What Were the Effects of Interbreeding on the Jewish People?

[Secret Alias]

I know this sounds like a Nazi-inspired post but it is not. I have spent some time tracing the genealogy of every part of my son's family tree with a zeal that members of this forum know that I have for obscurities. As such I have developed the family trees not only for my immediate family but the people that married into our line and so on. What I notice quite clearly is that when you go backwards into the chronology past the eighteenth century for almost all Jewish families there is an incredible amount of interbreeding. For instance my maternal grandmother's maiden name was "Marx." The "Marx" name goes back to supposedly some link with Karl Marx and perhaps the Marx brothers (according to a silly family tradition I can't corroborate) but "Marx" of course was a strange reformulation of Mordecai or Marcus. By about the 17th century you see this elasticity with given names and last names. So a family called "Marx" starts having Marc (as we were French Jews), Mordecai etc as given names and then family names.

What's more incredible however is how intermarriage dominates the lineage in the early 17th and 16th centuries. It's not just one family but across the board among groups related to or married into the lineage. I wonder what the effects of this were on the Jewish people in Europe at the time. Tracing the lineage of Irish and Scottish in-laws I see SOME interbreeding but nowhere near the universality that exists among my French Jewish ancestors. I know Napoleon offered Jews a great hope and part of this accounts for the "Europeanization" of Jewish names (i.e. "Marx" from Mordecai). I would imagine though that if records existed of the 15th, 14th, 13th centuries the inbreeding would continue.

[Peter Kirby]

IMO, this doesn't belong in this subforum.

[Secret Alias]

Ok fine.

[billd89]

Secret Alias believes he's genetically special. (The rest of us laugh.)

Here is an antidote.

[Secret Alias]

If I thought I was special or Jews were special why would I bring up interbreeding.

[billd89]

Oh you think you're special alright: you make another one of these posts every few months or so. Any reader sees it!

Everyone is special, snowflake.

This OP/Thread belongs in the Subforum ~Nowhere in Particular~, because it is. All 'Talking About My Crazy' threads -- whoever the author, whatever the digression -- belong in such a place: a nether-region.

[Leucius Charinus]

Lineages produce an exponential numbers of ancestors. Take the blinkers off.