Abstract
The Bene Israel Jewish community from West India is a unique population whose history before the 18th century remains largely unknown. Bene Israel members consider themselves as descendants of Jews, yet the identity of Jewish ancestors and their arrival time to India are unknown, with speculations on arrival time varying between the 8th century BCE and the 6th century CE. Here, we characterize the genetic history of Bene Israel by collecting and genotyping 18 Bene Israel individuals. Combining with 486 individuals from 41 other Jewish, Indian and Pakistani populations, and additional individuals from worldwide populations, we conducted comprehensive genome-wide analyses based on FST, principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE, identity-by-descent sharing, admixture linkage disequilibrium decay, haplotype sharing and allele sharing autocorrelation decay, as well as contrasted patterns between the X chromosome and the autosomes. The genetics of Bene Israel individuals resemble local Indian populations, while at the same time constituting a clearly separated and unique population in India. They are unique among Indian and Pakistani populations we analyzed in sharing considerable genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations. Putting together the results from all analyses point to Bene Israel being an admixed population with both Jewish and Indian ancestry, with the genetic contribution of each of these ancestral populations being substantial. The admixture took place in the last millennium, about 19–33 generations ago. It involved Middle-Eastern Jews and was sex-biased, with more male Jewish and local female contribution. It was followed by a population bottleneck and high endogamy, which can lead to increased prevalence of recessive diseases in this population. This study provides an example of how genetic analysis advances our knowledge of human history in cases where other disciplines lack the relevant data to do so.
Highlights
How well does the oral history of a group reflect its origins? The Bene Israel community in West India is a unique community whose historical background before the 18th century other than their oral history remains largely unknown [1,2,3]
The Middle-Eastern populations were used to distinguish between Middle-Eastern and Jewish specific ancestry while the Pakistani populations were used to represent populations that are geographically located between India and the Middle-East
As the merging with Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) resulted in considerable reduction in number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) available for analysis, we only considered this merged dataset for some analyses
Summary
How well does the oral history of a group reflect its origins? The Bene Israel community in West India is a unique community whose historical background before the 18th century other than their oral history remains largely unknown [1,2,3]. The exact timing of this event, as well as the origin and identity of the survivors, are not part of this oral history Some date it around two millennia ago [2], whereas others suggest a specific date and origin: around 175 BCE, where the survivors were Jews living in the northern parts of the land of Israel that left their homes during the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes [5]. Adding to the vagueness of Bene Israel origin is the fact that a similar story of seven surviving couples is found in the oral histories of other Indian populations [2,3]. Beyond vague oral history and speculations, there has been no independent support for any of these claims, and Bene Israel origin and whether they are related at all to other Jewish populations and remain "shrouded in legend" [4]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
