1. To start the attack on the argument by first throwing some dirt on the opponents (instead of dealing with the main point of contention) is a hallmark of the true demagogue. In this case, it is especially so, because the mass conversion of Khazars has always been an accepted fact for a thousand years starting with such people as Ibn Shaprut, Yehuda HaLevi, Ralbag and others who certainly can’t be added to any of the categories of the “revisionists” listed below.
2. The use of Germanic dialect, i.e. Yiddish has been used by certain historians as a self-evident “proof” of the Western origins of the Eastern European Jewry. While there can be little doubt that the learning in the united Poland/Lithuania and thus the language of the learning in yeshivot (i.e. Yiddish) came from Germany and France with the teachers, the student body of those yeshivas, by and large, came from the East. Today’s many studies of Yiddish lean more towards such an understanding, although the genesis of Yiddish is still somewhat a mystery. While there were movements to Poland of the Jews from France and Germany at different times, those Jews didn’t ever constitute even small minority of the Jews in the area of White Russia, Podolie, and Volyn which constituted the bulk of end of 19th century Russian Jewry. 3. What is indeed “absurd” is to place Sefardim and migrants from Babylonia in the same “group of Jews”. The number of Sefardim that made their way to Eastern Europe after the Expulsion is tiny (most of them settled in Africa, Land of Israel, Turkey, Southern, and Central Europe), while there is plenty of evidence of large Jewish migrations at various times from Byzantium and Babylon to the areas of Northern Black Sea (used to be called the Sea of Khazaria) and Caucasus over the 2,000 years before that. After the demise of Khazaria, it is these Jews –naturally mixed with the native Jews of Khazaria--that have gave the rise to no more than 100,000 Jews estimated to live in that part of the world after Mongolian invasion. It is these people that increased to something like 9,000,000 by the end of 19th century and who became the ancestors of about 80% of the American Jewry today. Alex From: Kuperman, Aaron [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 8:10 AM To: 'A G'; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: RE: [ha-Safran] Eastern European Jews descended from Babylonia[?] posting by David Hirsch Oct 25, 2013 1. It is important to remember that those trying to "revise" Ashkenazi Jewish history in the past have been highly motivated by a desire to either: 1) show they were really Aryans rather than a member of an inferior race; 2) show they were not descended from "Christ-killers" and worthy of civil rights; 3) not connected ethnically to other Jews and therefore able to be anti-zionist without having to become either a hareidi fanatic or a self-hating secularist. While an ulterior motive doesn't prove the claims are baseless, it perhaps should raise a warning flag. 2. Yiddish is rather clearly a Germanic language with an undercurrent of romance words - there is no undercurrent of Turkish or Arabic roots in Yiddish. There are Jewish and non-Jewish accounts of Jews moving from western Europe to eastern Europe. There were large Jewish communities in western Europe who largely disappeared and according to contemporary accounts they moved to the east. The Jewish romance dialect is well documented, so seeing romance in Yiddish is no surprise. The only accounts of Jews migrating from the Khazar areas have them ending up in non-Ashkenazi places (which given the level of civilization in Europe at the time, is understandable). The nusach of davening in eastern Europe resembles that of western Europe, but does not resemble that of regions to the south and east. 3. To believe that a group of Jews following the minhagim of Babel and the Sefardim moved into eastern Europe, and totally changed their language and nusah of davening to emulate that of the western Europeans, and somehow altered all records of their migration and ancestry (and the aristorcratic families, the rabbanim, have always been very yichus conscious) is absurd. At the very least, it should be reflected in halachos, language, nusach of davening, family traditions, etc. Aaron Kuperman, LC Law Cataloging Section. This is not an official communication from my employer From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of A G Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 10:23 PM To: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]; <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] Subject: Re: [ha-Safran] Eastern European Jews descended from Babylonia[?] posting by David Hirsch Oct 25, 2013 It would be good to see some proof of the statement that “The original Jews of eastern Europe and the Crimea seem to have followed the Roman conquerors as the Roman legions occupied Europe, making the origins of these communities in southern Europe rather than Mesopotamia.” We do know that the Romans have reached Danube but not much further East. In the process, they have driven the Slavs from their original lands. That the Jewish traders would decide to leave Romans and join the Slavs in their run East is absurd. A history of the origins of the Ashkenazic Jewry is not an easy one to reconstruct. However, that the great Jewish kingdom of Khazaria—a kingdom that had one of the world’s largest standing armies of that time—played important role in its creation is behind any doubt. The Slavs who went East came under the rule and protection of Khazars whose domain already contained numerous Jewish communities of different origins. Think about it: 1. the first written document mentioning Kiev (at one time Khazarian outpost, but at the time of the writing of the letter, probably already under the rule of the Vikings, i.e. Rus) is the early 10th century letter of the Jewish community of that city written in Hebrew. 2. 1000-1500 years before that, major Jewish communities of Crimea (Khersones and Bosphores, the neighbor of Northern Caucasus) were created not following “the Roman conquerors”, but long before Roman ascendancy. 3. A lot of different Jews lived in Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including the Jews of what became eventually Ukraine), before they were expelled largely west to Poland in 1495. These Jews didn’t come from the West, but from the East… although their language, Yiddish, probably did from the West together with their teachers. Alex From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Donald Weinshank Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 6:13 PM To: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] Subject: [ha-Safran] Eastern European Jews descended from Babylonia[?] posting by David Hirsch Oct 25, 2013 David posted this question: Safranim: Wondering if any of you can help me. One of our researchers is interested in articles relating to Albert Harkavy and his theory that Eastern European Jews originated in Babylonia. The researcher can only read English. The only thing that we have found is a few sentences in EJ. "Harkavy claimed that the Jewish community in Russia was formed by Jews who migrated from the region of the Black Sea and Caucasia, where their ancestors had settled after the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. These people, who preserved an ancient Jewish heritage, which they spread among the *Khazars <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?inPS=true&prodId=GVRL&userGroupName=uclosangeles&tabID=T003&searchId=R1&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&contentSet=GALE&docId=GALE%7CCX2587511089> , expanded through the Khazar kingdom westward to Czechoslovakia." My colleague, Dr. Stephen Rayburn, has studied this issue extensively and sent me this analysis. The Khazars were a Turkic people of whom a number, mostly the ruling class, converted to a form of Judaism in the eighth to the ninth century. But the Khazars were not the ancestors of the Jews of Russia; nor were populations of Jewish migrants from Mesopotamia. There were indeed significant communities of Jews living in the Crimean Peninsula going back to Roman times, but with the persecutions of the Byzantine Empire, additional Jews migrated eastward from Byzantium to the Khazar territories. The original Jews of eastern Europe and the Crimea seem to have followed the Roman conquerors as the Roman legions occupied Europe, making the origins of these communities in southern Europe rather than Mesopotamia. Some of Harkavy's ideas may stem from rumors that were known to Jerome (fourth century CE); according to Jerome's writings, "the Assyrians and Chaldeans had conducted the Jewish people into exile ... in the Bosporus and the extreme North." There is, of course, no historical support for Jerome's claim as it is based on rumors that circulated widely at the time; Jews were not exiled to northwestern Turkey or southern Ukraine in 722 BCE or 598/587 BCE. The Jews were exiled in those conquests from a fairly short distance to northern Syria (Antioch) to the farthest, locations in modern Iran (Hyrcania, south shore of the Caspian Sea). During the eighth to tenth centuries CE there were numerous Jewish communities located throughout eastern Europe; most of these had grown out of commercial activities centered along the Danube River. Chasdai ibn Shaprut's (Andalusian vizier to Cordoban caliph Abd al-Rahman III) famous letter to King Joseph of Khazaria of the mid-tenth century traveled from Spain to Kazaria via the Jewish communities in Croatia, then Hungary, then Russia, then to Bulgaria, and finally the Khazars. (References are Baron, SW, "A Social and Religious History of the Jews" vol. 3, Columbia Univ Press, 1957, pp. 196ff, n. 323-4, see also p. 110. There are additional references in vols. 4, 5, and 8 of Baron's work. Also see Kriwaczek, P, "Yiddish Civilisation," Knopff, 2005, pp. 49ff.) Most of the Jews in Khazaria appear to have been descendants of refugees of Byzantium and of those Jews who had lived in the region since Roman times. Others also migrated into the east from the west, very slowly during the early middle ages but increases occurred after the Crusades and the later persecutions in Germany. Certainly Jews from the Middle East migrated to Russia especially as a result of the Islamic persecutions that occurred periodically between the eighth and twelfth centuries, but these numbers were tiny mainly because of the difficulty of traveling from the Middle East to Russia. Almost all historians attribute the conversion of the Khazars to the influence of the numerous Byzantine Jews who were living in the Crimea and whose customs were attractive to the Khazars and also to their contacts with the successful and influential Jewish traders in Bulgaria-Romania-Moldova, a region in the Khazar political sphere, and not the the fairly primitive Jews of the Caucasus. When the Kievan Rus defeated the Khazars in the late tenth century, many Jews fled westward and the Jewish population of Ukraine dropped precipitously; Jews did not return to this region in any significant numbers until after the Crusader period. Another source of information about the Jews of Russia from the medieval period comes from the writings of Petachiah ben Ya’akov, also known as Petachiah of Ratisbon (Regensburg), who travelled through Russia and Crimea in the mid to late twelfth century. A surviving edition of his travelogue, preserved by Judah the Pious, exists, called Sibuv haOlam (A World Trip); from this work it's clear that no significant Jewish community existed in the region although he did describe a small Karaite community in Crimea. Finally, the Jews of Czechoslovakia (Bohemia/Moravia) definitely came from the Rhineland and from the Balkans. Ultimately those Jewish populations could trace their roots to northern Italy (Rhineland) and southern Italy, Spain, and Greece (Balkans). I posted an article with a full bibliography on the origins of the Ashkenazim at this site: <http://kehillatisrael.net/docs/learning/ashkenazim.html> http://kehillatisrael.net/docs/learning/ashkenazim.html. Parts of the article refer to the Jews of Russia. Steve If you have further questions for Steve, write to me at <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected], and I will relay them to Steve. He will reply directly to you. ___________________________________________ Dr. Don Weinshank Professor Emeritus Comp. Sci. & Eng. 1520 Sherwood Ave., East Lansing MI 48823-1885 Ph. 517.337.1545 FAX 517.337.1665 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <http://www.cse.msu.edu/%7Eweinshan> http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weinshan Anybody who is not paranoid about PHISHing is crazy.
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