Re: ZIONISM and the Talmud; the Khazars and Menachen Beilis
Christopher Jones writes: Cameron Sawyer makes two assertions in his piece that I have investigated, suspecting them to be false due to the nature of his sources. First, he says that the "Khazar" theory of Khazar conversion was concocted by the Catholic priest Justin Pranaitis from Tashkent. This assertion is wrong. Wikipedia is quite clear:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar
Conversion to Judaism and Khazar relations with world Jewry
Jewish communities had existed in the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast since late classical times. Cherson, Sudak, Kerch and other Crimean cities possessed Jewish communities, as did Gorgippa, and Samkarsh / Tmutarakan was said to have had a Jewish majority as early as the 670s. The original Jewish settlers were joined by waves of immigration fleeing persecution in the Byzantine Empire, Sassanid Persia (particularly during the Mazdak revolts, and later within the Islamic world. Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites regularly traded in Khazar territory, and may have wielded significant economic and political influence. Though their origins and history are somewhat unclear, the Mountain Jews also lived in or near Khazar territory and may have been allied with or subject to Khazar overlordship; it is conceivable that they too played a role in the conversion.
Jewish sources
• A letter in Hebrew dated 4746 (985/986) refers to "our lord David, the Khazar prince" who lived in Taman. The letter said that this David was visited by Russians to ask about religious matters- this could be connected to the Vladimir conversion which took place during the same time period. Taman was a Russian principality around 988, so this successor state (if that is what it was) may have been conquered altogether.
• Abraham ibn Daud, a twelfth-century Spanish rabbi, reported meeting Khazar rabbinical students in Toledo, and that they informed him that the "remnant of them is of the rabbinic faith." This reference indicates that some Khazars maintained ethnic, if not political, autonomy at least two centuries after the sack of Atil.
• Petachiah of Ratisbon, a thirteenth-century rabbi and traveler, reported traveling through "Khazaria", though he gave few details of its inhabitants except to say that they lived amidst desolation in perpetual mourning.
He further related:
Whilst at Baghdad [I] saw ambassadors from the kings of Meshech, for Magog (n.b.- medieval Christian writers said that the Khazars lived in the land of Gog and Magog) is about ten days' journey from thence. The land extends as far as the Mountains of Darkness (a term often used to describe the Caucasus). Beyond the Mountains of Darkness are the sons of Jonadab, son of Rechab (an official in the court of the Judahite king Josiah). To the seven kings of Meshech an angel appeared in a dream, bidding them to give up the laws and statutes, and to embrace the laws of Moses, son of Amram. If not, he threatened to lay waste their country. However, they delayed until the angel commenced to lay waste their country, when the kings of Meshech and all the inhabitants of their countries became proselytes, and they sent to the head of the academy (i.e., the Gaon of Sura or Pumbedita) a request to send them some disciples of the wise. Every disciple that is poor goes there to teach them the law and Babylonian Talmud. From the land of Egypt the disciples go there to study. He saw the ambassadors visit the grave of [the prophet] Ezekiel..."
The account of the conversion of the "seven kings of Meshech" is extremely similar to the accounts of the Khazar conversion given in the Kuzari, and in King Joseph's Reply. It is possible that Meshech refers to the Khazars, or to some Judaized polity influenced by them. Arguments against this possibility include the reference to "seven kings" (though this, in turn, could refer to seven successor tribes or state micropolities).
Cameron's claim that Pranaitis' testimony or lack of knowledge of the Jewish religion was the reason for Beilis' acquittal is also pushing credibility to the limit. Beilis was represented by the best Jewish lawyers of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and other members of the Jewish intelligentsia testified about the goodness of the Jewish faith. The Tsarist prosecutors relied on Pranaitis as an expert, nothing more. Curiously, seven members of the 12 man jury were clandestine members of the "Black One-Hundred" counter revolutionary group that had fallen apart before World War I.
ameron Sawyer says:Where in the world did Christopher Jonmes get the idea that I deny the story of the Khazar conversion? Again he is occupied with disproving something I never said. This story is widely accepted by historians and is beyond serious doubt. There are even records in the Chronicles of Kievan Rus of Khazar missionaries attempting in 986 to convert Prince Vladimir (who eventually chose Christianity for Russia).
The theory which I attributed to Pranaitis (and he was probably not the originator) is a completely different, and much wackier idea: that Jews of modern times, or, according to some variants of the tale, Ashkenazy Jews, are not descendants of the biblical Tribes of Israel at all, but rather, of the Khazars, a Mongol-Turkic tribe who lived around the Black Sea in ancient times and who famously converted en-masse to Judaism in the 8th century. Therefore, says Pranaitis, the Jews have no claim to Palestine. This line of argument is a constant refrain in the neo-Nazi and White Power literature. See for example http://www.todaysalternativenews.com/index.php?event=link,150&values%5B0%5D=&values%5B1%5D=2369 <http://www.todaysalternativenews.com/index.php?event=link,150&values%5B0%5D=&values%5B1%5D=2369> (which, by the way, ludicrously identifies the Khazars as Slavs). See also "Irv Spielberg's" National Journal: http://globalfire.tv/nj/04en/jews/666.htm <http://globalfire.tv/nj/04en/jews/666.htm> (". . . those 90% who call themselves Jews are really Khazars and not Jews. . .). Radio Islam, which frequently picks up material from Neo-Nazi websites, has this: http://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/toread/khazars.htm which employs the typical technique of quoting someone saying one thing -- that Yiddish has Slavic roots, that Arthur Koestler thinks that many Ashkenazi Jews have Khazar ancestry -- and shouting in the headline a conclusion unsupported by the quotes: "New York Times Reveals that European-Descended Jews are Counterfeits and have no Blood line to Abraham!". See http://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/toread/khazars.htm. And here is the best variation of all, WAISers will have a fantastic laugh over this one: http://www.white-knights911.com/cf/cf_02_11_2005.htm <http://www.white-knights911.com/cf/cf_02_11_2005.htm> .
All of this is a ludicrous distortion of a theory discussed among ethnologists since the 19th century that the Khazars made a contribution to the gene pool of Northern European Jews (not that they were their exclusive ancestors!). The most extreme case by a serious-minded person was made by Arthur Koestler (of Darkness at Noon fame, a great writer but no ethnologist), but even he did not claim that Ashkenazi Jews have no Middle Eastern ancestry. The idea that all Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of the Khazars is ludicrous literally on its face -- any WAISer who has travelled around the Caucasus, Volga Region, and Black Sea knows the distinctive Mongoloid appearance of the Buryats, Bashkirs, Tatars, and many other relatives of the Khazars who live in those parts to this day. They do not look at all like Northern European Jews.
Also, if the Ashkenazis are supposed to be Khazars, what happened to all of the "real" Jews of Europe? The Khazars were only converted to Judaism in the 8th century. Jews -- descendants of Jews from biblical Israel -- have been living on the Black Sea coast, Southern Russia, and the Caucasus since before the birth of Christ, as Christopher mentions himself, not to mention Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. So all these people just disappeared one day, to be suddenly replaced by Khazar converts? Khazaria itself was full of Jewish immigrants from Constantinople, as Christopher himself mentions, and these immigrants actually outnumbered the converts according to some sources.
In any case, modern genetic analysis now gives us very precise information about bloodlines, migrations, and the genetic relationships between peoples, and has settled the matter once and for all. Ashkenazi Jews are, in fact, close relatives of Sephardic and other Jews (except, apparently, the Ethiopean Jews), somewhat less close but still very close relatives of the Arabs and other Eastern Mediterranean peoples), and are predominantly descended from the Hebrews who lived in Israel 2000 years ago, with a notably small admixture of European, Slavic and other blood. Tracing direct paternal lines of descent (based on analysis of the "Y" chromosone), researchers found that the most common direct paternal ancestors of modern Ashkenazi Jews are the Judeans of ancient Israel, with more than 50% of modern Ashkenazi Jews being so descended. 12.7% of modern Ashkenazi Jews have direct paternal lines of descent from either Eastern Europeans (including Slavs) or Khazars. See Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. June 6, 2000 | vol. 97 | no. 12 | 6769-6774 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/12/6769 <http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/12/6769> , reporting a very large international scientific study.*
Note well please that I did not say that the provable fact that most Jews are the descendants of the Jews of biblical Israel means that Zionism is true or right. This is a completely different question. What about the Palestinians, for a start? Surely those who would argue against Zionism would better spend their efforts talking about real Palestinians rather than imaginary Khazars.
* "The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora. . . . In summary, the combined results suggest that a major portion of NRY biallelic diversity present in most of the contemporary Jewish communities surveyed here traces to a common Middle Eastern source population several thousand years ago. The implication is that this source population included a large number of distinct paternal and maternal lineages, reflecting genetic variation established in the Middle East at that time. In turn, this source diversity has been maintained within Jewish communities, despite numerous migrations during the Diaspora and long-term residence as isolated subpopulations in numerous geographic locations outside of the Middle East. "
Cameron Sawyer said:Where in the world did Christopher Jones get the idea that I deny the story of the Khazar conversion? Christopher replies: Cameron should reread his piece: "What a coincidence: Pranaitis is also the author of the theory that present-day Jews are actually the descendants of the convert Khazars, not the biblical Jews, also recently discussed on WAIS. The Khazar theory is widely cited in Neo-Nazi websites as an argument that the Jews have no claim on Israel." I consider the very idea of "biblical" claims completely silly,The idea that Jews are descended from the"biblical" tribes of Israel is racist, bigoted and the prime characteristic of Zionism.
RH; Can someone inform us precisely what dns studies tell is about this?
Ronald Hilton 2005
last updated:
June 15, 2005