Where do Jews Come From? (Part II - Maybe I am Not a Judeo-Khazar)

Intrigued by the thought that I was a Judeo-Khazar, I did some additional research and learned that the Khazarian Hypothesis -- the theory that Eastern European Jews are descendants of the Khazars, a confederation of tribes in the central-northern Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the 8th century -- is highly controversial because of its political implications.

As I observed in my last post, the Jewish claim to the land of Israel -- including settlements in the "historic heartland" of Judea and Samaria (in what is now known as the West Bank) -- is premised at least in part on the argument that Jews settled and developed Israel and have maintained ties to Israel for more than 3,700 years. But if Jews of Eastern European descent (who comprise the vast majority of Jews today) can only claim a tenuous connection to the early Judeans, this argument would seem to lose much of its force.

This is precisely why, according to a Wikipedia article on the Khazars, anti-Semites and anti-Zionists have been propagating the Khazarian Hypothesis since the late 19th century.  The article also notes that "Jewish Zionist novelist Arthur Koestler devoted his popular book The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) to the topic."  Apparently, Koestler was unaware that anti-Semites had used the Khazarian Hypothesis for their own purposes decades earlier. Koestler did  not disavow the hypothesis, but he did assert that it was irrelevant to the Jewish claim to Israel, which he believed was based on the United Nations mandate rather than any religious or historical claim.

The fact that anti-Semites and anti-Zionists have embraced the Khazarian Hypothesis does not mean it is wrong, of course.  But several scholars have disputed the hypothesis.  Just this year, in August 2012, Professor Harry Ostrer, a Jewish medical geneticist at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, published a book entitled Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People, in which Ostrer reportedly asserts that all major Jewish groups have a common Middle Eastern origin stemming from the early Judeans, and refutes the notion that the Khazars contributed significantly to the Jewish gene pool.  

So maybe the Khazarian Hypothesis is incorrect. Maybe what I learned in Hebrew School, i.e. the competing Rhineland Hypothesis, is correct -- that modern European Jews are descendants of the Judeans, whose descendants migrated to Europe and, subsequently, from Germany to Eastern Europe.  But go back and read Eran Elhaik's paper, and I am confident you will be left with some doubt.

In my estimation, the jury on this fascinating issue is still out. But as the comments to an article in Haaretz that discusses  Elhaik's paper make clear, this is a highly charged political issue, regardless of the scientific merits of the competing hypotheses. 

 

Where do Jews Come From? (Or Why I May be a Judeo-Khazar)

Jews descend from ancient Israel, of course.  At least that's what I was taught in Hebrew school.  Sure, Jews migrated over the centuries, often by force, thus creating the diaspora that, it could be argued, allowed the Jewish people to survive to this day.  But ultimately you can trace the origin of the Jewish people back to ancient Israel, right?

Well, maybe not, according to Eran Elhaik, a genetic scientist at Johns Hopkins University whose paper, "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses," explores the genetic origins of Jews of European descent.  Eastern European Jews, a/k/a Ashkenazi Jews (of which I am one) account for nearly 90 percent of the 13 million Jews worldwide.  (Ehliak rejects use of the term Ashkenazi Jews because "the Hebrew word 'Ashkenaz' was applied to Germany in medieval rabbinical literature - contributing to the narrative that modern Eastern European Jewry originated on the Rhine.").

The Rhineland hypothesis is what learned in Hebrew School.  It posits that modern European Jews are descendants of the Judeans - an assortment of Israelite-Canaanite tribes of Semitic origin.  According to this hypothesis, there were two mass migratory waves of Jews: the first occurred over the two hundred years following the Muslim conquest of Palestine (638 CE) and consisted of Judeans who left Muslim Palestine for Europe.  The second wave occurred at the beginning of the 15th century by a group of 50,000 German Jews who migrated eastward.

The competing “Khazarian Hypothesis” posits that Eastern European Jews are descendants of the Khazars, a confederation of tribes in the central-northern Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the 8th century.  According to the Khazarian Hypothesis,  European Jews are comprised of Caucasus, European, and Middle Eastern ancestries.

Elhaik notes that according to either hypothesis, "Jews are an assortment of tribes who accepted Judaism, migrated elsewhere, and maintained their religion up to this date and are, therefore, expected to exhibit certain differences from their neighboring populations."  In other words, Jews are a distinct people, regardless of which hypothesis is correct.  But because "Caucasus and Semitic populations are considered ethnically and linguistically distinct," the two hypotheses offer very different explanations for the origins of nearly 90 percent of Jews worldwide.

To test the two hypotheses, Elhaik and his team used genetic sequencing. I am no scientist and cannot comment on Elhaik's methodology or the validity of his findings. But according to Elhaik, his findings "support the Khazarian Hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry." Stating it another way, Elhaik writes that "Eastern European Jews are Judeo-Khazars in origin." Elhaik cites archaeological, historic, anthropological and linguistic studies that support this conclusion. Of his findings, Elhaik writes that "we hope that they will provide new perspectives for genetic, disease, medical, and anthropological studies."

But there may also be a political dimension to the Khazarian Hypothesis. The Jewish claim to the land of Israel -- including settlements in the "historic heartland" of Judea and Samaria (in what is now known as the West Bank) -- is premised at least in part on the argument that Jews settled and developed Israel and have maintained ties to Israel for more than 3,700 years. But if the vast majority of Jews can only claim a tenuous connection to the early Judeans, does this argument not lose some of its force?

This is my first post, so I guess I should start with the title of the blog.  Let's start with non-Jewish Jew. An oxymoron, yes, but one with a rich heritage.  The famous Marxist intellectual Isaac Deutscher coined the phrase in a series of essays called the Non-Jewish Jew (published in 1968), which I happened to acquire in college at a book sale. Now, I am no Marxist; far from it. But Deutscher applied the phrase to humanist Jews like himself, and it is that category of Jew that I proudly belong to. "I am a Jew because I feel the pulse of Jewish history," Deutscher wrote.  That pretty much sums it up for me as well.

As for nice Secular Boy, well, hopefully you get the play on words.  I am secular, not religious; I will expand on that in future posts. I am a boy (well, a man, actually).  And I'm usually nice.  But I guess we'll see about that...