Jewish Heritage
Which companies have the best reference populations for tracing Jewish ancestry?
The Jewish diaspora is scattered around the world, but for people with Jewish ancestry a DNA test can often provide a reliable indicator of their heritage. This is because Jewish people have traditionally married within their own communities for hundreds of years. So when the scientists try to assign reference populations to clusters, Jewish people stand out as a distinct genetic cluster. This means that the ancestry proportions generally roughly correspond with your known heritage.
If you have one Jewish grandparent, you would expect that about 25 per cent of your DNA would be assigned to a Jewish population. There is a wide variation in the range because of the random way in which autosomal DNA is inherited, so the Jewish percentage might be as low as 15 per cent or as high as 35 per cent. An assignment of 12.5 per cent Jewish might indicate that you have a Jewish great grandparent. Remember that our ancestors sometimes hid their Jewish heritage because of discrimination and prejudice.
Most of the Jewish population in both the UK and the USA are of Ashkenazi
Jewish heritage, and it is this group that is best represented in reference populations. Ancestry can even identify six subregions in Eastern Europe for people of Ashkenazi Jewish origin. 23andMe will report Ashkenazi heritage, but no subregions. MyHeritage has reference populations from Sephardic Jews from North Africa, Mizrahi Jews from Iran and Iraq, Yemenite Jews, Ashkenazi Jews and Ethiopian Jews. FamilyTreeDNA distinguishes between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish heritage, and its updated myOrigins 3.0 report will include four Jewish populations. Living DNA does not currently have any Jewish reference populations.