Goldfoot Genealogy

Nadene Goldfoot
Israeli scientist Dr. Eran Elhaik from John Hopkins University has discovered autosomal signature of the Khazar aristocracy and royalty. Khazars were of Turkish origin, it is thought.   They would be the royal family and 4,000 nobles  that converted to Judaism in the Empire of Khazaria, which was very large in most of South Russia, in the lower Volga region, going as far as Kiev. which was very powerful from the 8th to the 10th centuries CE.  Their  King Bulan  lived from 786-809 CE.   The Khazars had teamed up with Attila the Hun around 452 CE.  They fought in company with the Black Huns (Hungarians)  and Alans.   The Tartars had invaded in 1237, putting an end to the empire.  Italians referred to the empire as Gazaria.

Descendants of Khazars have been found among Crimea Karaites, Krimchaks and Jews of Eastern European origin, the latter of which my family comes from.  Our grandfather came from Telsiai, Lithuania.

The Jewish population in the entire Khazaria between the 7th and 10th centuries must have been considerable.  Caucasian and other Oriental Jews had lived and carried on business with Khazars before the arrival of Jewish fugitives from Christian conversion from Greece in 723 by the Byzantine Emperor Leo.  Two Spanish Jews, Judah ben Meir ben Nathan and Joseph Gagris lived in Khazaria.  A German Jew living there was Isaac ben Eliezer.  It was he who brought a letter to the king.  Isaac ben Abraham moved there from Sura.  Rahdanite Jewish merchants coming from Spain or France went through the land near the Caspian Sea.  These merchants spoke Arabic, Persian, Greek, Spanish, French and Slavonic and traveled continuously from west to east and vice versa by sea and land.  They carried with them eunuchs, serving-maids, boys, silks, furs, swords, imported musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon and other things from the Far East.

This study by Dr. Elhaik comes from Alfred Freddy Krupa.  He tells me that to get involved, you need to add your own data set (autosomal raw data from FTDNA Family Finder or Relative Finder of 23 and Me).  This is to check to see if you descended from Khazar aristocracy by the way of autosomal DNA.

This information is pertinent for people tested for DNA who are of the Q haplogroup and are Jewish or have Jewish connections, at least discovered through dna.  We happen to be Q1b1a, and it's possible we are from this royalty.   That's not to say that the E haplogroup or the R haplogroup isn't the main body of royalty there.  Hopefully, this test will tell us something.  Since our haplogroup makes up only 5% of the male Jewish population, being so small makes me think we could be from this special group of people.

Update: 2/24/14 The latest report is that there is no evidence that Ashkenazi Jews were  from Khazaria.  http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/study-finds-no-evidence-of-khazar-origin-for-ashkenazi-jews/2014/02/23/

Resource:  Alfred Freddy Krupa
http://www.rockethub.com/projects/7471-the-khazar-dna-project
New Jewish Encyclopedia
Jewish Encyclopedia.com 1906 edition
Books to read: The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition by Kevin Alan Brook, published in 2006
The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler, published in 1976

I sent in my sample to 23 and me for complete testing of my genome. The notification just came in that I can expect the results on about Washington's Birthday, February 22nd. It takes time and they have received lots of samples.

This is a completely different sort of test-covering both the Ydna and the mtdna. It will also give me a report as to my physical condition and what is possible to occur. It's pretty exciting. I've just begun to understand the usual test, and this will be different, so I hope I'll be able to learn something. I've been told that I'll love the results.

This test should tell me who I am related to and what the distance might be. Of course it depends on the results of people who have taken the test, so the results are from a limited population of others interested in dna.

I've not been the person taking a test till now. My brother and male and female cousin have been the testees. This test was not like theirs where the inside of the cheek was rubbed to get a sample. I had to spit into a test tube. I was so excited that I forgot to put the tube into a plastic bag before putting it into the mailer. I about died of shock when I found the bag on the table after I had hurridly gone to the post office to mail it all off. Well, I just couldn't contain myself, following the directions, waiting the 30 minutes after eating and all. At my age, it's a wonder I knew what I was doing. I emailed the company and told them of my neglect. It was a safety precaution for them to have the sample in the bag first. I hope others will be more aware. You might try having a friend with you as you follow the test directions to remind you of what to do.

The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the 2nd Temple in 70CE and scattered the Israelite people from their homeland. Many were taken as slaves to Rome and its colonies. This is seen as starting the Jewish diaspora.

By the 2nd century BCE, Jews were establishing communities in Rome. By the 1st century CE there were as many ass 50,000 Jews in and around Rome. Most were poor Greek-speakers, looked down upon because they were poor or were slaves. Even though many gained their freedom eventually, they continued to live in and around Rome. Rome is also where the ghetto was created, used, and where the word comes from.

By the 1st century, Jews had spread to a number of places in the world, starting the Ashkenazi Jewish community. They began to migrate north of the Alps, most likely from Italy.

By 600 CE, Jews were in many parts of Europe. There were small settlements in Germany, France and Spain. There were also small Jewish settlements along the Black Sea in the east as well as larger communities in Greece and the Balkans.

Finally, by the 12th and 13th centuries CE, Jews were being expelled from many countries of Western Europe. However, they were granted charters to settle in Poland and Lithuania. This may be when both our grandparents's ancestors entered the area. Now the Askenazi Jewish population expanded rapidly in Eastern Europe, growing from a possible 15,000-25,000 people from the 13th to 15th centuries to 2 million by 1800. By 1939 there were 8 million Jews in Europe.

Khazars have been described with fair complexions, blue eyes, long hair rather reddish, with large bodies. They appeared "wild". This was from an Armenian writer. From an Arab writer the description was that they did not look like the Turks. They have black hair. (Whatever did the Turks look like, then?) There were said to be two kinds; blacks who were swarthy like a kind of Indian and a white kind, very handsome. Now Turkish people refered to the ruling classes as white and the lower clans as black, so we really are not sure, but this was from an Arab.

Whatever, Khazars were seen in Europe around the middle of the 5th century, in the Hun's territory and rules. The Khazars seemed to enter and mix in with Europe's Jewish communities. They make up only 5% of the total Jewish population of today.

by Nadene Goldfoot
Edited again 10/5/2012
 Q1b1's  haplogroup make up 5% of the entire Jewish population which amounts to about 1% or less of the world population, so I’m in a very small group of people. Through DNA at familytreedna in Houston, I’ve discovered my roots go back thousands of years to one man from the Altay Mountains in Mongolia, Siberia and a little of Turkey.  This was done by testing my brother for our grandfather’s origins, and is only done with the male, called a Ydna test. Besides my brother, I had found a 2nd cousin of Stanley Goldfoot, another Goldfoot, thank goodness, working right in Houston, Texas having immigrated there from South Africa. I had already met Stanley in Jerusalem when I lived in Israel from 1980-1985. Stanley turned out to be the former Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group, a fighting group of Jews helping Israel to become a state. Both my brother and the 2nd cousin were tested and both were found to be Q1b’s, or Q1b1a or Q L245, so I’ve known we are related, but lacked a paper trail.

At first we thought we were of the Khazarian Jews.  The Chinese held the records of Khazarian Jews. . The Ashina Turkic people were acting more as a noble or royal line which played the role of a political entity unifying various Turkic speaking tribes. It was also known as a Desert aristocracy and it was a ruling class of a number of central Asian empires, and eventually it became the ruling class or nobility known as khagans or emperors of the Khazarian Khaganate in the early middle ages in the year 656 AD after the collapse of the Gokturk Empire under pressure from the resurgent Uyghurs. Then branches of the Ashina clan moved westward to Europe where they became the kaghans of the Khazars. From there it was easy to get into Russia. My grandfather, I presume, was from Lithuania and Ashkenazi, and to find that my roots lie in Mongolia and Siberia thousands of years ago was quite a surprise. But my Q line is not thought today to be from Khazaria.  More likely it is from the Middle East around Ur, which today is in Iraq.  Another dna grouping, the R1's are thought to be from Khazaria's royal line that converted to Judaism.

It was Arthur Koestler who wrote "The Thirteenth Tribe" in 1976 that caused people to think that all Ashkenazi Jews were actually from Khazaria and not directly from the tribe of Judah.  DNA evidence since then shows he was very wrong.  The haplogroup of R1b is thought to be from Khazaria.  Our Q line has evidence that suggests it is more likely to be from the Mediterranean area, probably around Ur.  The largest group of Jews today are of the haplogroup J1, which is called the Cohen gene.  Yes, the Jews living in Israel today are mostly from the tribe of Judah.

Actually, I am reminded that if I go back even farther, we really did start in the Middle East with our male line being P haplogroup. It had the two lines branch off of it which were Q and R.

What happened was that the ruling class of the Khazarian Empire (Khagan Bulan and 4,000 of his nobles, converted to Judaism in the 8th century AD. Originally they were people who were practicing Turkish shamanism. The head Khagan heard speakers of Christianity, Muslims and Jews speak and he chose Judasim. They did not force any conversion. It seems that only the ruling class of the Khazars became Jews. Abba Eban stated that it appears that the majority of the population remained either Christian or Moslem. I can take it then that being Jewish was a royal thing to be.

You may remember that one of our past speakers was Kevin Alan Brook who wrote "The Jews of Khazaria." For some time we haven’t really been sure about whether or not our rare dna really came from Khazaria, but we have now come to this conclusion. We are all marked by a rare mutation called M378 and fit into a haplotype-a sequence of genetic markers-peculiar to us. Not surprising to me, we’re all a rather learned group. I’ve just gone for the 67 allele marker test and will receive the results around July 6th. We are likely to find that many of the 300 people so far discovered will easily be my 7th or 8th cousins, having an ancestor less than 300 years ago.

The group is organized with several heads that have taken various aspects on as responsibilites..

PS: 1/26/10: There are known skeletons of Khazars from the Don-valley (Sarkel, Semikarakovskoye, etc.) and from the Crimea (e.g., Sudak). It is important to note that Khazarian skeletons and North Caucasian Turks have not yet been used to compare Jewish genes with likely traces of the Khazars. Thus, the Khazar theory has not really been put to the genetic test yet. Some historians and scientists are starting to recognize the need for specifically testing the Khazar theory, rather than generalizing based on studies of other non-Khazar populations:
　
　
　
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