From: kr3@ph3hp840.physik.uni-stuttgart.de ()
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: The Thirteenth Tribe
Date: 22 Jan 1993 18:15:58 GMT
Organization: Physikalisches Institut, U of Stuttgart, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: ph3hp840.physik.uni-stuttgart.de

I have read with much interest the posting of sethr@cbnewsl.cb.att.com 
(seth.r.rosenthal) on the Khazar origin of Ashkenazi Jews. It so
happens that my interest parallel his since I have read much on the
history of Karaites.

Below a few comments which in no way contradict Mr. Rosenthal but
may be of some interest to him:

> If the hypothesis is that converts exist in the background
>of Eastern European Jews, and the Khazars are a group that converted
>and became Jews, the answer is probably yes.  If the hypothesis is
>that we are solely or even mostly Khazar, this is quite easy to refute,
>Koestler notwithstanding.

I have read Koestler's book quite recently. His hypothesis agrees with
the latter one: the Eastern European Jews come directly from the 
Khazars, and not from the Western European Jewry.

When reading the book it becomes obvious that Koestler was no
professional historian: he suppresses the facts that do not fit his
theory and convictions while quoting those of dubious value that
confirm his version. Thus he writes, among others, that there are no
proofs of a mass exodus of Jews from Germany to the East. I think this
should be easy to refute, and in fact has been refuted. Also,
regarding the Yiddish language, his idea is that it was picked up
by the Khazar immigrants from the German burghers in Poland.

>The History:

They [Khazars] were a Turkic people who came with the general waves
of Turks in the 5th-7th centuries.  Their ruling classes were
said to be related to Genghis Khan.  

Since Genghis Khan lived about 1200, and the Mongols had no written
sources before him, there is little chance this is more than a legend.
Besides, the Mongols were not exactly Turkic people and the two mixed
on a large scale together only after the mass Mongol expansion.

>we find letters addressed to the Khazars that were to be conveyed
>by German, Hungarian and other existing 9th century Eastern European
>Jewries, showing that Judaism existed in Eastern Europe prior to any
>Khazar migrations.  

The Magyars settled down in present-day Hungary only in 10th century,
thus there is little reason why any 9th century Jews should be called 
`Hungarian'. Perhaps you talk about the Jews residing in 9th century 
in Pannonia, at the time populated mainly by the Avars.

>Current archeological
>work in Kirghizia is also bringing to light the non-convert
>Jewish community of Khazaria,

I checked the map, and Kirghizia (present day Kyrgystan) is very far
away from the area forming the Khazar Empire which you rightly give 
somewhere earlier (roughly between Caspian Sea, Black Sea, Don and Volga 
rivers). I fail to see how the excavations in Kyrgystan can bear on 
Khazar Jews.

>The kingdom was destroyed gradually over the centuries until about 
>1150 the last remnants of the Khazar empire was in the Crimea.

It is better to say that it declined over the centuries. Khazaria was
dealt a fatal blow by the emerging Red (i.e. Kiev) Russia in 10th
century, but even after that it still survived some two hundred
years.


>The most likely direct descendants of the
>Khazars (i.e. without much intervening mixture of Eastern
>European peoples) are the Karaites of Eastern Europe,
>mostly in the Crimea but there were small communities in
>Poland too.

Now, this is my main point of interest. The thesis of the Khazar origin 
of Eastern-European Karaites has been popular among the Karaites
themselves (see: Szyszman, Simon, Le Karaisme. Ses doctrines et son 
histoire. L'Age d'homme: Lausanne 1980, and Zajaczkowski, Ananiasz, 
Karaims in Poland, PWN: Warszawa 1961.)

The main argument is that they speak a language which is very closely
related to the ancient Khazar language (Kipchak). 

However, this thesis has been questioned (see Freund, Roman, Karaites 
and dejudaization. A historical review of an endogenous and exogenous 
paradigm, Almqvist & Wiksell: Stockholm 1991.)

Freund claims that the language alone does not answer the question since
the Jews in other countries tended to pick up the local languages
(like Yiddish and Ladino) as well. According to him the Eastern-European
Karaites are direct descendants of ethnic Jews belonging to the
Karaite sect, who escaped persecutions in the Byzantine Empire by
moving to Khazaria, and particularly Crimea (see also Ankori, Zvi, 
Karaites in Byzantium, Columbia University Press: New York 1959.)

By the way, the community in Crimea is largely a thing of the past.
A major group of Karaites has lived in Lithuania, particularly in
or around the town of Trakai, having been brought there in 14th
century by Prince Vytautas from Crimea. The tiny community in Poland
mostly descended from the Lithuanian one.

>		Seth Rosenthal

Jeremi Krawczyk

Ah, to naturman@uctvax.uct.ac.za (Colin) who writes on the subject 
of Arthur Koestler's book:

>Of course the neo-Nazis love to claim that modern Jews are descended 
>from any one but the Israelites. 

I suggest that he keep the Nazi and neo-Nazi thread away from this
discussion. Koestler, while perhaps not a good historian, was a fine
writer and, with his Hungarian-Jewish background, was as far from
Nazism as it can only be imagined.

Jeremi