Who are the Khazars?

See also "The Thirteenth Tribe" by Arthur Koestler.

The 1000 Year War Between Russia And The Khazars
Dr. Beter, 1979

Topic #3--Over the past two years or so I have discussed the struggle
within Russia between the Christians and the Bolsheviks since 1917.
Current events cannot be understood without knowing about the past
six decades of struggle for control of the Kremlin. But that struggle
in turn is part of an even bigger historical picture. What we are seeing
today, my friends, is the climax of a war of more than a thousand years
between the two most bitter enemies on earth. It is the war between
RUSSIA and the KHAZARS.

The empire of the Khazars vanished from the map of the world many
centuries ago. Today many people have never even heard of it, yet in
its day the Khazar empire was a very major power indeed, holding sway
over a large empire of subjugated peoples. It had to be reckoned with
by the two neighboring superpowers of that day. To the south and west
of Khazaria the Byzantine Empire was in full flower with its Eastern
Orthodox Christian civilization. To the southeast, the Khazar empire
bordered on the expanding Moslem Empire of the Arab Caliphs. The
Khazars influenced the histories of both of these other empires but,
far more importantly, the Khazar empire occupied what was later to
become a southern portion of Russia between the Black and Caspian
Seas. As a result, the historical destinies of the Russians and the Khazars
became intertwined in ways which have persisted down to the present day.

In case you have never heard of the Khazars, I think I should mention
where you can look to learn more about them. Three years ago in 1976
a book about the Khazars was published by the British writer Arthur
Koestler. The book is titled "THE 13TH TRIBE - THE KHAZAR
EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE." The American publisher is Random
House, New York, N.Y. History records that the Khazars were derived
from a mixture of Mongols, Turks, and Finns. As early as the 3rd
Century A.D., they were identifiable in constant warfare in the areas
of Persia and Armenia.

Later, in the 5th Century, the Khazars were among the devastating
hordes of Attila the Hun. Around 550 A.D., the nomadic Khazars
began settling themselves in the area around the northern Caucasus
between the Black and Caspian Seas. The Khazar capital of Itil was
established at the mouth of the Volga River where it emptied into
the Caspian, in order to control the river traffic. The Khazars then
exacted a toll of 10% on any and all cargo which passed Itil on the
river. Those who refused were attacked and slaughtered.

With their empire firmly established in the Caucasus, the Khazars
gradually began to create an empire of subjugated peoples. More
and more Slavonic tribes, who were peaceful compared to the Khazars,
were attacked and conquered. They became parts of the Khazar Empire,
required to pay tribute continually to the Khazar empire. Tribute by
conquered peoples has always been a feature of empires, of course,
but not in the fashion of the Khazars. The so-called great empires of
the world always gave something in return for the tribute they exacted.
Rome, for example, made citizens of those they conquered; and in
return for the taxes they levied, they brought civilization, order, and
protection against attack from would-be invaders. But not so in the
Khazar Empire. The peoples who were subject to the Khazars received
only one thing in return for their payments of tribute, and that was a
shaky promise: the Khazars would refrain from further attacks and
pillage so long as the tributes were paid. The subjects of the Khazar
Empire, therefore, were nothing more than the victims of a giant
protection racket.

The Khazar overlords were therefore resented universally and bitterly
throughout their domain, but they were also feared because of the
merciless way in which they dealt with anyone who stood up to them.
And so the Khazar Empire expanded until it occupied large areas of
what is now Russia and southeastern Europe. By the 8th Century, the
Khazar Empire extended northward to Kiev and westward to include
the Magyars, the ancestors of modern Hungary.

In about 740 A.D., a stunning event took place. The Khazars had been
under continual pressure from their Byzantine and Moslem neighbors
to adopt either Christianity or Islam; but the Khazar ruler, called the
Kagan, had heard of a third religion called JUDAISM. Apparently for
political reasons of independence, the Kagan announced that the
Khazars were adopting Judaism as their religion. Overnight an entirely
new group of people, the warlike Khazars, suddenly proclaimed them-
selves Jews--adoptive Jews. The Khazar empire began to be described
as the "empire of the Jews" by historians of that day. Succeeding Khazar
rulers took Jewish names, and during the late 9th Century the Khazar
empire became a haven for Jews from other lands.

Meanwhile the brutal Khazar domination over other peoples continued
unchanged. But then a new factor appeared on the scene. During the 8th
Century they came coursing down the great rivers--the Dnieper, the Don,
the Volga. They were the eastern branch of the Vikings. They were known
as the Varangians, or as the Rus. Like other Vikings, the Rus were bold
adventurers and fierce fighters; but when they tangled with the Khazars,
the Rus often ended up paying tribute like everyone else.

In the year 862 a Rus leader named Rurik founded the city of Novgorod,
and the RUSSIAN NATION was born. The Rus Vikings settled among
the Slavonic tribes under Khazar domination, and the struggle between
Vikings and Khazars changed in character. It became a struggle by the
emerging nation of Russia for independence from Khazar oppression.

Over a century after the founding of Russia's first city, another
momentous event took place. Russia's leader, Prince Vladimir of Kiev,
accepted baptism as a Christian in the year 989. He actively promoted
Christianity in Russia, and his memory is revered by Russians today as
"Saint Vladimir"; and so a thousand years ago Russia's tradition as a
Christian nation began.

Vladimir's conversion also brought Russia into alliance with Byzantium.
The Byzantine rulers had always feared the Khazars, and the Russians
were still struggling to free themselves. And so in the year 1016, combined
Russian and Byzantine forces attacked the Khazar empire. The Khazar
Empire was shattered, and the empire of the Khazars itself fell into
decline. Eventually most of the Khazar Jews migrated to other areas.
Many of them wound up in eastern Europe, where they mingled and
intermarried with other Jews. Like the Semitic Jews some 1000 years
earlier, the Khazar Jews became dispersed. The empire of the Khazars
was no more.

As they moved and lived among the Jewish people, the Khazar Jews
passed on a distinct heritage from generation to generation. One element
of the Khazar Jew heritage is a militant form of ZIONISM. In the view
of Khazar Jews, the land occupied by ancient Israel is to be retaken--not
by miracle but by armed force. This is what is meant by Zionism today,
and this is the force that created the nation which calls itself Israel
today.

The other major ingredient of the Khazar Jew heritage is hatred for
Christianity, and for the Russian people as the champions of the
Christian faith. Christianity is viewed as the force which caused the
ancient so-called empire of the Jews, the Khazar empire, to collapse.
Having once dominated much of what is present-day Russia, the
Khazar Jews still want to reestablish that domination--and for a
millennium they have been trying continually to do just that.

In 1917 the Khazar Jews passed a major milestone toward the creation
of their own state in Palestine as I mentioned last month. That same
year they also created the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. There
followed a Christian holocaust, the likes of which the world has never
seen. The Khazar Jews were once again in control of Russia after more
than 900 years, and they set about the task of destroying Christianity by
destroying Christians--over 100-million of them, and at the same time
over 20-million religious Jews also died at the hands of the Khazar Jews.
This, my friends, is what the Russian Christians were up against in their
60-year struggle to overthrow the atheistic Bolsheviks; but they finally
succeeded in their overthrow program, and now the 1000-year-old war
between the Russian Christians and the Khazar Jews is reaching a climax.
At stake is not only the future of Russia and of Christianity, but also
of the Jewish people as a whole.

Last month on August 19, 1979, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum died in New
York. He died in the morning, and was buried the same afternoon.
Very short notice, and yet some 100,000 Jewish men arrived in time
for the funeral. It is hard to imagine how many more hundreds of
thousands could not arrive on such short notice. A month later, on
September 18, his followers placed a memorial tribute by way of a
paid advertisement in the New York Times, and clearly it spoke for
many Jews. Among other things it said, quote: "He was the undisputed
leader of all Jews everywhere who had not been infected by Zionism";
and also, quote: "With a courage all too rare in our time, he called the
Zionist state 'a work of Satan, a sacrilege, and a blasphemy.' The shedding
of blood for the sake of the Zionist state was abhorrent to him."

These words, my friends, were spoken by Orthodox Jews mourning for
their fallen leader. And the new Christian rulers of Russia would agree
for they, too, regard the Zionist state of Israel as a counterfeit, a cruel
and dangerous hoax for Christian and Jew alike. The Khazar state called
the "Empire of the Jews" a thousand years ago was a parasite, living on
the tribute from conquered peoples. Likewise today, Israel depends for
its survival on a never-ending flow of support from outside. Left
unchecked, the Russians believe that the Khazar Jews will destroy
Christianity by means of Zionism, and Russia through Bolshevism;
so Russia's Christian rulers are on the offensive against their enemies
of a thousand years, the Khazars.

We Americans who call ourselves Christians have not cared enough to
open our eyes to try to save our own country, or to defend our faith.
So now our land has become the battleground of the Christian Russians
and their deadly enemies--the Bolsheviks and the Zionists. And like it or
not, my friends, we are caught up in this all-out war.

Dr. Beter 1979

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

Judaism is now known to have been more widespread among the Khazar inhabitants of the Khazar kingdom than was previously thought. The findings described below 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.

Hebrew characters were allegedly found engraved on utensils from a Khazarian site in the Don river valley of Russia:

"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 j�zaros." La Naci�n (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 reconstitution 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 retrouv�e des Khazars." Le Monde des Livres (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 P�cs in southwestern Hungary and not far from the villages of Nagykoz�r and Kiskoz�r, 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." - Istv�n Erd�lyi, "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.

In the early 10th century, the Khazarian 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): 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

Most importantly, Judaism is almost always noted in our medieval documentary sources as being 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 Judaised 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 circumcised, 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 traveled 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 circumcised 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).

The Ellend and Chelarevo sites mentioned above are evidence that a Turkic Jewish group migrated westward from the Khazar empire. There is also other evidence of this sort. For instance:

"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 G�nzburg (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)

"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)

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.

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 descendants 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 B�r] 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 Travelers (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1930), page xiii)

"At about the same time that the Muhammadans had conquered Spain, the king of a people, called Khazars, had become dissatisfied with worshiping 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)

"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)

"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." (Francoise 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 consensus 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) Note Arthur Koestler was murdered by the Jews for writing his books.

"...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 post medieval 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 lying 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 A.D., 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 Judaised 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)

"...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)

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 Jewish 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, said that Jews from Khazaria settled in Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland in his 1991 book The Glassmakers.

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 Memlekhet 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: 'We are Jewish Tartars'. The 5 centuries would correspond exactly to the time at which the descendants of the Khazars dispersed from Crimea. And the usage of 'Tartars' instead of 'Khazars'? Perhaps a slip of the tongue and of the memory, that the historians will not delay in correcting." - Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, "El fantasma de los j�zaros", La Naci�n (Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 19, 1999).

A relative of a Transylvanian Jew who has been in touch with me once told him "We are not Semites - we are white Turks from far to the East, and our homes were destroyed by the Russians." These are the Jews of the town Sf�ntu Gheorghe in what is now Romania. Though their community had intermingled with some Hungarians and Romanians, they remained a cohesive community with knowledge of its Turkic origins for centuries. In the 1990s a genealogical expedition hired by my Transylvanian Jewish acquaintance found confirmation of the tradition that these Jews are Turkic. That does not prove that they were Khazars. They could have been Tatars or Kipchaks (Cumans) or Oghuzes. But most likely they were Khazars, as the Khazars converted to standard Judaism in larger numbers than any other Turkic group.

There are also isolated cases of Jews from certain towns in Ukraine and Lithuania who claim Khazar ancestry. Stories like these help to contradict the opinion of Leon Wieseltier in "You Don't Have to Be Khazarian: The Thirteenth Tribe, by Arthur Koestler" (New York Review of Books, October 28, 1976) on page 34 that there are no memories of a Khazar heritage among any modern Jews.

PART 4: Arguments against the Khazar theory

1). Judaism was never widespread in Khazaria, having been limited only to the ruling classes. FALSE

2). Ibn Rustah's account accurately describes the Jewish phase of Khazar life (10th century) and since he says most Khazars followed the Turkic religion the Khazars were not Jews. FALSE

3). The idea that Khazars migrated westward is not supported by any scholars. FALSE

4). The idea that Khazars migrated westward is not backed by any evidence. FALSE

5). Khazars never lived in Kiev. FALSE

6). The Khazars were really Karaites, not Rabbinites. FALSE

7). The modern Karaims speak Turkic, and the Khazars spoke Turkic, so they must be one and the same people with the same type of Turkic. FALSE

8). All the Khazars became Orthodox Christians, none remaining Jews. FALSE

9). All the Khazars became Muslims, none remaining Jews. FALSE

10). There were no recognizable Khazars alive after the 11th century. FALSE

11). No Turkic words exist in the Yiddish language. FALSE

12). The Khazars were not a highly cultured people. FALSE

13). The Byzantines and the Khazars were allies in the 8th and early 9th centuries - how was this possible if the Khazars were really Jews and the Byzantines were Christians? FALSE CHRONOLOGY

14). There are no modern Jews who remember their Khazar heritage. FALSE

15). No Polish place-names were named after the Khazars. TRUE

16). Polish shtetl life did not derive from the Khazars. TRUE

17). The majority of Polish Jews came from the West, not the East. TRUE

18). Most Ashkenazi Jews have Germanic, not Turkic, surnames and customs. TRUE

19). If the Ashkenazi Jews are genetically Israelites, then it is not possible that they had any ancestors who lived in the Khazar kingdom. FALSE BECAUSE KHAZARIA WAS A DESTINATION FOR THE JEWISH DIASPORA

Often the primary argument against the Khazar theory is the claim that Judaism never was widespread in the Khazar kingdom and even if it was it was allegedly of a syncretic (mixed) nature rather than pure Judaism. For instance, Nicholas de Lange, in Atlas of the Jewish World (1984), on page 43 writes:

"The Khazar kingdom contained many different ethnic and religious groups, and there is no evidence of a substantial Jewish element among the population. The Judaism of the ruling Khazars was mingled with extraneous beliefs and practices, and the principal center of Judaism in Iraq never seems to have taken a serious interest in the 'Jewish empire' to the north...but it is clear that the Khazars were not at all integrated into the Jewish world, and they must be considered something of a curiosity. Nothing is known for certain about their ultimate fate."

It should be added that De Lange also contributed to another Jewish atlas during the 1990s, The Illustrated History of the Jewish People, in which the Khazars are totally disregarded, except for a brief mention in the introduction, where they are irrationally dismissed as having been irrelevant to Jewish history. Khazaria, according to the atlas, "was a marginal and little-known entity." Strange, then, how famous and influential Jews like Saadiah Gaon in Babylonia and Hasdai ibn Shaprut in Spain knew about them. Robert M. Seltzer claimed: "The Judaism of the Khazars has been much discussed but the historical evidence is very limited. Only the ruling class of the Khazars became Jews..." (Jewish People, Jewish Thought, published by Macmillan in 1980, page 787 in note 7).

Rabbi Bernard Rosensweig is one of the biggest opponents of the Khazar theory, and authored the article "The Thirteenth Tribe, the Khazars and the Origins of East European Jewry" which appeared in Tradition 16:5 (Fall 1977): 139-162. On pages 154-155 he writes:

"We have exposed the weaknesses of the Khazar hypothesis and the fact that it stands on wobbly scholarly foundations without historical support."

Does it, in fact, have all of the weaknesses that Rosensweig claims that it does? We will see that Rosensweig has some legitimate arguments against Koestler's presentation of the Khazar theory, yet he also makes certain arguments that are disputable. For instance on page 146 he argues:

"The truth of the matter is that the Khazar Jews in Khazaria represented only a minority of the population. The Khazar conversion to Judaism proceeded from the royal house to the ranks of the nobility and the upper classes, without ever including the broad masses of the Khazar people. Dunlop quite correctly points out that the Judaising of the general populace, if it was ever seriously undertaken, never proceeded very far, since even in the tenth century the Moslems and the Christians greatly outnumbered the Jews."

And on page 147 he repeats:

"The great number of Khazars who populated Khazaria at its height were, in the main, not Jewish Khazars; and, consequently, the use of the name Khazar in any given context does not necessarily refer to or imply Khazar Jews."

The problem with Rosensweig's argument is that he confuses the Khazars with other inhabitants of the empire. Almost all of the sources refer to Muslims and Christians in the population without saying that they were necessarily Turkic Khazars. But we do know the identities of these non-Jews: they were Slavic pagans, Greek Christians, Gothic Christians, Iranian Muslims, Bulgar Shamanists, Hungarian pagans, and others. When the Khazars are invoked in particular, their Judaism is almost always mentioned, as in Christian of Stavelot, Ibn al-Faqih, Al-Masudi, Abraham Ibn Daud, Yehuda HaLevi, and so on. What is more, Khazar Judaism did not merely exist in the Khazar capital, Atil, or among Crimean and Daghestani princes and warriors, but also in the Don valley and in Kiev and elsewhere, as newly uncovered evidence is revealing.

Some scholars have expressed negative opinions of a Khazar-Ashkenazic theme without discussing any specifics nor acknowledging that any reputable writers think differently today. The common thread of this assortment of opinions is an absolute negative statement on the idea. Daniel Lasker's entry "Khazars" in The Encyclopedia of Judaism (1989), on page 414 reads:

We also read in A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People (1992), ed. Barnavi, on page 118:

"Then, in the eighth century, the ruling class of the Khazar kingdom in the steppes of southern Russia converted to Judaism. Some legends trace the origins of Polish Jewry to this Turkic people, but there is no historical evidence to corroborate such theories."

Bernard Lewis also put forth a one-sided argument: "[The Khazar theory], first put forth by an Austrian anthropologist in the early years of this century, is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field..." (Semites and Anti-Semites, 1987, page 48). Similarly, Louis Jacobs wrote: "There is a solid basis in fact behind the stories circulating in the Middle Ages that a king of the Khazars and his people with him converted to Judaism...Arthur Koestler's attempt (The Thirteenth Tribe, London, 1976) to show that all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars is purely speculative, has nothing to commend it, and is repudiated by all Khazar scholars." (Oxford Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion, Oxford University Press, 1999, page 124). This is not much better than Lewis' statement. No evidence in favor? No one knowledgeable thinks Khazars were connected to Ashkenazi Jews, after reviewing the pros and cons? I feel that these absolute statements are unwarranted. They may indicate that many scholars simply aren't aware of new facts which support the Khazar theory of westward migrations. Also, they contradict Denis Sinor's statement in many editions of Encyclopedia Britannica: "A few scholars have asserted that the Judaised Khazars were the remote ancestors of many of the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia."

A particularly absurd treatment of the Khazars is contained in Yo'av Karny's travelog The Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000) where Karny tries repeatedly to attack claims for the partial Khazar heritage of Mountain Jews, Kumyks, and Ashkenazi Jews, because he thinks the idea of a Khazar heritage is dangerous to contemporary politics, especially in Daghestan where the Tenglik Party - led by Salau Aliyev, who believes he is Khazarian - seeks to form a Kumyk-led independent state, and in Balkaria where the Balkars claim descent from Bulgars. He actually states that he cannot understand why anyone would think the study of history is of any importance (page 129).

Here are some of his outlandish quotes: "Precious little is known about the Khazars, and the mindful reader need not be misled by encyclopedia entries about them, even when accompanied by maps and replete with names and dates. None of this abundant printed material is based on eyewitness accounts or conclusive archaeological findings." (page 131) This is most definitely false, as I proved in my book The Jews of Khazaria, which covers two centuries of grand discoveries in Khazar studies. Then Karny writes: "Nothing sums up the state of our knowledge of the Khazars better than the Serb author Milorad Pavic's vignette about a diplomatic delegation that the Khazar king sent to Byzantium in the ninth century. The entire history of his people was tattooed on one of his envoy's skin. Known as the 'great parchment,' that priceless source, the missing part in the puzzle, gradually peeled off...So was destroyed our only firsthand account." (page 131).

This is complete bunk; Pavic invented the parchment out of his own creative mind, and there exist many surviving documents from Khazar times including by Ibn Fadlan, King Joseph, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, Masudi, Istakhri, anonymous writers, and others. Karny is misled on page 134 by a professor of history in Makhachkala, Gadzhi Saidovich Fedorov-Gusseinov, who denies that there is evidence for Khazars ever living in Daghestan, and who considers the primary Arabic sources on the Khazars to be "hearsay", and who doesn't even think that the Kumyks are descended from Turks. Karny accepted this pseudoscholar Fedorov-Gusseinov's ideas without getting a second opinion from reliable historians who actually know something about Khazars. (Amazingly, after building a case against Kumyks being old Turks and Khazars, Karny contradicts himself later in the book, on page 222, by saying "The Kumyks, a Turkic people, were among the first in the Caucasus to convert to Islam, perhaps as early as the tenth century.") Then, in typical revisionist fashion, following in the footsteps of ignorant dead writers like Bernard Weinryb and Chaim Rabin, he attempts to deny the Jewishness of the Khazars and the importance of the Khazar state to Jewish history. He does this by considering the conversion of the Khazar people to be merely a "tale". Here is a sentiment of his quite typical of historical deniers: "At no time that I recall were my schoolmates and I ever told... that the Jewishness of the Khazars was at best very selective and at worst highly questionable. The 'mass conversion' of the Khazars generated a host of outlandish theories about the Khazar ancestry of the majority of Ashkenazi Jews...Khazaria, Koestler wrote in apparent seriousness, represented 'the Third World' of the early Middle Ages, striving for nonalignment, treading carefully between empires..." (page 132) However, Khazar Judaism represents an historical fact, and historians today believe it is true that the Khazars merged with Ashkenazi Jews. As Karny says on pages 132-133, there are some people who misuse Khazar history, but I would argue that there is never any excuse for ignoring the historical record simply because it's inconvenient or even potentially hazardous. Karny also makes a false statement on page 133, where he claims that Ibn Hawkal did not write contemporary to the time of Samandar. Because Karny is afraid of the possible link between Khazars and East European Jews and Mountain Jews, he has put "mass conversion" in quotes and led readers to believe that it is all simply myth and legend, that we really know nothing about Khazars. What is hilarious is that Karny contradicts his own sentiments concerning Israel (in the Prologue on page xxiii he argues that Jerusalem and Israel aren't as antique as Israeli Zionists claim) and proselytism (on page 346 he writes about how Jews are reluctant to seek and welcome converts). Yet he is both defending the Israeliteness of the Israelis by excluding the Khazars as well as expressing denial that the Khazars were really Jews. Karny's ludicrous book has been denounced by several experts on the Khazars.

Another absurd book is Ilan Halevi's English history of the Jews, which attacks not only Koestler but also the great scholar Dunlop "and those who think like them." Halevi is incredibly inaccurate when it comes to describing the history and society of the Khazars, Cossacks, etc.

In short, as we will see further below, hardly any statement made against the Khazar theory can be left unchallenged, because they are full of falsehoods and written for reasons other than in the spirit of objective scholarly inquiry. An exception is the brilliant Swedish archaeologist Bozena Werbart, whose knowledge of the Khazars is vast. She writes:

"In the Khazar kingdom, Koestler wanted to see the origin of the eastern European Jewry. Nevertheless, all the historical and linguistic facts contradicted his theories. Today the majority of scholars consider that the Khazaric elements in the Jewish eastern European immigrations were of insignificant character...According to many researchers, to associate the Khazars with a modern eastern European Jewish population is an impossible and unnecessary task..." ("Khazars or 'Saltovo-Mayaki Culture'? Prejudices about Archaeology and Ethnicity", Current Swedish Archaeology 4 (1996): 202).

Fair enough, but what are the historical and linguistic facts that contradict the idea that the Khazars merged with the Ashkenazi Jews? I don't see any in her essay, so I can't take her argument at face value. And I'm not impressed by the use of numbers. This is not a popularity contest. I don't care what percentage of scholars agree with the Khazar theory or not. I am interested only in discovering the truth. I happen to have access to more information about the Khazars than those scholars who don't agree with the Khazar theory. Why should I disregard what I've learned for the sake of consensus? The same may be said of objections to the Khazar theory by the distinguished historians Meyer Balaban (circa 1930s) and Bernard Dov Weinryb (circa 1950s-1970s). They wrote their opinions before all we know about the Khazars today had been discovered and published, and the latter systematically denied the existence of Jewish communities in post-Khazar Kievan Rus to an extreme extent. Zvi Ankori's arguments, published in an old book about Ashkenazic Jewish genetics, are not that convincing either.

But a reliable historian, Andr�s R�na-Tas, also agreed with these other writers:

"The great majority of the Jewry, which had until then lived under the shelter of Arab rule, fled eastward to escape the new inquisition [in Spain]. Passing through the Ottoman Turkish Empire, they reached the territory of today's Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, where they met with Jews who had been continuously migrating there through Germany since the 12th century. East European Jews thus migrated from the west to the east of the continent, and were not descended from the inhabitants of the Khazar Empire." (Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages, CEU Press, 1999, English edition, page 91).

Another reliable historian, Nora Berend, wrote in her book At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and 'Pagans' in Medieval Hungary c. 1000-c. 1300 (Cambridge University Press, 2001, page 61):

"All the evidence used to support the thesis of Jewish Khazars in Hungary is questionable. Two rings with Hebrew letters were found in a Hungarian cemetery (from the second half of the eleventh c.) near villages that were probably settled by tribes from the Khazar Empire. The rings could have been imported, and the Hebrew letters are only used as an ornament, without constituting a meaningful script...[and] there is...no agreement even on the language of the inscription...The Byzantine Ioannes Kinnamos in his Epitome twice mentioned khalisioi in the Hungarian army...He first describes them as keeping the laws of Moses although not in a pure form, then as having the same religion as Persians. This is a reference to the khaliz (Muslims), not Jewish Khazars." Unfortunately she did not analyze the Chelarevo Jewish gravesite and did not comment on whether she thinks it is Khazarian or Avar.

The fact is that Judaism was the most important religion in the Khazar kingdom among the Khazars. New evidence for Khazar Judaism continues to emerge, as mentioned earlier in this essay, which minimizes the importance of archaic sources like Ibn Rustah and of a statement against widespread Judaism in the work of Ibn Fadlan. And new evidence for their migration westward has also surfaced.

But besides the faulty argument that the Khazars weren't rabbinical Jews, we have linguistic arguments to counter. For instance, because the Karaims speak a Turkic language, some say that they must surely be the real descendants of the Khazars. And any Jews who speak Yiddish surely must be pure descendants of the Central European Jews. There appears to be no middle ground among these folks. They simply believe the Khazars aren't involved in Jewish ancestry at all, and the Karaims (or, alternatively, Cossacks or Mountain Jews or Krymchaks) are convenient because they need SOMEONE ELSE to be the Khazar descendants.

The hypothesis that the Karaims are descended from the Khazars has no merit. The so-called Khazarian recipes and poems among the Crimean Karaims are 20th century inventions. The alleged gravestone of Rabbi Yitzhak ha-Sangari (converter of the Khazars to Judaism) in the Karaim cemetery at Balti Tiimez in Chufut-Kale was a forgery. The sources don't even speak about a Middle-Eastern rabbi becoming king of the Khazars, yet this hoax had the engraving of Sangari with the title "bek," meaning "king." In reality, the Khazar kings always had at least partial Turkic ancestry, even the dynasty of beks Aaron and Joseph. The Lithuanian and Crimean Karaims are clearly the descendants of Middle-Eastern Karaites from Byzantium and Persia. Arguments against their Khazar origin are contained in my book The Jews of Khazaria on pages 298 and 299. We know now that the Khazars were Rabbinical Jews, while the Karaite sect vigorously opposes Rabbinical Judaism. A connection is not supportable between (1) Middle-Eastern Hebrews who adopted the Turkic language and were native to Jewish beliefs and (2) Khazars whose native language was Turkic and whom adopted Judaism later on. The two situations are vastly different, and the dialect of Turkic that the Karaims spoke is not identical to the Khazarian language.

"In the twelfth century, the Jews of Russia, who naturally spoke the language of the country, began to be thrown into contact with the brethren of Germany, both through mercantile association and by reason of the influx of western Jews into Slavic countries after the Crusades...These new-comers, whether by weight of number or because of their superior training in Judaism, imposed upon the older residents their culture and their very speech. The German dialect was thus introduced among Polish Jewry." (Max Leopold Margolis and Alexander Marx, in A History of the Jewish People (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947), page 527)

"The label ''Ashkenazi'' does not necessarily mean that all Ashkenazi Jews came from Germany but that they adopted the cluster of Ashkenazi culture which included the specific Ashkenazi religious rite and the German-based Yiddish language. Thus, it is plausible that Slavic-speaking Jewish communities in Eastern Europe (which existed there from early times) became dominated in the sixteenth century by Ashkenazi culture and adopted the Yiddish language." (Benjamin Harshav, in The Meaning of Yiddish (Los Angeles and Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pages 5-6)

"Jews from the Rhineland were invited to Poland...And in Poland these immigrants now found old settlements of Jews who spoke Slavic, did not live in ghettos (though in separate sections of cities), and were not worried or threatened about their Jewishness. These Polish Jews assimilated their Ashkenazic brethren, newly arrived, and themselves began to speak - Yiddish." (Leo Rosten, in The Joys of Yiddish (New York, NY: Pocket Books, 1970), page 526)

"Of other Germanic or German-based languages, Yiddish did not take its final shape as a separate language of eastern, including EC, Europe until late medieval times. However, its immediate predecessor, Judeo-German (originating, as recent scholarship has shown, in Bavaria and Bohemia, and notably in the cities of Regensburg and Prague, and not, as was earlier thought, in the Rhine valley), spread, at least with the first wave of Jewish settlers, to Silesia, Poland proper, Lithuania, Belarus', and western Ukraine during the high and later Middle Ages. Earlier Jewish ethnic groups had arrived in ECE (or its fringes) from the southeast: the former Khazaria (and beyond) and Kievan Rus', switching in the new setting to some form of East Slavic speech, and from the Crimea - the so-called Karaites - who settled in Lithuania and Galicia and who long retained a mixture of Turko-Tataric and Hebrew." (Henrik Birnbaum, "The Vernacular Languages of East Central Europe in the Medieval Period", in "...The Man of Many Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways...: Festschrift in Honor of J�nos M. Bak", edited by Bal�zs Nagy and Marcell Seb�k (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), page 385)

"In Poland a sizable population of Jews from the west met a much smaller group who had arrived via the east. Hundreds of years before, these eastern Jews had walked from Israel by way of Byzantium. By this time they spoke some form of Slavic. And because their numbers were much smaller than the Ashkenazi Jews, they largely disappeared into their ranks. But they brought one more strand to be woven in." (Miriam Weinstein, in "Yiddish: A Nation of Words" (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2001), page 25; See also Eckhard Eggers, "Sprachwandel und Sprachmischung im Jiddischen" (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1998) which discusses the mixing between Slavic Jews and Khazar Jews and Bavarian Jews)

Are all Jews around the world descended from the Khazars? Certainly not. But the New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, page 179,[GCP pg 68] "ASHKENAZI, ASHKENAZIM...constituted before 1963 some nine-tenths of the Jewish people (about 15,000,000 out of 16,5000,000)[ As of 1968 it is believed by some Jewish authorities to be closer to 100%]"

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.

Khazars: (kh��������������������������������¿½z�rz) (KEY) , ancient Turkic people who appeared in Transcaucasia in the 2d cent. A.D. and subsequently settled in the lower Volga region. They emerged as a force in the 7th cent. and rose to great power. The Khazar empire extended (8th-10th cent.) from the northern shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the Urals and as far westward as Kiev. The Khazars conquered the Volga Bulgars and the Crimea, levied tribute from the eastern Slavs, and warred with the Arabs, Persians, and Armenians. In the 10th cent. they entered into friendly relations with the Byzantine Empire, which attempted to use them in the struggle against the Arabs. In the 8th cent. the Khazar nobility embraced Judaism. Cyril and Methodius subsequently made some Christian converts among them. Religious tolerance was complete in the Khazar empire, which reached a relatively high degree of civilization. Itil, its capital in the Volga delta, was a great commercial center. The Khazar empire fell when Sviatoslav, duke of Kiev, defeated its army in 965. The Khazars (or Chazars) are believed by some to have been the ancestors of many East European Jews.

Russia and The Khazars: Having traced the Knighthood of the Teutonic Order from its origin to its dissolution as a military-religious brotherhood, and having noted the development of successor sovereignties down to the obliteration of Prussia in 1945, we must turn back more than a thousand years, to examine another thread; a scarlet one, in the tangled skein of European history.

In the later years of the dimly recorded firt millennium of the Christian era, Slavic people of several kindred tribes occupied the land which became known later as the north central portion of European Russia. South of them between the Don and Volga rivers and north of the lofty Caucasus Mountains lived a people known to history as Khazars. (Ancient Russia, by George Vernadsky, Yale University Press, 1943, p. 214) These people had been driven westward from Central Asia and entered Europe by the corridor between the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea. They found a land occupied by primitive pastoral people of a score or more of tribes, a land which lay beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire at its greatest etent under Trajan (ruled, 98-117 A.D.), and also beyond the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire (395-1453)

By slow stages the Khazars extended their territory eventually to the Sea of Azov and the adjacent littoral of the Black Sea. The Khazars were apparently a people of mixed stock with Mongol and Turkic affinities. Around the year 600, a Belligerent tribe of half-Mongolian people, similar to the modern Turks, conquered the territory of what is now Southern Russia. Before long the kingdom (khanate) of the Khazars, as this tribe was known, stretched from the Caspian to the Black Se. Its capital, Ityl, was at the mouth of the Volga River. (A History of the Jews, by Solomon Grayzel, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947)

In the eighth or ninth century of our era, a khakan (or chagan, roughly equivalent to tribal chief or primitive king) of the Khazars wanted a relgion for his pagan people. Partly, perhaps, because of incipient tension betweenChristians and the adherents of the new Mohammedan faith (Mohammed died in 632), and partly because of fear of becoming subject to the power of the Byzantine Emperor or the Islamic Caliph, (Ancient Russia, by George Vernadsky, Yale University Press, 1943, p. 291) he adopted a form of the Jewish religion at a date generally placed at c. 741 A.D., but believed by Fernadsky to be as late as 865.

According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, pp. 375-377) "This chieftain, Christianity and Mohammedanism to expound their doctrines before him. This discussion convinced him that the Jewish faith was the most preferable, and he decided to embrace it. Thereupon he and about 4,000 Khazars were circumcised; it was only by degrees that the Jewish teachings gained a foothold among the population."

In his "History of the Jews," (The Jewish Publication Society of America, Vol. III, 1894, pp. 140-141) Professor H. Graetz gives further details: a successor of Bulan, who bore the Hebrew name of Obadiah, was the first to make serious efforts to further the Jewish religion. He invited Jewish sages to settle in his ominions, rewarded them royally, founded synagogues and schools...caused instruction to be given to himself and his people in the Bible and the Talmud, and introdcued a divine service modeled on the anccient communities.

After Obadiah came a long series of Jewish chagans, for according to a fundamental law of the state only Jewish rulers were permitted to ascend the throne. The significance of the term "ancient communities" cannot be here explained. For a suggestion of the "incorrect exposition" and the "tasteless misrepresentations" with which the Bible, i.e., the Old Testament, was presented through the Talmud, see below in this chapter, the extensive quotation from Professor Graetz.

Also in the Middle Ages, Vikign warriors, according to Russian tradition by invitation, pushed from the Baltic area into the low hills west of Moscow. Archaeological discoveries show that at one time or another these Northmen penetrted almost all ares south of Lake Ladoga and West of the Kama and Lower Volga Rivers. Their earliest, and permanent, settlements were north and east of th eWest Dwina River, in the Vale Llmen are, and between the Upper Volga and Oka Rivers, at whose junction they soon held the famous trading post of Nizhni-Novgorod. (Ancient Russia, by George Vernadsky, Yale University Press, p. 267)

These immigrants from the North and West were princuipally "the ‘Russ,' a Varangian tribe in ancient annals considered as related to the Swedes, Angles and Northmen. (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XIX, pp. 375-377) From the local Slavic tribes, they organized (c. 862) a state, known subsequently from their name as Russia, which embraced the territory of the the Upper Volga and Dnieper Rivers and reached down the latter river to the Black Sea, (An Introduction to Old Norse, by R.V. Gordon, Oxford University Press, 1927, map between pp. xxiv-xxv) and to the Crimea. Russ and Slav were of related stock and their languages, though quite different, had common Indo-Germanic origin. They accepted Christianity as their relibion. "Greek Orthodox missionaries, sent to Russ (i.e., ‘Russia') in the 860'z baptized so many people tht shortly after this a special bishop was sent to care for their needs. (A History of the Ukraine, by Michael Hrushevsky, Yale University Press, 1941, p. 65)

The "Rus" (or "Russ") were absorbed into the Slav population which they organized into statehood. The people of the new state devoted themselves energetically to consolidating their territory and extending its boundaries. From the Khazars, who had extended their power up the Dnieper Valley, they took Kiev, which "was an important trading center even before becoming, in the 10th century the capital of a large recently Christianized state." (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 381) Many Varangians (Rus) had settled among the Slavs in this area (the Ukraine), and Christian Kiev became the seat of an enlightened Westward-looking Dynasty, whose members married into several European royal houses, including that of France.

The Slavs, especially those in the area now known as the Ukraine, were engaged in almost constant warfare with the Khazars and finally, by 1016 A.D., destroyed the Khazar government and took a large portion of Khazar territory. For the gradual shrinking of the Khazar territory and the development of Poland, Lithuania, the Grand Duch of Moscow, and the other Slavic states. (See the pertinent maps in the Historical Atlas, by William r. Shepherd, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1911) Some of the subjugated Khazars remained in the slav-held lands their khakans had long ruled, and others "migrated to Kiev and other parts of Russia, (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 377) probably to a considerable extent because of the dislocations wrought by the Mongols under Genghis Khan (11162-1227), who founded in and beyond the old Khazar khanate the short-lived khanate of the Golden Horde.

The Judaized Khazars underwent further dispersion both northwest into Lithuania and Polish areas and also within Russia proper and the Ukraine. In 1240 in Kiev "the Jewish community was uprooted, its surving members finding refuge in towns further west. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 382) Along with the fleeing Russians, when the capital fell to the Mongol soldiers of Batu, the nephew of Genghis Khan.

A short time later many of these expelled Jews returned to Kiev. Migrating thus, as some local power impelled them, the Khazar Jews became widely distributed in Western Russia. Into the Khazar khanate ther had bee a few Jewish immigrants; rabbis, traders, refugees, but the people of the Klevan Russian state did not facilitate the entry of additional Jews into their territory. The rulers of the Grand Duchy of Moscow also sought to exclude Jews from areas under its control. "From its earliest times the policy of the Russian Government was that of complete exclusion of the Jews from its territories. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384) For instance, "Ivan IV (reign 1533-1584) refused to allow Jewish merchants to travel in Russia." (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384)

Relations between Slavs and the Judaized Khazars in their midst were never happy. The reasons were nto racial; for the Slavs had absorbed many minorities, but were ideological. The rabbis sent for by Khakan Obadiah were educated in and were zealots for the Babylonian Talmud, which after long labors by many hands had been completed on December 2, 1499.

In the thousands of synagogues which were built in the Khazar khanate, the imported rabbis and their successors were in complete control of the political, social and religioius thought of their people. So significant was the Babylonian Talmud as the principal cause of Khazar resistance to Russian efforts to end their political and religious separatism, and so significant also are the modern sequels, including those in the United States, that an extensive quotation on the subject from the "History of the Jews," by Professor H. Graetz, (History of the Jews, by Professor H. Graetz, Vol. II, 1893. Pp. 631 ff) is here presented: The Talmud must not be regarded as an ordinary work, composed of twelve volumes; it possesses absolutely no similarity to any other literary production, but forms, without any figure of speech, a works of its own, which must be judged by its peculiar laws.

The Talmud contains much that is frivolous of which it treats with great gravity and seriousness; it further reflects the various superstitious practices and views of its Persian birthplace which presuem the efficacy of demoniacal medicines, of magic, incantations, miraculous cures, and interpretations of dreams...It also contains isolated instances of uncharitable judgments and decrees against members of other nations and religions, and finally it favors an incorrect exposition of the scriptures, accepting, as it does, tasteless misrepresentations.

More than six centuries lie petrified in the Talmud...Small wonder then, that...the sublime and the common, the great and the small, the grave and the ridiculous, the altar and the ashes, the Jewish and the heathenish, be discovered side by side.

The Babylonian Talmud is especially distinguished form the Jerusalem or Palestine Talmud by the flights of thought, the penetration of mind, the flashes of geius, which rise and vanish again...It was for this reason that the Babylonian rather than the Jerusalem Talmud became the fundamental possession of the Jewish race (people, for the Jews are not a race but a people), its life breath, its very soul...nature and mankind, powers and events, were for the Jewish nation insignificant, non-essential, a mere phantom; the only true really was the Talmud.

Not merely educated by the Talmud but actually living the life of its Babylonian background, which they may have regarded with increased devotion because most of the Jews of Mesopotamia had embraced Islam, the rabbi-governed Khazars had no intention whatever of losing their identity by becoming Russianized or Christian. The intransigent attitude of the rabbis was increased by their realization that their power would be lost if their people accepted controls other than the Talmudic. These controls by rabbis were responsible not only for basic mores, but for such externals as the peculiarities of dress and hair. It has been frequently stated by writers on the subject that the "ghetto" was the work, not of Russians or other Slavs, but rabbis.

As time passed, it came about that these Khazar people of mixed non-Russian stock, who hated the Russians and lived under Babylonian Talmudic law, became known in the western world, from their place of residence and their legal-religious code, as Russian Jews.

Ain Russian lands after the fall of Kiev in 1240, there was a period of dissension and disunity. The struggle with the Mongols and other Asiatic khanates continued and from the the Russians learned much about effective military organization. Also, as the Mongols had not overrun Northern and Western Rusasia, (Historical Atlas, by William R. Shepherd (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1911), Map 77) there was a background for the resistance and counter-offense which gradually eliminated the invaders. The capital of reorganized Russia was no longer Kiev, but Moscow (hence the terms Moscovy and Muscovite). In 1613 the Russian nobles (boyars), desired a more stable government than they had had, and elected as their Czar a boy named Michael Romanov, whose veins carried the blood of the Grand Dukes of Kiev and gthe Grand Dukes of Moscow. Under the Romanovs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was no change in attitude toward the Judaized Khazars, who scorned Russian civilization and stubbornly refused to enter the fold of Christianity. "Peter the Great (reign 1682-1725) spoke of the Jews as ‘rogues and cheats.'" (Popular History of the Jews, by H. GrETZ, New York, The Jordan Publishing Co., 1919, 12935, Vol. VI, by Max Raisin,p. 89) "Elizabeth (reign 1741-1762) expressed her attitude in the sentence: ‘From the enemies of Christ, I desire neither gain nor profit." (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384)

Under the Romanov dynasty (1613-1917) many members of the Russian upper classes were educated in Germany, and the Russian nobility, already partly Scandinavian by blood, frequently married Germans or other Western EuropeNS. Likewise many of the Romanovs, themselves; in fact all of them who ruled in the later years of dynasty, married into Western families.

Prior to the nineteenth century the two occupants of the Russian throne best known in world history were Peter I, the Great, and Catherine II, the Great. The former; who in 1703 gave Russia its "West window," St. Petersburg, later known as Petrograd and recently as Leningrad, chose as his consort and successor on the throne as Catherine I (reign 1725-1727), a captured Marienburg (Germany) servant girl whose mother and father were respectively a Lithuanian peasant woman and a Swedish Dragoon. Catherine II, the Great, was a German princess who was proclaimed reigning Empress of Russia after her husband, the ineffective Caar Peter III, "subnormal in mind and physique," (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. V, p. 37) left St. Petersburg. During her thirty-four years as Empress, Catherine, by studying such works as Blackstone's Commentaries, and by correspondence with such illustrious persons as Voltaire, F.M. Grimm Frederick the Great, Dederot, and Maria-Theresa of Austria, kept herself in contact with the West. (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XIX, p. 718 and passim) She chose for her son, weak like his father and later the "madman" Czar Paul I (reign 1796-1801), a German wife.

The nineteenth century Czars were Catherine the Great's grandson, Alexander I (reign 1801-1825; German wife); his brother, Nicholas I (reign 1825-1855; German wife); his son, Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917; German wife) who was murdered with his family (1918) after the Jewish Communsits seized power (1917) in Russia.

Thous many of the Romanovs, including Peter I and Catherine II, had far from admirable characters; a fact well advertised in Amrican books on the subject, and though some of them including Nicholas II were not able rulers, a general purpose of the dynasty was to give theri land certain of the advantages of Western Europea. In the West they characteristically sought alliances with one country or another, rathern than ideological penetration.

Like, their Slavic overlords, the Judaized Khazars of Russia had various relationships with Germany. Their numers form time to time, as during the Crusadesk received accretions from the Jewish communities in Germany; principally into Poland and other areas not yet Russian; many of the ancestors of these people, however, had previously entered Germany form Slavic lands.

More interesting than these migrations was the importation from Germany of an idea conceived by a prominent Jew of solving century-old tension between native majority population and the Jews in their midst. In Germany, while Catherine the Great was Empress of Russia, a Jewish scholar and philsosopher named Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) attracted wide and favorable attention among non-Jews and a certain following among Jews.

His conception of the barrier between Jew and non-Jew, as analyzed by Grayszel, (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. V, p. 37) was that the "Jews had erected about themselves a mental ghetto to balance the physical ghetto around them." Mendelssohn's objective was to lead the Jews "out of this mental ghetto into the wide world of general culture; without, however, doing harm to their specifically Jewish culture," The movement received the name Haskalah, which may be rendered as "enlightenment." Among other things, Mendelssohn wished Jews in Germany to learn the German language.

The Jews of Eastern Europe had from early days used corrupted versions of local vernaculars, written in the Hebrew alphabet (A History of the Jews, by Solomon grayzel, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947, p. 456) just as the various vernaculars of Western Euroep were written in the Latin alphabet, and to further his purpose Mindelssohn translatted the Pentateuch; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, into standard German, using however, the accepted Hebrew alphabet. (A History of the Jews, by Solomon Grayzel, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947, p. 543) Thus in one stroke he led his readers a step toward Westernisation by the use of the German Language and by offering them, instead of the Babylonian Talmud, a portion of Scripture recognized by both Jew and Christian.

The Mendelssohn views were developed in Russia in the nineteenth century, notably by Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788-1860), the "Russian Mendelssohn." Levinsohn was a scholar who, with Abraham Harkavy, deceived into a field of Jewish history little known in the West, namely the settlement of Jewish history little known in the West, namely the settlement of Jews in Russia and their vicissitudes furring the dark ages... Levinsohn was the first to express the opinion that the Rusasian Jews hailed not from Germany, as is commonly supposed, but frmo the banks of the Volga. This hypthesis, corroborated by tradition, Harkavy established as a fact." (The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p. 17)

The reigns of the nineteenth century Czars showed a fluuuation of attitudes toward the Jewish "state within a state." (The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p. 43) In general, Nicholas I had been less lenient than Alexander I toward his intractable non-Christian minority, but he took an immediate interest in the movement endorsed by opportunity for possibly breaking down the separatism of the Judaized Khazars. He put in charge of the project of opening hundreds of Jewish schools a brilliant young Jew, Er. Max Lilenthal.

From its beginning however, the Haskalah movement had had bitter oppositino among Jews in Germany; many of whom, including the famous Moses Hess, (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, Vol. VI. Pp. 371) became ardent Jewish nationalists,and in Russia the opposition was fanatical. "The great mass of Russin Jewry was devoid of all secular learning, steeped in fanaticism, and given to superstitious practices (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin,Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p. 112) and their leaders, for the most part, had no opinion of tolerating a project which would lessen or destroy their control.

These leaders believed correctly that the ned education was designed to lessen the authority of the Talmud which was the cause, as the Russians sa it, "of the fanaticsm and corrupt morals of the Jews." The leaders of the Jews also saw that the new schools were a way "to bring the Jews closer to the Russian people and the Greek Church." (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin,Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, p, 116) According to Raisi, "the millions of Russian Jews were averse to having the government interfere with their inner and spiritual life" by "fosting upon them its educational measures. The soul of Russian Jewry sensed the danger lurking in the imperial scheme." (The Haskalah Movement on Russia, Vol. VI, p. 117) Lilienthal was in their eyes "a traitor and informer," and in 1845, to recover a modicum of prestige with his people, he "shook the dust of bloody Russia from his feet." (Graetz-Raisim, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, Vol. V, p. 117) Thus the Haskalah movement failed in Russia to break down the separatism of the Judaized Khazars.

When Nicholas I died, his son Alexander Ii (reign 1855-1881) decided to try a new way of winning the Khazar minority to willing citizenship in Russia. He granted his people, including the Khazars, so many liberties that he was called the "Czar Liberator."

By irony, or nemesis, his "liberal regime" contributed substantially to the downfall of Christian Russia. Despite the ill-success of his Uncle Alexander's "measures to effect the ‘betterment' of the ‘obnoxious' Jewish element, (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 384) he ordered a wholesale relaxation of oppressive and restraining regulations (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913, 1914, Vol. VI, p. 124) and the Jews were free to attend all schools and universities and to travel without restrictions. The new freedom led, however, to results the "Liberator" had not anticipated.

Educated, and free at last to organize nationally, the Judaized Khazars in Russia became not merely an indigestible mass in the body polite, the characteristic "state within a state," but a formidable anti-government force. With non-Jews of nihilistic or other radical tendencies; the so-called Russian "intelligentsia" they sought in the first instance to further their aims by assassinations. (Modern Europen History, by Charles Downer Hazen, Holt, New York, p. 565) Alexander tried to abate the hostility of the "terrorists" by granting more and more concessions, but on the day the last concessions were announced "a bomb was thrown at his carriage. The carriage was wrecked, and many of his escorts were injured. Alexander escaped as by a miracle, but a second bomb exploded near him as he was going to aid the injured. He was horribly mangled, and died within an hour. Thus perished the Czar Liberator. (Modern European History, p. 567)

Some of those involved in earlier attempts to assassinate Alexander II were of Jewish Khazar background. (See The Anarchists, by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, John Lane, London and New York 1911, p. 66) According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, the "assassination of Alexander II in which a Jewess had played a part" revived a latent "anti-Semitism." Resentful of precautions taken by the murdered Czar's son and successor, Alexander III, and also possessing a new world plan, hordes of Jews, some of them highly educated in Russian universities, migrated to other Europen countries and to America. The emigration continued under Nicholas II. Many Jews remained in Russia, however,for "in 1913 the Jewish population of Russia amounted to 6,946,000. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, p. 285)

Various elements of this rstless aggressive minority nhurtured the amazing quadruple aims of internatioal Communism, the seizure of power in Russia, Zionism, and continued migration to America, with a fixed purpose to retain their nationalistic separatism. In many instances, the same individuals were participants i two or more phases of the four-fold objective.

Among the Jews who remained in Russia, which then included Lithrania, the Ukraine, (A History of the Ukraine, Michael Hrushevsky, Yale University Press, 1941) and much of Poland, were the founders of the Russian Bolshevik party. In 1897 was founded the bond, the union of Jewish workers in Poland and Lithuania...They engaged in revolutionary activity upon a large scale, and their energy made them the spearhead of the Party. (Article on "Communism" by Harold J. Laski, encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. III, pp. 824-827)

The name Bolsheviki means majority (from Russian Bolshe, the larger) and commemorates the fact that at the Brussels-London conference of the party in late 1902 and early 1903, the violent Marxist program of Lenin was adopted by a 25 to 23 vote, the less violent minority or "Mensheviki" Marxists fading finally from the picture after Stalin's triumph in October, 1917. It has been also stated that the term Bolshevik refers to the "larger" or more violent program of the majority faction. After (1918) the Bolsheviki called their organization the Communist Party.

The Zionist Jews were another group that laid its plan in Russia as a part of the new re-orientation of Russian Jewry after the collapse of Haskalah and the assassination (1881) of Alexander II. "On November 6, 1884, for the first time in history, a Jewish international assembly was held at Kattowitz, near the Russian fountier, where representatives from all classes and different countries met and decided to colonize Palestine..." (The Haskalah Movement in Russia, p. 285)

For a suggestion of the solidarity of purpose between the Jewish Bund, which was the core of the Communist Party,and early Zionism. (Graetz-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, p. 662) Henceforth a heightened sense of race-consciousness takes the place formerly held by religion and is soon to develop into a concrete nationalism with Zion as its goal." (Graez-Raisin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, by Jacob S. Raisin, p. 168)

In Russia and abroad in the late nineteenth century, not only Bundists but other Khazar Jews had been attracted to the writings of Karl Marx (1818-1883), party, it seems, because he was Jewish in origin. "On both paternal and material sides Karl Marx was descended from rabbinical families. (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 289)

The Marxian program of drastic controls, so repugnant to the free western mind, was no obstacle to the acceptance of Marxism by many Khazar Jews, for the Babylonian Talmud under which they lived had taught them to accept authoritarian dictation on everything from their immorality to their trade practices. Since the Talmud contaijned more than 12,000 controls, the regimentation of Marxism was acceptable; provided the Khazar populitician, like the Talmudic rabbi, exercised the power of the dictatorship.

Under Nicholas II, there was no abatement of the regulations designed, after the murder of alexander II. To curb the anti-government activities of Jews; consequently, the "reaction to those excesses was Jewish support of the Bolsheviks...(Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 286) The way to such support was easy since the predecessor organization of Russian Comunism was the Jewish "Bund."

Thus Marxian Communism, modified for expediency, became an instrument for the violent seizure of power. The Communist Jews, together with revolutioaries of Russian stock, were sufficiently numerous to give the venture a promise of success, if attempted at the right time. After the rout of the less violent fraction in 1917, when Russia was staggering under defeat by Germany/ a year before Germany in turn staggered to defeat under the triple blows of Britain, France, and the Untied States. "The great hour of freedom struck on the 15th of March, 1917," when ‘Czar Nicholas's train was stopped" and he was told "that his rule was at an end...Israel, in Russia, suddenly found itself lifted out of its oppression and degradation." (Graetz-Rasin, The Haskalah Movement on Russia, p. 209)

At this moment Lenin appeared on the scene, after an absence of nine years. (Encyclopedia Brit., Vol. XIII, p. 912) The Germans, not realizing that he would be anything more than a trouble maker for their World War I enemy, Russia, passed him and his party (exact nuber disputed; about 200?)

In a sealed train from Switzerland to the Russian border. In Lenin's sealed train, "Out of a list of 165 names published, 23 are Russian, 3 Georgian, 4 Armenian, 1 German, and 128 Jewish. (The Surrender of an Empire, Nesta H. Webster, Boswell Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., 10 Essex St., London, W.C2, 1931, p. 77) "At about the same time, Trotsky arrived from the United States, followed by over 300 Jews from the East End of New York and joined up with the Bolshevik Party." (The Surrender of an Empire, p. 73)

Thus under Lenin, whose birth-range was Ulianov and whose racial antecedents are certainly Jewish, and under Leon Trotsky, a Jew, whose birth name was Bronstein, a small number of highly trained Jews from abroad, along with Russian Judaized Khazan and non-Jewish captives to the Marxian ideology, were able to make themselves masters of Russia. "Individual revolutinary leaders and Sverdlov; played a conspicuous part inthe revolution of November, 1917, which enabled the Bslshevists totake possession of the state apparatus. (Universale Jewish Encyclopedia Vol. IX, p. 668)

Here and there in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia other Jews w are named as co-founders of russian Communism, but not Lenin an dStalin. Both of these, however, are said by some writers to be half-Jewish. Whatever the racial antecedents of their top man, the first Soviet commissariats werelargely staffed with Jews. The Jewish position in the Communist movement was well udnerstood in Russia. "The White Armies which opposed the Bolsishvik government linked Jews and Bolsheviks as common enemies." (Universal Jewish Encyclope