I resisted the temptation to respond to Jana's post because I have seen from experience that it does no good; it is better to ignore her.

Of course her facts are completely wrong. Genetic tests conducted over the last decade have shown conclusively that Jews are indeed genetically distinct from the populations among whom they live, and indeed are genetically closer to the Palestinian Arabs than they are to most white Europeans. I was quite surprised to hear this when it was first announced, but you can't argue with DNA.

So the Middle East conflict really is one between "brothers". Is this good news or bad news for us Jews? I don't know. I had also thought of Judaism as being a religion, not a racial or ethnic group, but the evidence shows clearly that it is both. What's more, futher studies have shown that the Levites, a patrilineal "tribe" or bloodline within the Jewish community (of which I am a member) really are related even more closely than Jews in general. We Levites are said to be descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. In any lineage propagated through the male line, the Y chromosome will be passed unchanged (except for occasional mutations) from father to son generation after generation after generation. And testing shows that this is indeed the case: all Levite males the world over have Y chromosomes which are virtually identical to each other.

Jewishness in general, on the other hand, is passed through the matrilineal line. That is, you are considered Jewish if your mother was Jewish. It would therefore be interesting to see a comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of Jews and non-Jews, but I don't know of any such studies.

As for Jana's attacks on the Talmud and Jewish tradition, I don't think anything is going to change her mind, so as I suggested before it is probably best to let her rants fall on deaf ears. She may think she is a butterfly, but I can think of several other types of insect she more closely resembles. Her ideas are tired and moth-eaten, so if she wants to be a member of the order Lepidoptera, I will henceforth refer to her as the Rogue Moth.