Unless you have been sleeping under a rock, you know the saga of David Shor. You have read about him in New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine again. Shor’s firing by Civis Analytics was so craven that even social justice scolds think it was ridiculous.
But there is another aspect of David Shor that people don’t know: his parents are Moroccan Jews. About a decade ago Shor sent me his DNA when I was doing deep-dives into peoples’ genomes. He got some strange results since there weren’t any Sephardic Jewish reference populations in 23andMe and such at the time. I didn’t have Moroccan Jews to test against, but I do now. This is relevant for two reasons
- Shor has a family legend that his father may have substantial Ashkenazi ancestry
- Until Shor’s rise to prominence, Emmanuelle Chriqui was arguably the most famous Moroccan Jew in America (she being Canadian in origin). As he’s mentioned on every third podcast I listen to (and this has been true for a month or so), he’s definitely more “Razib famous” than Emmanuelle Chriqui, who I had to Google to find out about (she’s starting as a secondary character in a new Superman television series next year).
What are the results? David Shor seems to be 100% Moroccan Jewish. Whatever that means.