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Journal: Cambridge University Press eBooks
Year: 2011

Ukraine. According to archeological evidence from Greek colonies in Crimea, Jews appeared in what is now Ukraine in the last centuries BCE. In the seventh to ninth centuries CE, the steppe part of contemporary Ukraine was under the control of the *Khazar state. The Khazars had accepted Judaism as their official religion and gave refuge to Jews from *Islamic and *Byzantine regions. Jews were present in the medieval towns of Kievan Rus’; a letter from Kiev Jews dated to the first third of the tent