Who are the Khazars? 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 bur… truncated (136,953 more characters in archive)