Due to the lack of written records or inscription, the origin and affiliation of Indian Jewish populations with other world populations remain contentious. Previous genetic studies have found evidence for a minor shared ancestry of Indian Jewish with Middle Eastern (Jewish) populations. However, these studies (relied on limited individuals), haven't explored the detailed temporal and spatial ad...

In Māori contexts in Aotearoa New Zealand (henceforth New Zealand) you often hear, “Don’t sit on the table.” 1 Underlying the prohibition of sitting on tables used for food purposes is a complex binary cultural system. The comment “You are what you eat” and the practice of not permitting people to sit on dining tables concern food traditions, what goes in and what comes out of the human body, a...

The Jewish diaspora can be viewed as a natural process in population dispersion and differentiation. We extend genetic studies on the Jewish diaspora to an analysis of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) haplotype distributions in the Jewish peoples, and show the value of this information for the design of Jewish marrow donor registries. HLA data from the Hadassah Bone Marrow Registry having parental...

The arrangement of this study, which approaches the Second Temple Enochic text after I have already examined the medieval Jewish materials and traditions, might appear strange. Yet this organizational choice provides a unique opportunity to highlight some Merkabah features of the Slavonic apocalypse that link the symbolic world of this early Enochic text with the later Metatron imagery.1 It see...

English law, like the English language, is an amalgam of diverse cultural influences. The legal system may fairly be seen as a composite of discrete elements from disparate sources. After the conquest of 1066, the Normans imposed on the English an efficiently organized social system that crowded out many Anglo-Saxon traditions. The Jews, whom the Normans brought to England, in their turn contri...

Many religious traditions teach that we should worship God, and philosophers have explored the requirement to what might make God worthy of worship. These also prohibit worshipping other gods. This essay explores, from a Jewish perspective, it mean gods, rationale behind prohibition be, why be so grave.

Growth hormone insensitivity (GHI) may be primary, caused by defects in the GH receptor, or further along the GH-insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) axis, or secondary, resulting from a variety of illnesses or malnutrition affecting various steps in the pathway from the GH binding to IGF-I action. GH receptor deficiency, although rare, with only 229 cases reported, is the most common cause of ...

In a previous study we found that a Tay-Sachs disease (TSD) causing mutation in the intron 9 donor splice site of the HEXA gene occurs at high frequency in non-Jewish patients and carriers from the British Isles. It was found more frequently in subjects of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh origin compared with English origin (63% and 31% respectively). We have now tested, in a blind study, 26 American...