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This article presents a new evaluation and analysis of the five censuses undertaken at the initiative of philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore among the Jewish population of Palestine/the Land of Israel between 1839 and 1875. The main purpose of the censuses was to ascertain the composition and needs of a generally poor Jewish population in order to better provide to its welfare. The information collected concerned basic demographic characteristics, countries of origin—namely along the main divide of Ashkenazi and Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews—and periods of immigration, social composition, and religiosity. By combining the different censuses into an integrated database, the authors are able to show changes intervening over time not only regarding the aggregate population, but also concerning individual and household profiles. The data aggregation allows us to better understanding the material conditions of the Jewish population and to outline with greater accuracy the relationship between socio-cultural communities and socio-economic stratification. The analysis unveiled the patterns of Jewish immigration all along the surveyed period and its variations by size and by countries of origin. These data provide important evidence concerning the overall Jewish presence in the Land of Israel and demonstrate that immigration was a significant factor well before the formal beginning of Aliyah in the early 1880s. No such analysis of the whole set of Montefiore censuses had been performed previously. The findings will prove very useful to historians and social scientists in their further investigation of the area and its populations in the 19th century.

The article focuses on the registers of patients of the surgical units of the Imperial University of Vilna and the Medical-Surgical Academy in Vilna as interesting sources for the history of Ashkenazi Jews in the city, especially their everyday existence and diseases. Personal data from these registers were analyzed and compared in order to identify the most common health problems and gather some information about patients’ occupations. Jewish medical practitioners have been presented as well. Altogether the dynamics of social changes within the Jewish community of Vilna in the first half of the nineteenth century was assessed as rather slow.

Historically, European Jews have specialized in financial services while being the victims of antisemitism. We find that the present-day demand for finance is lower in German counties where historical antisemitism was higher, compared to otherwise similar counties. Households in counties with high historical antisemitism have similar saving rates but invest less in stocks, hold lower saving deposits, and are less likely to get a mortgage to finance homeownership after controlling for wealth and a rich set of current and historical covariates. Present-day antisemitism and supply-side forces do not fully explain the results. Households in counties where historical antisemitism was higher distrust the financial sector more—a potential cultural externality of historical antisemitism that reduces wealth accumulation in the long run.

Purpose Nonclassic 21-hydroxylase deficiency, a mild form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), is estimated to be the most common autosomal recessive condition, with an especially high prevalence in Ashkenazi Jews (3.7% affected, 30.9% carriers), based on a 1985 HLA-B linkage study of affected families. Affected individuals, especially women, may suffer from hyperandrogenism and infertility. State-of-the-art genetic studies have not been done to confirm these remarkable rates. Methods CYP21A2 genotyping was performed in 200 unrelated healthy Ashkenazi Jewish subjects and 200 random US Caucasians who did not self-identify as a specific ethnicity using multiplex minisequencing, real-time polymerase chain reaction and junction site analysis. Results Nonclassic CAH carriership was found similarly in 15% (95% confidence interval (CI): 10.4–20.7) of Ashkenazi Jews and 9.5% (95% CI: 5.8–14.4) of Caucasians ( P =0.13). The proportion of Ashkenazi Jewish nonclassic CAH carriers (0.15 versus 0.309, P <0.0001) and disease affected (0.005 versus 0.037, P =0.009) was not as high as previously reported. The estimated prevalence of nonclassic CAH in Caucasians was 1 in 200 (0.5%, 95% CI: 0.01–2.8). Conclusion Nonclassic CAH is a common condition, regardless of ethnicity, and should be considered with preconception and infertility counseling.

Purpose Population BRCA1/BRCA2 screening identifies carriers irrespective of family history, yet this information is actionable for relatives. We examined familial communication rates and cascade testing in the screening setting and assessed sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors. Methods Participants in a BRCA1/BRCA2 screening study of healthy Ashkenazi Jews self-administered a family communication questionnaire. Intent to communicate was determined before genetic status was known, along with result communication (carriers and noncarriers) 6 months and 2 years after enrollment. Carriers underwent in-depth interviews and provided cascade testing information. Results In total, 88% (524/595) of questionnaire responders and 97% (30/32) of carriers informed at least one relative. In multivariate analysis, family history ( P  = 0.005) and greater Satisfaction With Health Decision scores ( P  < 0.001) predicted communication of results. Among carriers’ adult first- and second-degree relatives, 71 (48%) had cascade testing, more commonly performed in first- (58%) than in second-degree relatives (26%, P  = 0.0002), and in females (56%) vs. males (36%, P  = 0.02). At least 11% remained uninformed. Conclusion Familial communication rates and characteristics in a screening setting parallel those reported by Cancer Genetics clinics. Universal screening circumvents dependence on familial disclosure. However, our finding that satisfaction—a potentially modifiable factor—predicts communication, raises the hypothesis that improving the testing experience could facilitate familial communication.

In Ashkenazi (East European) Jews, three predominant mutations in BRCA1 (185delAG and 5382insC) and BRCA2 (6174delT) account for the majority of germline mutations in high‐risk breast and/or ovarian cancer families. Among non‐Ashkenazi Jews, the 185delAG, Tyr978Ter, and a handful of “private” mutations have been reported anecdotally within both genes. In this study we attempted to determine the spectrum of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations in high‐risk Jewish individuals, non‐carriers of any of the predominant Jewish mutations. We employed multiplex PCR and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis for BRCA2, and combined denaturing high performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) and protein truncation test (PTT) for BRCA1, complemented by DNA sequencing. We screened 47 high‐risk Jewish individuals, 26 Ashkenazis, and 21 non‐Ashkenazis. Overall, 13 sequence alterations in BRCA1 and eight in BRCA2 were detected: nine neutral polymorphisms and 12 missense mutations, including five novel ones. The novel missense mutations did not co‐segregate with disease in BRCA1 and were detected at rates of 6.25% to 52.5% in the general population for BRCA2. Our findings suggest that except for the predominant mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 in Jewish individuals, there are only a handful of pathogenic mutations within these genes. It may imply novel genes may underlie inherited susceptibility to breast/ovarian cancer in Jewish individuals. Hum Mutat 16:491–501, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

In one of the few histories to be written on Sudanese Jewry, Eli Malka's Jacob';s Children in the Land of the Mahdi: Jews of the Sudan, the author--the son of Solomon Malka, the Sudan's first chief rabbi from 1906 to 1949--notes that starting in the second decade of the twentieth century, the community's population was bolstered by the arrival of newcomers from Egypt. According to Malka, a small but noteworthy Ashkenazi contingent numbered among them. Similarly, in the Sudanese community's communal register (pinkas), out of the fourteen marriages recorded from 1908 to 1910, six bridegrooms and five brides were listed with identifiably Ashkenazi surnames. Whether these Ashkenazi newcomers arrived in the Sudan as a direct result of Galante's propagandizing or Hazzan's political interventions, though entirely plausible, is not immediately evident.

This study discusses subjective aspects of the commodification of healthcare from an ethno-class perspective using narrative analysis of patient stories. We hypothesize that the objective social hierarchy of resources, together with a certain degree of individual agency, structure the patients’ strategies of coping with the public–private “maze” of the healthcare system. The findings show different coping strategies indicating three different ethno-class ‘patient-selves’: The dominant ‘Neo-Liberal Self’, prevalent among the upper middle-class (mostly Ashkenazi Jews) that expresses contempt of the public system, and an individual hero-quest story maneuvering between the private and the public. The ‘troubled’ patient-self of the low-middle and working classes (mainly Mizrahi Jews and Arabs) also expresses negative impressions of the public system, but it is drawn to sadness, fear of being lost, and a longing for a lost ‘logic of care’. Finally, a ‘communal alternative self’ among the Arab lower classes seeks personal solutions through social networks that include local health providers while crossing barriers between private and public sectors. All selves show some degree of neoliberal values, but the first ‘patient-self’ implies a sense of social mastery while the other two attest to the agency and even resistance of patients facing structural barriers and scarce resources.

Since the discovery of DNA and the understanding that genetic code carries not only information about people's health but also traces of their ancestors, a tantalizing possibility emerged: could they find clues to their individual and collective histories encoded within their bodies? Whereas some scientists, private companies, and the public eagerly embraced genetics to learn about diseases or their ancestry, this endeavor has been more fraught for professional historians. For one, although genetic methods are new, some of the issues tackled have a problematic history going back to the pseudoscientific studies of race in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Second, until recently, such studies were based on DNA samples from people alive today, whereas historians are trained to work with primary sources from the past--objects and texts created by direct eyewitnesses or people who lived close to the time or place of the events. This changed in 2012 when geneticist Svante Pääbo sequenced the first Neanderthal genome using ancient remains.

The short essays assembled here in fact show us again and again that structures and status, interaction, citizenship and law, mindset, and self-interest were highly varied and not at all compliant with a unidirectional march from separate to assimilated, from religious to secular, from disempowered to emancipated. In that context, some Jews sought \"foreigner\" status because it connected them with the colonial authority, making them subject to a more privileged court system and giving them more rights. Writing on a later period, Aviad Moreno shows how a 1982 book that Israeli Sephardi Jews wrote and published on Jewish communities of the Far East was part of an effort to push back against Ashkenazi cultural elites who treated Sephardim as desperately needing modernization.