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To: Barnabus who wrote (25934)	6/30/1999 12:41:00 PM
From: Emile Vidrine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39621

Barney said: ""Koestler's controversial thesis..." Emile said: How about a few citations from the historical records of the Middle Ages? The numerous historical records referring to the Khazar conversion are not wild hypothetical assertions, but solid historical facts that paint a clear picture of a multitude of Khazars who converted to talmudic Judaism in the ninth century. MEDIEVAL QUOTES ABOUT KHAZAR JUDAISM This is a sampling of numerous contemporary references to the practice of rabbinical Judaism among the Khazars. Druthmar of Aquitaine, in Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam (864): "At the present time we know of no nation in the world where Christians do not live. For in the lands of Gog and Magog who are a Hunnish race and call themselves Gazari there is one tribe, a very belligerent one - Alexander enclosed them and they escaped - and all of them profess the Jewish faith. The Bulgars, however, who are of the same race, recently became Christians." Ahmad ibn Fadlan, in his travellogue (c. 922): "The Khazars and their king are all Jews." Ibn al-Faqih (c. 930): "All of the Khazars are Jews. But they have been Judaized recently." Khazar King Joseph, in his Reply to Hasdai ibn-Shaprut (c. 955): "After those days there arose from the sons of Bulan's sons a king, Obadiah by name. He was an upright and just man. He reorganized the kingdom and established the Jewish religion properly and correctly. He built synagogues and schools, brought in many Israelite sages, honored them with silver and gold, and they explained to him the 24 Books of the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and the order of prayers established by the Khazzans. He was a man who feared God and loved the law and the commandments." Abd al-Jabbar ibn Muhammad al-Hamdani, in The Establishment of Proofs for the Prophethood of Our Master Muhammad (c. 1009-1010): "One of the Jews undertook the conversion of the Khazars, who are composed of many peoples, and they were converted by him and joined his religion. This happened recently in the days of the Abbasids.... For this was a man who came single-handedly to a king of great rank and to a very spirited people, and they were converted by him without any recourse to violence and the sword. And they took upon themselves the difficult obligations enjoined by the law of the Torah, such as circumcision, the ritual ablutions, washing after a discharge of the semen, the prohibition of work on the Sabbath and during the feasts, the prohibition of eating the flesh of forbidden animals according to this religion, and so on." Abraham ibn Daud of Toledo, Spain, in The Book of Tradition (1161): "You will find the communities of Israel spread abroad... as far as Dailam and the river Itil where live Khazar peoples who became proselytes. The Khazar king Joseph sent a letter to Hasdai ibn-Shaprut and informed him that he and all his people followed the rabbinical faith.(an entire kingdom of Khazar Jews back in 1161). We have seen descendants of the Khazars in Toledo, students of the wise, and they have told us that the remnant of them is of the rabbinical belief." Dimashqi (1327): "Ibn-al-Athir tells how in the days of Harun, the emperor of Byzantium forced the Jews to emigrate. They came to the Khazar country, where they found an intelligent but untutored race and offered them their religion. The inhabitants found it better than their own and accepted it."

To: Barnabus who wrote (25934)	6/30/1999 2:50:00 PM
From: David	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39621

Wasn't there a recent NY Times news story documenting, through genetic markers, tribal affiliation to the Cohenim by an ethnic group in South Africa with an oral history that they were Jewish? The scientific studies indicated a strong biological link in that group to other Cohenim in terms of the incidence of a particular genetic identifier passed only through the paternal (tribe-identifying) line -- and also shared by known Jewish populations in equally strong measure. The point here is that if Askenazic Jews were really mostly latecomer Kazars, there is no way there would be a uniform, very high statistical clustering in the known Jewish population of the Cohen tribal marker (somewhere around 90%). Instead, the Sephardic population marker would be at 90%, and the Ashkenazi genetic marker percentage would be much lower (in a proportion that would suggest the level of Kazar genetic dilution). This data strongly suggest the Kazar theory is baseless.