The Thirteenth Tribe

In the process of telling this tale, Koestler concludes that the conversion of the Khazars, which seems to be historically documented, explains the significant presence of Jews in Eastern Europe at the end of the Middle Ages (since extant records do not show them arriving from the Mediterranean world, or even western Europe, in any great numbers in ancient or later times). This theory is a quite rational one though it poses problems for Orthodox Jewry since the premise of the faith depends so much (though not exclusively) on the historical link to Abraham, a Semite. Complicating the matter is the suspicion that the Khazar conversion may not have been a 'kosher' one. Orthodox Jews have not, accordingly, been quick to embrace the Khazar thesis and others tend to shy away from it for this and other reasons. However, the facts do seem to indicate that modern Jews are a mixture of many different genetic influences (just look at the physical evidence).

But if the Khazars did contribute substantially to the Jewish gene pool, they didn't do so exclusively as modern scientific research indicates that there are clear genetic markers which connect modern Jews (Orthodox and otherwise) to a single source which spans both the Eastern European and Sephardic Jewish heritages, suggesting that the Khazar influence was limited at best. But even if this research did not exist, so what? The record also suggests that there were Semitic Jews (from Constantinople and Persia) living among the Khazars before and after the conversion who certainly would have intermingled with a "Jewish" Khazar population in whose midst they lived. And no one knows what method the conversion may have taken in any case, whether rabbincally sanctioned at the outset or only after the fact, or not at all. Just as people from all pagan backgrounds quite legitimately enrolled in the Christian and Muslim folds from ancient times going forward, so there is no reason to deny the Judaism of Jews whose ancestors may have been non-Semites but who embraced the religion which traces its roots back to Abraham and Moses.

Now there are those who seize on the existence of the Khazars to deny modern Jews their claim to Jewishness. This is absurd, even if there is a substantial genetic link with a non-Semitic Turkic people in the Jewish past. Still others see the Khazars as a convenient hook on which to hang negative aspersions they wish to cast on modern Jews, suggesting that Jews are descended from a cruel and barbaric middle Asian horde, not fit to stand with the great civilizations and cultures of history. Jews, in this view, are not the ancient people of the covenant we find in the bible but rather historical imposters. But this is just as absurd as using the Khazar connection to deny modern Jews their link to their heritage. Like the Khazars, other European groups came from middle Asia at different historical times and intermixed with many different groups. If some adopted Christianity while others chose Judaism, there is yet no reason to suggest that the one group was better than the other. In fact the historical record shows that, while the Khazars were nomadic tribesmen in Byzantine times, they were no worse than the more 'civilized' Christian peoples of the Byzantine Empire in terms of their dealings with friends and enemies (and possibly they were better as they were a good deal more tolerant and less intrusive on their subjects' lives). Yes, the Khazar empire blew away without leaving a trace -- unless one seeks and finds that trace in the European mores and culture of the Jews coming out of that region (big fur hats and long coats, for instance, may have been a carry-over from the nomadic Khazar horsemen). However, the record, such as it is, also suggests that the Khazars were unusually enlightened 'conquerors' who treated their subject peoples with great mildness. In fact, this very mildness may have been the source of their downfall since they did not ruthlessly suppress their enemies or enforce any sort of cultural hegemony which might have created a unified state capable of withstanding the Russians who eventually overran them. Or the Pecheneg horsemen who were much more brutal and benighted. Or the Mongols, who came after, about whom little more need be said.

As to Koestler's book, it does present a very simplified version of all this, largely derived from the the work of the scholar, D. M. Dunlop of Columbia University who wrote a much better one (THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH KHAZARS) some years before. Most of Koestler's information seems to have come from Dunlop's book though, in many cases, he over-simplified or simply got his facts wrong. So, if you're interested in the Khazar thesis I'd suggest you check out Dunlop's book first, although Koestler's is an easier read and adds to the case Koestler's own, not unreasonable, speculation about the relationship of the Khazars to modern Jewry (Dunlop doesn't go there). But as an easy introduction to this particular line of thinking, Koestler's book is alright. Just beware the oversimplifications and errors.

SWM


Hold the Strudel and Pass the Baklava   December 23, 2004
Robert S. Newman (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA)
68 out of 83 found this review helpful

Back in the 1970s, Arthur Koestler, author of "Darkness at Noon", wrote this amazingly innovative book. I read it in Rarotonga in 1980---a suitably exotic place to read a serious book on a rather exotic topic. Recently I returned to it, though I long ago disagreed with the author's main conclusions.

In the first 121 pages, Koestler describes the history of a long-vanished, Turkic people called the Khazars, whose ruler, faced with pressure from both Muslim and Christian nations around them, took the radical step of converting to Judaism. As this is one of the very few instances (if not the single one) in history of such a royal move, the Khazars have attracted scholarly attention ever since, particularly, but not only, from Jews. Indeed, you can log on to a Khazar Studies website today. For another, less factual view of this interesting tribe, you can read Milorad Pavic's poetic, absurdist novel "Dictionary of the Khazars". In any case, Koestler's history makes fascinating reading, containing accounts by ancient Arab travellers, stories of Jewish crusaders in northern Iraq, and descriptions of the links to Vikings, Byzantium, Islam, and Magyars. I have no professional knowledge as to how accurate it all is, but if I were awarding stars for good history writing, I'd give five here.

However, THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE is not just a history. In the remainder of the book, Koestler constructs an argument for the Eastern European Jews' being the descendants of these Khazars. He asks where the Khazars all disappeared to. He says population statistics from the period 1300-1500 bear evidence that there could not have been so many Jews to be killed by the brutal Bogdan Khmielnitsky in the great massacres of 1648-49 in the Ukraine unless the Khazars had become the Polish-Ukrainian Jews by then. He deals in some dubious racial theorizing, throws in a few arguments based on place names, and concludes that the "original stock" of the Jews was predominantly Turkish. This theorizing turned me off back in 1980 and it still does. As an anthropologist, I have to ask: in all cases known in history, when a people converts en masse to another religion, a large body of pre-existing language and culture always remains. Why not with the supposed Khazar-Jews ? Is there an element of Turkish in Yiddish ? No. Are there any kinds of nomadic or Turkish cultural behaviors among the Eastern European Jews ? The answer is no. This would be just about impossible if Koestler's theory were correct. Secondly, to rely on statistics gleaned from medieval records is extremely dubioius especially when the Jews were hardly deemed members of European society and may never have been counted. Numbers of people killed or born were routinely exaggerated or ignored all over Europe. I rejected Koestler's theory 24 years ago. Since then, DNA research, unknown at the time, has shown that most Eastern European Jews have a mixed Semitic and European heritage. Despite the passage of many centuries, genetically the closest people to them are still the Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians. Koestler's theory remains only an interesting thought. It is worth reading for the historical part and to see how convincing incorrect theories can still be.




Interesting theory of the origin of East European Jews   November 27, 1997
66 out of 73 found this review helpful

It is curious that in Israel, where I am from, the Khazar's history is only briefly mentioned in school. We did study "letters to the Khazar" by Jehuda Halevi, but more as a literary piece that in context with the Khazars. That is the reason that the book was so interesting for me: It presents a theory which is quite unacceptable to the religious population in Israel. (and outside as well). Are all the eastern european Jews in essence converts? It makes the whole question, so much dealt with in Israel, of "who is a Jew" rather ironical. Are the religious Jews the "real" Jews? And how can they be so much against conversions to judaism, if they themselves are converts? Interesting! Of course, the theory the book presents that ALL the east european Jews are descendants of the Khazars is only a theory, but Koestler surely presents some interesting arguments! Fascinating reading!


The truth about history's greatest & most enduring deception   July 20, 2002
Charles (Miami, Florida United States)
45 out of 71 found this review helpful

I had read this important book years ago and now have found it again. It sets right the story of a people who have long used a false identity that has served them well, a fact that should have become obvious because of their lack of Semitic attributes. The blue eyes & red hair often found in so-called modern "Jews" is a dead giveaway of this.
Koestler documents and analyzes how the movement of Jews into Europe never reached farther east than the western edge of Germany and how these few (according to "Jewish" census sources)
left the area due to the pressures and violence related to the Plague epidemics when many were killed. When masses of "Jews"
from Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Prussia moved into Eastern Germany after the twelfth century, the amounts were prodigious
- not the few stragglers that might have been found had they remained in Germany and moved East after the Bubonic Plagues.
The so-called Jewish Pale actually comprised much of the territory that had been the domain of the Khazars since late in the fifth century AD, basically the same people in the same area.
One should remember that the conversion to Judaism was political and not religious, so that most of the converted Khazars remained
pagan or atheistic. Centuries later, Irving Kristol in his book Neo-Conservatism stated that "the Jewish people discovered in the XVIII century that there was no god." As B'Nai B'Rith documentaries shown on PBS attest, modern "Judaism" is more than anything else a way of life - except for the minority among the Ashkenazi (Khazars) who had become Orthodox "Jews" - whose religion is the basis for their lives.
The Koestler comment that the modern "Jews" are more related to
Attila than to Solomon and David is of course true. A team of
archaeologists sent by the state of Israel to verify Koestler's claims, found about the same facts that the writer had.
It is a pity that the Bolsheviks in Russia, themselves for the most part - the overwhelming part - Khazar "Jews", found it convenient to flood the existing Khazar fortress of Sarkel, perhaps to eradicate any possibility of it being found where their own roots lied.
NOTE: In the fifth century AD, Leo III, the Isaurian, emperor
of Byzantium had the Jews remaining around the Mediterranean after the Roman destruction of Israel/Judea in AD70 and after the Bar Kohba uprising, c.AD135, picked up and sent to Khazaria, but these numbers were a tiny drop into the one million or more
Khazars and their allies - which had been the Pecheneg, the Maggyar, the Alani, the Huns, Turks, and others - all of them scattered over an area larger than the United States.


Out of date and disproven by new evidence   October 4, 2001
J. A Magill (Sacramento, CA USA)
39 out of 81 found this review helpful

The culture of the Khazars, a central asian tribe that adopted Judaism over 1000 years ago and was then destroyed by Gengis Khan, is a facinating subject worthy of study. Sadly, it always gets mixed up with an old 19th century idea that modern European Jews are decended from the Khazars and not the biblical Jews. That theory, highly popular in the middle 19th century served the duel use of, for some, proving that the Jews around Europe were not the same as those of the Hebrew Bible, giving great comfort to anti-semitic Christians. For others, they wanted to prove that Jesus was not Jewish, a strange branch of racist psudo-theory that goes on even today.

In the 19th century Jews could simply role their eyes but had no evidence to disprove the theory. The best evidence against the Khazar theory was lingustic, as neither Hebrew nor Yiddish seems to contain any trace of a cetral asian language. Now, with gentic evidence, we can positively identify common ancestry of Jews from areas as far flung as Germany, Spain, Yemen, and Russia. Identical Y chromosome markers can be found among members of every community. While it may be that some Khazars married into the larger Jewish community, the evidence indicates that it never happened in overwhelming number. Indeed, their is considerable historic evidence that the Khazar were largely cut off from the rest of the Jewish world.

Many reviwers point to the idea that many European Jews show non-middle eastern features (blue eyes, blond hair, etc.) However, the existance of large scale conversion to Judaism is a clear historical fact. Particularly before Christianity became firmly rooted in Eastern and South Eastern Europe, many locals converted to Judaism. Many of the modern Jewish attitudes against conversion are in fact reasonably recent, tracable to the strong and often violent action Christians took against communities where individuals chose to become Jews.

Given the vast amount of genetic evidence against the theory one has to wonder why it still gets so much play. After all, if all Jews contain common genetic markers from locations across the world, what possible evidence could be for this strange theory?