From: sethr@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (seth.r.rosenthal)
Subject: Re: Newsflash from Khazaria
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 14:36:25 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.jewish

In article <1992Sep9.153826.15690@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>, sethr@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (seth.r.rosenthal) writes:
> Since some of you have been interested in the Khazars
> in the past, I thought I would post this article from
> the Archeology Review.  Its the "From the President" column
> of the Archeological Institute of America, Martha Sharp Joukowsky.
> Here's another bit of evidence for those of us who are making
> up our minds to what extent Eastern European Jews are the
> descendants of Khazars.
> 
> Posted without permission.
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> On a cold and rainy day this past fall, I received a visit from
> Murad Gadgievich Magomedov, an archaeologist and university professor
> in Daghestan, a tiny autonomous republic in Russia.  He was on a five
> day visit and sought encouragement for his ongoing work back home.
> 
> With great pride, Murad told me that it was in the ancient region of
> Khazaria, the core of which forms the present-day republic,
> that Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Pagans lived in harmony from the
> fifth to the tenth centuries A.D.  There, he said in the darkness
> of medieval Europe, Jewish refugees from Byzantine Hungary, Bulgaria,
> Greece, and Armenia found sanctuary.  The region, he said was "like a
> bright star of religious tolerance."  Radiating from the great cities
> of Belendjer, Semender, and Itil, the religious freedom of Khazaria
> continued well after its rulers adopted Judaism in the eigth century.
> The kingdom's religious tolerance extended over a large geographic
> area - to the Carpathians in the West, as far north as the middle
> of modern Russia, south to the Caucasus, and along the east-west
> axis between the Volga and Don rivers and the Dnieper River,
> including the Crimea.
> 

Some analysis, and what this means to some of the debates we
have had in the past.  (Jack, Mark are ya listenin'?)

First, the theory that Eastern European Jews are Khazar
converts, thus not descended from Israelites/Judaeans
is at least weakened by this, since we see immigration
flow Eastward to Khazaria by Jews in the Balkans and Armenia.
We also see evidence of a pre-Khazar Jewish community
in Hungary.  Since this is pre-Inquisition, such Jews would
not be Sephardic
(in the sense of Spanish/Portuguese) or Ashkenazic, but would either
be from Roman convert communities, or Romaniote communities
(i.e. Greek Jews who came to Greece around the destruction of the Temple).
Since in the al-Khuzari we are told the conversions were done
by Persian rabbis, we see two non-convert communities involved
in Khazaria, that contribute to the background for Eastern European
Jews.

Second, it confirms again that only the Khazar rulers adopted
Judaism, and that the masses were largely still Christian/Pagan/Muslim.
Hence, the numbers of Jews fleeing Westward into Eastern Europe
later when Khazaria fell would be relatively low.

Third, we see yet again the assertion that Jewish kingdoms are
tolerant of other religions, even Pagan religions (Islam can't
claim that by any stretch of the imagination).  The same was
true of the Yemenite kingdom, and the Ethiopian kingdom.


		Seth Rosenthal


Disclaimer: All opinions are my own not my employers'.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish