Dr. Leo Sachs, head of the genetics section of the Weizmann Institute of Science, arriving here this week-end, said that the results of research by himself and Dr. M. Bat-Miriam on fingerprint patterns had revealed that Jews of all parts of the world had certain common genetic similarities and sprang from an ancient Mediterranean people.
He did not mean, Dr. Sachs said, that “all Jews were exactly alike.” In his statement, intended to clarify reports of the research presented at the first Congress of Human Genetics at Copenhagen, Dr. Sachs said that what the study revealed was that all Jews “have certain strong similarities in certain characteristics, such as the fingerprints, which indicate ancestral origin in the Eastern Mediterranean.” The study involved the fingerprints of 4,000 recent immigrants to Israel who came from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, Bulgaria, Poland and Germany.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
