THE JEWS OF KHAZARIA, Third Edition (2018) Kevin Alan Brook The new edition incorporates the latest research into the multicultural Khazar civilization in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia from the 7th through 10th centuries.
Under the influence of Jewish refugees from the south, some Khazars converted to Judaism in the 9th century. As presented in the updated chapter 6, the newest evidence that Judaism existed in Khazaria is a menorah etching on a pot from Mariupol. Also new are chapter 10's substantially revised discussions of documentary and scientific evidence related to Eastern European Jewish origins and migrations. Conversations on competing ideas about them took place in ha-Safran in November 2013. In the 3rd edition, the hypothesis that Ashkenazic Jews descend at all from the Khazars is definitively put to rest by contrasting Ashkenazic DNA with the DNA of medieval Khazars, Hungarians, and Avars and modern Turkic and non-Turkic peoples from relevant regions. The book confirms the strong connection of Ashkenazim to the ancient Israelites using the newest Y-DNA, mtDNA, and autosomal DNA analyses. There are also surprisingly recent genetic ties in both directions between Ashkenazic Jews and Sephardic Jews, between Ashkenazic Jews and Mizrahi Jews, and between Ashkenazic Jews and Polish Catholics (further confirmed, as the book went to press, by the discovery of the Ashkenazic mtDNA haplogroup J1c7a in the Kowalewko cemetery in Iron Age Poland), and at least one lineage in Ashkenazic Jews that comes from Chinese people. Several more Turkic words in Yiddish that were identified by Alexander Beider in his 2015 book "The Origins of Yiddish Dialects" are summarized in chapter 10, but neither those nor the previously-found words are specifically Khazarian, and they were adopted by Yiddish speakers from non-Turkic languages like Polish or Ukrainian rather than directly from Turkic speakers or ancestors. The Jews in Kievan Rus and the Lithuanian Grand Duchy who became fluent in Slavic languages were not Khazars and it turns out that at least some of them were Ashkenazic Jews who became Slavicized. Michael Chabon and Emily Barton used my book to construct their novels about the Jewish Khazars, "Gentlemen of the Road" and "The Book of Esther" respectively. Neal Wyatt's article "Take the RA Talk Online" in the February 2008 issue of Library Journal cited my book as an appropriate nonfiction companion to Chabon's novel. xv + 357 pages, 2 maps hardcover, ISBN 978-1-5381-0342-5 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Reviews and table of contents at http://www.khazaria.com/brook.html I am offering a 30% discount code that expires December 31, 2018 to Jewish libraries that contact me at kbr...@khazaria.com prior to placing an order directly through my publisher. It brings the price down to $29.40 + sales tax + shipping. __ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: hasaf...@lists.service.ohio-state.edu To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: galro...@osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list Hasafran@lists.osu.edu https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
