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Conference taveng::bagels

Title:	BAGELS and other things of Jewish interest
Notice:	1.0 policy, 280.0 directory, 32.0 registration
Moderator:	SMURF::FENSTER

Created:	Mon Feb 03 1986
Last Modified:	Thu Jun 05 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1524
Total number of notes:	18709

59.0. "Khazars/Jews" by ALAGSH::SPECTOR_DAVI () Thu Jan 09 1986 07:41

	Several years ago Arthur Koestler (sp?) wrote a book entitled
'The Thirteenth Tribe' in which he theorized that the bulk of east European
Jewry and hence most American Jews were ,in fact, descendent of a Turkic  
people called the Khazars. 

	They existed as a people between the 9th and 11th century in Ukraine/
Caucasus area and embraced Judaism around the 10th century. The conversion to
Judaism was more to differentiate themselves from the Byzantine and Moslem
world than any great love of Judaism.

	They were destroyed as a people in the latter part of the 11th century
by the Mongols and subsequentely many of them moved west into Poland and Russia.

	Koestler claims that these ancient refugees make up the most of the
ancestral blood lines of east European Jews rather then German and French
Jews that migrated into Poland at about that time.


		Any comments or thoughts ?

T.R	Title	User	Date	Lines
59.1		TAV02::ROSENMAN	`Mon Jan 13 1986 00:39`	5
	Arthur Koestler was until his suicide a very prolific writer who dabbled in every "ism" he could lay his hands on (ie. communism - Darkness at Noon, Zionism - Thieves in the Night, Buddism - the title escapes me, Psychic phenomena - The Roots of Coincidence and so on). Therefore I would take any theories or writings of his with several grains of salt!
59.2		LSMVAX::ROSENBLUH	`Thu Jan 16 1986 14:04`	31
	re .0 The Khazar-Jewish connection itself is more of a theory than an established fact...I remember reading the relevant articles in college. There are almost NO contemporary documents to back up the claim, there are (I believe) nearly-contemporary ambiguous references to the KING of the Khazars being a 'King of the Jews', and to his conversion --ambiguous means they couldn't really quite make out the word being read as 'Jews'. The tradition goes back quite a ways; v. Yehuda Halevi's treatise which purports to be a debate among 3 speakers, a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew, held before the King of the Khazars who wanted them to tell him why he should convert to their religion rather than the others. Of course, this was written centuries after the end of the separate existence of the Khazars. Nobody ever thought of taking this tradition seriously until the last quarter-century or so. re .1 It's true that Koestler was convinced of the truth of this highly speculative theory and of his own even more speculative embellished version of it, and that he wrote "The Thirteenth Tribe" in order to convince the world of it's truth. It's also true that he wrote about communism in "Darkness at Noon", but hardly from the perspective of persuading his readers of it's truth! He wrote it AFTER he broke with the party, as a searing indictment of the human suffering and ethical and moral evil of communism as practiced in Eastern Europe. It caused a stir when it was first published -- it was very unusual for disillusioned communist to be so 'disloyal', and the novel is a moving, intelligent and honest account of the making and breaking of a communist ideologue. Dismiss his theories about Khazars all you like on historical grounds, but not, please, with ad hominem attacks because he 'dabbled' in 'isms'. (<= written in the spirit of open debate, not as an ad hominem attack on the write of the reply :-) ). Kathy