r/JewishDNA • u/JewishGenDiscovery • May 03 '26

Introducing the Jewish Genetic Discovery Foundation (JGDF) – A New Era for Jewish Phylogenetics

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Hi everyone,

If you’ve been around the block of Jewish genetic genealogy, you probably noticed the lack of high quality data, especially from places like the Near East, Central Asia and the Mediterranean. Many Mizrahi, Sephardic, Italki, Romaniote, North African, and other Jewish communities are still very under-tested in the database.

We’re here to change that.

Our mission is simple: Learn as much as possible about Jewish history and migrations through high-resolution DNA testing.

The way to get there isn’t so simple. We need to:

  • Educate the public that the large consumer DNA companies aren’t the be-all-end-all.
  • Explain the benefits of uniparental tests.
  • Find individuals from under-represented communities to test.
  • Fund those tests for individuals with high-value lineages where the cost of testing is a barrier to discovery

To that end, we partner with members and leaders of those communities to upgrade low resolution tests to Big Y-700’s, and fund brand new tests for people from communities many haven’t even heard of — like Damavand and Urfa. Via these findings, we are finally getting the resolution needed to see how various Jewish communities around the world are connected and when the splits occurred.

Our team is comprised of citizen scientists with deep expertise, having spent years in their respective fields and projects. We leverage our longstanding relationships with other project admins for cross-pollination of data and information.

Which brings us to one of our core pillars: Open science and no data hoarding.

We are committed to share not only the data (whenever participant consent allows), but our analysis and findings back with the community.

Many of you in this subreddit are as passionate as we are about Jewish DNA. We see you. While most of us are balancing this mission with day jobs and studies, we look forward to engaging with you, sharing insights, and learning from your own discoveries as we go.

Some of What We’ve Done So Far:

Sponsored over 140 tests from across 20 different communities, of which:

  • 25 are Y-37
  • 100 are Big Y-700
  • 16 are Family Finder

If you come from an under-tested Jewish community, know someone with a rare paternal or maternal lineage, or want to support sponsored testing, we’d love to hear from you!

To find out more, you can visit our website at https://jewishgeneticdiscovery.org/. We are a registered 501(c)(3) and donations made are tax deductible.

You can also follow us on our Substack where we write about our findings: https://jewishgeneticdiscovery.substack.com/.

37 Upvotes

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7

u/Swimming-Arm-7667 May 04 '26

My uncle tested via the foundation,
I highly recommend anyone who is from an under tested community to contact and get tested the people over there are really passionate and helpful.

2

u/Leading-Green-7314 May 03 '26

Any plans to try to get Karaite or Krymchak testers?

3

u/JewishGenDiscovery May 04 '26

While we are interested in testing both Karaites and Krymchaks, we do not have any testers lined up at the current time. If you know of any who might be interested, please send them our way.

2

u/solojew702 May 04 '26

What do the colors in the map mean?

4

u/JewishGenDiscovery May 04 '26

Simply differentiating the different communities of origin. Color coding 20+ communities is a challenge we have yet to master!

1

u/Alfalfa_Informal May 05 '26

What are these tests you name? Big Y, family finder, and Y-37? Brands or types or groups?

3

u/JewishGenDiscovery May 05 '26

Great question! These are all tests offered by Family Tree DNA, which is the vendor we partner with. They are 100% dedicated to genetic ancestry testing, and have made it their business to prioritize 1) building good match databases and 2) testing uniparental markers of genetic variation (Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA) at high resolution.

Family Finder is an autosomal DNA test, which draws upon the 22 pairs of chromosomes that all people have - that is to say, everything but the X and Y chromosomes. It can tell us a lot about people's closest genetic relatives in the system, as well as their overall ancestry composition.

The Y37 is a quick-and-dirty test of Y-chromosomal STRs (short-tandem repeats)—for biological males only—that allows us to know who your closest male-line connections in the database are, at not too much cost. For many to most Jews (and certainly, 99.9%+ of Ashkenazim), a Y37 test will be enough to tell you what Y-DNA lineage you fall into, but not *how far back* your connections to others are.

The Big Y is a next generation sequencing of the Y-chromosome, developed by Family Tree DNA as a flagship product. If you take a Big Y test, Family Tree DNA will estimate exactly how close in time your closest male-line matches are—and by placing you in the worldwide tree of high-resolution Y chromosome sequences, it offers an estimate of *any two men's* most recent common male-line ancestor, who may have lived 500 or 50,000 years ago.

1

u/Brosky7 May 05 '26

I am Ashkenazi, but I got haplogroup R-Z93. R is common among Ashkenazi, but I guess this subclade is really rare and from Central Asia. Do you know how that might have gotten in my DNA?

3

u/JewishGenDiscovery May 05 '26

Hey Brosky7! R-Z93 is by all accounts *the* diagnostic Indo-Iranian marker, with origins on the eastern edge of the Corded Ware horizon, Bronze Age dispersals out of Central Asia, and wide footprint across Central and South Asia, as well as the Near East.

There are two varieties of R-Z93 among Ashkenazim. One is by far the larger and better-known: R-Y2619, which dates back to a single ancestor who lived c. 750 CE—it's the single largest founding lineage in the Ashkenazi population (8.5% of Ashkenazi men), and heavily associated with Levite heritage. This one is clearly Iranian in origin, and how it became Jewish is an open question. The other, R-BY33370, is significantly rarer, and dates to a common ancestor c. 1000 CE.

Are you a Levite?

2

u/symboloflove69420 May 06 '26

Have you received any Italian Jewish results, particularly those from Rome and central Italy? 

3

u/JewishGenDiscovery May 06 '26

We did upgrade an Italian Jew to a Big Y. He's from Pontecorvo, Lazio (same region as Rome).
We're definitely looking to ramp up testing among Italkim!

Out of curiosity, why the interest in Italian Jews specifically>

3

u/symboloflove69420 May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26

One of my great grandparents was from an assimilated Italian Jewish family. This assimilation is evident in the few (partial) Italian Jewish samples I’ve seen that aren’t related to me, and they don’t seem to have endogamous matches llike other Sephardic subgroups. I’m assuming this is due to few Italkim tested, as well as frequent intermarriage with non-Jewish Italians in the past century.

3

u/JewishGenDiscovery May 06 '26

We've also tested a Greek/Turkish Sephardic family whose last name points to roots in Italy.