There are two main "racial" branches of modern Jewry. The smaller of the two is called the Sephardim, some of whose ancestors fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and spread across North Africa to Spain. This group has been from the outset so small, in terms of a viable gene pool, and has mixed with such regularity over the centuries with the indigenous peoples wherever they lived that Dr. Raphael Patai, a leading Jewish scholar, felt compelled to write a book entitled `The Myth of the Jewish Race' (Scribners, 1975).
In reviewing an earlier work by Dr. Patai, `Israel Between East and West,' Dr. Camille Honig, literary editor for the Voice (Jewish Voice of California, Sept. 25, 1953), stated:
"If you studied Jewish types and communities in five continents, as this writer had the opportunity of doing, you would have realized that it is sheer nonsense, and very dangerous nonsense, as well as unscientific, to speak about a Jewish race."
