Is there such a thing as a descent from King David?

According to books I've read, Germanic/Jewish marriages were already happening in at least the mid to late 1700s. When I say Germanic, I include not just Germany, but Austria, Hungary and Switzerland.

Then again, Hitler considered a person non-Jewish if a person had no practicing Jew among that person's grandparents. He never looked at the ethnicity of a person's great grandparents. What's more is most, if not all of his top aides were 1/4 Jew, and conferred honors on Jewish officers who were 1/4 - almost full blooded Jew. Hitler and Himmler, and who knows how many others among the top aides, decided who was Jew and who was not according to their own convenience.

I've studied Hitler and many of his aides, mostly because my mother grew up under his regime in Germany, and they were all very sick, sick men, as are all dictators, and most of the Germans hated them.

If a ruler is loved by the population he rules, he doesn't have to resort to dictatorship, he can rule by popular vote. Hitler NEVER had more than a 40% vote from the population, and he only got that because, by that time, the German people were so terribly desperate, and he was telling the biggest lies. He knew he was hated by the majority of the German population, that's why he took over the government by force.

I'm sorry, guys. I know too much of how the Germans themselves suffered under him, from 1933 on. I've heard too many of my mother's and her families' stories, on top of all the research I've done. Hitler and his Nazis should NEVER be equated with the general German population.

I'm out of this discussion. If you have answers to any of my questions you can contact me privately.

Most Sincerely,
Sylvia M. Hertel

You are correct, in the 20th century, in Germany, in the cities, after the Enlightenment of the 19th century there were Jewish - non-Jewish marriages. These are very recent and taken in the scope of marriages of Jews overall are a small number.

Anti-Semitism is a fact of European history. Hitler was the most evil and harmful of those who were anti-Semites, but Hitler did not exist in a vacuum. The Catholic church in Poland was also a factor in the enthusiastic involvement of Polish collaborators and of mob violence in the mass murders such as in Jedwabne. It is only in the 20th century and really only in the past four or five decades that there has been any sort of widespread tolerance of other nationalities / religions / ethnic groups. Humans are pretty vile actually.

Let's PLEASE stick to history and things that support history such as DNA.

The Nazis, profilgate record keepers that they were, give us some hints..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischling#Numbers_of_people_considere... says that as of 1939, Germany had 72.000 people with two Jewish grandparents and two non-Jewish grandparents, and 39.000 people with one Jewish grandparent and three non-Jewish ones (more details in article). The same count seems to have counted 239.000 full Jews. So at least in the last few generations prior to 1939, quite a bit of intermarriage occured. Of course there were powerful reasons to try to manipulate your category at the time, so the number may be untrustworthy - but intermarriages did occur at that time.

Thanks Harald, good to go with actual statistics, even from such sources. Again, these were phenomena associated with urbanization and the Enlightenment and the second half of the 19th century into the 20th century. And I believe this was true earlier in Germany than say in Eastern Europe where the vast majority of the world's Jews lived. Remember that 3 million Jews left "Russia" (the Russian Empire) between 1880 and 1920. They were confined to the Pale of the Settlement, not even allow to live in smaller towns such as Suwalki, let alone in large cities until the early 1800s to mid 1800s. Jews were being expelled from Courland (Latvia) in the mid 1800s. Separatism was very much how people lived in the smaller towns and the rabbis and the Catholic church / Russian orthodox church controlled life there.

http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2080&co...

This academic thesis gives an accessible and brief history. Basically the Jews were mostly killed or driven from Germany in the early Middle Ages, moving into Eastern Europe, and were not allowed back until the 1600s or later. Intermarriage was not even legally permitted until 1875.

And so I don't mislead anyone, it wasn't only the Christian majority and the Church that opposed intermarriage. Judaism was adamantly against intermarriage and for the most part still is, with the exception of Reform Judaism.

But the main thing to remember is that all over the world, people have lived in ethnic communities, separate from other ethnic communities, not mixing, until really the last century or so.

Sylvia - YOUR WORDS OFFEND ME and every survivor of the camps and is promulgated by someone who is making EXCUSES for german behavior !!! Unlike your mother, my father-in-law escaped nazi germany on the last "kinder" train in June of 1939. I know far to many survivors (or did, as they have died off) who to this day or the day they died, still had their tattoo of their concentration camp number still on their forarm.

There were NO jews in Hitler's advisors. And your words ONLY provide more fodder for the holocaust deniers that continue to crop up. The infamous SS made their members PROVE through baptismal records that they had "no jewish blood" in them to as far back as 1750.

Your words are disgusting and you owe ever reader of this discussion an apology !!!!

we should create a discution ..openly information about jewish and nazi is not an easy talk

The History of War i general is brutal, and in my humble opinion the most important thing is to get the history as correct as possible.

Again my opinion and limited study, not all enlisted Nazis and Regular German Military forces believed in Hitlers mandates, they were forced to do many things they would never have even contemplated with out direct orders from a superior Officer commanding them to follow Direct Orders.

I am not saying or even guess what the true number of the Axis were placed in the most difficult of circumstances, many especially the SS were truly believers in the Master plan and even took great pride in complementing their missions. We now have documentation that the Officers in charge took Great pride, even joy in the form of Official action reports submitted by both Junior and Senior Commanders at the completion of certain operations.

A good example is on the Russian Front, if personnel from either side retreated there were special troops that would shot their own men trying to flee the assaults.

Countless others under such a command would go on to their own deaths at the fire of the enemy troops under fear of certain Death upon retreat.

Again my own opinion and limited study of the true nature of the conflict..

As far as birth records there were many persons that obtained falsified records under fear of retribution.. Graft and Bribery were common place at the time.

.I was born in Germany, my father was in the Us Army, He was Stationed there when I was an infant and then again when I was 9 to 12 years old. We traveled extensively throughout Europe. I was very young, however I saw first hand how the common Germany people despised what Hitler and his upper echelon did to the German economy and it's own citizens..

I personalty saw a a frail elderly woman (my best guess she was a 60 to 70 year old woman) discipline a 20 Something young man for Singing "Deutschland Über alles", (English translation to the best of my knowledge. (erman: "above all") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cber_Alles_(disambiguation), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied , she had a difficult time getting out of her seat, however she was furious and got up and came very close to assaulting him. She severely reprimanded the man in a loud voice and embarrassed him in front of all on the bus. She told him of the things she had to endure during the war.

The Holocaust did happen, there is so much documentation on all sides of the war to say that it did not Happen.

The Nazis were meticulous in documentation, one of the few things that have never been confirmed in my limited knowledge is the true number of persons of Jewish, other Ethnic groups and dissidents that were (Difficult words here) Brutalized and Exterminated during WWII, we will probably never know.

I will repeat this one more time, this statement is based on my own experiences in Germany and my limited study of the the war.

I am VERY OPEN To CORRECTION and further Knowledge of others with better understanding than I have.

Bill

Bill - the "un-official" number of people killed in the camps and the numerous mass murder sites around Europe is 11 MILLION: 6 million Jews and 5 million others - this included the physically and mentally handicapped, gypsys, homosexuals of EVERY distinction, communists and those the nazi regime considered "threats" to new aryon society.

This number does NOT include the 10 million soldiers that some say were killed on the Russian front nor the devastation of the german people themselves.

One of the things I found truly incredible on my last trip to Germany in Oct-Nov, 2012 was that I was in several communities in Southeast Bavaria that had NO deaths attributed to WWII. Totally amazing.

Did I read this correctly..."...I'm sorry, guys. I know too much of how the Germans themselves suffered under him..."
Seems to me I heard this before.....does "NUREMBERG" ring a bell???..."...we were only following orders"??? Did she say "the poor germans suffered"???? WELLLLL....certainly not nearly enough....while it's true there were some so called "Good Germans" that tried to resist...the vast majority were more than happy to follow the paperhanger into the abyss ...dragging the world to hell with it!...in search of their "proper place as the Leaders of the New World Order"!!! If it was up to me I would have dropped the Bomb on Berlin instead of Hiroshima...and that still wouldn't have been enough revenge!

So Silvia's pal Adolf got together a group of his pals (and some of his Best Jewish Friends) and they decided to crush the world and murder all the Jews & Gypsies & Gays & Commies, etc. ... this group of nazi's acted alone without any help and/or support of the German/Austrian/Polish population????
Sylvia my dear do all the people (100% Germans) living in the Dakotas and followers of Armstrong's Church...do they believe as you do?

Ladies and gentlemen.....

this discussion is far from the original purpose of the thread. And it has strayed far into the territory for which Godwin's law was written.
Please - let's stop now. There will be no light and much heat in continuing further.

Halard , i think you are right, it has gone too far. I dont understand what nazism got to do with being descended from king david

Going back to King David and to leave the Nazis behind -and forever I hope-here's my rather thin connection to him:
David, King of Judah and Israel is your 64th great grandmother's husband's third great uncle's wife's son's wife's niece's husband's second great grandfather.

REALLY ?????

Wikipedia lists King David's life conventionally dated as 1040–970 BCE. That is 2984 years since his listed death. You have listed just under 70 generation. Using that number - then each generation would have been an average age of (2984 / 70 =) 42.63 years of age when the next generation was born.

Do you really think that is a fair number? Wouldn't a fairer number be 25 or 30 years of age when the next generation was born? If you use either of these numbers, 25 gives you 119+ generations OR if you use 30, then you need only 99+ generations.

I think you have proved beyond any doubt you have a lot of missing links !!!!

Have fun .............

Simon Schama on TV now (PBS) which people in this thread should be interested in.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/story-jews/

Richard (Rick) Gary Simon the nice thing about Geni is that you don't have to rely on averages. You can actually pull down the data for each ancestor, see the date of birth given for each, and say "THAT is the one I don't believe in".

Having people father children into their 50s is commonplace - even into their 60s is frequently seen - perhaps most commonly with very powerful people who acknowledged children born to women who were not their first wives.

My line to David (which is not direct) goes via to 64th grandfather Ariobarzanes, king of Pontus (approx 7 gens after David), listed as born in -300. That's 66 generations back, giving an average of 34 years.

The first few ones:
-300: Ariobazanes
-270: Mithridates II
- 240: Mithradates III
- 225: Pharnaces I
-184: Mithridates V
- est 163-111: Laodice
- 97: Pharnaces II
- est -92-34: Dynamies
- est -55-+5: Aspurgus
- ca 10: Cotys

and so on. No incredible jumps.

This is Geni. We have all the names and numbers. There's no reason to stop with the averages. Let's focus on the *particular* pieces that are hard to believe, and sort out the evidence for or against *that* particular event.

Don't miss "The Story of the Jews" with the wonderful Simon Schama. The first two of five episodes ran in Los Angeles on Tuesday on PBS...next Tuesday the final three episodes. What makes it better than the usual History is that he really get's mad at what's been happening to "HIS PEOPLE"!!!

Rick, the "11 MILLION" figure is actually false. I was speaking with Michael Berenbaum about it. It was just a number some guy through out at a conference, later admitting it was made up. But it stuck. Some folks (Jewish and non-Jewish) don't like to admit that the Holocaust was mainly about killing Jews, so this fictitious number is useful to them. I see it all the time. But it's not true.

The whole thing is ludicrous. All of us that are somehow connected to King David -and not to talk Adam and Eve- are missing lots of generations along the centuries. Besides, at the time humans lived much shorter lives and used to marry and procreate younger .

Graciela Duran-Troise don't forget that the people whose lives are documented are the rulers and the upper classes. The historical records tell us that those people frequently lived fairly long.
Again - with Geni's data, you don't need to criticize the general. You can criticze the specific. It's all listed.

Actually in the case of males - even 150 years ago - they were often married three or four times to women younger than them and had families where children were decades apart.

My great grandfather (born 1871) married the daughter of his mother's older brother. There were only 18 years between my great great grandmother and her brother (who is my ggg grandfather). I have seen 30 and 40 years between siblings from different wives.

Women married at 16 and 17 and had children until they died in childbirth or ceased being fertile at 48 or 50. A man might have his first child at 17 years of age and his last child at 67 years of age.

Actually - the 11 million is a very accurate number - given a very loose definition of accurate. While your source - Michael Berenbaum - is certainly a significant source and an authority on much on the era in question, there are other significant sources that have produced numbers relating to total deaths that were "deliberately" committed. According to Timothy D. Snyder, professor of History at Yale, the 11 million are the numbers derived and developed from newer information available since the fall of the Soviet Union and the release of data beginning in about 1991.

The Holocaust - refers specifically to the nazi attempt to eliminate World Jewry can and never should be minimized !!! This was not an attempt to reduce the significance of the holocaust, but rather to answer a more general question. The question posed was about WWII deaths, - "extermination deaths" which I tried to respond to concerning the camps and mass-murder sites. The actual death toll in WWII was more on the order of 60 million from all causes.

Rick, I asked Michael Berenbaum again and he wrote me:

From: "Michael Berenbaum"
Subject: RE: 11 million
Date: March 30, 2014 at 5:00:49 PM PDT
To: "'E. Randol Schoenberg'"

The 11 million figure was Simon Wiesenthal's invention to gain the
cooperation of European government in the prosecution of Nazi War Criminals
by saying that it happened to their own people and not just the Jews. It is
either too low or too high and at various points includes Soviet POWs and an
exaggerated number of Poles killed at Auschwitz -- 2 million -- the figure
that Poles now use is 83,000, yet 83,000 and also an inflated number of
Gypsies Roma and Sinti. Will send you the information tomorrow on
Wiesenthal.

Best!
Michael

Most European people are likely to be descended from King David just like most of us are descended from Odin Zeus and Abraham. I don't mean to be sarcastic, that is just what the odds are. Your geneology doubles with each generation so that it spreads out to so many people. 10 generations back is already more than 1000 people so in that number of people there are bound to be people descended from King David.

Hatte, you said " Judaism was adamantly against intermarriage and for the most part still is, with the exception of Reform Judaism." I'm afraid that's a bit misleading, since it implies that Reform is either in favor of or not opposed to intermarriage.

Reform is *still* actually opposed to intermarriage; the difference is that the movement has recognized the reality of it happening, and moved to accommodate that within the practical framework of daily life and practice with the goal of at least keeping those who marry out within the greater fold - and with a definite goal of educating their children Jewishly, and ideally, bringing the non-Jewish partner into the tent as well. Educating the non-Jewish partner about Judaism is actually a fairly high priority - and yes, actually a degree of outright prosetylization.

There are still many, many Reform rabbis who will not perform a mixed marriage, and Reform has never stopped encouraging people to marry within the faith.

It's just taken a more pragmatic stance to dealing with the issue than the other streams have, recognizing that this is the only way to have a prayer of keeping many of these people in the fold at all - and thus not killing off the whole religion. But if people were to decide to stop intermarrying, Reform would be celebrating right along with the Conservative and Orthodox branches.

Of course there is such a thing as descent from King David, and as people have pointed out, after so many generations, probably every one, or certainly every Jew has him as an ancestor.

The Jewish tradition holds that Rashi was a descendant of King David. Rashi did indeed have only daughters, they married and had children, their children and the generations after them would still be descendants of King David. Many Jews who claim descent from King David, do so by proving descent from Rashi. However, according to what I've read, some 80%, if not more, of Ashkenazi Jewry is descended from Rashi. And if by now 80% are descended from Rashi, certainly with many more centuries in his favor, we're probably all descendents of King David.