"Genetic testing breathes new life into Israel's Samaritans"

Samaritans celebrating Sukkot

All of these weird eugenic arguments people make about consanguinamory, about people having "too many kids," are not only creepy, but they're based on bad assumptions. When people are given easy access to good information on how to manage their families, they usually use it. The results can be amazing.

MT. GERIZIM, West Bank — When Ben Yehuda Altif got engaged to his first cousin Mazal, there was no problem winning the blessing of their families or the Samaritan high priest, who leads their ancient Israelite sect. Marriage between cousins is common in the religious community. But there was still an obstacle. Like many Samaritan couples today, the pair had to pass a premarital genetic screening to predict the likelihood of having healthy children. Without the green light from doctors, the marriage would be off. "Doctors said OK, and now we have a healthy, handsome boy," said Altif, 33, reaching for his wife's cellphone to show off pictures of their son.

Samaritans, who trace their roots back about 2,700 years, are best known for clinging to strict biblical traditions that have largely disappeared, including animal sacrifice, isolation of menstruating women and, until recently, a ban on marrying outsiders. But after facing near-extinction and being devastated by a high rate of birth defects because of inbreeding, the community is using modern science — including genetic testing, in vitro fertilization and abortion — to preserve their traditional way of life.

"It's changing our blood," said Aharon Ben-Av Chisda, 86, high priest of the 750-member Samaritan community, which is split about evenly between the West Bank village of Kiryat Luza near Nablus and the Israeli city of Holon, south of Tel Aviv. The white-bearded priest said genetic testing was breathing new life and optimism into the once-besieged community. He noted that he and his wife, who is a second cousin, had four children before genetic testing was available: Three are deaf and one can't walk. Most other families at Mt. Gerizim tell similar stories of health problems and handicaps among the older generation, though lately such problems have begun to disappear.

Samaritans are one of the world's oldest religious sects. Similar in practice, beliefs and ancestry to Jews, they follow the Hebrew Torah. But instead of Jerusalem, they revere a temple their ancestors built on this remote West Bank hillside.

Mentioned several times in the Bible, Samaritans are also considered one of the most inbred communities in the world, with 46% marrying first cousins and more than 80% marrying blood relatives, according to research by Israeli geneticist Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, who spent most of her career studying the community. The restrictions against marrying outsiders were less of a problem when Samaritans numbered more than a million in the 5th century. But because of persecution and forced conversion to Islam, their numbers had dwindled to just 146 by 1917. To crawl their way back, Samaritans began having large families of eight to 10 children, and the frequency of first-cousin marriages doubled, Bonne-Tamir found. As the population grew, so did the health problems and genetic defects, including rare blood diseases, Usher syndrome, deafness, muteness, blindness and physical handicaps.

"It was largely a 20th century phenomenon," said Bonne-Tamir, now retired from Tel Aviv University. Over the last decade, the community also relaxed its restrictions on intermarriage, allowing in about 25 women, mostly Jewish Israelis and arranged matches with brides from Ukraine. Samaritan leaders are reluctant to discuss their gene pool shrinkage, but they estimate the rate of birth defects was once 10 times higher than the nationwide average. By the 1960s, the rate of miscarriage was 10% higher among Samaritan women, one study found. But since adopting genetic testing, Samaritans say the rate of birth defects among newborns today is normal, even though most people still marry inside the community, including to relatives.

"This is enabling us to build a better generation for the future," said Ishak Al Samiri, a spokesman for the community at Mt. Gerizim.
Like his father, Al Samiri married a cousin. He has two healthy children, but he suffers from a blood disorder and his brother is crippled, both believed to be linked to genetic defects, he said.
Samaritans have long been the focus of genetic research, initially because of their ancient roots. In the 1960s, Israeli scientists began to study the Holon branch of the community, both to assist with genetic defects and to trace their historic lineage.

Samaritans claim that they are the descendants of northern Israelite tribes that were conquered by Assyrians. Subsequent genetic studies suggested that Samaritan men carry the so-called Cohen gene, linking them to ancient Israelites. For centuries, Samaritans lived in Nablus, but some moved to Jaffa and later to Holon. In 1988, the Nablus community relocated to a village near an Israeli settlement to escape attacks by Palestinians, who viewed them as Jews. Today Samaritans, who hold Israeli citizenship, pride themselves on staying neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 This can happen if there's a sudden, extreme bottleneck. Moderate levels of consanguineous marriage can have little to no consequence on a population's health stats, as long as the population is large enough and there is still non-consanguineous marriage. If a bottleneck does happen, it can be many generations before all of the deleterious genes from the founder population are eliminated from the gene pool. One of the ways to get around this, as the Samaritans have shown, is to use genetic tests to inform marital and reproductive decisions. If people are worried about children born with disabilities - and I'm assuming they're genuine here, and not just using this as an excuse to attack consanguinamorous people specifically - then a great way to address those concerns is with widespread, cheap access to genetic testing and family planning. As the Samaritans have shown, if you have that, consanguinamory isn't much of a problem.

Why do I support consanguinamory?

An anonymous user on Tumblr asked:

I hope this doesn't sound weird and I'm sure you get asked all the time, but why are you for incestuous / consaguinamory relationships and marriages? Every example I've ever heard has come from a background of abuse, or perhaps neglect from parents to have exposure to the outside world. I want to understand though, I want to understand in what context you believe this is okay and not abusive, and why you believe that it should be fought for?

It’s not weird, but others get asked it more than me. Before, people would just unfollow me. It’s more unusual for someone to ask about it before passing judgment.

One of the things you should notice is that there isn’t any child abuse in any of the cases I’ve posted about, unless I’m taking someone to task for it. I hate the equation of “incest” (I hate how broadly we use that word) with familial child abuse, in the same way that I hate how homophobes equate all homosexuals with men who abuse young boys - and yes, they do make that equation. It seems that some of my followers can make this distinction, too.

You want to know why? Because when I see two consenting adults who’ve fallen in love and want to build a life together, I think it’s beautiful. And then I have to sit and watch as everyone around them tars and feathers them, beats and strangles them, shames them, throws them in jail, and puts them on the sex offender registry for life. People who’ve been abused speak out, because they hope they can find support from their friends. People in non-abusive relationships don’t speak out, because they know that their friends and family will try to hurt them. It’s actually far more common than you realize, and I come across more and more cases all the time.

I am tired of people killing themselves or getting murdered by their families. It sickens me when our society cares more about punishing non-conformity than helping the victims of real abuse. Our society is far too prurient. When people celebrate gay men getting married, no-one seems to get all that confused about the lack of equivalence with adult men sexually abusing young boys, but if the two are half-siblings, suddenly it gets extremely confusing for people. It’s totally legal to return to your home town after college and marry your old teacher, but if you have sex with a woman who never raised you, but who happened to have carried you for 9 months, suddenly you’re a sex offender. None of that sounds sane to me.

What you’re talking about is a major assumption, and it’s one that’s created by stereotypes perpetuated by our culture and the media. I never internalized those assumptions. Actually, I think such couples are sweet. It has also never stopped me from hating child abuse. I know and know of people who’ve been abused by family, and people who’ve had consensual sex with family. The two groups don’t negate each other, any more than a priest having a romantic relationship with another man negates those boys who’ve been victimized by priests.

Besides, I hope you realize that a majority of all long-term sexual relationships between blood-relatives are among reunited relatives. It’s called genetic sexual attraction. Literally every human being is capable of it, because our instincts evolved in a context in which 99.9% of children were raised by their biological parent, with their biological siblings. If you ever find yourself meeting a long lost half-sibling, you might find your feelings changing rather quickly.

And what about cousin couples? They’re not even considered biologically “incestuous”, and we have no natural instincts to prevent attraction to cousins. Most cultures now don’t consider even 1st-cousins to be “incestuous”. Hell, double 1st-cousins are allowed to marry under all Abrahamic religions, even though double 1st-cousins are as genetically related as half-siblings. Double 1st-cousin marriage is also allowed in half the US, and in a majority of countries. I mean, Islam allows it, and Islam is way stricter about consanguinamory than Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. The Torah doesn’t even specify a uniform punishment for all types - siblings who’ve had sex are merely banished. (Also, the Torah allows for uncles and nieces to marry. Remember that the next time someone tells you that cousin marriage is “against God” or whatever.)

It’s not like the laws are universal, anyway. What’s considered “incest” in any given culture has changed drastically over time. Now Iranians live under Twelver Shi’i shari’ah law (mostly), but in ancient times marriages to close relatives were venerated as holier than exogamous marriages. Exposure to Islam and Hinduism has changed modern Zoroastrianism to forbid such marriages, but 1st-cousin marriages are still preferred among the Parsis. Before the Romans actively tried to eliminate the practice, sibling marriage was preferred among the Egyptians, and as much as a fifth of all marriages were between siblings. The Romans even used the threat of violence to eliminate the practice from their Kurdish Zoroastrian provinces. Western imperialists and Christian missionaries later went around the world and tried their best to eliminate similar practices among those cultures which had them.

That was, of course, under systems of arranged marriage (though not all the marriages were necessarily arranged, or unwanted by the participants). The point is, the prohibition is pretty damn arbitrary, and always has been. Such couples have existed since the dawn of humanity, and in most cultures they’ve been hunted down and tortured to death for no other reason than people thought it was “unnatural” and a “bad omen”. Why should nice people, who aren’t even that unusual, be hunted down like rabid dogs and thrown away for life? Why should their children be ripped from them and placed in foster homes where they are actually more likely to be sexually abused? Why should society waste its time and resources suppressing something that doesn’t need to be suppressed, to protect nobody, and destroy families that would otherwise contribute positively to society?

Many countries allow consanguineous sex, anyway. Last time I checked, Brazil’s problems weren’t because they allow consensual adults to have sex, or because they allow half-siblings to marry. France and Japan don’t seem to be falling into ruin. Australia and England get by while allowing 1st-cousins to marry. I have yet to see anyone claim that France is a cesspool of child rape. Historically, “incest” laws were not created with child welfare in mind, and other laws exist to protect child welfare already. The bigger problem is how effectively those laws are enforced, and whether they need to be enforced frequently, both of which are cultural problems related to the way societies view children and authority figures. I respect children and don’t blindly accept something from someone with power. I think that’s more important for preventing the abuse of children than outlawing consanguinamory.

I can’t possibly reproduce all of my arguments for you here. It would be very, very long. I haven’t even gotten to the psychology of it, nor even the biology of it. Read this; it will help you understand. Maybe read an account or two. Watch a movie or two or three. There are still plenty of things I haven’t linked to here, regardless. Similar couples are everywhere, floating around the internet. These are all just the ones that bother to publicize themselves. Remember that.

Don’t feel bad for asking. At least you care enough to ask.

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Queen Helena and King Monobaz I of Adiabene

Helena, Queen of Adiabene, came from a Zoroastrian family, and was married to her brother King Monobaz I, a vassal of the Parthian Empire of Iran. (Adiabene is now Iraqi Kurdistan.) As an adult she converted to Judaism, while remaining married to her brother. She and her brother are mentioned in the Talmud for their generosity towards Judea.

[...] [D]uring a famine at Jerusalem she sent to Alexandria for [grain] and to Cyprus for dried figs for distribution among the sufferers from the famine. In the Talmud, however (Bava Batra 11a), this is laid to the credit of Monobaz [...]. The Talmud speaks also of important presents which the queen gave to the Temple at Jerusalem.

She bore her brother two sons, and later in life moved to Jerusalem, where she built a small palace by the Temple, and was buried in a massive, sophisticated personal tomb.

Josephus tells us that Helena in her lifetime built three pyramids (which no longer exist) over the intended tomb. Pausanias [...] mentions a unique mechanism that opened the tomb automatically at certain times and sealed it at others:

They have contrived to make the door of the tomb, which is stone like all the rest of it, so that it opens only on a certain day of the year at a particular season: at that moment the machinery opens the door on its own, holds it open for a little while, and then closes it up again.  At the time you can get in like that, but if you tried to open it at any other time it would never open -- you would have to break it down first.

Tomb complex of Queen Helena

Her palace was destroyed when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in vengeance for the Jewish Revolt. 

Ruins of Queen Helena's Jerusalem palace

Helena's youngest son, Izates, was actually the first in the family to convert to Judaism after his mother, though neither knew it. (I'm sure they were both surprised, when he came home to be king, that the other was also now Jewish.) A very interesting fact comes out of Izates' rise:

On the very day that the king died, with Izates far away, Queen Helena called an assembly of noblemen, district governors, and army commanders in the royal palace at Arbela [modern Arbil]. [...] Then, she explained that Monobazus had chosen Izates to succeed him and had thought him worthy to do so. She appealed for their support. The fact that the queen summoned the council and had the honour of speaking first -- rather than her eldest son -- bolsters the idea that brother-sister royal incest increases the power and status of a queen [as recently discussed in my post on the incestuous Ptolemaic queen Arsinoë II].

It also seems that, by the standards of the time for monarchs, they were extremely magnanimous.

[Helena's] next move was unexpected, perhaps even naive: she entrusted her eldest son, Monobazus, with the diadem and insignia of office until Izates could get to Arbela and begin his reign. Perhaps  Helena knew something that cynics didn't know: Monobazus duly surrendered his temporary powers, and Izates was crowned king in 36 CE. Inspired by his religious scruples, we are told, Izates acted with a clemency extraordinary for the age: rather than kill [his half-brothers], he sent them away as hostages to Rome and Parthia.

Drawing of a Relief of King Izates