a Facebook group encouraging the close to 10,000 members to built their tree and to collaborate on Geni. This allowed the group to build a tree of more than 350,000 profiles on Geni.
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[@gianpaolo8871]

This was an amazing talk! I agree with what has been said concerning admixture estimates. In this respect, the GEDMATCH DODECAD V3 calculator is in my opinion very accurate. Some blame it for being obsolete, but in my experience all Oracle estimations (1,2,3 and 4 population estimations) of Dodecad V3 can give you excellent "fingerprints" of both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews. I compared dozens of GEDCOM family trees and was able to establish "fingerprints" of Sephardim and Ashkenazim on DODECAD V3. Not scientific (we need very large samples to achieve statistical significance), but very very reproducible in my experience.

[@tlaloc-rh9sm]

How nice that we can know about Dna and the pathways they move.

[@CitizenTurtleIsland]

That's rather fascinating to hear about this notion of "resevoirs of survivors". I have 2 German parents born in 1929 and 1931. Surprisingly, it appears 2 and perhaps even 3 of my 4 grandparents had distant Jewish Sephardic and/or Ashkenazi ancestry that was passed on to me via DNA. This is based on observations of my matches via autosomal DNA. I've often wondered about the living Jewish people whom I match, the majority are in the USA... with most having roots there that predate WWII. For some time, I've had a hunch that I may have DNA that is shared with ghosts... people who did not have the opportunity to live and have descendants. (I have a match named Gindi incidentally. That name came up. And on the issue of Europeans apparently often getting 1-2% Jewish ancestry... I would say that is inaccurate! I also match tons of Europeans but very few of them get Jewish ethnicity estimates. It is not common. There was a suggestion that it's commonly, and therefore, incorrectly assigned. In any case, ethnicity estimates are not that useful. Autosomal matches... that's telling you something, especially if >15 cM is involved... if there is more than one segment involved.)

[@peggylanton6384]

Somebody should check the written transcription. It’s soooooo bad

[@ZenatiOmar]

In Morocco you find many Jewish Cemetaries and places were Jewish Saints lived