57. The Khazar Conversion (Jewish History Lab)

now that we have discussed the persistent question  of the origin of ashkenazi jewry in the previous   video let's go straight to khazaria and try to  understand what exactly do we know about the story   of the conversion of the khazars in that region  possibly in the 8th century the story of khazaria   is especially fascinating when you think about the  way it has been received by jewish history this is   what the german historians call it transcepcion  or the history of the reception how an idea   is formed and developed and spread around perhaps  the most important element of the red sepsis   well it's hard to say of the khazar conversion is  this book the kusari written by rabbi yehuda levy   very very important spanish jewish thinker in the  12th century the the story described in the kuzari   is essentially the story of the khazar conversion  as this great poet and philosopher developed into   a massive book uh the the story goes like this  basically there is this king bulan who somewhere   around the year 740 is uh you know very spiritual  individual and and concerned with the practice of   paganism among his people and uh looking at the  growth of monotheistic movements uh particularly   christianity and islam and both christianity and  islam are making geographic headway in central   asia and approaching his borders and he thinks  to himself oh so what should i be doing should i   be remaining a pagan should i join one of the  these other faiths and so on and so he has a   debate where he brings together a uh a jew a  muslim and a christian i know it sounds like   an offensive joke but it's not and he has them  have a trilateral debate over which religion is   superior in the end as you might expect given the  fact that this is rabbi yehuda khaleebi writing it   king bhulan decides to accept judaism and  all of his court and the kusari the khazarian   people ultimately follow him into judaism that's  essentially the story now i hope you noticed that   there is 500 years difference between the setting  of this story and the authorship of the puzzari   that's half a millennium that's a lot of time and  we have to understand that the kusari was chosen   as a subject for rabbi yehuda levy because of  circumstances in the iberian peninsula in his day   specifically the trilateral relationship between  jews muslims and christians which was very unique   to spain and portugal rabbi your levy essentially  used the story of the conversion of the khazars as   a kind of a literary foil to have a larger  philosophical discussion about the relative merits   of judaism christianity and islam and then of  course by doing so to demonstrate the superiority   of judaism that's that's the essential idea of the  kusari and the the actual historical elements of   the conversion of the khazars is not necessarily  important for what yehuda halevi wanted to achieve   in his literary work so let us set aside  the kuzari as a historical source it's   definitely not intended to serve as a historical  source it's intended to serve as a literary   philosophical source let's try to go back and  understand what we do know about the period   so let's move back a couple hundred years to the  correspondence of khasta ibn shaproot again we're   still about 300 years distant from the actual  events described but this is a fascinating and   very important source which was exceptionally  important for yuhuda levy's work as well khasta   ibn shaproot who i hope we will discuss in a few  lectures when we look at spain in the 10th century   very important diplomat who communicated with  jewish communities throughout the mediterranean   basin and he was fascinated with the story of  the khazar conversion which was known to him and   so he sent out some emissaries to try and reach  khazaria and find out you know yeah what's what's   going on there are you guys actually jewish  is this actually a jewish kingdom now and for   reasons which will take us beyond our the scope  of our discussion his emissaries did not succeed   in reaching khazaria or speaking with any actual  khazarians but they did receive correspondence   from someone who purported to have brought letters  from a king joseph of khazaria these letters are   absolutely fascinating they relate the story of  the conversion of king bulan they talk about the   nature of khazarians their judaism and all kinds  of fascinating things but it's widely believed   that these letters were forgeries in other  words the people who provided the letters to the   messengers of khastay bin shabrut were essentially  engaged in some kind of con and uh they have   no bearing on the actuality of khazaria and they  don't have historical value for that purpose so   they're they're fascinating and they're really  engaging but are they real did they did do these   are they authentic are they actually letters from  king joseph probably not we do know however as we   get closer and closer to the original dates that  there were medieval jewish travelers who either   had uh direct contact with khazaria or direct  contact with khazarians in different places and   and report however briefly on their jewish status  sometimes with a degree of surprise sometimes with   a degree of skepticism but nevertheless there's  like more and more little tiny bits of evidence   uh piling up in a lot of places as we shall  see many skeptics would say that the plural   of anecdote is not data but it's hard to toss  away these little bits of information for example   here's a fascinating document which was found in  the cairo ganesa we will have opportunity to speak   about what that geniza is in a few lectures  from now but basically it's a medieval trove   of documents which were literally thrown away but  were amazingly preserved till they were unearthed   in the late 19th century and in this uh trove  of documents is the so-called kievan letter uh   which is a basically a letter that is familiar to  anyone who lives in a jewish community today when   tzedakah collectors when charity collectors come  by jewish homes they typically present a document   which is called a patek and it it's essentially  a statement of the bona fides of the bearer of   the document saying that this person represents  a legitimate cause he's fallen on hard times he's   supporting orphans and widows or a charitable  cause one or the other and it's expected that   when someone presents you with this patek which  may be issued by the local community in which the   donor lives or it may come from the uh originating  community like from jerusalem or wherever then you   give them charity and they they build up their  cost so this is exactly one of those documents   the only real difference between this document  and the ones we use today is that the ones we   use today are laminated typically this was not  laminated but it comes from kiev which indicates   that that was part of the range of khazaria in  fact the great uh harvard historian omelian pritzk   argued that kiev may have been founded by  khazarian jews believe it or not at any rate   the uh the the letter which comes from kiev  specifically describes how the person has fallen   how at times the person is worthy and you should  specifically support his cause and then amazingly   at the bottom you can see it's highlighted here  in this particular image there is a signature   in what appear to be turkic runes that  say i have read it or we have read it   fascinating that indicates that there was  uh evidently people who because normally   this would be the signature of someone who was  important in the jewish community like a rabbi   or the parnos of the community which essentially  the president of the community and he obviously   is completely illiterate in hebrew and needs to  write in turkic runes which would be very unusual   unless there was a distinct khazarik community  in kiev at the time we have multiple references   from arab historians to a jewish presence  in khazaria as well and perhaps one of my   favorite examples is in one of the most important  early historical documents that describe   the uh origins of the kievan rus uh population  which later would grow into modern day ukraine   it's also shared with the russian empire and the  polish empire and so on it's the so-called povest   or chronicle of bygone years which is essentially  a church record of the history of the region   there is a fascinating description of a key  element in the uh christianization of the region   specifically the conversion of king volodymir  or vladimir to eastern orthodox christianity   and amazingly it's exactly like the story in  the kusari there is a representative of islam   there are two representatives of christianity  both western and eastern christianity and   there is a representative of the jews and that  representative is specifically a khazarian jew and   this is absolutely fascinating that not only do  they replicate the story that is essentially told   in the letters of khasta ibn shaproot with king  joseph they actually report the same kind of   scenario of course it ends up that king volodymir  decides to become christian rather than jewish   could you imagine how history would have changed  hades he chosen to be jewish he barely nearly did   by the way but the uh this is you know one of  those data points that's really hard to ignore   uh speaking to the idea of a jewish community  in khazaria at the time and then finally we've   got some really tempting archaeological finds  like this coin found in the united kingdom as   part of the so-called spillings horde there's  a whole number of them that come from khazaria   around this time like eighth ninth century this  one writes in arabic uh a sort of a paraphrase on   the uh the famous statement of islamic faith  uh there is no god but allah and moses is his   prophet right that's an unusual kind of statement  there and then there are some tempting examples   of jewish symbols on khazar architecture which  is limited there are not a lot of fines but   this menorah symbol from a a khazar archaeological  dig is especially tempting so all of these things   come together to suggest that something  really important happened in this region in   the 8th century that involved judaism but what  exactly happened let's have a look at that oh   if you ask professor xiaowil stamford who we met  in the last lecture when we were talking about dna   evidence dr fur is definitely one of the biggest  skeptics of the whole story he says it is quote   a splendid story right you can finish the rest of  that sentence in other words there's not much to   it so but we still have all these little bits of  of data the the kievan letter the spillings hoard   coin and things like that what does all that mean  so trying to put it together one of the biggest   questions we have is if they did convert to  judaism and i tend to believe something happened   there with regards to conversion why did they  convert there does not seem to be a really good   you know source to provide an answer for this  besides of course the the letter of king joseph to   khasta ibn shaproot widely regarded as a forgery  but in that letter the primary motivation was   essentially spiritual nature and that's very nice  but maybe i've been a historian too long i tend to   be skeptical of such things it's also possible  that maybe it had to do with the geopolitics   of the era the khazars did fight two brutal wars  with the muslims they did see the rapid expanse of   christianity which would overtake ukraine or then  kievan rus in short order so you know maybe they   chose to adopt judaism as some kind of potentially  neutral position perhaps they hope to say that hey   jews are tolerated in muslim lands under the  pact of umar which we discussed earlier and   in christian lands through the doctrine of  witness maybe they thought they could carve   out some independence there we but we also have  to remember that there is um remarkable silence   regarding their association with the massive  jewish population in mesopotamia which is really   not so far away this was really the world center  of jewish intellect and rabbinics and writing and   so on why is there silence from mesopotamia on the  khazar conversion who converted them if not the   rabbis active in babylonia and mesopotamia was it  the karaites who we haven't had the opportunity   to discuss yet why do we have no carotid sources  either so a lot of questions about why they would   convert secondly how jewish was this conversion  both in terms of quality and in terms of quantity   i mentioned already that we don't have a clear  sense as to whether these converts were rabbinic   in orientation or karaite in orientation the  documents like the key evan letter just indicate   that that particular individual who had gone to  egypt with the purpose of raising funds had fallen   on hard times but it doesn't really say much about  his personal religious orientation we don't really   have clear evidence as to what kind of judaism  they performed we also very importantly don't   know how many of them became jewish is it possible  that this was kind of like a royal conversion like   we see for example with queen helena of adiaba who  converted to judaism with her sons but her husband   remained non-jewish is it possibly similar to the  conversion in khimyar in the arabian peninsula we   simply don't know how many of khazarian jews  converted to judaism and it could be that this   was simply a token conversion that took place  in the upper strata did not extend to the lower   population as a whole who remained essentially  pagan we don't know uh and thirdly perhaps   you know contributing to the ongoing mystery  about the khazars what happened to them right   where did they go we know that the empire lost  its political independence in the 10th century   when svyatoslao of kiev and russ destroyed it for  the last time uh but they seemed to like pop up   every now and then in the chronicle of bygone  years that was a couple hundred years later   we still have reference to hazards as jews  but they don't seem to have that impact on the   demographics of the region we already discussed  in the previous video the lack of dna evidence of   their continuing relationship with ashkenazi jews  did they perhaps you know make an impact on some   of the smaller jewish populations like in the  caucasus like the mounted jews perhaps we simply   don't know now as i mentioned in the beginning of  the last video i get a lot of questions and a lot   of attention about the casa or sometimes i have  to actually shut off the comments because they   just get way out of hand and you might wonder if  this is your first time encountering this question   why would people care right what is the  big deal some obscure 8th century event   so the implications are actually quite significant  for 21st century politics if you consider for   example the work of professor [ __ ] zand who  is an israeli historian who has written quite   a few controversial books one of the most  significant is this one here the so-called   the invention of the jewish people in which  he essentially argues that ashkenazi jews as   we discussed in in the last video ashkenazi  jews are not really jewish that this entire   sub ethnic group of the jewish people which  had such a profound impact on modern politics   in particular since the 19th century in  particular they're not actually descended   from the biblical jews of ancient israel now this  has a lot of appeal to people who wish to see   modern jews taken down a peg uh maybe for  religious reasons that they want to feel   that modern ashkenazi jews don't have a real  share in the ancient patrimony that they claim   again not that it really makes a  difference in terms of jewish law   and although i'm not a theologian i don't  think i'm not even sure what kind of difference   it would make theologically the argument of some  people frankly anti-semites that modern jews are   not real jews is a way of delegitimizing their  ethnic identity and of saying that we don't have   to afford them the respect that their ancient  patrimony might otherwise be appropriate for   them we don't have to regard them as being you  know millennial followers of an ancient tradition   uh and perhaps therefore uh you know we don't have  to even apply the doctrine of witness to them we   could consider them usurpers uh racial interlopers  who have somehow taken away the true patrimony   you see this sometimes among black supremacists  who argue that the real jews are actually black   and those white jews who claim to be jews they  can't be jews because we are right that's as we've   discussed when we look at the jews of africa there  are jews who are black as well and it's just not   a it's not a factor in the theological or  the halachic application of who is a jew a   halachic being in terms of jewish law so a lot of  anti-semites really like the khazarian hypothesis   and for people like professor zhan they also  see kind of like a a liberal approach to this   as well the the right wing may see it in  terms of traditional anti-semitic views   the left wing as we see professor zand he wishes  to disassociate himself specifically with the   jewish claim to the land of israel if ashkenazi  jews the argument goes are not really jewish and   israel is to be a homeland for jews that  therefore in the way the argument goes   invalidates the ashkenazi claim to the land  of israel as their homeland and that's a   pretty strong thing to state politically and  that's why ironically you sometimes find the   khazarian hypothesis being advanced by those  who have issue with jews both on the right   and on the left that's why this issue seems to  have so much traction even in the 21st century but   in terms of the overall scope of jewish history  it's just a tiny little footnote a fascinating one   a splendid story to use dr stamford's message but  we're going to move on from this now we're going   to look at a much more significant topic we're  going to look at the growth of middle eastern   jewry and particularly we're going to look at the  geonec period thank you very much for watching

Channel: Henry Abramson

Views: 48,147

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

Id: GR4DTjsCVU8

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021