ABSTRACT
In 1997 DNA research on the Bene Israel Indian Jewish group was initiated mainly in and around Mumbai (Bombay). The first tentative results of the analysis of these data were communicated to a group of scholars of Indian Jewry at a conference in the Oxford Centre in 2002.1 According to these data it seemed possible for the first time to make some substantive comments on the origins of this mysterious community. The preliminary data were picked up by the London correspondent of the Times of India. Unlike the Lemba, the Bene Israel are very confident of their Jewish identity and have been practising a recognisable form of Judaism for about 200 years. However, like the Lemba, they have not always been recognised as Jews by Western Jews and by religious authorities in Israel. The idea of these DNA tests was to throw some light on the vexed question of their origin. The preliminary results of the tests suggest that genetically the Bene Israel can be differentiated from other Indian groups from which we have samples including neighbouring populations in Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat. The DNA material of the Bene Israel was compared with DNA collected from other parts of India. It transpires that a particular combination of polymorphisms – haplogroup (hg) 28, which is very widespread in India, is hardly found among the Bene Israel. In fact only one singleton was found with hg28 among the Bene Israel. In addition the tests demonstrated that the Bene Israel have affinities with Ethiopian and Yemeni datasets. Furthermore, genetic diversity was significantly lower in the Bene Israel than in the other Indian groups examined.