CIVIL SOCIETY
Ancient annals of the Jewish people speak of exile after exile, pogrom after pogrom. But for two brief centuries during the early Middle Ages, a succession of Jewish kings ruled over an empire that became the dominant power of southern Russia, and encompassed regions stretching from the modern-day Ukrainian capital of Kiev to Central Asia’s Aral Sea.
Sitting on the northern borders of Byzantium and the lands of the Arab caliphate, Khazaria rivaled both empires. The story of Jewish Khazaria, with its components of proselytism, militarism and extensive inter-ethnic mixing, is unique among Jewish tribes. Indeed, because the kingdom owed its Jewishness to conversion, its importance in questions of ancestry and of Ashkenazi ethnogenesis has long been demoted.
This is the thesis of the second edition of Kevin Alan Brook’s The Jews of Khazaria, published this month by Rowman & Littlefield. The edition incorporates new archeological findings and DNA analysis to bolster Brook’s argument that the Khazarian Jews are the origin of multiple ethnic groups in Eastern Europe today. The revisions also emphasize the Khazar contribution in halting Arab conquest into Russia and in catalyzing the migrations of the Bulgars and Magyars from the Volga region to their present lands.
Khazaria, which became an independent state in the mid-seventh century, was a multi-ethnic kaganate,, or khanate, favoring Turkic administrative customs and shamanistic religions, but permissive of many faiths. Initially a refuge for Jews from less tolerant Persia and Byzantium, Khazaria was reshaped by waves of Jewish refugees, most of who intermarried and adopted local customs while keeping their own religious observances. By the tenth century, Judaism had become Khazaria’s predominant religion, according to Brook and other scholars.
The Khazars’ mass conversion was not a grassroots phenomenon, but one initiated by the ruling class. In about 740 AD, King Bulan converted to Judaism, with the nobility following in his example. The story of the king’s decision reads like a classic myth: Uncertain as to the best religion, Bulan summons scholars of Christianity, Islam and Judaism to Khazaria. Like Paris before him, Bulan makes his choice – but with better fortune: "From that time on, the Almighty God helped him and strengthened him," reads an 11th century account. "He and his slaves circumcised themselves and he sent for and brought wise men of Israel who interpreted the Torah for him and arranged the precepts in order."
Brook, who is not affiliated with a university, has been researching Khazar history for little more than a decade. His book, however, is solidly academic. The conversion of Bulan, for example, is related with details from five separate texts as well as contemporary theories attributing his decision to a geopolitical gambit to offset Christian Slavs and Muslim caliphs. All extant sources have been consulted, with material cited at the end of each chapter.
The Jews of Khazaria owes much to Khazar Studies by Professor Peter Golden of Rutgers University (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1980), and for primary resources gives preference to the so-called Schechter Letter, an anonymous tenth-century manuscript discovered by Solomon Schechter in a Cairo synagogue in the 1890s. An informational essay on the Khazar Jews commissioned by interested parties, the Schechter Letter is a true font of information for Khazar scholars. Brook’s style, didactic and balanced, is less riveting as a history.
Strangely, The Jews of Khazaria, which sets out to dispel certain "popular misconceptions," begins with a series of anti-Semitic legends in which Khazars appear as the tribesmen of Gog and Magog, then as the "monstrous nations" captured by Alexander the Great and penned between the mountains of the Caucasus, and finally as the "Red Jews" of medieval German folklore who menace peace-loving Christians.
The book suffers most from a curious organizational structure. It begins with a description of the Khazar race. Its ethnic, linguistic and civic features are carefully delineated by chapter heading. The history of Khazaria from conversion to demise (brought on by aggression and perhaps, suggests Brook, by the very lack of homogeneity for which it was famed) is covered two-thirds of the way through the book. The final third is devoted to a broader topic: the prevalence of Jews throughout Eurasia before, after, and during the Khazar reign.
The discussion of Jewish proselytism as a formerly common phenomenon is to Brook’s credit, as is his insistence on the legitimacy of converts in the already nebulous realm of interethnic pedigrees from the region and time in question. It is difficult, however, to herd information about the Avars, Subbotniki, Yemenites, Krymchaks, and Karaites into 100 pages without undermining their very inclusion in Brook’s thesis. Brook forwards a thesis at the end of his book that Khazar
descendents can be found in Jewish settlements from Lithuania to Judea adds to the overall argument that conversion is a lasting legacy. This argument would
have perhaps served the book better as an opening salvo then as a closing
addendum.
This complaint, however, should not dissuade readers from tackling Brook’s abundant scholarship. On the contrary, his forthright embrace of such a quantity of material should be emulated, refined and disseminated, much as the faith of Khazaria’s most learned citizens was.
Editor’s Note: Elizabeth Kiem is a freelance writer based in New York.
