Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars? : Houston Indymedia

Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars?

A Reassessment Based upon the Latest Historical, Archaeological,
Linguistic, and Genetic Evidence

by Kevin Alan Brook

The "traditional" view is that Eastern European Jews descend almost
entirely from French and German Jews. This essay presents the pros and
cons of the controversial "Khazar theory" of Eastern European Jewish
origins and will attempt to provide a likely middle-ground solution to
the question. Unlike other treatments of the question, this essay uses
recent discoveries, is meant to be objective, and is fully sourced so
that you can be guaranteed of the authenticity of the information. In
summary, I argue in this essay that Eastern European Jews descend both
from Khazarian Jews AND from Israelite Jews.

PART 1. Evidence in favor of the Khazar theory

According to most historical sources, Judaism was widespread among the
Khazar inhabitants of the Khazar kingdom. Archaeological evidence,
however, has not yet corroborated this. The findings described below,
some of which are more conclusive than others, add strength to the
argument that there were many Jews residing in eastern Europe prior to
the immigration of German, Austrian, Bohemian, Spanish, and Portugese
Jews into Poland and Hungary.

Judaism is almost always noted in our medieval documentary sources as
having been the most important religion in the Khazar kingdom. It is
often the only religion cited when referring to the Khazars. And the
Hebrew script is noted as being the script of 10th century Khazars.
Here are some examples:

"At the present time we know of no nation in the world where Christians
do not live. For in the lands of Gog and Magog who are a Hunnish race
and call themselves Gazari there is one tribe, a very belligerent one -
Alexander enclosed them and they escaped - and all of them profess the
Jewish faith. The Bulgars, however, who are of the same race, are now
becoming Christians." - Christian of Stavelot, in Expositio in
Matthaeum Evangelistam, composed circa 864

"Thus, it is clear that the false doctrine of Jesus in Rome, that of
Moses among the Khazars, [and] that of Mani in [Uyghur-ruled] Turkistan
removed the strength and bravery that they formerly possessed..." -
Denkart, a Persian work

"All of the Khazars are Jews. But they have been Judaized recently." -
Ibn al-Faqih, a 10th century author

"One of the Jews undertook the conversion of the Khazars, who are
composed of many peoples, and they were converted by him and joined his
religion. This happened recently in the days of the Abbasids.... For
this was a man who came single-handedly to a king of great rank and to
a very spirited people, and they were converted by him without any
recourse to violence and the sword. And they took upon themselves the
difficult obligations enjoined by the law of the Torah, such as
circumcision, the ritual ablutions, washing after a discharge of the
semen, the prohibition of work on the Sabbath and during the feasts,
the prohibition of eating the flesh of forbidden animals according to
this religion, and so on." - Abd al-Jabbar ibn Muhammad al-Hamdani, in
his early 11th century work The Establishment of Proofs for the
Prophethood of Our Master Muhammad

"The Khazars write Hebrew [letters]." - Muhammad ibn Ishaq an-Nadim of
Baghdad, in his late 10th century Kitab al-Fihrist

The Karaite writer Jacob ben Reuben referred to the Khazars in Sefer
ha-Osher as "a single nation who do not bear the yoke of the exile, but
are great warriors paying no tribute to the Gentiles."

"The Khazar Jews came to the court of Prince Vladimir and said: 'We
have heard that Bulgarians (Muslims) and Christians came to teach you
their religion... We, however, believe in the one God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.' Vladimir asked them: 'What kind of law do you have?'
They answered: 'We are required to be circumcized, we may not eat pork
or hare meat, and we must observe the Sabbath.' And he asked: 'Where is
your land?' They answered: 'In Jerusalem.' And again he asked: 'It is
really there?' They answered: 'God got angry with our fathers and
therefore scattered us all over the world and gave our land to the
Christians.' Vladimir asked: 'How is it that you can teach people
Jewish law even while God rejected you and scattered you. If God had
loved you and your law, you would not be scattered throughout foreign
lands. Or do you wish us Russians to suffer the same fate?'" - The
Russian Chronicle, describing a visit of Khazar missionaries to Kiev in
the year 986

"The king and his vizier travelled to the deserted mountains on the
seashore, and arrived one night at the cave in which some Jews used to
celebrate the Sabbath. They disclosed their identity to them, embraced
their religion, were circumcized in the cave, and then returned to
their country, eager to learn the Jewish law. They kept their
conversion secret, however, until they found an opportunity of
disclosing the fact gradually to a few of their special friends. When
the number had increased, they made the affair public, and induced the
rest of the Khazars to embrace the Jewish faith. They sent to various
countries for scholars and books, and studied the Torah. Their
chronicles also tell of their prosperity, how they beat their foes,
conquered their lands, secured great treasures, how their army swelled
to hundreds of thousands, how they loved their faith, and fostered such
love for the Holy House that they erected a tabernacle in the shape of
that built by Moses. They also honored and cherished the Israelites who
lived among them." - The Kuzari: The Book of Proof and Argument in
Defense of the Despised Faith, a philosophical work composed in the
12th century by the Sephardic writer Yehuda HaLevi

"The Khazars have a script which is related to the script of the
Russians [Rus].... The greater part of these Khazars who use this
script are Jews." - Ta'rikh-i Fakhr ad-Din Mubarak Shah, a Persian work
composed in 1206

Khazaria is regarded as the "country of the Jews" (Zemlya Zhidovskaya)
in Russian folk literature (byliny). And the Schechter Letter informs
us that some of the Alan people (neighbors of the Khazars to the south)
also adopted Judaism (see Golb and Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents
of the Tenth Century, pages 113 and 115).

Constantine Akropolites (1250-1324) copied 11th-century stories about
Saint Zotikos and the leprosarium that he founded in Pera, a suburb of
Constantinople. The stories reveal the settlement of Jewish Khazars in
Pera, near the leprosarium, and how these Khazars had married with
other Jews and become fully integrated into the Jewish district. (See:
"The Legend of Saint Zotikos According to Constantine Akropolites", ed.
Timothy S. Miller, Analecta Bollandiana 112 (1994): 339-376.)

In the early 10th century, the Jews of Kiev wrote a letter of
recommendation on behalf of one of the members of their community,
whose name was Yaakov bar Hanukkah. The letter is known as the Kievan
Letter and was discovered in 1962 by Norman Golb of the University of
Chicago. The names of the Kievan Jews are of Turkic, Slavic, and Hebrew
origins, such as Hanukkah, Yehudah, Gostata, and Kiabar. There is an
argument that these Jews were Israelites who adopted local names, but
others argue that they were Jews of Khazar origin to whom Turkic names
were native.

"The new Kievan Letter may thus be said to support, and indeed to
demonstrate, the authenticity of other Hebrew texts pertaining to the
Khazar Jews, and together with them shows that Khazarian Judaism was
not limited to the rulers but, rather, was well rooted in the
territories of Khazaria, reaching even to its border city of Kiev." -
Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the
Tenth Century (Cornell University Press, 1982), page 32.

The burial practices of the Khazars were transformed sometime in the
9th century. Shamanistic sun-amulets disappeared from Khazar graves
after the 830s, according to Bozena Werbart, and so did other sorts of
items: "The clear indications of Christian [of Stablo] and al-Faqih
that the Khazars en masse adopted Judaism may be collated with an
archaeological phenomenon. Only quite recently have there been
identified graves which can most probably be ascribed to the Khazars.
They are distinguished by a particular lay-out, being barrows raised
over graves which are surrounded by square or on occasion circular
trenches; these trenches are often filled with the remains of animal
sacrifices. There are analogies to this form of ritual in the homes for
the dead in early Turk sites in the Altai region. The inventories have
many features in common with those of other burials of the
Saltovo-Mayatskii culture, such as the riding-gear and bow-and-arrows
of the cavalrymen, together with the skull or skeleton of his horse,
the skeleton being saddled and harnessed. But the graves in question
often, though not invariably, stand out from other Saltovo-Mayatskii
burials by their wealth. One salient feature of these graves is their
lack of inventories datable to the tenth century. The Byzantine coins
are of the late seventh and earlier eighth centuries, while the
belt-mounts, weaponry, and stirrups are of types generally dated to the
eighth and ninth centuries. Even allowing for the approximate nature of
archaeological periodization, the absence of things clearly datable to
the tenth century is noteworthy. It seems reasonable to conclude that
the Khazars as a collective changed to some other form of
burial-ritual. Various explanations for a change might be offered, but
one obvious cause would be the mass-adoption of a religion which
disapproved of horse-sacrifices and burnt offerings. Even had Christian
of Stablo exaggerated in stating that the Khazars adopted 'Judaism in
full' in the 860s, their conversion might || well have led to the
abandonment of some of the most fragrantly pagan features of their
burial-ritual, trenches forming hollow squares among them." - Jonathan
Shepard, "The Khazars' Formal Adoption of Judaism and Byzantium's
Northern Policy." Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series 31 (1998): 16-17.

Khazarian and Hebraic imagery can often be found on the same artifact:

"It is certain that Khazar Jews lived in Phanagoria (Tmutorokan), since
over sixty tombstones bearing Jewish symbols (such as seven-branched
menorahs, shofars, and lulavs) on one side and Turkic tribe symbols
(tamgas) on the other side were found on the Taman peninsula. Many of
these tombstones date from the eighth or ninth century. Khazarian
tombstones on the Crimean peninsula also depict the shofar, menorah,
and staff of Aaron, as well as Turkic tribe symbols... The artifacts
from Taman and Crimea are extremely significant since their tamgas show
that these Jews were ethnic Turks." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of
Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 142

In 2002, a coin from the Viking "Spillings Hoard" of Gotland, Sweden
was identified as having been minted by Jewish Khazars, due to its
markings and its inscription "Moses is the messenger of God" in place
of the usual Muslim inscription "Muhammad is the messenger of God". The
coin is an imitation of Arabic coinage and contains the fictitious
mintmark "Madinat as-Salam 779-80". Numismatists conclude that it was
actually minted between about 830 and 840 in Khazaria.

"One of the most important coins in the hoard, dating from AD 830 to
840, sheds light on a place far away: Its markings show its provenance
is the kingdom of the Khazars, a realm in southern Russia between the
Black and Caspian seas. Its Arabic inscription reads 'Moses is the
messenger of God' - apparently a Jewish variant on the Islamic credo
'Mohammed is the messenger of God.' Only four other coins are known to
have this inscription." - "Viking treasure hoard yields astounding
finds", China Daily (June 24, 2002).

"The prophets Mahomet and Moses gathered on the same piece dating from
the 830s: it is the exceptionally lucky find of a Swedish orientalist
and which, for the first time, materially connects the disappeared
empire of the Khazars to Judaism.... Because even though it is worn out
well in the upper part of the side [of the coin], crushing the
traditional Muslim inscription 'Mahomet is the messenger of God', one
can read in the bottom this small, apparently improper sentence, 'Moses
is the messenger of God'. When Gert Rispling, Swedish numismatist and
orientalist, made this lucky find among the treasure brought back by
Jonas Ström, he shouts victory. This dirham is indeed the missing link
of a series of 4 already-known Islamic pieces with this inscription of
Moses, but whose different first side had not made it possible to
establish the origin. Thanks to this piece, we can go back up until
'Ard al-Khazar', the country of Khazars. It is there [in Itil] that the
pieces were struck. 'But they are in fact imitations. The original
pieces came from the caliphate [of Baghdad]... And, as was the custom,
when a face was worn [out], one struck another inscription in its
place... But the handling was so unrefined that one could use them only
in Northern Europe or Russia, where only their silver weight counted...
To add Moses on such a piece can be made only by a Jew' [Gert Rispling
explained]." - Olivier Truc, "Une pièce au puzzle kazhar", Libération
(July 16, 2002): 26-27.

Hebrew characters were allegedly found engraved on utensils from a
Khazarian site in the Don river valley of Russia. One prominent scholar
thinks this discovery is a hoax, and no solid evidence of the discovery
has yet been presented to a scholarly journal or conference, despite
the unconfirmed allegation that it was mentioned at the 1st
International Khazar Studies Colloquium by Gennadii Afanasyev.

"The Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, Russia finishes
reconstructing fragments of utensils found in Khazarian sites, where
the word 'Israel' in Hebrew characters is mentioned several times." -
Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, "El fantasma de los jzaros." La Nacin (Buenos
Aires, Argentina, August 14, 1999).

"No one, on the other hand, could distinguish a specific culture, a
fortiori a Jewish culture, until the very recent reconstruction by the
Hermitage Museum, in Saint Petersburg (Russia), of fragments of
utensils, put at the day in 1901, revealed four times the word 'Israel'
in Hebraic letters." - Nicolas Weill, "L'histoire retrouve des
Khazars." Le Monde (July 9, 1999): 12.

"Russian archeologists reexamining finds excavated from Khazar sites in
the area of the Don River in southern Russia recently discovered an
ancient vessel inscribed with the word "Israel" in Hebrew lettering.
The broken fragments of the vessel, originally unearthed in the 60s,
were only recently put together. The result is the firmest verification
yet of historical sources that point to the mass conversion to Judaism
of the Khazar empire in 740 C.E." - Ehud Ya'ari, "Archaeological Finds
Add Weight to Claim that Khazars Converted to Judaism." The Jerusalem
Report (June 21, 1999), page 8.

A so-called "Jewish Khazar" ring was buried in a grave in medieval
Hungary:

"A silver ring found in a cemetery in Ellend, near Pécs in southwestern
Hungary and not far from the villages of Nagykozár and Kiskozár, is
believed to be of Khazar-Kabar origin. The ring, which dates from the
second half of the eleventh century, was found next to a woman's
skeleton, and has thirteen Hebrew letters engraved on it as
ornamentation." - Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria (Jason
Aronson, 1999), pages 208-209, following the argument of Alexander
Scheiber and Attila Kiss which was also adopted by Raphael Patai and
Eli Valley. However, it does not spell out real Hebrew words, and is
mixed with many non-Hebrew letters and symbols. Scheiber, Kiss, and
others argued that the woman was from one of the two nearby Khazar
villages.

Jewish symbols were placed on bricks at another burial site in medieval
Hungary, which is now located in northern Serbia:

"In 1972, 263 graves were discovered near the village of Chelarevo, in
the Vojvodina district of present-day Serbia... More important, Jewish
motifs have been found on at least seventy of the brick fragments
excavated from the graves. The Jewish symbols on the fragments include
menorahs, shofars, etrogs, candle-snuffers, and ash-collectors. One of
the brick fragments, which was placed over the grave of Yehudah, has a
Hebrew inscription that reads, 'Yehudah, oh!' The skulls in the
Chelarevo graves had Mongolian features..." - Kevin Alan Brook, The
Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 251.

"One can conjecture that this burial ground belonged to the Kabar
tribes which joined the Hungarians at the time when they discovered
their fatherland. Some of the Kabars, arriving from Khazaria,
apparently kept their Judaic religion." - István Erdélyi, "Kabari
(Kavari) v Karpatskom Basseyne." Sovietskaya Arkheologiya 4 (1983): 179.

"The early-medieval graveyard and settlement at CHelarevo, near Novi
Sad, offers the most numerous and most unusual finds with Jewish
symbols. Along with several hundreds of graves of typically Avaric
characteristics (judging by the pottery, jewellery and horsemen's
gear), excavations begun in 1972 produced several hundreds of graves of
the same shape but lacking any additional burial objects.... each grave
was marked by a fragment of a Roman brick (never a whole brick,
although these were plentiful in the near-by older Roman sites) into
which a menorah was cut, and most frequently two other Jewish symbols
on its left and right sides: the shofar and an etrog, a lulav on some
bricks, and even a small Jewish six-pointed star. Some 450 brick
fragments have so far been found. The position and size of the incised
motifs were adapted to the size and shape of each of the fragments,
which means that the motifs were not there on the original whole
bricks. Some of the fragments had a Hebrew inscription added - a name
or a few words which, with the exception of JERUSALEM and ISRAEL, are
difficult to decipher because of the damage. Some of the Hebrew
characters are carved with great precision.... Several hypotheses have
been proposed on the possible origin of a Jewish or Judaised population
who marked the graves of their dead in this unusual way and had
literate people among them. The influence of the Crimea Khazars has
been mentioned in this context; their ruler, nobility and part of the
population were Judaised in the 8 c., and many Jews who had emigrated
from Asia Minor and Byzantium, lived among them." - Ante Soric et al
(editors), Jews in Yugoslavia: Muzejski prostor, Zagreb, Jezuitski trg
4. (Zagreb: MGC, 1989), page 28.

"In excavations at a large graveyard apparently dating to the end of
the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries, when the region was
under the domination of the Avar tribe, archeologists have unearthed
hundreds of brick fragments inscribed with menorahs and other Jewish
symbols, including at least one small six-pointed Star of David. Some
brick fragments also were inscribed with Hebrew letters. Research has
shown that the people buried at Celarevo were of the Mongol race,
apparently a tribe that had newly migrated into the area from the east.
Beyond that, the origin of this Jewish settlement remains a mystery:
One hypothesis has suggested that they may have been influenced by the
Crimean Khazars, a tribe whose leaders converted to Judaism in the
eighth century." - Ruth Ellen Gruber, Jewish Heritage Travel, 3rd
edition (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 248.

In addition to the Hungarian site above, the Star of David was found at
two sites in the Khazar kingdom, even though it is unclear whether the
symbol was used there for Jewish purposes:

"Engravings of the six-pointed Jewish star of David were found on
circular Khazar relics and bronze mirrors from Sarkel and Khazarian
gravefields in Verkhneye Saltovo." - Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of
Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 142.

The Ellend and Chelarevo sites mentioned above allegedly show that a
Turkic Jewish group migrated westward from the Khazar empire. However,
the Khazar affiliation of those sites is unproven. More substantial
evidence which may indicate Jewish Khazar westward migrations follows:

"Significant evidence exists that attests to permanent Khazar
settlements in the territory that is now western Belarus. Documents
contained in the Russian Judaica collection of Baron Günzburg
(1857-1910) and Baron Polyakov (Polakoff) indicated that the Khazars
founded a glass factory in Hrodna (Grodno) in the late ninth century or
the early tenth century." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria
(Jason Aronson, 1999), page 213

However, the current location of such documents, if they really
existed, is unknown. In 2002 I learned that they are not contained in
the present-day Guenzburg manuscripts collection. It is possible that
this information was either hearsay without substantiation or has been
lost or destroyed.

"Even as late as 1309 a Council of the Hungarian clergy at Pressburg
forbade Catholics to intermarry with those people described as Khazars,
and their decision received papal confirmation in 1346." - Douglas M.
Dunlop, "The Khazars", in The Dark Ages, ed. Roth and Levine (Rutgers
University Press, 1966), page 356

"A significant fact attesting to continued Magyar-Kabar relations is
the statement of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus that the Magyars and
Khazars learned each others' languages, such that the Khazar language
was spoken in Hungary until at least the middle of the tenth century."
- Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page
208, referring to the fact that Khazars living in Hungary taught their
language to their Hungarian neighbors

"The Khazarian population in Hungary further increased in size when the
Hungarian Duke Taksony (reigned 955-970) invited Khazar Jews to settle
in his realm." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason
Aronson, 1999), page 208

"Around the year 1117, people presumed to be Khazars fled the Cumans
and sought refuge in Kievan Rus from Vladimir Monomakh. These 'Khazars'
settled near Chernihiv (Chernigov), northeast of Kiev, in a new town
they built called Byelaya Vyezha ('White Fortress')." - Kevin Alan
Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 222,
following Dunlop and von Kutschera. I was right to question their
Khazar identity, because Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath in A Grin without
a Cat, vol. 2, page 126, indicates that the source document, PSRL, only
speaks about the "belovezhtsi" who "came to Rus'" and nothing about
their having founded another town with that name, but only suggests
that they were of or from Belo Vezha; furthermore, the source doesn't
say that the belovezhtsi were "Khazars".

Sketchy information also allows us to posit that a small number of
Khazars reached Moravia and Croatia. Central European Jews in service
to Hasdai ibn Shaprut met a blind Khazarian Jew named Amram circa 947
in an unknown place, apparently in central Europe (see Kevin Alan
Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, page 131). According to the Life of
Methodius, Saint Methodius met a Khazar named Zambrios in Moravia
around 879-880 (see Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, page 124.

The best evidence that Khazars form a portion of modern Ukrainian Jewry
is the fact that Slavic-speaking Jews existed in Kievan Rus.
Scholarship has demonstrated that these Jews were of Khazarian and
Byzantine origins, and thus are distinguished from later immigrants
from the West. And, by the way, the Kozare district in Kiev was named
for Khazars.

PART 2. Scholarly opinions in favor of the Khazar theory

The idea that Khazars contributed to a certain extent to the gene pool
of Eastern European Jewry has been, and still is, championed by a large
number of legitimate folklorists and historians, as well as by popular
authors. Below is a collection of their viewpoints.

"The strangest fact is that the name of the Ashkenazim, the bulk whom I
see as the descendents of the Khazars, points towards the old grounds
of the Khazars around the Caucasus... According to the explanation by
the Talmud, Ashkenaz thus means a country near the Black Sea between
Ararat and the Caucasus, within the original region of the Khazar
empire. The name with which the Sefardim indicate their co-religionists
from Poland already gives the explanation for the real descent, from
the countries in the Caucasus." - Hugo Freiherr von Kutschera, in Die
Chasaren: Historische Studie (Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1910).

"[Isaac Bär] Levinsohn was the first to express the opinion that the
Russian Jews hailed, not from Germany, as is commonly supposed, but
from the banks of the Volga. This hypothesis, corroborated by
tradition, Harkavy established as a fact. Originally the vernacular of
the Jews of Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev was Russian and Polish, or,
rather, the two being closely allied, Palaeo-Slavonic. The havoc
wrought by the Crusades in the Jewish communities of Western Europe
caused a constant stream of German-Jewish immigrants to pour, since
1090, into the comparatively free countries of the Slavonians.
RussoPoland became the America of the Old World. The Jewish settlers
from abroad soon outnumbered the native Jews, and they spread a new
language and new customs wherever they established themselves. Whether
the Jews of Russia were originally pagans from the shores of the Black
and Caspian Seas, converted to Judaism under the Khazars during the
eighth century, or Palestinian exiles subjugated by their Slavonian
conquerors and assimilated with them, it is indisputable that they
inhabited what we know to-day as Russia long before the || Varangian
prince Rurik came, at the invitation of Scythian and Sarmatian savages,
to lay the foundation of the Muscovite empire. In Feodosia there is a
synagogue at least a thousand years old. The Greek inscription on a
marble slab, dating back to 80-81 B. C. E., preserved in the Imperial
Hermitage in St. Petersburg, makes it certain that they flourished in
the Crimea before the destruction of the Temple." - Jacob S. Raisin, in
The Haskalah Movement in Russia (The Jewish Publication Society of
America, 1913), pages 18-19.

"We are told of a large tribe of Tartars called the Khazars, who in the
eighth century were converted to Judaism and established a Jewish
kingdom in southern Russia. Although that kingdom was destroyed by the
Russians in the tenth century, no doubt many of the descendants of the
Khazars were still living in the region. || And no doubt they readily
greeted their brethren as they came flocking in from Germany." - Lewis
Browne, in Stranger Than Fiction: A Short History of the Jews from
Earliest Times to the Present Day (Macmillan, 1925), pages 237-238.

"The fashion of dismissing the tale about the Khozars as also
incredible and therefore untrue is no longer in vogue. Inasmuch as the
famous poet philosopher Judah Halevi (1085-1140) founded his Cuzari on
the Khozars, the tale was thought to be merely the poetical offspring
of his imagination. But history has now accepted the account as
undoubtedly true and attributes some of the characteristics of the
Russian Jew as due to their descent from Tartars, converted to Judaism,
rather than from Jews even of the lost Ten Tribes." - Elkan Nathan
Adler, in Jewish Travellers (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1930),
page xiii.

"At about the same time that the Mohammedans had conquered Spain, the
king of a people, called Khazars, had become dissatisfied with
worshipping idols, and had become a Jew. A great many of his lords,
generals, and soldiers had done likewise. Rabbis were then invited to
come and teach Jewish laws and customs to the Jewish Khazars. During
the two hundred years of the existence of this Jewish kingdom, most of
the Khazars had learned the Jewish religion and were living in
accordance with its laws. Hasdai rejoiced greatly to learn of the
kingdom of the Khazars. Unfortunately, the Russians destroyed it a few
years later. You are probably wondering: ''What happened to the Jewish
Khazars?'' Some of them mingled with the other Jews of Russia, and the
others || gradually forgot their Judaism and became Christians." -
Mordechai I. Soloff, in How the Jewish People Grew Up (Cincinnati, OH:
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1936), pages 219, 221.

"Dr. [Itzhak] Schipper believes that diffusion of Jewish Khazarian
elements into the Polish kingdom appeared only after the Khazarian
kingdom fell. A lot of documents and different town-names attest to the
early Jewish immigration to Poland.... At the same time there was
another Jewish immigration and colonization from the west, from
Germany. Lots of antagonism existed between the eastern and western
Jewish immigrants because there were different types of
city-buildings.... Polish land was covered mostly with forests,
especially in the North and West with wetlands and quagmire, so there
was little population. The Khazar people, usually peasants, used
primitive tools and were people with less culture. There was antagonism
with the more advanced German Jews." - E. Ringelblum, in Z'ydzi w
Polsce Odrodzonej, edited by A. Hafftka, Itzhak Schipper, and A.
Tartakower (Warsaw, 1936), page 38.

"In the early Middle Ages a powerful state, inhabited by the Khazars,
existed on the coast of the Black Sea; and early in the eighth century
Buland, ruler of the || Khazars, formally adopted the Jewish religion.
Subsequently this country, like so many other areas of Eastern Europe,
was absorbed by the growing power of the Kingdom of Kiev. To the
present day the Mongoloid features noticeable among the Polish Jews
would indicate that, after the downfall of this Eastern European Jewish
state, some, probably the ruling classes, migrated to Poland. Some
anthropologists, however, attribute such features to the Mongol
invasions." - Raymond Leslie Buell, in Poland: Key to Europe (New York,
NY: A.A. Knopf, 1939), pages 288-289.

"The capital city and lands of the Chazars were finally captured about
the middle of the tenth century by the Duke of Kiev; the survivors of
this strange kingdom were then scattered through the Crimea, where they
were soon lost to history. Yet even today throughout Southern Russia we
find Jews whose tall figures, sandy hair and high cheek bones suggest
that they may have descended from the almost forgotten Chazars." - Elma
Ehrlich Levinger and Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, in The Story of the Jew for
Young People (New York, NY: Behrman's Jewish Book House, 1940), page
107.

"The Khazar nation was scattered. Some of the people fled to northern
Russia. They may have become the ancestors of certain Jewish groups who
are living at the present time." - Dorothy F. Zeligs, in A History of
Jewish Life in Modern Times for Young People (New York, NY: Bloch
Publishing Company, 1950), page 203.

"The circumstances surrounding the beginnings of Jewish settlement in
Poland remain nebulous, though it is more than a surmise that the first
Jews must have come from the Crimea. After the fall of the Jewish
kingdom of Khazaria, they continued to arrive, fleeing from the Russian
boyars of Kiev who after several centuries of vassalage to the Jewish
kings had finally risen in revolt and conquered them. In time, these
Khazar Jews blended with the other Jewish elements in Poland and
ultimately lost their ethnic group identity." - Nathan Ausubel, in
Pictorial History of the Jewish People (New York, NY: Crown, 1953),
page 133.

"In 1016 the descendants of the Jewish royal family fled to their
coreligionists in Spain. Many of the Jewish Khazars, however, continued
to live in the Crimea.... But the majority of the early Khazar
proselytes were scattered over the neighboring countries, introducing
Jewish ideals among their Christian neighbors. Some estimate that from
sixty to seventy per cent of the Jews of Southern Russia are not of
Semitic descent." - Jacob S. Raisin, in Gentile Reactions to Jewish
Ideals (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1953), page 691.

"The first Jews to settle in Lithuania in the 11th century came from
the land of the Khazars, on the lower Volga River, from Crimea on the
Black Sea and from Bohemia. Originally, the Jews came to the land of
the Khazars from the Byzantine kingdom, where they had been oppressed.
The Khazars had welcomed the Jews and later had been converted to
Judaism. When the Khazars were overrun by the Mongols and Russians, the
Jews settled in Lithuania, whose rulers, at that time, were extremely
tolerant." - Sidney L. Markowitz, in What You Should Know About Jewish
Religion, History, Ethics and Culture (New York, NY: Citadel Press,
1955).

"The immigration (originally transmigration) of Jews to Poland started
in the middle of the IX century. It took place at the same time from
Western Europe and from the East (that is from the state of the
Chazars, whose state religion was Judaism. Chazars was situated in the
vicinity of Kiev and extended to the Dniestr; it ceased to exist in
969)." - Michal M. Borwicz, in A Thousand Years of Jewish Life in
Poland (Paris, 1955).

"But before and after the Mongol upheaval, the Khazars sent many
offshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic lands, helping ultimately to
build up the great Jewish centers of eastern Europe." - Salo Wittmayer
Baron, in A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York, NY:
Columbia University Press, 1957), volume 3, page 206.

"Descendants of the Khazars, men noteworthy for their learning and
piety, were known long after in Toledo.... And, to the present day, the
Mongoloid features common amongst the Jews of eastern Europe are, in
all probability, a heritage from these 'proselytes of righteousness' of
ten centuries ago." - Cecil Roth, in A Short History of the Jewish
People (London: Horovitz [East and West Library], 1959), page 288.

"In the same period there began an influx of Chazar Jews from the East.
At first this was essentially a trade immigration, but towards the end
of the 10th century, after the fall of the Chazar state, it assumed
larger proportions. The immigrants of this period turned mainly to
agriculture and handicrafts. These colonies or settlements occurred in
the southern and eastern parts of the future Polish state." - Kazimierz
and Maria Piechotka, in Wooden Synagogues (Warsaw: Arkady, 1959;
originally appeared in a Polish-language edition), English edition,
page 9.

"Poland received many Jews seeking to escape from the oppressions of
the Crusades and the Black Death, as well as survivors of the Jewish
kingdom of Khazaria." - Meyer Levin and Toby K. Kurzband, in The Story
of the Jewish Way of Life (New York, NY: Behrman House, 1959), page 48.

"The Khazars were a warlike people, and succeeded in extending their
rule and influence. They were subjected to occasional attacks by the
Byzantines and later by the Russians. By the end of the 10th century
they succumbed to the Russians, and after maintaining themselves for a
short period in the Crimea, some gradually embraced the Christian or
Moslem faith, ceasing to exist as a separate people, though many joined
with their Jewish brethren." - David Bridger and Samuel Wolk (editors),
in article "Khazars" (pp. 265-266) in The New Jewish Encyclopedia (New
York, NY: Behrman House, 1962), page 266.

"Far away, on the steppes of Southern Russia, a whole nation had been
converted to Judaism several hundred years ago. Could it be true?
Hasdai sends a letter to the king of this foreign people, the Chazars,
and receives an answer: the story is true... They were to exist to the
thirteenth century, when they were defeated, their remnants joining the
Jewish or Christian communities." - Leo Trepp, in Eternal Faith,
Eternal People: A Journey into Judaism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1962), page 143.

"Polish scholars agree that these oldest [Polish Jewish] settlements
were founded by Jewish emigres from the Khazar state and Russia, while
the Jews from Southern and Western Europe began to arrive and settle
only later... and that a certain portion at least of the Jewish
population (in earlier times, the main bulk) originated from the east,
from the Khazar country, and later from Kievian Russia." - Adam
Vetulani, in his article "The Jews of Mediaeval Poland," in Jewish
Journal of Sociology, volume 4 (December, 1962), page 274.

"In Khazaria, perched precariously on the trackless steppe extending
between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, Jewish merchants and
refugees from the persecutions of the Byzantine Empire managed to
convert the king, many of his nobles, and a considerable portion of the
nomadic, Khazarian population.... With the disappearance of the
Khazarian kingdom under the blows of the Russians, the Jews and Jewish
Khazars settled in the Crimea, in Hungary, and in Lithuania." - Jacob
Berhard Agus, in The Meaning of Jewish History (New York, NY:
Abelard-Schuman, 1963), page 237.

"It is clear, however, that the influence of the Jews, who had become
the most active agents of the commerce of the Caliphate, was
substantial in the Khazar kingdom, and it is probable that the commonly
observed mongoloid type among East European Jews, particularly in the
Ukraine, Poland and Roumania, derives from the conversions and
intermarriages which were no doubt frequent in the swarming trading
camps of the Khaqans." - W. E. D. Allen, in The Ukraine (New York, NY:
Russell and Russell, 1963), pages 8-9.

"Meanwhile the bulk of the victims of expulsion, massacre, and
persecution were to be found in the territory between the Black Sea and
the Baltic, most of which was part of the kingdom of Poland. There
European Jews had met another strand of the Jewish people, Jews who had
entered the same area from the south and east. Jewish colonies on the
Black Sea and in the Crimea dated back to very early times, and the
kingdom of the Khazars || had left many Jewish relics in lands which
are now Ukrainian." - James Parkes, in A History of the Jewish People
(Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1963), pages 105-106.

"Driven out of their country by the Cumans in the 12th century, part of
the last Jewish Khazars settled in Poland." - Françoise
Godding-Ganshof, in article "Khazars" (pp. 214-215) in Chamber's
Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1966), page 215.

"It is likely too that some Khazar progeny reached the various Slavic
lands where they helped to build the great Jewish centers of Eastern
Europe." - Abba Solomon Eban, in My People: The Story of the Jews (New
York, NY: Behrman House, 1968), page 150.

"It would of course be foolish to deny that Jews of different origin
also contributed to the existing Jewish world-community. The numerical
ratio of the Khazar to the Semitic and other contributions is
impossible to establish. But the cumulative evidence makes one inclined
to agree with the concensus of Polish historians that 'in earlier times
the main bulk originated from the Khazar country'; and that,
accordingly, the Khazar contribution to the genetic make-up of the Jews
must be substantial, and in all likelihood dominant." - Arthur
Koestler, in The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage
(London: Hutchinson, 1976 and New York, NY: Random House, 1976), page
180.

"...it may be stated at present that well-documented findings
concerning the culture of the Jewries of western Europe in the Middle
Ages, as well as evidence leading directly to the recognition of the
movement eastward of important segments of those Jewries during late
medieval times, leave no room for the hypothesis that the Jews of
postmedieval Europe were descended primarily from the Khazars. That,
however, those among the Khazars who adopted Judaism as their religion
came to form a part of the Ukrainian component of eastern European
Jews, and eventually to be assimilated by it, can hardly be doubted on
the basis of our present state of knowledge." - Norman Golb and Omeljan
Pritsak, in Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), page xv. In later separate
writings by Golb (Jewish Proselytism, 1988) and Pritsak ("The
Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe in Relation to the Khazars, the
Rus' and the Lithuanians." In Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical
Perspective, 1990), however, the view that virtually no Jews are
descended from the Khazars is expressed.

"There is little reason to doubt that Jews had lived in Poland from the
earliest times, and that Judaism, as preserved by the descendants of
the ancient Chazar kingdom in the southeast, had actually antedated
Christianity." - Norman Davies, in God's Playground: A History of
Poland, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1982), volume 1, page
79.

"The Khazar Jewish kingdom was a fascinating episode in Russian Jewish
History.... The Jews dispersed into Russia, Armenia, Byzantium, and the
Mediterranean coast. It is likely that many of the Jews of these
regions are descended from Khazar refugees." - Richard Haase, in Jewish
Regional Cooking (Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1985), page 56.

"Poland was Christianized in 966, at a time when Jews already lived
there. The first ones came from the Khazar state of Russia and Kievan
Rus. Late in the eleventh century, Jews fleeing from persecution in
southern and western Europe arrived. Not, however, until the fifteenth
century did large numbers of Jews begin to live in Poland." - Meyer
Weinberg, in Because They Were Jews: A History of Anti-Semitism
(Greenwood Press, 1986), page 153.

"East European Jews, especially the Ukrainian, Moldovian (Bessarabian),
Azerbaijanian, Georgian, and Armenian Jews are actually a fusion of
Byzantine-Greek Jews, Babylonian Jews from the Abbasid Caliphate,
Yiddish-speaking German-Polish Jews, sixteenth Century Sephardic Jews
fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and Khazars. This is the bloodline of
these Russian Jews... However, the most strongly Khazar of the Jews are
undoubtedly the Hungarian Jews, descendants of the last Khazars who
fled into Hungary about 1200-1300, where they were received by their
former vassals, the Magyar kings. The Hungarian Jews are definitely a
fusion of Semitic German Jews and the Turkic Khazars with some
Sephardic immigrants who came to Hungary by way of Italy in the 1500's
escaping the Spanish Inquisition." - Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac
Mozeson, in Wars of the Jews: A Military History from Biblical to
Modern Times (New York, NY: Hippocrene Books, 1990), page 224.

"As the conquering Lithuanians moved south through Byelorussia,
Volkynia, and the Ukraine, they came upon towns with either established
Jewish communities or a Jewish presence. These communities were
established by a mixture of Jews who came via Khazaria, Khazarian Jews
and Jews who came directly from older communities. What was the
proportion of each or their numbers is not known." - Stuart and Nancy
Schoenburg, in Lithuanian Jewish Communities (New York, NY: Garland,
1991 and Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), page 10.

"Jews are the largest and most important of these nationalities...
According to some historians, many of them are descended from the
Khazars, a people who ruled much of the Volga-Dnieper basin the seventh
to ninth centuries and converted to Judaism en masse in the eighth
century. Others are descended from a large colony of Jews who settled
in Ukraine when it was ruled by a religiously tolerant Poland." -
William G. Andrews, in The Land and People of the Soviet Union (New
York, NY: HarperCollins, 1991), page 183.

"It is very likely that Judaized Khazar elements, especially those that
had acculturated to the cities, contributed to the subsequently
Slavic-speaking Jewish communities of Kievan Rus'. These were
ultimately absorbed by || Yiddish-speaking Jews entering the Ukraine
and Belorussia from Poland and Central Europe. In the same way, one may
conjecture that Khazar Muslims contributed to the Turkic-speaking and
Turko-Muslim communities of the Volga basin and North Caucasus." -
Peter Benjamin Golden, in An Introduction to the History of the Turkic
Peoples (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), pages 243-244.

"How and why Jews first reached Lithuania is a matter of informed
hypothesis. Historian Abraham Elijahu Harkavi maintains that they came
from Babylonia and elsewhere in the Near East in the ninth and tenth
centuries C.E., after the decline of the Jewish communities there.
Harkavi also believes that Jews reached Lithuania from the shortlived
but flourishing Jewish state of the Khazars, who were among the
founders of Kiev in 865. The Khazars lost their kingdom in 969 to the
Russian princes, who introduced the Russian Orthodox Church... Thus
inspired, the Russians expelled the Jews..., who moved en masse to the
then-Lithuanian towns of Gardinas (Grodno), Minsk, Pinsk..." - Masha
Greenbaum, in The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable
Community 1316-1945 (Jerusalem: Gefen, 1995), page 2.

"It is in the fusion of autochthonous Jews with semi-Jewish Khazars and
Kabars in the tenth century that we must seek the earliest demographic
basis of the Jewish population of medieval Hungary." - Raphael Patai,
in The Jews of Hungary (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press,
1996), page 29.

"...one should remember that the Khazars were described by several
contemporary authors as having a pale complexion, blue eyes, and
reddish hair. Red, as distinguished from blond, hair is found in a
certain percentage of East European Jews, and this, as well as the more
generalized light coloring, could be a heritage of the medieval Khazar
infusion." - Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai, in The Myth of the
Jewish Race (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989), page 72.

"Jews from central Europe first settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
in the second half of the 14th century. Early examples are the
communities of Brest-Litovsk and Grodno, established by Jews from
Poland with charters from Duke Vitold, similar to those granted by
Bolislav the Pious to Jews of Great Poland. Among the Jews of the
southwestern districts of the Lithuanian Duchy, annexed to the Kingdom
of Poland toward the end of the 14th century, were descendants of Jews
from oriental countries, including a few of Khazar stock. They differed
from the Ashkenazis in both language and cultural traditions." - Shmuel
Arthur Cygielman, in Jewish Autonomy in Poland and Lithuania until 1648
(5408) (Jerusalem, 1997).

"Eventually, the Khazaria kingdom fell. Evidently, some of its Jewish
population went to Eastern Europe and the rest disappeared." - Lawrence
Jeffrey Epstein, in Questions and Answers on Conversion to Judaism
(Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998), page 176.

"Jewish-Khazarian settlement in Kiev can be traced to the 10th century;
the Russian-speaking community was later absorbed by Yiddish-speaking
immigrants from Central Europe." - in the entry "Ukraine" in The
Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Klenicki, Schiff, and Schreiber
(Schreiber Publishing, 1998), page 267.

"The descendants of the Khazars reached eastern and central Europe.
There is substantial evidence that some of them settled in Slavic
lands, where they took part in establishing the major Jewish centers of
eastern Europe.... It is also widely believed that many Khazar Jews
fled to Poland to avoid forced baptism. Moreover, some of the groups
that migrated from eastern to central Europe have been called Khazars
and may have originated in the former Khazar empire. Some apparently
fled into northern Hungary, where, to this day, there are villages that
bear such names as Kozar and Kozardie." - Robert and Elinor Slater, in
Great Moments in Jewish History (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David,
1999), page 87.

"Unfortunately, in 1016 C.E., the Russians, with the help of Byzantium,
crushed the Khazar kingdom and brought it to a close. What happened to
all the Khazar Jews, both the descendants of the converts and the
settlers, is shrouded in mystery. They were certainly dispersed in many
of the neighboring lands. It is conceivable, according to || some
scholars, that some of them are the forebears of the Polish and Russian
Jews of previous generations. Who knows? If your ancestors came from
these lands, you may have the blood of kings in you - not David and
Solomon, but kings who voluntarily chose to join the fate of a people
whose religion they acknowledged as true." - Benjamin Blech, in The
Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture (Alpha Books,
1999), pages 161-162.

"Before they arrived in present-day Hungary, the Magyars had lived in
Central Asia relatively near the famous Khazars, who had converted to
Judaism in the eighth century. When the Magyars left the area, many
Khazar Jews joined them on their trek westward. In southern Hungary,
archaeologists discovered a Khazar ring engraved with Hebrew letters.
These Khazars joined the pre-existing Jews of Hungary and formed
communities in the main cities, including Buda." - Eli Valley, in The
Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe (Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson, 1999), page 377.

"Thus, the Ashkenazic ethnogenesis, having been formed by migrations
from the East (Khazaria), West (e.g., Germany, Austria, Bohemia), and
South (e.g., Greece, Mesopotamia, Khorasan), is more complex than
previously envisioned." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria
(Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999), page xv.

"During the Middle Ages, a large group of Jews came from Germany and
eastern lands to Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.... Another
group emanated from the lands of the Khazars, relates the Encyclopedia
Judaica." - Ben G. Frank, in A Travel Guide to Jewish Russia and
Ukraine (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 1999), page 63.

"In the tenth and eleventh centuries, as the Khazar state
disintegrated, and into the thirteenth century, as the Cuman and Mongol
hordes pushed large numbers of refugees westward, Khazar and
Khazar-influenced groups professing Judaism - including the probably
highly committed Levites - migrated into Eastern Europe, where they
mixed with other Jewish groups moving east from Germany and north from
|| Italy." - David Keys, in Catastrophe: An Investigation into the
Origins of the Modern World (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2000),
pages 100-101.

"During their period of decline many Khazars were killed in battle,
sold into slavery, or forced to convert to Islam or Christianity. A
sizable number probably intermarried with the Crimean Jews. Others fled
to the West (meaning Poland and southern Russia) where they
intermarried with Ashkenazi Jews." - Ken Blady, in Jewish Communities
in Exotic Places (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 2000), page 118.

"An important Jewish center was established in Kiev, the Khazarian
border stronghold. After the conquest of Khazaria by Rus, the Khazarian
Jews moved northward. Simultaneously, Eastern Europe was reached by
Jews from the West." - Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe: From the
Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism, ed. by Richard Frucht
(Garland, 2000), page 402.

"It is even possible that Jewish survivors of the Khazar kingdom near
the Caspian Sea made their way to Poland after that kingdom's
destruction during the thirteenth century Mongol invasions." - Lloyd P.
Gartner, in History of the Jews in Modern Times (Oxford Univ. Press,
2000), page 19.

"Aprs toute cette nbulosit historique, une question se pose : qu'est
devenue la population khazar aprs la dbandade effrne sous l'invasion
russe dtruisant son empire ? Bien qu'ignorant son importance numrique,
on peut imaginer qu'elle tait considrable, juger par l'impact qu'elle
exerait sur ses voisins byzantins et musulmans. Indniablement, ceux qui
restaient attachs la religion nouvellement acquise n'avaient pas
d'alternative entre une nouvelle conversion et l'exode, exposs comme
ils taient une extermination certaine en cas de rsistance. On sait,
d'aprs des tmoignages historiques, qu'un groupe chercha refuge l'Est
parmi les communauts juives du Caucase. Un autre vers les Carpates,
surtout en Hongrie et en Bohme- Moravie. Mais le gros de la population
se dirigea au Nord vers l'Ukraine, la Bilorussie, la Pologne, la
Lituanie et les zones limitrophes de Russie. Partout dans ces
territoires, o la population juive tait numriquement insignifiante au
dbut du Moyen-ge, l'affluence massive des fugitifs khazars rencontrait
d'autres groupes d'migrants venant des rgions rhnanes de France et
d'Allemagne ainsi que du Danube, chappant la vague de perscutions par
les bandes arme chrtiennes des premires croisades, en route vers la
Terre-Sainte via Constantinople. D'aprs de nombreux historiens du
judasme europen de l'poque, c'est la jonction des Khazars aux fugitifs
venant de l'Ouest et aux populations locales dj organises en communauts
qui a donn lieu la naissance du grand peuple ashknaze, en se
restructurant pour devenir, ds le 16me sicle, la partie prpondrante des
juifs dans le monde." - Léon Alhadeff, in his article "Les ethnies
marginales du Judaisme," in Los Muestros No. 39 (June 2000).

"...the 18th-century Yiddish-speaking Jews who lived in German- and
Slavic-speaking areas and considered themselves Ashkenazic, actually
were descended from three independent sources. The first, very
important source, was the Rhineland in western Germany; the second one
was the area of the modern Czech Republic, an area that medieval Jewish
rabbinic literature called 'West Canaan.' The third and marginal center
called 'East Canaan' corresponded to modern Ukraine in which one part
of the Jews were of Khazarian origin." - Alexander Beider, in his
article "The Influence of Migrants from Czech Lands on Jewish
Communities in Central and Eastern Europe," in Avotaynu, volume 16,
number 2 (Summer 2000), page 20.

"When, in 1016, a joint Russian and Byzantine army defeated the already
much weakened Khazar army, these 'Khazar' Jews were forced to flee once
more... These Jews were no longer simply the descendants of Jewish
refugees from Greece and Persia. Intermarriage with original Khazars
who had been converted to Judaism had introduced central Asian
features, high cheek-bones and Oriental eyes... With the destruction of
Khazaria some of the Jews found their way back to Greece and the
Mediterranean, exiles once more. But many must have taken back with
their Russian conquerors to the lands of southern Russia - to Kiev and
Kharkov... The Khazar Jews who settled in Russia were not particularly
liked or welcomed. Such historical records as survive show for example
that a hundred years after their arrival anti-Jewish riots broke out in
Kiev itself and many were killed.... || Meanwhile, in the very same
years that the defeated Jewish Khazars - and there was a second Khazar
Diaspora following the Mongol invasion of the area in the thirteenth
century - were finding new homes in southern Russia, another group of
Jews, numerically much larger, were being driven out of their homes,
along the river Rhine." - Martin Gilbert, in Letters to Auntie Fori:
5000 Years of Jewish History (New York, NY: Schocken, 2002), pages
147-148.

"It's even possible that my ancestry might not move in the direction of
ancient Israel at all.... After 965, the Khazars were through as an
organized power, but Judaism may have remained, and it may well be that
many East European Jews are descended from Khazars and the people they
ruled. I may be one of them. Who knows? And who cares?.... Where did
all this [my family's European physical traits] come from? Surely not
from any Mediterranean or Turkish people. It had to be of Slavic origin
and Scandinavian beyond that - plus a bit of Mongol to account for my
B-type blood." - Isaac Asimov, in It's Been A Good Life (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2002), chapter 1.

"During the period of decline, many Khazars converted to Islam or
Christianity, but some, who remained Jews, migrated westward, and are
historically documented in several East European countries and cities,
including Kiev. According to one sweeping theory, the original and
dominant stratum of East European Jewry is of Khazar origin." - Rivka
Gonen, in The Quest for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel: To the Ends of
the Earth (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 2002), page 73.

"Wrotizla's (= Wroclaw/Breslau) Jewish community clearly predated the
earliest records of existance. Jewish merchants had been active in
Central and Eastern Europe from Khazar times. ... And it has been
contended that a Jewish community functioned in Poland from the tenth
century onwards, stimulated by a Jewish presence to the east in the
former Khazaria." - Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, in Microcosm:
Portrait of a Central European City (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), page
91.

"Apparently, part of the Khazar Jews remained in their areas of
settlement because there is evidence of a messianic movement among the
Jewish Khazars of the Crimea. Others returned to the Caucasus and there
augmented the Jews who had earlier immigrated from Persia. They formed
the core of the || 'Mountain Jews' who even today live in communities
rich in tradition. Khazar Jews also settled in Kiev and other cities in
Rus', as well as in Poland." - Heiko Haumann, in A History of East
European Jews (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002),
pages 6-7.

There are also similar sentiments in many other works by other authors.
For instance, J.S. Hertz, a Yiddish-language historian, in Di Yidn in
Ukrayne: fun di eltste tsaytn biz nokh tah vetat (New York: Unzer tsayt
farlag, 1949), argued that most Ukrainian Jews and many other Eastern
European Jews are Khazarian. Abraham N. Poliak, a Hebrew-language
historian from Israel, wrote a book Kazariyah (first published in the
1940s) in which he argues that Eastern European Jews are predominantly
Khazarian. Arthur Koestler borrowed heavily from Poliak's works when
writing The Thirteenth Tribe during 1973 and 1974. Early proponents of
the Khazar theory included the Polish scholars Tadeusz Czacki
(1765-1813) and Max (Maksymilian) Gumplowicz (1864-1897), the Ukrainian
Jewish scholar Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788-1860), and the Russian Jewish
doctor/anthropologist Samuel Weissenberg (1867-?). Itzhak Schipper
(1884-1943), a Polish Jewish historian who wrote in Polish and Yiddish,
argued that the Polish Jews are largely Khazarian. The quote I gave
from Piechotka and Piechotka is influenced by Schipper's opinion of
what happened to the Khazars. Samuel V. Kurinsky, an American
archaeologist with extensive knowledge of Jewish history, alleged that
Jews from Khazaria settled in Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland in his 1991
book The Glassmakers. Denis Sobolov also supports the Khazar theory.
The Jewish historian Julius Brutzkus also did.

Then there are the works of Abraham Elija Harkavy, a Russian-language
historian of the late 19th century who was familiar with some of the
basic Hebrew sources for Khazarian history. I have already quoted from
Greenbaum, who summarizes his views. Harkavy's theory that Khazarian
and Middle-Eastern Jews came into Poland is supportable by a number of
factors, and may yet gain added credence if Yaffa Eliach is correct in
saying (in her 1998 book There Once Was A World: A 900-Year Chronicle
of the Shtetl of Eishyshok) that the first five Jewish families to
settle in the town of Eishyshok in Lithuania came from Babylonia. Since
Eliach (whose family spoke Yiddish just like other Lithuanian Jews)
herself claims descent from these Oriental Jews, that is perhaps
another clue that Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews are the
descendants of multiple migrations from diverse locations and not
simply late-medieval arrivals from Germany. And there are many other
historians and archaeologists who have argued that Russian and Polish
Jews derive in part from Oriental and Khazarian Jews.

PART 3. Notable modern Jews and Jewish communities who claim Khazar
ancestry

Dan Rottenberg, author of "Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish
Genealogy" (1st edition, 1977), has ancestors from the Austrian and
Russian empires. Some of his wife's ancestors were allegedly Khazars.
Karen De Witt, in The Washington Post, wrote the following on page B3,
in the Saturday, August 20, 1977 issue, in her article "Family Lore and
the Search for Jewish 'Roots'": "Rottenberg, who has traced his and his
wife's family back to the early 1800s and found one line that goes back
to the Khazar kingdom in the Crimea, which dates to the 8th century,
notes that there is only a finite number of Jews in the world." And
Rottenberg wrote in his book "Finding Our Fathers" on page 45: "In any
case, some East European Jews, and perhaps a great many, are descended
from the Khazars. Figuring out whether you are or aren't of Khazar
ancestry may be impossible, but some families seem to have clues. For
example, a branch of my wife's family named Tamarin, from Russia,
maintains that the family came into Judaism via the Khazar conversion
and that the family took its name from Tamara, queen of Georgia in the
thirteenth century."

The family of Ehud Ya'ari, a top Israeli journalist who produced the
1997 documentary Mamlekhet ha-Kuzarim, also claims some Khazarian
roots. Michael Ajzenstadt, in The Jerusalem Post, wrote the following
on page 5 in the March 17, 1997 issue, in his article "An Incredible
Journey to the Lost Empire of the Khazars": "[Ehud Ya'ari is quoted as
saying:] "As a child I heard that our family has some Khazarian blood
and for 30 years now I have been trying to find information about this
exciting subject.... [I am] a soldier in the last battle of the Khazar
kingdom, a battle for the right to be remembered.... And finally I
would like to secure funds to continue excavations in several places,
which looked quite promising. My sexiest dream is to find the actual
tomb of one of the Khazar kings. I believe that if we achieve that it
will be as important-at least as the discovery of Troy or of the
treasures of the Pharaohs in the Pyramids."

Some Jews from the shtetl Kurilovich, in Moldova, claim "Tartar"
ancestry: "In 1923, my father, who was born in the Jewish colonies of
Baron Hirsch, visited the small-town of Kurilovich, near Kishinev,
between Moldavia and Bessarabia, from where their parents had come to
Argentina. Old relatives of the town assured him that the family lived
there for 500 years, and added this phrase that fed my fantasies for a
long time: 'W