An excellent article that debunks the lie that Ashkenazi Jews are not descendants of the Tribes of Israel.
The actual details of the Khazar theory concerning European Jewry are simply pseudo-history and crackpot poppycock.
Jews already lived in Europe a thousand years before the Khazar kingdom was formed. There are no genetic markers or indicators at all showing that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Turkic tribes. In fact, there exists considerable genetic evidence showing that European Jews are closer to Levantine and Syrian Arabs than to Central Asians.
After the Mongol invasion most Khazars probably assimilated into the Jewish communities of Iran and Iraq, which of course eventually emerged as important Sephardic centers, formed mainly of Jews with Semitic racial characteristics, descended from migrants and exiled Jews from the Land of Israel. In any case, there are more “Semitic” Sephardic Jews in Israel today than there are European Ashkenazi Jews. And if the Khazars looked Turkic, how on earth could they give Ashkenazi Jews a European complexion?
There are other problems. If all Ashkenazi Jews are descended from converted Khazars, why are there Cohens and Levis among them? One inherits the status of a Cohen (priest) or Levite from one’s father. Descendants of converts through the male line can never be a Cohen or a Levite.
And why are there no Khazar surnames among Ashkenazim, or Khazar names for towns in Europe where Jews lived? And why did most Ashkenazi communities speak variations of Yiddish rather than Turkic?
As mentioned, the popularity of the Khazar myth among anti-Semites represents a return of modern anti-Jewish bigotry to the racialism of the 1930’s and earlier.
This is a point that I have made when discussing the stupidity of the Khazar argument:
So what are we to make of the Khazar myth concerning Ashkenazi Jews and their supposed lack of legitimate claims to Israel due to their Khazar origins? The greatest irony is that even if the entire Khazar theory of Ashkenazi Jews were correct – and virtually none of it is correct – it would be entirely irrelevant. Judaism has never defined Jews on racial grounds. Anyone from any race is welcome as a convert to Judaism as long as he or she is sincere.
The biblical Israelites themselves were already a racial hodgepodge. They absorbed the “mixed multitude” that left Egypt together with them at the time of the Exodus. There are biblical references to Jews of different racial features, including the black-skinned Shulamit mentioned in the Song of Songs.
Read in full recommendation.
There are problems with the explication. First, the Khazar kingdom was pretty much where southern Ukraine is today, spreading along the north shore of the Black Sea over to the mouth of the Volga, where German tribes originated. Perhaps this is why ashkenazis spoke Yiddish/Hochdeutsch, because the Khazar kingdom incorporated a German-speaking area. Second, perhaps only the ruling families were Jewish – a small number – and after the Mongol conquest these families assimilated into both ashkenazi and sefardi Jewry. Lastly, when the genetic research that showed ashkenazi and sefardi were closely related to each other and to Syrian and Levantine/Palestinian Arabs, the Palestinian news organ said that such news disproved Jewish master race theories (we had them?) as Jews were related to Palestinian Arabs. Hence, they accepted the Levantine/Palestinian origins of Jews.
All the “khazar” dreck spewed by the Arab media is just more dissemblage and lies.
chsw
Some geneticists suspect that the Karaim, a small group of Turkic-speaking Karaite Jews from the Baltics and Ukraine, may be descended from the Khazars. Maybe, but the Karaim might also be descended from later Turkic speakers.
Arthur Koestler’s book, The Thirteenth Tribe, really popularized the Khazar-Ashkenazim theory. As you note, there is no genetic evidence for it.
It should be mentioned that while it is entirely clear from the genetic evidence at hand that Ashkenazic Jews are not descended primarily from the Khazars, the presence of a small amount of Khazar ancestry hasn’t been completely ruled out. At this point, we simply don’t know much about Khazar genetics (though DNA from Khazar remains may provide answers at some point in the future). It is possible the Khazars were not as Central Asian genetically as their language suggests. After all, even the Turks in Turkey don’t cluster closely to other Central Asian populations. The small number of Turkish invaders from the steppes who overwhelmed Anatolia and Asia Minor were quickly absorbed into the much larger local gene pool. I would advise caution on matters like this. In a similar vein, it was thought just a few years ago that Finns had absolutely no Asian ancestry, that they were entirely Scandinavian, in spite of speaking a Uralic language. Later, more extensive genetic studies changed that view. The Finns are mostly European but do have a minority Asian component to their ancestry.