"an indifference to ancestry is sometimes taken as a rejection of one’s 'real' identity, even of 'self-hatred'"

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/06/is-there-a-jewish-gene/?pagination=false

Is There a Jewish Gene?

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Richard C. Lewontin

Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People
by Harry Ostrer
Oxford University Press, 264 pp., $24.95                                                  

The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology
by Nadia Abu El-Haj
University of Chicago Press, 311 pp., $35.00    

"While this belief in the fundamental importance of a knowledge of ancestral origins is undoubtedly widespread, it is far from universal. Yet an indifference to ancestry is sometimes taken as a rejection of one’s “real” identity, even of “self-hatred.” It seems clear that while one may see oneself as “embracing” one’s ancestry, one may also be indifferent to such ancestry, or reject it. No one, including Abu El-Haj, claims that the genetic facts by themselves exert a force obliging people to take one conscious position or another."