Judaism
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Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars?
According to most historical sources, Judaism was widespread among the Khazar inhabitants of the Khazar kingdom. Archaeological evidence, however, has not yet corroborated this. The findings described below, some of which are more conclusive than others, add strength to the argument that there were many Jews residing in eastern Europe prior to the immigration of German, Austrian, Bohemian, Spanish, and Portugese Jews into Poland and Hungary.
Judaism is almost always noted in our medieval documentary sources as having been the most important religion in the Khazar kingdom. It is often the only religion cited when referring to the Khazars. And the Hebrew script is noted as being the script of 10th century Khazars. Here are some examples:
"At the present time we know of no nation under the heavens where Christians do not live. For [Christians are even found] in the lands of Gog and Magog -- who are a Hunnic race and are called Gazari (Khazars)... circumcized and observing all [the laws of] Judaism. The Bulgars, however, who are of the same seven tribes [as the Khazars], are now becoming baptized [into Christianity]." - Christian of Stavelot, in Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, composed circa 864
"Thus, it is clear that the false doctrine of Jesus in Rome, that of Moses among the Khazars, [and] that of Mani in [Uyghur-ruled] Turkistan removed the strength and bravery that they formerly possessed..." - Denkart, a Persian work
"All of the Khazars are Jews. But they have been Judaized recently." - Ibn al-Faqih, a 10th century author
"One of the Jews undertook the conversion of the Khazars, who are composed of many peoples, and they were converted by him and joined his religion. This happened recently in the days of the Abbasids.... For this was a man who came single-handedly to a king of great rank and to a very spirited people, and they were converted by him without any recourse to violence and the sword. And they took upon themselves the difficult obligations enjoined by the law of the Torah, such as circumcision, the ritual ablutions, washing after a discharge of the semen, the prohibition of work on the Sabbath and during the feasts, the prohibition of eating the flesh of forbidden animals according to this religion, and so on." - Abd al-Jabbar ibn Muhammad al-Hamdani, in his early 11th century work The Establishment of Proofs for the Prophethood of Our Master Muhammad
"The Khazars write Hebrew [letters]." - Muhammad ibn Ishaq an-Nadim of Baghdad, in his late 10th century Kitab al-Fihrist
The Karaite writer Jacob ben Reuben referred to the Khazars in Sefer ha-Osher as "a single nation who do not bear the yoke of the exile, but are great warriors paying no tribute to the Gentiles."
"The Khazar Jews came to the court of Prince Vladimir and said: 'We have heard that Bulgarians (Muslims) and Christians came to teach you their religion... We, however, believe in the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' Vladimir asked them: 'What kind of law do you have?' They answered: 'We are required to be circumcized, we may not eat pork or hare meat, and we must observe the Sabbath.' And he asked: 'Where is your land?' They answered: 'In Jerusalem.' And again he asked: 'It is really there?' They answered: 'God got angry with our fathers and therefore scattered us all over the world and gave our land to the Christians.' Vladimir asked: 'How is it that you can teach people Jewish law even while God rejected you and scattered you. If God had loved you and your law, you would not be scattered throughout foreign lands. Or do you wish us Rus'ians to suffer the same fate?'" - The Russian Chronicle, describing a visit of Khazar missionaries to Kiev in the year 986
"The king and his vizier travelled to the deserted mountains on the seashore, and arrived one night at the cave in which some Jews used to celebrate the Sabbath. They disclosed their identity to them, embraced their religion, were circumcized in the cave, and then returned to their country, eager to learn the Jewish law. They kept their conversion secret, however, until they found an opportunity of disclosing the fact gradually to a few of their special friends. When the number had increased, they made the affair public, and induced the rest of the Khazars to embrace the Jewish faith. They sent to various countries for scholars and books, and studied the Torah. Their chronicles also tell of their prosperity, how they beat their foes, conquered their lands, secured great treasures, how their army swelled to hundreds of thousands, how they loved their faith, and fostered such love for the Holy House that they erected a tabernacle in the shape of that built by Moses. They also honored and cherished the Israelites who lived among them." - The Kuzari: The Book of Proof and Argument in Defense of the Despised Faith, a philosophical work composed in the 12th century by the Sephardic writer Yehuda HaLevi
"The Khazars have a script which is related to the script of the Russians [Rus].... The greater part of these Khazars who use this script are Jews." - Ta'rikh-i Fakhr ad-Din Mubarak Shah, a Persian work composed in 1206
Khazaria is regarded as the "country of the Jews" (Zemlya Zhidovskaya) in Russian folk literature (byliny). And the Schechter Letter informs us that some of the Alan people (neighbors of the Khazars to the south) also adopted Judaism (see Golb and Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century, pages 113 and 115).
Constantine Akropolites (1250-1324) copied 11th-century stories about Saint Zotikos and the leprosarium that he founded in Pera, a suburb of Constantinople. The stories reveal the settlement of Jewish Khazars in Pera, near the leprosarium, and how these Khazars had married with other Jews and become fully integrated into the Jewish district. (See: "The Legend of Saint Zotikos According to Constantine Akropolites", ed. Timothy S. Miller, Analecta Bollandiana 112 (1994): 339-376.)
In the early 10th century, the Jews of Kiev wrote a letter of recommendation on behalf of one of the members of their community, whose name was Yaakov bar Hanukkah. The letter is known as the Kievan Letter and was discovered in 1962 by Norman Golb of the University of Chicago. The names of the Kievan Jews are of Turkic, Slavic, and Hebrew origins, such as Hanukkah, Yehudah, Gostata, and Kiabar. There is an argument that these Jews were Israelites who adopted local names, but others argue that they were Jews of Khazar origin to whom Turkic names were native.
"The new Kievan Letter may thus be said to support, and indeed to demonstrate, the authenticity of other Hebrew texts pertaining to the Khazar Jews, and together with them shows that Khazarian Judaism was not limited to the rulers but, rather, was well rooted in the territories of Khazaria, reaching even to its border city of Kiev." - Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Cornell University Press, 1982), page 32.
The burial practices of the Khazars were transformed sometime in the 9th century. Shamanistic sun-amulets disappeared from Khazar graves after the 830s, according to Bozena Werbart, and so did other sorts of items:
"The clear indications of Christian [of Stablo] and al-Faqih that the Khazars en masse adopted Judaism may be collated with an archaeological phenomenon. Only quite recently have there been identified graves which can most probably be ascribed to the Khazars. They are distinguished by a particular lay-out, being barrows raised over graves which are surrounded by square or on occasion circular trenches; these trenches are often filled with the remains of animal sacrifices. There are analogies to this form of ritual in the homes for the dead in early Turk sites in the Altai region. The inventories have many features in common with those of other burials of the Saltovo-Mayatskii culture, such as the riding-gear and bow-and-arrows of the cavalrymen, together with the skull or skeleton of his horse, the skeleton being saddled and harnessed. But the graves in question often, though not invariably, stand out from other Saltovo-Mayatskii burials by their wealth. One salient feature of these graves is their lack of inventories datable to the tenth century. The Byzantine coins are of the late seventh and earlier eighth centuries, while the belt-mounts, weaponry, and stirrups are of types generally dated to the eighth and ninth centuries. Even allowing for the approximate nature of archaeological periodization, the absence of things clearly datable to the tenth century is noteworthy. It seems reasonable to conclude that the Khazars as a collective changed to some other form of burial-ritual. Various explanations for a change might be offered, but one obvious cause would be the mass-adoption of a religion which disapproved of horse-sacrifices and burnt offerings. Even had Christian of Stablo exaggerated in stating that the Khazars adopted 'Judaism in full' in the 860s, their conversion might || well have led to the abandonment of some of the most flagrantly pagan features of their burial-ritual, trenches forming hollow squares among them." - Jonathan Shepard, "The Khazars' Formal Adoption of Judaism and Byzantium's Northern Policy." Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series 31 (1998): 16-17.
Khazarian and Hebraic imagery can often be found on the same artifact:
"It is certain that Khazar Jews lived in Phanagoria (Tmutorokan), since over sixty tombstones bearing Jewish symbols (such as seven-branched menorahs, shofars, and lulavs) on one side and Turkic tribe symbols (tamgas) on the other side were found on the Taman peninsula. Many of these tombstones date from the eighth or ninth century. Khazarian tombstones on the Crimean peninsula also depict the shofar, menorah, and staff of Aaron, as well as Turkic tribe symbols... The artifacts from Taman and Crimea are extremely significant since their tamgas show that these Jews were ethnic Turks." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 142
In 2002, a coin from the Viking "Spillings Hoard" of Gotland, Sweden was identified as having been minted by Jewish Khazars, due to its markings and its inscription "Moses is the messenger of God" in place of the usual Muslim inscription "Muhammad is the messenger of God". The coin is an imitation of Arabic coinage and contains the fictitious mintmark "Madinat as-Salam 779-80". Numismatists conclude that it was actually minted in 837 or 838 in Khazaria.
"One of the most important coins in the hoard, dating from AD 830 to 840, sheds light on a place far away: Its markings show its provenance is the kingdom of the Khazars, a realm in southern Russia between the Black and Caspian seas. Its Arabic inscription reads 'Moses is the messenger of God' - apparently a Jewish variant on the Islamic credo 'Mohammed is the messenger of God.' Only four other coins are known to have this inscription." - "Viking treasure hoard yields astounding finds", China Daily (June 24, 2002).
"The prophets Mahomet and Moses gathered on the same piece dating from the 830s: it is the exceptionally lucky find of a Swedish orientalist and which, for the first time, materially connects the disappeared empire of the Khazars to Judaism.... Because even though it is worn out well in the upper part of the side [of the coin], crushing the traditional Muslim inscription 'Mahomet is the messenger of God', one can read in the bottom this small, apparently improper sentence, 'Moses is the messenger of God'. When Gert Rispling, Swedish numismatist and orientalist, made this lucky find among the treasure brought back by Jonas Ström, he shouts victory. This dirham is indeed the missing link of a series of 4 already-known Islamic pieces with this inscription of Moses, but whose different first side had not made it possible to establish the origin. Thanks to this piece, we can go back up until 'Ard al-Khazar', the country of Khazars. It is there [in Itil] that the pieces were struck. 'But they are in fact imitations. The original pieces came from the caliphate [of Baghdad]... And, as was the custom, when a face was worn [out], one struck another inscription in its place... But the handling was so unrefined that one could use them only in Northern Europe or Russia, where only their silver weight counted... To add Moses on such a piece can be made only by a Jew' [Gert Rispling explained]." - Olivier Truc, "Une pičce au puzzle kazhar", Libération (July 16, 2002): 26-27.
Hebrew characters were allegedly found engraved on utensils from a Khazarian site in the Don river valley of Russia. One prominent scholar thinks this discovery is a hoax, and no solid evidence of the discovery has yet been presented to a scholarly journal or conference, despite the unconfirmed allegation that it was mentioned at the 1st International Khazar Studies Colloquium by Gennadii Afanasyev.
A so-called "Jewish Khazar" ring was buried in a grave in medieval Hungary:
"A silver ring found in a cemetery in Ellend, near Pécs in southwestern Hungary and not far from the villages of Nagykozár and Kiskozár, is believed to be of Khazar-Kabar origin. The ring, which dates from the second half of the eleventh century, was found next to a woman's skeleton, and has thirteen Hebrew letters engraved on it as ornamentation." - Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), pages 208-209, following the argument of Alexander Scheiber and Attila Kiss which was also adopted by Raphael Patai and Eli Valley. However, it does not spell out real Hebrew words, and is mixed with many non-Hebrew letters and symbols. Scheiber, Kiss, and others argued that the woman was from one of the two nearby Khazar villages.
Jewish symbols were placed on bricks at another burial site in medieval Hungary, which is now located in northern Serbia:
"In 1972, 263 graves were discovered near the village of Chelarevo, in the Vojvodina district of present-day Serbia... More important, Jewish motifs have been found on at least seventy of the brick fragments excavated from the graves. The Jewish symbols on the fragments include menorahs, shofars, etrogs, candle-snuffers, and ash-collectors. One of the brick fragments, which was placed over the grave of Yehudah, has a Hebrew inscription that reads, 'Yehudah, oh!' The skulls in the Chelarevo graves had Mongolian features..." - Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 251.
"One can conjecture that this burial ground belonged to the Kabar tribes which joined the Hungarians at the time when they discovered their fatherland. Some of the Kabars, arriving from Khazaria, apparently kept their Judaic religion." - István Erdélyi, "Kabari (Kavari) v Karpatskom Basseyne." Sovietskaya Arkheologiya 4 (1983): 179.
"The early-medieval graveyard and settlement at Čelarevo, near Novi Sad, offers the most numerous and most unusual finds with Jewish symbols. Along with several hundreds of graves of typically Avaric characteristics (judging by the pottery, jewellery and horsemen's gear), excavations begun in 1972 produced several hundreds of graves of the same shape but lacking any additional burial objects.... each grave was marked by a fragment of a Roman brick (never a whole brick, although these were plentiful in the near-by older Roman sites) into which a menorah was cut, and most frequently two other Jewish symbols on its left and right sides: the shofar and an etrog, a lulav on some bricks, and even a small Jewish six-pointed star. Some 450 brick fragments have so far been found. The position and size of the incised motifs were adapted to the size and shape of each of the fragments, which means that the motifs were not there on the original whole bricks. Some of the fragments had a Hebrew inscription added - a name or a few words which, with the exception of JERUSALEM and ISRAEL, are difficult to decipher because of the damage. Some of the Hebrew characters are carved with great precision.... Several hypotheses have been proposed on the possible origin of a Jewish or Judaised population who marked the graves of their dead in this unusual way and had literate people among them. The influence of the Crimea Khazars has been mentioned in this context; their ruler, nobility and part of the population were Judaised in the 8 c., and many Jews who had emigrated from Asia Minor and Byzantium, lived among them." - Ante Soric et al (editors), Jews in Yugoslavia: Muzejski prostor, Zagreb, Jezuitski trg 4. (Zagreb: MGC, 1989), page 28.
"In excavations at a large graveyard apparently dating to the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries, when the region was under the domination of the Avar tribe, archeologists have unearthed hundreds of brick fragments inscribed with menorahs and other Jewish symbols, including at least one small six-pointed Star of David. Some brick fragments also were inscribed with Hebrew letters. Research has shown that the people buried at Celarevo were of the Mongol race, apparently a tribe that had newly migrated into the area from the east. Beyond that, the origin of this Jewish settlement remains a mystery: One hypothesis has suggested that they may have been influenced by the Crimean Khazars, a tribe whose leaders converted to Judaism in the eighth century." - Ruth Ellen Gruber, Jewish Heritage Travel, 3rd edition (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 248.
In addition to the Hungarian site above, the Star of David was found at two sites in the Khazar kingdom, even though it is unclear whether the symbol was used there for Jewish purposes:
"Engravings of the six-pointed Jewish star of David were found on circular Khazar relics and bronze mirrors from Sarkel and Khazarian gravefields in Verkhneye Saltovo." - Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 142.
The Ellend and Chelarevo sites mentioned above allegedly show that a Turkic Jewish group migrated westward from the Khazar empire. However, the Khazar affiliation of those sites is unproven. More substantial evidence which may indicate Jewish Khazar westward migrations follows:
"Significant evidence exists that attests to permanent Khazar settlements in the territory that is now western Belarus. Documents contained in the Russian Judaica collection of Baron Günzburg (1857-1910) and Baron Polyakov (Polakoff) indicated that the Khazars founded a glass factory in Hrodna (Grodno) in the late ninth century or the early tenth century." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 213
However, the current location of such documents, if they really existed, is unknown. In 2002 I learned that they are not contained in the present-day Guenzburg manuscripts collection. It is possible that this information was either hearsay without substantiation or has been lost or destroyed.
"Even as late as 1309 a Council of the Hungarian clergy at Pressburg forbade Catholics to intermarry with those people described as Khazars, and their decision received papal confirmation in 1346." - Douglas M. Dunlop, "The Khazars", in The Dark Ages, ed. Roth and Levine (Rutgers University Press, 1966), page 356
"A significant fact attesting to continued Magyar-Kabar relations is the statement of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus that the Magyars and Khazars learned each others' languages, such that the Khazar language was spoken in Hungary until at least the middle of the tenth century." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 208, referring to the fact that Khazars living in Hungary taught their language to their Hungarian neighbors
"The Khazarian population in Hungary further increased in size when the Hungarian Duke Taksony (reigned 955-970) invited Khazar Jews to settle in his realm." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 208
"Around the year 1117, people presumed to be Khazars fled the Cumans and sought refuge in Kievan Rus from Vladimir Monomakh. These 'Khazars' settled near Chernihiv (Chernigov), northeast of Kiev, in a new town they built called Byelaya Vyezha ('White Fortress')." - Kevin Alan Brook, in The Jews of Khazaria (Jason Aronson, 1999), page 222, following Dunlop and von Kutschera. I was right to question their Khazar identity by putting the term in quotes, because Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath in A Grin without a Cat, vol. 2, page 126, indicates that the source document, PSRL, only speaks about the "belovezhtsi" who "came to Rus'" and nothing about their having founded another town with that name, but only suggests that they were of or from Belo Vezha; furthermore, the source doesn't say that the belovezhtsi were "Khazars".
Sketchy information also allows us to posit that a small number of Khazars reached Moravia and Croatia. Central European Jews in service to Hasdai ibn Shaprut met a blind Khazarian Jew named Amram circa 947 in an unknown place, apparently in central Europe (see Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, page 131). According to the Life of Methodius, Saint Methodius met a Khazar named Zambrios in Moravia around 879-880 (see Kevin Alan Brook, The Jews of Khazaria, page 124).
The best evidence that Khazars form a portion of modern Ukrainian Jewry is the fact that Slavic-speaking Jews existed in Kievan Rus. Scholarship has demonstrated that these Jews were of Khazarian and Byzantine origins, and thus are distinguished from later immigrants from the West. And, by the way, the Kozare district in Kiev was named for Khazars.
PART 2. Scholarly opinions in favor of the Khazar theory
The idea that Khazars contributed to a certain extent to the gene pool of Eastern European Jewry has been, and still is, championed by a large number of legitimate folklorists and historians, as well as by popular authors. Below is a collection of their viewpoints.
"Is it not probable that among the four millions of Russian Jews, thousands can be traced to the old nomads of the steppes? The study of the Jewish types of Poland and Little-Russia inclines us to believe so. A Finno-Turkish blend seems to be common among them."
- Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, in Israel Among the Nations: A Study of the Jews and Antisemitism (London: William Heinemann, 1904), page 118.
"The strangest fact is that the name of the Ashkenazim, the bulk whom I see as the descendents of the Khazars, points towards the old grounds of the Khazars around the Caucasus... According to the explanation by the Talmud, Ashkenaz thus means a country near the Black Sea between Ararat and the Caucasus, within the original region of the Khazar empire. The name with which the Sefardim indicate their co-religionists from Poland already gives the explanation for the real descent, from the countries in the Caucasus."
- Hugo Freiherr von Kutschera, in Die Chasaren: Historische Studie (Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1910).
"[Isaac Bär] Levinsohn was the first to express the opinion that the Russian Jews hailed, not from Germany, as is commonly supposed, but from the banks of the Volga. This hypothesis, corroborated by tradition, Harkavy established as a fact. Originally the vernacular of the Jews of Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev was Russian and Polish, or, rather, the two being closely allied, Palaeo-Slavonic. The havoc wrought by the Crusades in the Jewish communities of Western Europe caused a constant stream of German-Jewish immigrants to pour, since 1090, into the comparatively free countries of the Slavonians. RussoPoland became the America of the Old World. The Jewish settlers from abroad soon outnumbered the native Jews, and they spread a new language and new customs wherever they established themselves. Whether the Jews of Russia were originally pagans from the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas, converted to Judaism under the Khazars during the eighth century, or Palestinian exiles subjugated by their Slavonian conquerors and assimilated with them, it is indisputable that they inhabited what we know to-day as Russia long before the || Varangian prince Rurik came, at the invitation of Scythian and Sarmatian savages, to lay the foundation of the Muscovite empire. In Feodosia there is a synagogue at least a thousand years old. The Greek inscription on a marble slab, dating back to 80-81 B. C. E., preserved in the Imperial Hermitage in St. Petersburg, makes it certain that they flourished in the Crimea before the destruction of the Temple."
- Jacob S. Raisin, in The Haskalah Movement in Russia (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913), pages 18-19.
"...[The Khazars] spread far and wide to the west and northwest, their modern descendants probably forming the preponderant element among the east European Jews."
- Roland B. Dixon, in The Racial History of Man (New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923)
"We are told of a large tribe of Tartars called the Khazars, who in the eighth century were converted to Judaism and established a Jewish kingdom in southern Russia. Although that kingdom was destroyed by the Russians in the tenth century, no doubt many of the descendants of the Khazars were still living in the region. || And no doubt they readily greeted their brethren as they came flocking in from Germany."
- Lewis Browne, in Stranger Than Fiction: A Short History of the Jews from Earliest Times to the Present Day (Macmillan, 1925), pages 237-238.
"The fashion of dismissing the tale about the Khozars as also incredible and therefore untrue is no longer in vogue. Inasmuch as the famous poet philosopher Judah Halevi (1085-1140) founded his Cuzari on the Khozars, the tale was thought to be merely the poetical offspring of his imagination. But history has now accepted the account as undoubtedly true and attributes some of the characteristics of the Russian Jew as due to their descent from Tartars, converted to Judaism, rather than from Jews even of the lost Ten Tribes."
- Elkan Nathan Adler, in Jewish Travellers (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1930), page xiii.
"At about the same time that the Mohammedans had conquered Spain, the king of a people, called Khazars, had become dissatisfied with worshipping idols, and had become a Jew. A great many of his lords, generals, and soldiers had done likewise. Rabbis were then invited to come and teach Jewish laws and customs to the Jewish Khazars. During the two hundred years of the existence of this Jewish kingdom, most of the Khazars had learned the Jewish religion and were living in accordance with its laws. Hasdai rejoiced greatly to learn of the kingdom of the Khazars. Unfortunately, the Russians destroyed it a few years later. You are probably wondering: ''What happened to the Jewish Khazars?'' Some of them mingled with the other Jews of Russia, and the others || gradually forgot their Judaism and became Christians."
- Mordechai I. Soloff, in How the Jewish People Grew Up (Cincinnati, OH: The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1936), pages 219, 221.
"Dr. [Itzhak] Schipper believes that diffusion of Jewish Khazarian elements into the Polish kingdom appeared only after the Khazarian kingdom fell. A lot of documents and different town-names attest to the early Jewish immigration to Poland.... At the same time there was another Jewish immigration and colonization from the west, from Germany. Lots of antagonism existed between the eastern and western Jewish immigrants because there were different types of city-buildings.... Polish land was covered mostly with forests, especially in the North and West with wetlands and quagmire, so there was little population. The Khazar people, usually peasants, used primitive tools and were people with less culture. There was antagonism with the more advanced German Jews."
- Emmanuel Ringelblum, in Żydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, edited by Aryeh Hafftka, Itzhak Schipper, and Aleksander Tartakower (Warsaw, 1936), page 38.
"In the early Middle Ages a powerful state, inhabited by the Khazars, existed on the coast of the Black Sea; and early in the eighth century Buland, ruler of the || Khazars, formally adopted the Jewish religion. Subsequently this country, like so many other areas of Eastern Europe, was absorbed by the growing power of the Kingdom of Kiev. To the present day the Mongoloid features noticeable among the Polish Jews would indicate that, after the downfall of this Eastern European Jewish state, some, probably the ruling classes, migrated to Poland. Some anthropologists, however, attribute such features to the Mongol invasions."
- Raymond Leslie Buell, in Poland: Key to Europe (New York, NY: A.A. Knopf, 1939), pages 288-289.
"The capital city and lands of the Chazars were finally captured about the middle of the tenth century by the Duke of Kiev; the survivors of this strange kingdom were then scattered through the Crimea, where they were soon lost to history. Yet even today throughout Southern Russia we find Jews whose tall figures, sandy hair and high cheek bones suggest that they may have descended from the almost forgotten Chazars."
- Elma Ehrlich Levinger and Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, in The Story of the Jew for Young People (New York, NY: Behrman's Jewish Book House, 1940), page 107.
"The Khazar nation was scattered. Some of the people fled to northern Russia. They may have become the ancestors of certain Jewish groups who are living at the present time."
- Dorothy F. Zeligs, in A History of Jewish Life in Modern Times for Young People (New York, NY: Bloch Publishing Company, 1950), page 203.
"The circumstances surrounding the beginnings of Jewish settlement in Poland remain nebulous, though it is more than a surmise that the first Jews must have come from the Crimea. After the fall of the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria, they continued to arrive, fleeing from the Russian boyars of Kiev who after several centuries of vassalage to the Jewish kings had finally risen in revolt and conquered them. In time, these Khazar Jews blended with the other Jewish elements in Poland and ultimately lost their ethnic group identity."
- Nathan Ausubel, in Pictorial History of the Jewish People (New York, NY: Crown, 1953), page 133.
"In 1016 the descendants of the Jewish royal family fled to their coreligionists in Spain. Many of the Jewish Khazars, however, continued to live in the Crimea.... But the majority of the early Khazar proselytes were scattered over the neighboring countries, introducing Jewish ideals among their Christian neighbors. Some estimate that from sixty to seventy per cent of the Jews of Southern Russia are not of Semitic descent."
- Jacob S. Raisin, in Gentile Reactions to Jewish Ideals (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1953), page 691.
"The first Jews to settle in Lithuania in the 11th century came from the land of the Khazars, on the lower Volga River, from Crimea on the Black Sea and from Bohemia. Originally, the Jews came to the land of the Khazars from the Byzantine kingdom, where they had been oppressed. The Khazars had welcomed the Jews and later had been converted to Judaism. When the Khazars were overrun by the Mongols and Russians, the Jews settled in Lithuania, whose rulers, at that time, were extremely tolerant."
- Sidney L. Markowitz, in What You Should Know About Jewish Religion, History, Ethics and Culture (New York, NY: Citadel Press, 1955).
"The immigration (originally transmigration) of Jews to Poland started in the middle of the IX century. It took place at the same time from Western Europe and from the East (that is from the state of the Chazars, whose state religion was Judaism. Chazars was situated in the vicinity of Kiev and extended to the Dniestr; it ceased to exist in 969)."
- Michal M. Borwicz, in A Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Poland / 1000 ans de vie juive en Pologne (Paris, 1955).
"It is known that the khagan of the Khazars and many of his subjects had yielded to the Jewish propaganda coming mainly from the numerous Jewish colonies in the Crimea. They accepted the Jewish creed -- the first case of a large part of one nation becoming Jewish at such a late period. The Khazars were otherwise a very tolerant nation. They are probably to some extent the ancestors of the eastern Jews. Driven by the Cumans || and the Mongols from their homeland, many of the Jewish Khazars were settled in Poland by the Polish kings. There they mixed with western Jews."
- Francis Dvornik, in The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization (Boston, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1956), pages 196-197.
"But before and after the Mongol upheaval, the Khazars sent many offshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic lands, helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish centers of eastern Europe."
- Salo Wittmayer Baron, in A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1957), volume 3, page 206.
"Descendants of the Khazars, men noteworthy for their learning and piety, were known long after in Toledo.... And, to the present day, the Mongoloid features common amongst the Jews of eastern Europe are, in all probability, a heritage from these 'proselytes of righteousness' of ten centuries ago."
- Cecil Roth, in A Short History of the Jewish People (London: Horovitz [East and West Library], 1959), page 288.
"In the same period there began an influx of Chazar Jews from the East. At first this was essentially a trade immigration, but towards the end of the 10th century, after the fall of the Chazar state, it assumed larger proportions. The immigrants of this period turned mainly to agriculture and handicrafts. These colonies or settlements occurred in the southern and eastern parts of the future Polish state."
- Kazimierz and Maria Piechotka, in Wooden Synagogues (Warsaw: Arkady, 1959; originally appeared in a Polish-language edition), English edition, page 9.
"Poland received many Jews seeking to escape from the oppressions of the Crusades and the Black Death, as well as survivors of the Jewish kingdom of Khazaria."
- Meyer Levin and Toby K. Kurzband, in The Story of the Jewish Way of Life (New York, NY: Behrman House, 1959), page 48.
"The Khazars were a warlike people, and succeeded in extending their rule and influence. They were subjected to occasional attacks by the Byzantines and later by the Russians. By the end of the 10th century they succumbed to the Russians, and after maintaining themselves for a short period in the Crimea, some gradually embraced the Christian or Moslem faith, ceasing to exist as a separate people, though many joined with their Jewish brethren."
- David Bridger and Samuel Wolk (editors), in article "Khazars" (pp. 265-266) in The New Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, NY: Behrman House, 1962), page 266.
"Far away, on the steppes of Southern Russia, a whole nation had been converted to Judaism several hundred years ago. Could it be true? Hasdai sends a letter to the king of this foreign people, the Chazars, and receives an answer: the story is true... They were to exist to the thirteenth century, when they were defeated, their remnants joining the Jewish or Christian communities."
- Leo Trepp, in Eternal Faith, Eternal People: A Journey into Judaism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962), page 143.
"Polish scholars agree that these oldest [Polish Jewish] settlements were founded by Jewish emigres from the Khazar state and Russia, while the Jews from Southern and Western Europe began to arrive and settle only later... and that a certain portion at least of the Jewish population (in earlier times, the main bulk) originated from the east, from the Khazar country, and later from Kievian Russia."
- Adam Vetulani, in his article "The Jews of Mediaeval Poland," in Jewish Journal of Sociology, volume 4 (December, 1962), page 274.
"In Khazaria, perched precariously on the trackless steppe extending between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, Jewish merchants and refugees from the persecutions of the Byzantine Empire managed to convert the king, many of his nobles, and a considerable portion of the nomadic, Khazarian population.... With the disappearance of the Khazarian kingdom under the blows of the Russians, the Jews and Jewish Khazars settled in the Crimea, in Hungary, and in Lithuania."
- Jacob Berhard Agus, in The Meaning of Jewish History (New York, NY: Abelard-Schuman, 1963), page 237.
"It is clear, however, that the influence of the Jews, who had become the most active agents of the commerce of the Caliphate, was substantial in the Khazar kingdom, and it is probable that the commonly observed mongoloid type among East European Jews, particularly in the Ukraine, Poland and Roumania, derives from the conversions and intermarriages which were no doubt frequent in the swarming trading camps of the Khaqans."
- W. E. D. Allen, in The Ukraine (New York, NY: Russell and Russell, 1963), pages 8-9.
"Meanwhile the bulk of the victims of expulsion, massacre, and persecution were to be found in the territory between the Black Sea and the Baltic, most of which was part of the kingdom of Poland. There European Jews had met another strand of the Jewish people, Jews who had entered the same area from the south and east. Jewish colonies on the Black Sea and in the Crimea dated back to very early times, and the kingdom of the Khazars || had left many Jewish relics in lands which are now Ukrainian."
- James Parkes, in A History of the Jewish People (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1963), pages 105-106.
"Driven out of their country by the Cumans in the 12th century, part of the last Jewish Khazars settled in Poland."
- Françoise Godding-Ganshof, in article "Khazars" (pp. 214-215) in Chamber's Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, 1966), page 215.
"It is likely too that some Khazar progeny reached the various Slavic lands where they helped to build the great Jewish centers of Eastern Europe."
- Abba Solomon Eban, in My People: The Story of the Jews (New York, NY: Behrman House, 1968), page 150.
"It would of course be foolish to deny that Jews of different origin also contributed to the existing Jewish world-community. The numerical ratio of the Khazar to the Semitic and other contributions is impossible to establish. But the cumulative evidence makes one inclined to agree with the concensus of Polish historians that 'in earlier times the main bulk originated from the Khazar country'; and that, accordingly, the Khazar contribution to the genetic make-up of the Jews must be substantial, and in all likelihood dominant."
- Arthur Koestler, in The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage (London: Hutchinson, 1976 and New York, NY: Random House, 1976), page 180.
"...it may be stated at present that well-documented findings concerning the culture of the Jewries of western Europe in the Middle Ages, as well as evidence leading directly to the recognition of the movement eastward of important segments of those Jewries during late medieval times, leave no room for the hypothesis that the Jews of postmedieval Europe were descended primarily from the Khazars. That, however, those among the Khazars who adopted Judaism as their religion came to form a part of the Ukrainian component of eastern European Jews, and eventually to be assimilated by it, can hardly be doubted on the basis of our present state of knowledge."
- Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, in Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), page xv. In later separate writings by Golb (Jewish Proselytism, 1988) and Pritsak ("The Pre-Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe in Relation to the Khazars, the Rus' and the Lithuanians" in Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, 1990), however, the view that virtually no Jews are descended from the Khazars is expressed.
"There is little reason to doubt that Jews had lived in Poland from the earliest times, and that Judaism, as preserved by the descendants of the ancient Chazar kingdom in the southeast, had actually antedated Christianity."
- Norman Davies, in God's Playground: A History of Poland, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1982), volume 1, page 79.
"The Khazar Jewish kingdom was a fascinating episode in Russian Jewish History.... The Jews dispersed into Russia, Armenia, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean coast. It is likely that many of the Jews of these regions are descended from Khazar refugees."
- Richard Haase, in Jewish Regional Cooking (Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1985), page 56.
"Poland was Christianized in 966, at a time when Jews already lived there. The first ones came from the Khazar state of Russia and Kievan Rus. Late in the eleventh century, Jews fleeing from persecution in southern and western Europe arrived. Not, however, until the fifteenth century did large numbers of Jews begin to live in Poland."
- Meyer Weinberg, in Because They Were Jews: A History of Anti-Semitism (Greenwood Press, 1986), page 153.
"East European Jews, especially the Ukrainian, Moldovian (Bessarabian), Azerbaijanian, Georgian, and Armenian Jews are actually a fusion of Byzantine-Greek Jews, Babylonian Jews from the Abbasid Caliphate, Yiddish-speaking German-Polish Jews, sixteenth Century Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and Khazars. This is the bloodline of these Russian Jews... However, the most strongly Khazar of the Jews are undoubtedly the Hungarian Jews, descendants of the last Khazars who fled into Hungary about 1200-1300, where they were received by their former vassals, the Magyar kings. The Hungarian Jews are definitely a fusion of Semitic German Jews and the Turkic Khazars with some Sephardic immigrants who came to Hungary by way of Italy in the 1500's escaping the Spanish Inquisition."
- Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson, in Wars of the Jews: A Military History from Biblical to Modern Times (New York, NY: Hippocrene Books, 1990), page 224.
"As the conquering Lithuanians moved south through Byelorussia, Volkynia, and the Ukraine, they came upon towns with either established Jewish communities or a Jewish presence. These communities were established by a mixture of Jews who came via Khazaria, Khazarian Jews and Jews who came directly from older communities. What was the proportion of each or their numbers is not known."
- Stuart and Nancy Schoenburg, in Lithuanian Jewish Communities (New York, NY: Garland, 1991 and Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), page 10.
"Jews are the largest and most important of these nationalities... According to some historians, many of them are descended from the Khazars, a people who ruled much of the Volga-Dnieper basin the seventh to ninth centuries and converted to Judaism en masse in the eighth century. Others are descended from a large colony of Jews who settled in Ukraine when it was ruled by a religiously tolerant Poland."
- William G. Andrews, in The Land and People of the Soviet Union (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1991), page 183.
"It is very likely that Judaized Khazar elements, especially those that had acculturated to the cities, contributed to the subsequently Slavic-speaking Jewish communities of Kievan Rus'. These were ultimately absorbed by || Yiddish-speaking Jews entering the Ukraine and Belorussia from Poland and Central Europe. In the same way, one may conjecture that Khazar Muslims contributed to the Turkic-speaking and Turko-Muslim communities of the Volga basin and North Caucasus."
- Peter Benjamin Golden, in An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), pages 243-244.
"How and why Jews first reached Lithuania is a matter of informed hypothesis. Historian Abraham Elijahu Harkavi maintains that they came from Babylonia and elsewhere in the Near East in the ninth and tenth centuries C.E., after the decline of the Jewish communities there. Harkavi also believes that Jews reached Lithuania from the shortlived but flourishing Jewish state of the Khazars, who were among the founders of Kiev in 865. The Khazars lost their kingdom in 969 to the Russian princes, who introduced the Russian Orthodox Church... Thus inspired, the Russians expelled the Jews..., who moved en masse to the then-Lithuanian towns of Gardinas (Grodno), Minsk, Pinsk..."
- Masha Greenbaum, in The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community 1316-1945 (Jerusalem: Gefen, 1995), page 2.
"It is in the fusion of autochthonous Jews with semi-Jewish Khazars and Kabars in the tenth century that we must seek the earliest demographic basis of the Jewish population of medieval Hungary."
- Raphael Patai, in The Jews of Hungary (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1996), page 29.
"...one should remember that the Khazars were described by several contemporary authors as having a pale complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair. Red, as distinguished from blond, hair is found in a certain percentage of East European Jews, and this, as well as the more generalized light coloring, could be a heritage of the medieval Khazar infusion."
- Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai, in The Myth of the Jewish Race (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989), page 72.
"Jews from central Europe first settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the second half of the 14th century. Early examples are the communities of Brest-Litovsk and Grodno, established by Jews from Poland with charters from Duke Vitold, similar to those granted by Bolislav the Pious to Jews of Great Poland. Among the Jews of the southwestern districts of the Lithuanian Duchy, annexed to the Kingdom of Poland toward the end of the 14th century, were descendants of Jews from oriental countries, including a few of Khazar stock. They differed from the Ashkenazis in both language and cultural traditions."
- Shmuel Arthur Cygielman, in Jewish Autonomy in Poland and Lithuania until 1648 (5408) (Jerusalem, 1997).
"Eventually, the Khazaria kingdom fell. Evidently, some of its Jewish population went to Eastern Europe and the rest disappeared."
- Lawrence Jeffrey Epstein, in Questions and Answers on Conversion to Judaism (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998), page 176.
"Jewish-Khazarian settlement in Kiev can be traced to the 10th century; the Russian-speaking community was later absorbed by Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Central Europe."
- in the entry "Ukraine" in The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Klenicki, Schiff, and Schreiber (Schreiber Publishing, 1998), page 267.
"The descendants of the Khazars reached eastern and central Europe. There is substantial evidence that some of them settled in Slavic lands, where they took part in establishing the major Jewish centers of eastern Europe.... It is also widely believed that many Khazar Jews fled to Poland to avoid forced baptism. Moreover, some of the groups that migrated from eastern to central Europe have been called Khazars and may have originated in the former Khazar empire. Some apparently fled into northern Hungary, where, to this day, there are villages that bear such names as Kozar and Kozardie."
- Robert and Elinor Slater, in Great Moments in Jewish History (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David, 1999), page 87.
"Unfortunately, in 1016 C.E., the Russians, with the help of Byzantium, crushed the Khazar kingdom and brought it to a close. What happened to all the Khazar Jews, both the descendants of the converts and the settlers, is shrouded in mystery. They were certainly dispersed in many of the neighboring lands. It is conceivable, according to || some scholars, that some of them are the forebears of the Polish and Russian Jews of previous generations. Who knows? If your ancestors came from these lands, you may have the blood of kings in you - not David and Solomon, but kings who voluntarily chose to join the fate of a people whose religion they acknowledged as true."
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