Cultural Identity, DNA Testing & Religion

A very interesting article was written and posted by David Gewirtz, who hosts the ZDNet Government and ZDNet DIY-IT blogs. Not being Jewish, it’s a subject I hadn’t spent any time considering, but Mr. Gewirtz takes on the topic of cultural and religious identity. When you take a DNA test with Ancestry, you’ll get results that might show how “Jewish” you are. Wait a minute! Isn’t Jewish a religion? Why don’t our DNA tests tell us how Catholic or Lutheran we might be? Well… It’s much more complicated than that.

Mr. Gewirtz decidedly did not have a good time during his 5 years of Hebrew School, and that shaped his religious (non-religious?) identity for life. Then along comes DNA testing. He tested with Ancestry, then 23andMe, as well as Living DNA. The results were disconcerting, but also uplifting in many ways.

I don’t usually find other folks’ DNA results all that fascinating, but I’ll make an exception for David Gewirtz. Let me worn you, the article starts out a little boring (statistics and government stuff), setting the stage for the interesting parts in the later paragraphs. It’s worht wading through.

Read the article, My ancestry adventure: When DNA testing delivers unexpected and unsettling results, by David Gewirtz. I ended up subscribing the Gewirtz’ newsletter, as he’s a good writer.

About Leland Meitzler

Leland K. Meitzler founded Heritage Quest in 1985, and has worked as Managing Editor of both Heritage Quest Magazine and The Genealogical Helper. He currently operates Family Roots Publishing Company (www.FamilyRootsPublishing.com), writes daily at GenealogyBlog.com, writes the weekly Genealogy Newsline, conducts the annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour to the Family History Library, and speaks nationally, having given over 2000 lectures since 1983.

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