Almaty Fashion Week
Fashion Week just wrapped up in Almaty. There are, sadly, far fewer absurd creations like last year’s appearing at places like Yahoo News. (Still, none of it holds a candle to Oscar de la Renta’s Uzbek-influenced Fall 2005 collection.)
There were some noticeable strange sights such as the following face covering…
…or the crying baby as accessory…
The New York Times has a more serious report on fashion week that mentions efforts to promote the purchase of local fashion.
“Our own designers are making stylish high-quality clothes,” said Anna Kuzembayeva, a producer of the Kazakh collections. “Louis Vuitton is boring to us already, but ‘Made in Kazakhstan’ is sounding very chic.”
KZ Blog has comments on the article.
As the Times mentions, Kazakh fashion was also recently showcased in New York. New York Magazine has a brief report on the show that includes comments from Tim Gunn of Project Runway.
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Tags: Kazakhstan, Culture.
Posted by Nathan on November 28th, 2006
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Time: 12/3/2006, 1:43 am
Arthur Koestler has argued that the vast majority of present day Jews (mostly Ashkenazi) are not actually Semitic but originally of Khazar origin - see his book The Thirteenth Tribe and also The Jews of Khazaria.
While some researchers claim DNA testing doesn’t strongly support a major Khazar contribution, others believe that modern Jews are essentially non-Semitic with genetic input from a large number of international sources, including Khazars…so the jury’s still out.
Because of the conflict with traditional Jewish racial claims this field of research can be controversial and sensitive.
Sacha Cohen (Bruno) would be aware of the Khazar connection and the controversy.
Time: 12/3/2006, 1:52 am
Mr Sasha Cohen might have full rights to boast of Kazakh origin and Turkic-Mongolian Heritage!
Most modern day Jews are the descendants of Khazars, Mongolian-Turkic Nation.
The Ashkenazi Levites who carry R1a1 are most reasonably explained as having descended from the Khazar Turks, who lived in the northern Caucasus and Black Sea region and converted to Judaism in the 9th Century. Exactly how their descendants obtained hereditary Levite status is unclear and controversial, but it happened. Unlike the situation with the Cohanim, there is no modal haplotype or haplogroup that encompasses Levites as a whole.
Time: 12/3/2006, 1:58 am
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1180600
Multiple Origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y Chromosome Evidence for Both Near Eastern and European Ancestries
Doron M. Behar,1,* Mark G. Thomas,2,* Karl Skorecki,1 Michael F. Hammer,4 Ekaterina Bulygina,2 Dror Rosengarten,1 Abigail L. Jones,2 Karen Held,2 Vivian Moses,2 David Goldstein,3 Neil Bradman,2 and Michael E. Weale2
1Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute, Technion and Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel; 2The Centre for Genetic Anthropology and 3The Centre for Population Genetics and Human Health, Department of Biology, University College London, London; and 4Division of Biotechnology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Address for correspondence and reprints: Dr. Karl Skorecki, Department of Nephrology and Molecular Medicine, Technion and Rambam Medical Center, P.O.B. 9602, Haifa 31096, Israel. E-mail: skorecki@techunix.technion.ac.il
*These authors contributed equally to this work.
Khazarian Kingdom, whose ruling class is thought to have converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century (Dunlop 1967). This kingdom flourished between the years 700 c.e. and 1016 c.e. It extended from northern Georgia in the south to Bulgar on the Volga River in the north and from the Aral Sea in the east to the Dnieper River in the west—an area that falls within a region in which haplogroup R1a1 NRYs are found at high frequency (Rosser et al. 2000). Archival material also records migration of Khazars into the Hungarian Duchy of Taskony in the 10th century. The break-up of the Khazar Empire following their defeat by invading Rus led to the flight of some Khazars to central and northern Europe. Although neither the NRY haplogroup composition of the majority of Ashkenazi Jews nor the microsatellite haplotype composition of the R1a1 haplogroup within Ashkenazi Levites is consistent with a major Khazar or other European origin, as has been speculated by some authors (Baron 1957; Dunlop 1967; Ben-Sasson 1976; Keys 1999), one cannot rule out the important contribution of a single or a few founders among contemporary Ashkenazi Levites.
Finally, it is interesting to speculate on the possible mechanism by which the descendant of a non-Jew or convert could have acquired Levite status. The fact that Ashkenazi Cohanim NRYs show no evidence for an introgression of this nature suggests a lesser degree of stringency for the assumption of Levite status than for the assumption of Cohen status. This may be because there are more rights and duties associated with the Cohen status than with that of the Levite, leading to more rigorous protection of the former. Cohanim, for example, are called upon, on special occasions, to bless the assembled congregation and are prohibited from marrying divorcees and converts, religious laws that do not apply to Levites. Indeed, Talmudic sources may possibly be interpreted to support the notion of differences in the social, religious, and legal barriers that relate to the assumption of Cohen and Levite status. These include descriptions of the possible assumption of Levite status other than through patrilineal descent, in a Talmudic passage describing a debate regarding the potential assignment of Levite status to a man (and his descendants) whose father was a non-Jew and whose mother was the daughter of a Levite. Such differences could have provided the backdrop for the sanctioned acceptance of Levite status other than through patrilineal descent.
The comparative study of patterns of NRY variation among Ashkenazi Jews and other populations has revealed evidence for an unexpected and unusual historical event, which was not appreciated using other, more conventional historical approaches.
Time: 12/3/2006, 10:12 am
Could you please keep this confined to the other post rather than making every single one an argument about Khazar ancestry? (That’s not really a request…)
I think you’re missing the point though. No one’s saying that Ashkenazim couldn’t have Khazar ancestry. What people are saying, including the authors of the above report, is that there is no evidence for the claim that they are the Khazars or that Khazar ancestry makes up a large part of their ancestry.
Time: 12/4/2006, 8:47 pm
New fashion ideas for Kazakhstan/Almaty
Borat (Kazakh journalist) appears to be wearing pubic hair on his head, by the look of it, or is he not? Should this be becoming a brand new worldwide sexy trend?
About Khazars/Kazakhs:
Dr. Ariella Oppenheim, professor of genetics at Hebrew University in israel, and five research colleagues reported in the American Journal of Human Genetics (November 2001) that jews are closely related in DNA to Iraqis, Kurds, Turks, and Armenians. Meanwhile, Sephardic, (Middle East jews) differ from European jews (Ashkenazi), many of whom were found to be of Khazar (Turkic Kazakh) stock.
Time: 12/4/2006, 10:21 pm
This is warning two. Please refrain from trolling. It’s getting tiresome and you’re consistently misrepresenting others’ work. What I am about to say is the final word on it unless I happen to post on the topic at some point in the future.
The latest study you cite finds that 12.7% of the Ashkenazim are paternal descendants of either East Europeans or Khazars. Most descend from Middle Eastern populations. It’s a stretch to say that this makes European Jews Khazars.
Time: 11/29/2006, 6:51 am
Was Bruno there?