56. No, Ashkenazi Jews are not Khazars (Jewish History Lab)

i've recorded about 500 videos on jewish  history now and one of the things that used   to surprise me unfortunately doesn't surprise  me anymore is that in the top 10 of popularity   my handful of videos on the ghazar conversion  remain very popular and at first i thought you   know that's a really cool thing but now i begin to  think it says something unfortunate about humanity   uh so for this video and the next which are going  to focus on the unusual chapter of khazar jewry   in our larger project i'm going to first speak  about something that is frequently uh posed as   a question and i'll answer definitively the answer  is no ashkenazi jews are not khazars they are not   descended from the khazar people if they have  any connection with the khazar it is very very   tiny in proportion to the overwhelming hole  which is largely european and middle eastern   in background so let's take some time to  understand what the big controversy is about   and what is the resolution to something which is  a burning question for many people first of all   what is the hypothesis although it is shrouded in  mystery most historians coalesce around the idea   that a population in the region of the caspian  sea uh not too far from the northern black sea   encompassing part of south eastern europe  converted to judaism sometime in the 8th century   they had come into existence in the sixth century  as a proto empire and then began expanding   until they were finally defeated by the people of  kievan rus that would be uh based in today's cave   ukraine in the 10th century and then they  basically disappeared so here's a map that   shows you roughly where the khazar empire would  have stretched again we can't use like really firm   boundaries but this is the general area now at the  same time more or less you have the establishment   of jewish ashkenaz which is associated  primarily with germany with the rhineland   and we begin to see jewish settlement there from  somewhere around the 10th century onward the name   ashkenaz is a biblical origin but it is applied  in the medieval period to this region of germany   now from what we know from lots of other sources  there's a pretty significant eastward expansion   or migration of the jews of ashkenaz to eastern  europe for reasons that i'm looking forward to   discussing with you in later videos but there's  a lot of spread of ashkenazi jews to the east   and from there they constitute the the largest  single demographic chunk of european ashkenazi   jews as a whole looking at this uh outline here  in yellow is basically where most ashkenazi jews   trace their origins to of course there's a big  migration uh to the americas particularly from   eastern europe in the late 19th and early 20th  centuries and that's basically the migration that   my own ancestors came from and that's basically  the story the term ashkenazi again derives from   medieval germany although most of those jews who  used that term later migrated to eastern europe   and then from there many of them to america israel  and so on that's to distinguish them from other   ethnic groups within the jewish people such as  the spartan who trace their origins primarily to   the iberian peninsula god willing we'll talk a lot  more about them shortly now here's the khazarian   hypothesis since there is something of an overlap  between the limits of the khazar empire which had   some kind of connection possibly a conversion  to judaism perhaps in the 8th century and the   population of jews that by the time you get to  the 20th century the vast bulk of ashkenazi jews   are living in eastern europe the khazar hypothesis  says that the jews that call themselves ashkenazim   coming from eastern europe are not descendants  of the german ashkenazim they are actually   descendants from the khazars and and that's the  well that's it in a nutshell now why should we   care about this is something that we'll talk about  in the next video but that's the essence of the   khazar hypothesis that the jews who originate from  eastern europe are primarily descended from this   turkic tribe living in central asia perhaps one of  the most significant thinkers and writers on this   period is professor xiaowil stamford of hebrew  university uh great scholars written quite a   bit on eastern european jewish history and he's  published quite a bit on khazaria in particular he   has a very jaundiced view of the entire conversion  process as a whole the entire conversion story   which i'll speak about in the next video but he  says there are a few really clear reasons why we   can say that ashkenazi jews are not the center  from the khasars first of all there is no dna   evidence to support this now if you go back in  my earlier videos as i've been doing these over   the last 10 years there's been growing amounts of  data and you'll see slight changes even in my own   presentation because of the appearance of new  data dna evidence is one of the most exciting   tools that historians have in their you know  uh toolbox and when it comes to the question of   you know biological dissent as opposed to halachic  identity jewish identity by jewish law which is   a different thing although they tend to overlap  like a venn diagram it's really clear that there's   no dna evidence or a very tiny element of dna  evidence to support the idea of a khazar origin   to eastern european ashkenazi jewry now one  exception to that rule is the professor iran l   haik who's written some interesting things on this  but he remains controversial and most scholars   are not accepting the research that he's  presented specifically on khazaria now   without being a scientist and be able to get into  the real nuts and bolts of this what i've read   about this is that he prepared in 2013 i think it  was first published uh an analysis of about 1300   y chromosomes 1300 people looking at their y  chromosomes to try to see what the similarities   were between jews and about 75 odd other  nationalities unfortunately the sample was   really really small of the jews only eight fit  the specific parameters that we're looking at   right now that's a tiny number to really make huge  statements about the vast majority of ashkenazi   jews secondly more significantly the number of  khazar individuals studied were precisely zero   because there are no hazards today and in fact  we haven't had any hazards for about a thousand   years there has been no one walking around who  claims hazard descent to whom we can go to for   genetic data in other words you can't compare  jews to hazards if you don't have any hazards to   actually say oh you're a khazar great let's take  your dna so what he did was he essentially guessed   an educated guess using georgians and armenians  which live roughly in the same area but with a   thousand years of population movement it's really  hard to say that that's reasonable at all so it's   considered widely to be a very unreliable estimate  and most scholars particularly most historians   are not accepting this limited data evidence  to suggest that jews come from azaria   secondly you know we can pile on the burden of  proof here the second thing is there's absolutely   no linguistic evidence of hazard influence on jews  i mean one of the things that we would certainly   expect to see is that jews would pick up khazar  terminology in their yiddish yiddish by the way   is the the overwhelmingly dominant uh native  language of the jews who call themselves ashkenazi   originating from eastern europe at the turn  of the 20th century there was a census in   the russian empire and i think was 98 percent of  ukrainian jews 97 of jews throughout the empire i   remember correctly claimed yiddish as their mother  tongue and there is no discernible evidence of a   turkic in yiddish there are some interesting  words here and there that are kind of of uncertain   derivation uh the professor named vine right who  is one of the most important theorists of early   yiddish who argues that the word davin which means  to pray might come from a turk origin but it's   it's kind of up in the air absolutely yiddish  is basically german it's overwhelmingly german   arguments to the contrary that it's its grammar  is essentially slavic is nonsensical to anyone   who has studied all three language groups  if you've studied german if you studied   some slavic languages and you've studied yiddish  you know that yiddish is overwhelmingly german   written with hebrew characters with a significant  borrowing of hebrew aramaic both jewish languages   and a certain amount of french and all the  various words that that come along as the   jews are traveling through their migrations the  small elements of slavic grammar that are visible   particularly in the eastern dialects of of yiddish  which is not at all surprising given that we're   talking about living in a slavic area they're not  turkic they're slavic very different languages   and they're basically like uses of aspect and  other finer grammatical forms so bottom line is   yiddish is way way more german than it  is turkic the turkic elements the khazar   elements are vanishingly small if they exist at  all third there's no cultural evidence i mean   where are the you know the recipes where are  the folk customs where are the superstitions   the stories the legends the songs that one  would expect to come from turkic origins   we simply don't have them in ashkenazi culture  we have lots of russian things lots of ukrainians   especially lots of ukrainian polish and so on  after a thousand years of living in the region   we have evidence of german of latin of french  types of cultural uh you know accretions that   follow the jews they travel but we don't have  any khazarian things so the you know the burden   of proof is clearly on those who want to push  this theory the overwhelming amount of evidence   suggests that the model of jewish migration from  ashkenaz is exactly what happened historically   so then that brings us to the next question  where did ashkenazi jews come from and i get this   question a lot actually so this is doron behar who  is a remarkable geneticist who's really advanced   the the field quite a bit and he's done some  great studies of dna and the muslim muslim just   appeared in the last few years one of the most  fascinating things that he discovered is that 40   of all ashkenazi jews are descended from  precisely four women apparently of european origin   uh and there's some indication that they lived  about a thousand years ago or perhaps a little   bit earlier no indication they lived uh looked  like they knew each other but uh there are four   specific women that seems to have had a tremendous  impact on ashkenazi jews furthermore statistically   speaking there are significant similarities  between non-ashkenazi jews like safari jews   and mizrahi jews and so on with ashkenazi jews so  in other words it still seems to be one big family   despite the superficial differences in skin tone  and and hair texture and so on but jews seem to be   more or less one family and there are significant  distinctions between especially in eastern europe   between jews and the peoples among whom they  live so in other words this all basically   fits with the common sense idea of the jews  moving from western europe into eastern europe   the kind of elements that dr bihar was able to  map out include something called genetic drift   which helps to account for some of the  superficial presentation of ashkenazi   people as a layperson my understanding of  genetic drift is basically when you have and   by the way i'll show you a y chromosome study in  a second that shows a lot more about jewish males   than jewish females this happens when as is very  common and well documented uh non-jewish women   adopt judaism and marry into the jewish people  this may be a much more pronounced conversion   women converting to judaism than men converting  to judaism this helps account for the physical   distinctions between let's say mediterranean  jewry and eastern european jewry you also have a   phenomenon which is consistent with the historical  record of a genetic bottleneck where you have a   population of people that for a variety of reasons  which could be social economic political it could   have to do with persecution massacres wars  things like that but a larger group of people   are suddenly shrunk over a period of time to  be a much smaller population like a bottleneck   forms and that means that there are much fewer  people from whom the later ancestors derived their   origins this helps explain the the fairly large  number of genetic disorders that unfortunately   afflict ashkenazi jews like breast cancer and tay  sachs which may owe a lot to the fact that there   was this bottleneck perhaps around the turn of  the millennium that meant that the population of   jews living in northern europe that would later  move to the east represent the basis of a much   larger population so the bottom line of all of  this is that it's pretty much what we always   were thinking although italy may be more important  than most historians have thought have a look at   this map here which is also part of dr bihar's  research and this is looking specifically at   levites on the y chromosome now levites like  kohanim are members of the priestly family   and they are and it's only the males it's passed  down father to son mothers do not pass down   the levite connection so looking at the y  chromosomes of ashkenazi jews he was able   to determine that it appears that they  are they do have origins consistent with   a middle eastern distant origin and then a  strong migration through the italian peninsula   to the ashkenazic heartland in germany that would  be numbers one through two in this particular map   and then number three is as we expected a large  migration towards the east where most ashkenazi   levites find their origins going back through that  that original vector and then as you can see the   kind of uh the faded line there of the extension  towards the west along with the arrow labeled   number four there is a a reference back as those  ashkenazi levites begin to move to the west and in   fact begin to form families with sephardic women  and non-ashkenazi jews generally in the iberian   peninsula it is probably at the point number  two on this map when those four mothers appeared   probably somewhere around the year 1 000 and  then are responsible for this huge expansion   of ashkenazic jewry and as a result a tremendous  popularity of asian food now in america and so on   now if you look at these uh the green lines  here uh this is the traditional view of the   uh migration of jews historically which there's  a lot to say for this and it is this does not   contradict the historical model uh that we have  well-documented jews moving their way across the   coast of north africa but that particular route  would not necessarily explain the origins of most   ashkenazi levites in other words while jews may  have been moving along that route number five   they do not account for the large number of  levites in the ashkenazi community and so   it's not demonstrated by the research that  he has worked on nevertheless we do have jews   moving along the course of north africa just not  necessarily levites that would end up producing   lines among the ashkenazim it's so complicated  to see this in so many ways but you get the   basic idea right okay so that's our short answer  ashkenazi jews are not descended from the khazars   they are descended from the middle east  and possibly through a an italian vector   and there are four women ironically  you know the the sour rebecca rachel   and leia of ashkenazi jews account for  almost half of all ashkenazi jews today   in the next video let us actually go to khazaria  and try to figure out what did happen in the 8th   century what can we say about it intelligently  okay thank you very much for watching

Channel: Henry Abramson

Views: 25,799

Rating: 4.3123312 out of 5

Keywords: Jewish, History, Judaism, Torah, Henry, Abramson, Hebrew

Id: 9MkA8Qu_how

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021