Faith
The Appearance of Jews in Exile
Question
In Mishnah Negaim 2:1, it is stated that Israel are like ashkeroa. That is, their skin color is brown like the ashkeroa tree. So we looked like this before we went into exile.
So how did the Jews who went into exile acquire the appearance of the people of the place to which they were exiled? That is, Jews from Yemen became similar to the local Yemenites, and the Ashkenaz Jews became fair-skinned with blue eyes, and the Jews in Ethiopia became black.
How is this possible?
Answer
Hello and blessings,
Chazal knew the blacks in Africa, and the fair-skinned people in Europe-Germany. And they said that the Jews were medium in color, neither dark like the Africans nor white like Europeans (Negaim, chapter 2, mishnah 1): "A bright baheret appears in a German as dark, and the dark in a Kushite as bright. Rabbi Yishmael says: The House of Israel, may I be an atonement for them - they are like ashkeroa: neither black nor white, rather medium."
As for your question itself,
There was no intermarriage, since the Jews were persecuted and preserved their identity with great effort. Any Jew who assimilated disappeared within a generation among the gentiles, and his identity was forgotten by the people of Israel. All the Jews you see today are descendants of our forefathers who faithfully preserved their Judaism and did not assimilate.
The changes in skin tone arose as a result of the climate of each region. Hashem created in advance in human beings the ability to change skin tone, the amount of pigments, according to the level of the sun's radiation in each area.
The Children of Israel lived in exile for 2,000 years, and over this long period their tone changed according to the climatic need of each region in which they lived. Your descendants too, if they live for thousands of years in a land with little radiation, will become lighter-skinned, and conversely, if they live for thousands of years in a land with much radiation, they will develop a darker skin tone.
It must be remembered that all human beings in the world are descendants of the first man, so all the changes you see were created as a result of different climates. This is simply a genetic variation.
For thousands of years, the climate indeed allows such changes in skin color, hair, etc. These are only a few genes, and even today cases are known in which a white child is born to black parents, or a black child to white parents. Granted, this is very rare [another possibility is that there were a number of gentiles who converted and joined the Jewish community, and thus their genes, which were more suited to the climate, spread throughout the Jewish population in those areas. For example, almond-shaped eyes are only a very small skin fold, which is easy to pass on by inheritance].
Regarding skin tone, I will explain the process in a more scientific way -
Sunlight is needed to produce vitamin D through the skin, however too much sunlight damages the cells and may cause skin cancer.
The mechanism for obtaining vitamin D was created in the human body together with a defense mechanism against too much radiation from sunlight. This defense mechanism is called pigments. A darker skin color is actually more pigments in the skin called melanin, which prevent excess radiation from penetrating, and they are what create a darker skin tone.
Thus, every change in skin color has already existed in the DNA of all of us since creation. This is in fact an ahead-built mechanism that increases or decreases the number of pigments in our bodies. The human body produces excess pigmentation in countries where there is a lot of radiation, and conversely it will reduce pigmentation in places where the radiation is low.
A lack of melanin creates lighter skin, as well as blue eyes. An excess of melanin creates a darker skin tone, as well as green eyes - then brown - and then black according to need. But all of us למעשה have the same skin and the same eyes exactly. Only the excess or lack of melanin creates the difference in tone.
These changes, of course, are already embedded in the DNA, and they do not constitute development or new creation. The reason for the difference in skin color, and other signs, stems from climate changes. The holy Zohar states that Hashem created a nature in living creatures that they change according to the climate. It is a fact that from Adam HaRishon eventually emerged Asians, Africans, Europeans, and all the nations in fact. But the external changes you see are not considered evolution, and are not a new development or creation, rather are all already embedded in the genes of each of us. Even your descendants, if they live in countries with high ultraviolet radiation, will become darker over thousands of years.
And likewise the opposite: we see that black people who immigrated to the United States 250 years ago now look somewhat lighter than their brothers on the African continent.
With blessings,
Daniel Bels
