Answers to Questions by Yair Davidiy
Quora Query:
When I look at some pigmentation maps of Europe I see that Scandinavians are usually blonde and blue-eyed especially in Sweden and Norway, but I also saw a lot of people saying that it is just a tale. Which alternative is true? Are Scandinavians as attractive as they're considered? (hair, eyes, body)
Answer by Yair Davidiy:
I was once working for a Restaurant-Catering Service.
We had an event in Rishon-le-Tsion near the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
We were setting up the tables when the guests started arriving. There were about a 100 of them.
They were mostly blond, blue, eyes, fine-looking, of intelligent mien, men, women, and children.
I remember thinking they must all be the children of Jews from Germany.
This surprised me since the Jews from Germany I was familiar with though often fair were not as blondish as all that.
It turned out that these were indeed the children of Jewish immigrants but from Iraq not Germany.
The Jews of Iraq are usually of Mediterranean type appearance sometimes fair and sometimes darkish.
Some are very fair. This particular group apparently belonged to one large family.
Since Sephardic Jews used to prefer intermarrying mainly with their cousins I guess it stayed in the family.
Before that I had had a similar experience with Jews from Tunis.
About 20% of the Jews of Tunis (who are often blond) believed they descend from the Tribe of Zebulon.
Zebulon was exiled with the Ten Tribes and lost but small minority groups from each tribe did re-attach themselves to Judah as explained by Nachmanides.
Incidentally the idea existed in works on race from ca. the 1920s that the Mediterranean race though usually tanned in color would spontaneously bring forth blond hair specimens at the rate of ca. 15%.
