Genealogy Books - The Jews of Khazaria

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Summary: The Jews of Khazaria
Comment: Histories of peoples with little about them in the historical record and few artifacts uncovered,
are of course difficult to compile and risky to make absolute assertions about. The most important
previous book about the Khazarians, The Thirteenth Tribe, was published in 1976 by the novelist
Arthur Koestler. It's a good read, and has the novelist's enthusiastic engagement with the subject
matter. However, Koestler had an ax to grind, the thesis that all or most eastern European
Ashkenazic Jews were descended not from the Jews of Palestine but from the Khazarians, and as often
as he could he bent, misunderstood and apparently occasionally fudged the historical record to fit
his thesis, which current DNA testing has disproven. Kevin Alan Brooks' book is a work of solid
research, layered with sources, quite readable for an academic study, and like most academic works
very careful in its assertions. I recommend it for anyone interested in the period, from about the
eighth century to the 11th, and the place, between the southern Caucasus Mountains and the Volga
River, between the Black Sea and the Crimean, in the steppes just east of what we consider "Europe,"
in the "-stans." Among other things, we learn about the Khazarians' origins, their character as
nomads, traders, and fierce horsemen warriors, their conversion to Judaism, their politics and wars
with the Arabs the Christian church, and with surrounding tribespeople (Bulgars, Magyars, Alans, et
cetera), and their eventual fall to the Rus. The book was of particular interest to me because my
DNA shows the Khazarian stamp, a Q haplotype, which is relatively rare among Ashkenazi Jews. After
reading this book, I was ready to buy a horse and select an armorer.

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Summary: A vast improvement on an already impressive work
Comment: Brook has accomplished what no-one since D.M. Dunlop (in his 1954 "History of the Jewish Khazars")
has been able to do: He has written a comprehensive, up-to-date, scrupulously researched and
scholarly account of the amazing history of the Khazars. Better still, he has done so in a manner
that is accessible to the layman as well as to historians.

Brook, a layman himself
(albeit a lay expert), has meticulously collected thousands of tidbits of historical knowledge and
lore from a myriad of primary and secondary sources

Brook's first edition (published
by Jason Aaronson in 1999) was a masterpiece in and of itself, but it was flawed by the certainty of
certain controversial assertions (such as that the conversion of the Khazars took place in 861)
which have, over the course of only a few years, become outdated by dramatic new discoveries in
numismatics and archaeology. This second edition of Brook's magnum opus corrects many errors and
also includes information on new discoveries, organized into convenient, intuitive and well-cited
sections (including "The Origins of the Khazars", "The Khazars' Conversion to Judaism", and
"Relations between the Khazars and other People".)

Khazar history is brought to life
through discussions of trade, religion, daily life, language, and many other issues. Anyone
interested in Jewish, Eastern European or Eurasian history, or anyone who fancies themselves a
polymath, would be remiss if they failed to purchase and read this book.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Publishing reviews for 1st edition & this is 2nd edition
Comment: PLEASE NOTE Second Edition just published Sept 06 & some
published reviews date to 1999.
Perhaps second edition is
basically same as first edition, but how is one to know?

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Summary: A good overview, but the conclusions conflict with evidence
Comment: While I believe that this book is a must-read insofar as gaining an understanding of Khazaria goes,
I do not believe, as the author contends, that this population survived in the numbers that he
suggests. Most recent Mitochondrial and Y-Chromosome mapping work that has been done on Ashkenazi
Jews suggests that the overwhelming majority of the progenitors of this population were
middle-eastern in origin. The rest of the genome suggests that an intermarriage and conversion rate
that could not have been more than one percent per generation. A mass influx of survivors from the
fall of the Khazarian empire just doesn't fit into the genetic picture.

The other big
problem is that when Mr. Brook traces various customs of modern Ashkenazi Jews to Khazaria, even
when explicit evidence exists that these customs existed hundreds of years earlier. One such
example is the Mezuzah (a small parchment that is rolled up and affixed to the doorpost of Jewish
homes).

Even the linguistic evidence is sometimes wanting. The Turkic, or Ugric words
that are traced to Khasarian origins could have come into the Yiddish vocabulary from any number of
outlets. The Turkic language family was quite wide-spread across Asia well into the sixteenth
century, and is still quite large. Jews were and continue to be in contact with dozens of members
of this language group.

Lest I sound overly harsh, while some evidence is wanting, this
book has enormous assets. The exploration of Khazarian culture, and the fact that this Jewish
population existed are well presented. There are no apologetics and it is an honest investigation
into a difficult topic. I believe that anybody would be well served by reading it, even though I
disagree with the conclusions that are drawn.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Extremely Interesting
Comment: Being turkish myself, I have always found the friendship between jews and turks very warm and
interesting (and many of my friends are jewish). I knew the Ottoman Empire accepted 150.000 jews
during Sultan Suleyman (Solomon) II in 1492 - when Spain chose to expel them - and that modern
Turkey has close military ties with Israel; but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought than
an entire Turkish kingdom converted to Judaism and allowed jews from all over the world to settle
and build a strong kingdom. What a fascinating and extraordinary positive event!

Kevin
Brooks has written a very valuable book on not only the origins of some of the Eastern European
Jews, but also on Turkish history. Anybody with an interest in Jewish and turkish history needs to
read this "first encounter" between jews and turks, which has cemented a friendship that existed in
many different forms since then.

Türker Kara (Denmark)

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