There has been a lot of press recent­ly detail­ing the ​“con­flict” between sci­ence and reli­gion; these issues have includ­ed such top­ics as stem-cell research and evo­lu­tion. Some of these con­flicts have arisen in Judaism as well, such as the ques­tion of genet­ics and who, actu­al­ly, is a Jew. 

Abraham’s Chil­dren attempts to bridge some of these gaps. In a fas­ci­nat­ing, well-doc­u­ment­ed vol­ume, Jon Entine places the issue of the Cohan­im, the priests, in a genet­ic con­text and shows how it may actu­al­ly be pos­si­ble to sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly trace one’s genet­ic her­itage back to Aaron, even through cen­turies of the Dias­po­ra. Oth­er com­pelling chap­ters tack­le such top­ics as the Lost Tribes and the genet­ic sim­i­lar­i­ties of Israelites and Chris­tians. More con­tro­ver­sial sub­jects include ques­tions of why Jews are con­sid­ered ​“smarter” than oth­er races. 

This book indi­cates that con­tin­u­ing break­throughs in genet­ics and DNA research will pro­vide answers to ques­tions that were pre­vi­ous­ly unan­swer­able, per­haps fur­ther illu­mi­nat­ing who we are as a peo­ple and where we came from.