Dismantling the Khazar myth of Ashkenazi origins

Overview: An increasingly popular myth among antisemites, claiming that Ashkenazim descend from the Khazar kingdom. We will debunk this myth using literary evidence, historical records, genetic studies, linguistics and onomastics, Ashkenazi culture and law, family trees, migration patterns, and archeology.

A history of Ashkenaz

Ashkenazi Jews currently make up about 80% of Jews worldwide, with even higher numbers before the Holocaust that wiped out one third of Jews worldwide and about half of Ashkenazi Jewry. Ashkenazi Jews generally refer to European Jews (excluding Iberia), whereas the two other major Jewish subsets are Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula and Mizrachi Jews from Mesopotamia and Persia. The subject of this discussion is the origins of Ashkenazim which has – surprisingly – become subject to a “controversy” of sorts.

The mainstream academic and traditional understanding of the origins of the Ashkenazim is that they are the descendants of Middle Eastern Jews who migrated to Italy, married some of the local population, and retained their Jewish identity there. A subset of these Italian (Roman) Jews later migrated northward to Germany where the nucleus of the Ashkenazi community began in the Rhineland area, as well as in Northern France (Provence) and Bohemia (the Czech Lands).^[1] From there they eventually migrated eastward to Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania – which had a significantly smaller local Jewish population at the time – where their population boomed into the large numbers it was to become. We will provide the evidence for all of this history shortly.

So what is the “controversy” and the Khazar myth?

The Khazar myth and its advocates

The Khazar hypothesis is a largely abandoned historical claim that the Ashkenazi Jews don’t descend from German Jews by and large but are rather the offspring of a semi-Nomadic Turkic/Slavic people called Khazars, who formed a powerful empire in Southeast Europe. The claim goes that they had a mass conversion to Judaism in the 8th-century, after which they migrated Northward to the rest of Europe to form the bulk of Ashkenazi Jewry.

This view was always fringe but has increasingly become so after the many genetic studies done on Ashkenazim. Yet, in very recent times this myth has become increasingly popularized – and not because of a new study that came out. Rather with the increase in anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, the haters have found an attractive conspiracy to believe in. By claiming the Ashkenazim are Khazar descendants, they rid them of an ancestral claim to Israel, as well labeling them as “fake Jews.” The self-titled “Black Hebrew Israelites” are especially obsessed with this myth, in their quest to rebrand themselves as the “authentic Israelites.”

I understand that most proponents of this myth will not change their minds no matter the evidence against it. This is because it is coming from a bias of hate rather than from an informed academic conclusion. But for the ones who are open-minded to hear out the evidence against this Khazarian myth, join our journey back in time as we comprehensively delve into the question of the origins of the Ashkenazim. While I generally like to show “the two sides” to every debate I write about, this one has proven very difficult to do so, since there’s really no evidence at all for the Khazarian myth. Nevertheless, we will share what the proponents claim are its proofs, and later we’ll take them apart for scrutiny.

In the academic field, only a few fringe experts have proposed the Khazarian hypothesis. First among the modern proponents of this myth was Arthur Koestler, a born-Jewish anti-Jewish writer in Hungary, in his book titled The Thirteenth Tribe (1976). Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian, professed this myth in his book titled The Invention of the Jewish People (2008). Shlomo is an outspoken anti-Zionist and has stated that he rejects his Jewish identity and is “ashamed of it.” In 2012, Tel Aviv University geneticist Eran Elhaik published a study claiming genetic evidence demonstrated that Ashkenazim descended from the Khazars. Tel Aviv University Linguist Paul Wexler falsely claimed that Yiddish, the native Ashkenazi language, is a Slavic/Turkic dialect at heart – proving the Khazarian hypothesis.^[2] The rest of academia regards them as outliers, and we will demonstrate why.

The claimed evidence for the Khazar myth

There are three main arguments made in favor of the Khazarian myth. We will respond to them towards the end of this article.

1. Population boom: Between the years 1150 and 1939, the Eastern European population grew from roughly 50,000 (15th-century) Jews to about 10 million (20th-century).^[3] In order to achieve this population growth, there would need to be “an unnatural growth rate (1.7–2% annually),” according to Eran Elhaik. If we accept the Khazar hypothesis, he claims, it would help explain the large population increase.^[4] The proposed growth rate of the Eastern European Ashkenazim would have been double that of their non-Jewish neighbors, something that seems unlikely.

2. The name Ashkenaz: The term “Ashkenaz” is a biblical place mentioned in Genesis 10:3. Which place does it refer to? The name is related to the Assyrian Aškūza (Aškuzai, Iškuzai), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian highland of the Upper Euphrates area. They were living primarily in the Eurasian steppes of Kazakhstan, in Russian steppes of the Siberian, Ural, Volga and Southern regions, and in Ukraine. The region was called Scythia. To this day, there is a city named Iskenaz in Northern Turkey. This fits with the Khazar hypothesis which places the original “Ashkenazim” in the biblical area of Ashkenaz.
3. Eran Elhakim’s genetic test: In 2013, Eran ran a genetic test that demonstrated the genetic similarity between Ashkenazim and Khazars.^[5] This flawed study re-energized the myth, breathing new life into a dying hypothesis.

These three arguments not only fail when scrutinized but are actually deceptive in nature. Before getting into these three arguments made by Khazarian proponents, we will start with the basic literary evidence of the Eastern European Jews (Ashkenazim) coming originally from the Middle East, to Rome, to the Ashkenazic heartland (Rhineland, Northern France, and Bohemia), and ultimately to Eastern Europe.

The literary evidence of Italian and Germanic origins

Every society leaves behind a trail of evidence: archaeological, cultural, and contemporary literary references to historical events. The early development of Ashkenaz is relatively well documented.

The Jewish community in Rome in large numbers already existed in the first century of the common era, as evident from the writings of Josephus and Tacitus. Especially after the Jewish-Roman wars, thousands of Jews were exiled to Rome, according to Josephus, Judaic and Roman writings, and the Arch of Titus. Philo of Alexandria also makes mention of Jewish diasporas in Italy in the first century. Origen (3rd-century) makes references to the community as well.

Continued mention of the ever-growing Italian community is found in the writings of Ambrose of Milan (4th-century), the Christian theologian Jerome (5th-century), Gregory of Tours (6th-century), Isidore of Seville (7th-century), and Paulinus II of Aquileia (8th-century).

Aside from these literary references to the Jews, there are the many Jewish letters of various communities around the world to the religious academies in Italy (known as Italki or Romi). Most notable among the Italian rabbis attested to at this time, are those of the Kalonymus family who are to play a big role in the formation of the Ashkenazic community.

In the 9th and 10th centuries, we see the rise of a new scholarly community in the Rhineland of Germany (and parts of France), known as Ashkenazim. The most notable of rabbis from this period include Rabbi Gershom ben Judah (“Me’or Hagolah”), Rabbi Solomon Itzchaki (“Rashi”), Rabbi Moses ben Kalonymus, and Rabbi Jacob ben Yakar, all of whom left over a written legacy.^[6] There’s also a tremendous amount of secular and religious sources attesting to the newly founded Jewish communities of Spyer, Mainz, and Worms.^[7]

How did these Jews get to Germany? The most obvious route would be from the already thriving Jewish communities just south in Italy. The customs of the newly founded Ashkenazi communities will bear most resemblance to their Italian neighbors in the south. A progeny of the Kalonymus family, Rabbi Elazar Rokeach (13th-century), records a legend of the origins of the Jewish communities in the Rhineland, in which Charlemagne invites the Rabbi Moses ben Kalonymus and many others from Lucca Italy to settle in Mainz, Germany to stimulate economic growth in the region. This legend is recorded in several more later sources, but only a few hundred years after this would have occurred.

So while we are uncertain if indeed this legend is historically accurate, there may be reason to suggest so. From the archives of Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious (d. 840), we have three Latin charters of privilege that he issued to Jewish international merchants whom he encouraged to trade in the empire by offering them incentives of toll exemptions. He also promised them protection directly from his own court.^[8] In the literary record, the Kalonymus family first appears in Lucca, Italy for many generations and then appears in Mainz, Germany sometime in the 10th century, implying a migration of the family northward along with other Italian Jews.^[9] Similarly, Rashi’s grandmother was a Kalonymus, and his family ends up in Provence, France.

In the 11th-century, we begin to see charters of protection for the local Jewish community of Spyer, and several decades later for Worms as well. In his Latin charter, Rüdiger, bishop of Speyer, notes that he was welcoming Jews who might want to settle in his town. It’s from this time that the Jews of the region start calling the place Ashkenaz (more on this later). The 12th-century historian Benjamin of Tudela makes mention of the biggest communities of the Rhine in the “land of Alamannia, otherwise called Ashkenaz.”^[10] The following centuries see major academic flourishing in Jewish law in this region.

Similar developments of Jewish communities were happening in Bohemia (the Czech Lands) starting from the 11th-century,^[11] although much less is known of that region until the 12th-century when it started to become a major Jewish center. It is assumed that these Bohemian Jews migrated primarily from the large Jewish population centers to the west (Germany) and to the south (Italy).^[12] Northern France (Provence) saw massive religious schools with many famous Talmudic commentators, known as the Tosafists, stemming from that region. Many of the Ashkenazi customs were developed in this area.

But constant pogroms and massacres by the Crusades will eventually chase the Jewish communities eastward to the friendlier Polish commonwealth, where new economic incentives were presented. Later Germanic and Frankish state expulsions and forced baptisms continued the trend of eastward migration (e.g. the Nuremberg Expulsion of 1499, the Cologne Expulsion of 1424, and the forced baptisms of Speyer depleting it of Jews by 1529).

After the First Crusade (1096), the tolerant Władysław I Herman and his successor Boleslaw III of Poland, welcomed the Jews to their provinces and ordered charters of protection against the victims of the west. The later Statute of Kalisz of 1264 formulated a list of protections against antisemitic discriminations in the Polish empire and economic incentives for Jewish immigrants to join the empire. The bigger influx into Poland was after the 1298 Rindfleish massacres of what was then called Austria. Polish Jewry begins to flourish and will multiply even further after the next wave of refugees come from Germany after the Black Death massacres of 1348-1350.

These German (as well as Frankish and Bohemian) Jews bring their genetics, community customs, and language along with them, as we shall soon discuss – ridding all doubt that these immigrants to Poland were primarily coming from Germany, who in turn, primarily came from Italy (as discussed earlier). While according to some there is little physical evidence of Polish Jewry primarily coming from the west,^[13] there is even less evidence of them coming from a likely non-existent Khazarian Jewish empire. As we shall soon see, there actually is physical evidence of this migration eastward as well as literary evidence.

However, it should be noted that contributing to the population growth were Jewish migrants from the Sephardic expulsion from Iberia, Byzantine Jews, and Mizrachi Jews incentivized by economic opportunities. There were also small Jewish communities already in Eastern Europe by the time the Ashkenazim arrived, but they were rapidly assimilated into the much faster growing Ashkenazi population from the west. These Sephardic, Byzantine, Mizrachi, and pre-Ashkenazi Eastern Europeans were a small contributing factor to the population growth of Jews in Eastern Europe at that time. Some even lived in the lands of what was once called Khazar, but they would have been a small percentage of the Eastern European Jews, and there is almost no record of them as a result.

The literary evidence thus demonstrates the flourishing Jewish life in Central Europe, which later moves to Eastern Europe due to push-and-pull factors, including pogroms, expulsions, and economic opportunities.

The linguistic evidence for Germanic origin

Another pointer to the eastward migration from Germany is the universal Ashkenazi language, spoken by almost all Eastern European Jews until the Holocaust. This language is Yiddish. Anyone familiar with Yiddish knows^[14] that it’s a predominantly High Germanic language in origin. The Ashkenazim would have kept their native language they adopted in Germany into their new lands farther east. Even to this day, there are many religious communities in Israel and the US that preserved the Yiddish language as their main form of communication. Yiddish does include many Hebrew words as well, in addition to some Aramaic, and touches of Polish, Ukrainian, Old Czech, Old French, Greek, and Italian. But its main construct is Germanic, as seen in this basic sentence:

English: “What are you doing today? Do you want to come with me to the house and eat food?”

High German: “Wat tuot dir hūte? Wiltu mit mir zem hūse komen unde ēzzan?”

Yiddish (Ukrainian dialect): “Was Tuot dir Heint? Wilstu mit mir komen tzu dem hois und essen”?

For comparison purposes, here’s the sentence as it is in the Khazarian region languages:^[15]

Turkish: Bugün ne yapıyorsun? Benimle eve gelip yemek yemek ister misin?

Ukrainian: Shcho ty robysh sʹohodni? Khochesh pity zi mnoyu do khaty poyisty?

Persian: “Ajdarā? Shomā mi khwāhaid ba man be khāneh murājeʿe konid va ghaza bẖorid?”

As you can see with this sentence example, or by trying any other sentences, the Yiddish language bears a striking resemblance to its original Germanic dialect, with no resemblance to the languages of the Khazar region, i.e. Turkic, Slavic, or Persian. There are almost no Turkic or Iranian words in the language which would be strange if the bulk of Ashkenazim descended from a Turkic/Iranian/Slavic people. Even the few Turkic words in Yiddish are also found in Slavic languages, which is the more likely way the words got into Yiddish, rather than assume they came via a Khazar route. The Morris Swadesh list of 200 Yiddish basic words^[16] contains predominantly Germanic words, with only a handful of Hebrew and Slavic words.

Paul Wexler is the one linguist to disagree with this. He claims that Yiddish is “at heart” a Slavic language with many Iranian and Turkic elements “hidden” in it. All it takes to debunk this claim is a conversation with a German speaking person, who will mostly understand your Yiddish. Then try it with a Slav, Turk, or Iranian and they will have zero comprehension of what you are saying. His methods rely heavily on fortuitous coincidences. And if you apply them more widely, you can link Yiddish to any language in the world. It is for this reason that his view is not accepted by the other linguists or historians, or any Yiddish speakers.^[17]

Moving on from language to names. Other than the two Israelite tribal surnames of Cohen and Levi, the next 10 (arguably) most popular Ashkenazi surnames are all of Germanic origin: Goldberg, Greenberg, Fischer, Silverman, Weiss, Wolf, Adler, Freedman, Shwartz, and Stein. Most other Ashkenazi surnames have German/Yiddish origins, either a city name, a trade, a tree, an animal, geography, flowers, metals, colors, and descriptive adjectives.^[18]

Germanic/Bohemian city names as very popular Ashkenazi surnames include: Shapiro (Speyer, Germany), Horowitz (Horovice, Czech Republic), Landau (Landau, Germany), Wiener (Vienna, Austria), Prager (Prague, Czech Republic), Frankel (Frankonia, Germany), Rothenburg (Rothenburg, Germany) and Mintz (Mainz, Germany).^[19] The stereotypical Jewish surname ending in “berg” or “feld” are, indeed, both Germanic city-suffixes, meaning mountain and field respectively. The very popular Ashkenazi surname Deitsch or Deutsch literally translates as “German,” and the surname Unger translates to “Hungarian.” There aren’t equivalent popular names of places in the former Khazar region.

The surnames associated with German cities suggests that these Jews had family roots in those areas. Some of them would have adopted these surnames while still in those cities, but more likely they took that surname after migrating eastward. Religious communities now often call themselves based on their original cities in Europe despite migrating to Israel or the US (e.g. Litvak, Satmar, Belz, Lubavitch, Yeke; or more broadly Ashkenaz and Sephard denoting land of origin). A similar phenomenon is expected to have happened to families who migrated eastward but kept their origins in family origins in Germany as a source of identity. When surnames became popular in Eastern Europe (14th-18th centuries), they would have adopted these Germanic surnames in memory of their recent family history.

After Germanic names, the next most popular are Polish (surnames suffixes with “ski,” e.g. Dubinski, Kaminiski, Dubrowski) and the less popular surname Pollack, literally translated as “Polish.” The Polish surnames of Ashkenazim make sense since it was the hub of Ashkenazi life at the time when surnames were becoming popular. But had the Khazar origin myth been true, we would have expected Turkic and Caucuses surnames – and there simply aren’t.

The archaeological evidence for Italian and Germanic origin

In strong contrast to the Khazar lands, Western Europe (Italy and Germany) actually left a strong archaeological trace of the Jewish communities that were once there. This confirms the already-established basis for a historically strong Jewish presence in the region, from which Ashkenaz was to emerge. Eastern Europe was to only show traces of thriving Jewish life at a much later point, after the Western European Jews had already migrated there. Let us examine some examples of Jewish archeology found in the region, starting with ancient Rome (Italy).

Despite signs of Jewish life in Rome already before the Common Era, thousands of Jews appear in the city starting after the Jerusalem-Roman Wars which result in thousands of slaves being taken to Rome.^[20] The Arch of Titus (81 ACE), currently in Rome, remains as an artistic description of the many Judean slaves taken to Rome. The Ostia Antica Synagogue is a valuable relic of the legacy of the Roman Jews in the first century. Another ancient synagogue found was the Bova Marina synagogue (4th-century).

Many ancient Jewish gravesites (catacombs) were discovered, including with Hebrew letters, Jewish symbols, and Jewish writing, in the cities of Vigna Randanini (2nd-century), Villa Torlonia (2nd-3rd centuries), Venosa (3rd-century). In addition to all of this, there’s many Jewish writings from all over the world at that time that reference the Roman Jewish community, as well as Italian Jewish writings and poems.

Moving on to Germany. Although there’s evidence of small Jewish life in Cologne Germany from 321 ACE,^[21] major Jewish life only appears in the 10th-century in the Rhineland. Large Jewish cemeteries have been discovered in Worms, Mainz, and Erfurt, some of the tombstones belonging to famous rabbinic leaders we are familiar with from the Jewish literature. Synagogues in cities like Erfurt (11th-century) and Worms (11th-century, known as the Rashi Shul) are testimony to the already well-established Jewish communities in this region. The synagogues of Poland, between the 13th and 14th centuries, were found to be of similar design and architecture to the German synagogues.^[22] As in Italy, many correspondences are found between the other Jewish communities and the German Jews.

All this is in stark contrast to the land of the Khazars, as we will soon explore.

Genetics

Before getting into the actual DNA study results, let’s first discuss what we would expect Ashkenazi Jews to have based on the traditional, mainstream narrative. Ancient Israelites would have Semitic DNA, Canaanite in particular. Israelites stemmed from the Middle East, where the Semites are from, as well as having strong levels of intermarriage with the Canaanites according to the biblical account^[23] or are a Canaanite subgroup according to historians.^[24] The Canaanites included many ethnicities including the Hittites from Anatolia who established colonies in Canaan. There was also intermarriage with the Philistines, an Aegean people who settled Canaan in the 12th-century.^[25] Some even assert that the tribe of Dan is to be associated with the Denyen (or Danuna or Dene) tribe of the Philistines and later splintered away into the Israelite confederation of tribes and there may be some evidence for this theory.^[26] This, in addition to much earlier human migration, would explain the occasional European traits found in Semitic people like Esau and King David.^[27]

Judah was one of the tribes of the Israelites and was to become the de-facto dominant tribe after the destruction and exile of the Ten Tribes of northern Israel.^[28] The Judeans (“Jews”) were ethnically predominantly Israelite, with some Arab/Semitic admixture like with the Kenites of the South.^[29] During their Babylonian exile in the 6th-century BCE they may have had some level of intermarriage with the Mesopotamian and Persian people.^[30] During all this time, conversion was relatively common with instances like Ruth and post-Purim converts.^[31] During the Second Temple period, many more Semitic people converted,^[32] and later Greco-Romans as well.^[33] After the exile from Israel into the diasporic communities, it is expected that many male Jews married local women, converting them into the faith. In summary, the genetics of Jews is expected to be very complex and indeed it is.

With the advancement of genetic testing technologies, several fascinating discoveries about the Ashkenazi origins have been made. Indeed the Ashkenazi ethnicity is the most studied in the world, thanks to their genetic insulation and hereditary diseases present among them as a result of this isolation. While the technology is still in its infancy, there has been over twenty-five years of research that for the most part confirm one another.

There are three types of genetic origin testing, autosomal DNA (atDNA), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA). Autosomal DNA is a mixture from an individual’s entire ancestry. Y-DNA shows a male’s lineage along his paternal line, as it is only passed down from father to son. mtDNA shows any person’s lineage only along their maternal line, as it is only passed down from mother to daughter. Significant genetic testing has been done on Ashkenazim, using all three of these methods (as well as whole-genome testing), providing us a solid picture of the genetic history of Ashkenazi Jews (AJs). Although no doubt, as DNA technology advances even further, there will be many more discoveries to unlock.

Using autosomal DNA, in 2010 a team of 11 reputable geneticists co-authored a study, demonstrating genetic similarities between the various major Jewish groups throughout the diaspora.^[34] Ashkenazim had strong DNA resemblance to Sephardim (Iberian Jews), and to Mizrachim (Middle Eastern Jews). The study also showed that there were significant levels of intermarriage within these communities, leaving Ashkenazim to inherit much European DNA, Sephardim Iberian DNA, and Mizrachim to inherit Middle Eastern genetics. Palestinians, Druze, and Bedouins shared much DNA with Mizrachi Jews, and to a lesser extent Sephardim and Ashkenazim. AJs shared much DNA with Northern Italians in particular, as well as having some similarities to the isolated Adygei of the North Caucasus and Georgian Jews. This remains a mystery but suggests that AJs played a role in the formation of these small communities.^[35] The general results of this study have been confirmed by many other groups of geneticists and studies.^[36] Another study testing the autosomal DNA of ancient Canaanite skeletons and modern Levantine populations, found strong similarities between Jews, Palestinians, and ancient Canaanites suggesting a common origin, if not outright descent from these Canaanite homogenous populations.^[37]

A large-scale 2000 study of AJ’s Y-chromosomes found similarity in the Y-chromosomes of AJs and other Jewish groups in the diaspora, suggesting that they had a similar paternal gene-pool stemming from the Middle East.^[38]

Studies of mtDNA resulted in some fascinating discoveries. A 2006 study suggested that ~40% of AJs stem from only 4 women at some point, representing a major bottleneck at some point in AJ history.^[39] The remaining 60% of AJs didn’t fare much better in terms of genetic diversity, with an estimate that they stem from just ~350 founding ancestors.^[40] This significant genetic bottleneck explains many of the hereditary diseases associated with AJs.

While the previous study posited, using indirect evidence, that the 4 major founding matriarchs were of Middle Eastern descent, a much larger follow-up study was to conclude that >80% of mtDNA has deep roots in European ancestry.^[41] Thus, while on the paternal side there seems to be mostly Middle Eastern ancestry, on the maternal side there is mostly European. This suggests, complimenting the historical literature, that many Romans converted to Judaism at the turn of the common era.^[42] The many male slaves brought from Jerusalem to Rome^[43] as well as the male merchants originally from Israel (or the neighboring regions in the Middle East) would have married local women and raised the family in the religion and tradition of the father. Perhaps the surprising part of the study was the extent of European ancestry among AJs who culturally view themselves as much more Levantine than Italian due to their Jewish faith and culture.

A large study in 2014 concurred with the previous study of a ~350 founding population.^[44] This would equal to a community population of about 1,000 people, which would have an “effective” founding population of about 350 (it should exclude children who share a common set of parents). This of course assumes they are in the same time in history, which is possible although not necessarily the case. The process of sifting down the original larger population into this smaller founding population (“bottleneck”) of 350 persons may have taken several generations of migrations/persecutions. The time of the bottleneck was estimated to be 25-32 generations ago, which if we consider an average generation to be 25 years in ancient times, then this bottleneck would have occurred about 750 years ago (14th-century). This was when the Black Plague and follow-up massacres of many Jewish communities in Western Europe. This is regarded as the main wave of immigration of Western European Jews to Eastern Europe. The bottleneck would thus be the result of severe population reductions due to violence.

However other studies place the bottleneck to possibly 1000 years before that, at the time of the Roman exile,^[45] or even earlier.^[46] In all likelihood, there were several bottlenecks at several places throughout the diaspora of AJs.^[47] Further genetic testing can help clarify this ambiguity.

A large 2022 study on the teeth remains of 33 AJs buried in Erfurt, Germany in the 1300s, found it to be part of the original western AJs.^[48] Genetically, they already had the distinct AJ bottleneck. The Erfurt bottleneck was more severe, implying substructure in medieval AJ. An even earlier AJ mass burial found in Norwich England of the 12th-century shows AJs with similar DNA to modern ones, with the diseases associated with AJs already present.^[49]

Genetics are studied under a microscope; but some intuitive day-to-day observations can also confirm what we already have established. Of any group worldwide, none look more like AJs than their Northern Italian cousins (see here for a scientific national “average face”).^[50] Perhaps the next closest looking group are Lebanese, owing to the Middle Eastern ancestry of AJs and close proximity of Lebanon to ancient Israel.^[51] There is minimal facial resemblance between the Slavs, Turks, Iranians, or Georgians to AJs. While this is of course all subjective to an extent, it serves to confirm what the more objective science of genetics already tells us: that AJs have ancestry in Southern Europe and in the Middle East. This is in stark contrast to the Khazar myth, which has been repeatedly debunked by each study coming out.

Another observation to be made is the AJ-associated diseases to be found throughout all AJ communities, whether in Eastern Europe or in Western Europe. The Khazar myth attempts to explain the emergence of the large AJ population in Eastern Europe, but as a result, fails to explain how they have the same unique genes that affect the health of western AJs who have been residing in Western Europe for more than a thousand years.

In summary, the paternal Y haplogroups of AJs are mostly of Middle Eastern, or Levantine, origins (somewhere between half and three quarters). The maternal mtDNA shows about >80% European ancestry according to the most advanced recent studies. Autosomal DNA shows somewhere between 50-70% European ancestry for AJs, predominantly northern Italian followed by French and Flemish.^[52] However that number is likely somewhat lower for most modern AJs since most have small levels of admixture with Sephardic and Mizrachic Jews who have higher levels of Middle Eastern ancestry. Tiny amounts of German and Slavic admixture were found in the AJ gene pool.

Here is what the Khazar myth fails to explain in the field of genetics:

1. The large genetic relations between Northern Italians and AJs.
2. The major Middle Eastern genetic components in AJs.
3. Similarly, the large genetic relations between AJs and other Jewish communities throughout the world.
4. The Ashkenazic genetic markers found among the Erfurt and Norwich remains in medieval Western Europe.
5. The distinct genetic markers found among modern western AJs and Eastern AJs.
6. The lack of Turkic and minimal Slavic DNA amongst AJs.

There has been an Israeli geneticist named Eran Elhaik who has concluded that AJs are genetically Khazarian. His solo-authored paper has been rejected by the rest of geneticists and historians for the reasons outlined above. We will discuss the flaws in Elhaik’s actual study below.

Jewish life drifting eastward

In general, the trend of migration is consistently eastward, from Western Europe to Eastern Europe.^[53] This data is known from records of Jewish religious life, tax collections, and similar such traces. The Rhineland communities in Germany began to flourish about the 11th-century. Next to follow were Bohemian and Austrian cities like Prague and Vienna (early 13th-century), followed by the westernmost cities of Poland like Krakow and Wroclaw (13th-century) and Poznan (14th-century). Only afterwards did Jewish life move to Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, joining up with the small Jewish pockets in the region, turning it into the heartland of the Jewish diaspora. In Ukraine as well, the West-to-East pattern can also be observed. First the westernmost cities were flourishing followed by the eastern: Kamianets-Podilskyi (late 14th-century), Lviv (late 14th-century), followed by Brody (17th-century), Berdichev (late-16th century), and Uman (early-18th century).

This pattern is observed on the basis of archaeological findings (such as synagogues, tombstones, Jewish graffiti), literature (rabbinic responsa, non-Jewish historians) and documents (royal decrees, tax records). Had the Khazar myth been true, we would have expected an almost opposite trend, first northward from the Caucasus region, and then westward until Poland and Germany.

22 Jewish tombstones were found in Silesia of Poland in the 13th-14th centuries. The writing style and names resemble that of German Jewry. A document with over 200 names of Jews Silesia between the years 1330-1360 was found to be similar to German Jewish names (or, in some cases, Slavic derivations of German names). 66 Names of Jews living in Breslau were recorded along with their place of origin. The vast majority were from nearby Germany and Bohemia to the west, with only three coming from the east, and one from Poland itself.

The famed Moses Isserles (16th-century, leading Polish rabbi) makes clear mention of the refuge to Poland from the persecuted lands in the west.^[54] The earlier 15th-century Rabbi Moses ben Isaac Mintz, born in Germany and moved to Poland, says that Poland has become a safe haven for the Jewish refugees.^[55] The synagogues of Poland, between the 13th and 14th centuries, were found to be of similar design and architecture to the earlier German synagogues.^[56]

Family trees

Family trees are very common among Jews, who are known to have been an extremely literate society throughout history and wrote down many family records going back generations. These trees aren’t always perfectly accurate, but they portray a general sense of the family origins. Oftentimes these records are corroborated by other means later found.

Family records of most recorded Ashkenazi lines show a line of descent from German/Austrian and Bohemian Jews.^[57] None show a descent from the Khazar region.

We know of some large families heading from the Rhineland to Poland. For example, the Tosafist, Samuel ben Kalonymus he-Hasid of Speyer, is a part of the aforementioned Kalonymus family, and begins the new Shapiro dynasty in Spyer, Germany but his family migrates to Krakow, Poland after the Black Death massacres in the 14th-century.^[58] The famed Maharam of Lublin is from this family. Another example was the prestigious Katzenelnbogen family from the German town with that name, founded by the famed Meir ben Isaac (“Maharam of Padua,” 1473–1565), whose grandson, Saul Vohl, was a famous Jewish politician in Poland. Another family example is the rabbinic dynasty of Treves. Originally in Germany (13th century), they later appeared in the Russian territories of the east.^[59]

Yet another example is the Lowe family, most famously Rabbi Judah Lowe (“Maharal”) of Prague, whose grandfather, Chajim of Worms, was the rabbi at Worms (and succeeded by his son Jacob as chief rabbi of the German Empire). Rabbi Judah’s descendants played a major role in the future Ashkenazi communities of the east. Another is Rabbi Mordechai Yaffe (“Levush”) who was chief rabbi in Prague, until the expulsion of Jews from Bohemia in 1561, after which he made his way to Poland and became chief rabbi at Lublin. His family originated from Elhanan ben Isaac Jaffe of Dampierre, the famed French Tosafist of the 12th-century, who himself descended from the aforementioned founding family of Kalonymus. Rabbi Mordechai’s cousin was Yoel Sirkis (“Bach”), a famed Halachist of Poland. One final example was the famous rabbi, Moses ben Isaac Mintz, came from Mainz and settled in Germany in the 15th-century. There are many more examples.^[60]

Customs and culture from Western Germany

Families have customs that are passed down in their culture and religion. This is especially true in the very tradition-oriented Jewish communities throughout the world since the times of old. We can identify family roots, or community roots, based on their specific practices and culture. So when we look at the Eastern European Jewish communities, one thing that is strikingly clear is that their customs are identical and derived from that of the early Ashkenazi communities of Western Europe. There are no Turkic or Iranian customs amongst Ashkenazim. Had their origins been from the Khazars, we would expect Turkic or Iranian customs, or at the very least independent customs – not related to that of Western Europe. But that is not the case – further cementing our case against the Khazar myth.

Here are some examples of the customs derived from Western Europe.

The widespread distinctively Ashkenaz custom of refraining from eating legumes (“kitniyot”) on Passover stems from Western Europe,^[61] and is only observed by Ashkenazim. Eastern European Ashkenazim preserve this custom as well. The ban against polygamy was established by Rabbi Gershom ben Judah (“me’or Hagolah”) of 10th-century Germany and has been standard practice in all of Ashkenazi Jewry ever since. The Iranian/Turkic Jews had no such ban against it. There is evidence that polygamy continued to be practiced by the Jews of Iberia before their expulsion in the late 15th century and even later in Yemen and North Africa, where the practice remained broadly common.

The prayer liturgy of Ashkenaz (“nussach ashkenaz”) is largely based on Machzor Vitry written by a pupil of Rashi (11th-century, France). It diverges from all other prayer liturgies from Jewish communities around the world.^[62] However it should be noted that other groups did influence Ashkenaz liturgy, to a lesser extent, like the hymns of Romaniote Jews (of Greece).

The prayer poems of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, has many early Rhineland compositions. The opening poem of the avodah service in the Ashkenaz liturgy, titled amitz koach, was composed by Rabbi Meshulam ben Kalonymus of Mainz, Germany, who was originally from Lucca, Italy. Similarly, his Yom Kippur morning prayer intro titled eimeicha nasasi chein b’erchi is also present in Ashkenazi liturgy. Akdamos milin said by Ashkenazim on the holiday of Shavuot is from Rabbi Meir ben Yitzchok (“Shatz”) of 11th-century Germany. unesane tokef traditionally attributed to Amnon of Mainz, was also written in Germany and is now from the highlights of Yom Kippur Ashkenaz services.^[63] Older Italian poems, written by Shephatiah of Oria (9th-century) and his son Amitai, made their way into the Ashkenazi liturgy.^[64]

Literary sources tell us that the communities of Poland and Ukraine were based and founded on Takanot Shum (the laws of Shum). Shum was the Hebrew acronym for the Rhineland cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz. Several exclusively Ashkenazi customs stem from these laws of Shum, from the Rhineland.^[65] Ashkenazi Jews don’t name after a living ancestor, contrary to the prevalent custom until that time around the world. This custom originates in the 12th-century Rhineland.^[66] The pilpul learning method^[67] was brought from the Tosafists academies in France and Germany to Krakow, Poland by Rabbi Jacob Pollack, father-in-law of the famed Shalom Shachna (“Shach”).

The most famous and widespread Ashkenazi dish, Gefilte Fish, originates in Germany before the 14th-century, where it is also called Gefilte (Gefuelten).^[68] While this may have just been a coincidence of cultural sharing, it lends credibility to the already established link between German Jews and the later Eastern European Jews. Most other famous Ashkenazi dishes (such as cholent, kugel, kreplach, and kichels) stem from Western Europe, at least etymologically.

While certainly many Polish and Ukrainian (non-Jewish) customs, superstitions, and folk songs entered the Ashkenazi culture, those are mostly local. Ukrainian customs are generally not present in Lithuania or Poland, and vice versa; whereas they all have their common ancestral customs from earlier German Jewry. There are no Turkic or Iranian specific customs, which runs contrary to the Khazar myth’s expectations.

Responding to Khazarian claims

(1) Population boom:

“Between the years 1150 and 1939, the Eastern European population grew from roughly 50,000 (15th-century) Jews to about 10 million (20th-century).^[69] In order to achieve this population growth, there would need to be “an unnatural growth rate (1.7–2% annually),” according to Eran Elhaik. If we accept the Khazar hypothesis, he claims, it would help explain the large population increase.^[70] The proposed growth rate of the Eastern European Ashkenazim would have been double that of their non-Jewish neighbors, something that seems unlikely.

So we need to explain why we would expect a large eastern AJ population and how the conditions allowed for it.

“In 2022, the Haredi [Ultra-Orthodox Jews] population numbered around 1,280,000, up from 750,000 in 2009, and constituting 13.3% of Israel’s total population. According to Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) forecasts, its relative size is expected to reach 16% in 2030, and it will number two million people in 2033”^[71]

This growth rate of modern Charedim, the genetic and cultural heirs of the Shtetl mentality, stands at 4% annually.^[72] The average fertility rate of a Charedi woman was 7.5 in the early 2000s and has dropped to 6.5 in the 2020s. Despite this, the growth rate is from the largest in the world. Eran’s issue with an “unnatural” 1.7–2% annual growth rate for the early Ashkenazim is thus ridiculous. It’s especially ridiculous once we factor in the small, but not insignificant, outside non-Ashkenazi Jewish migration into Eastern Europe contributing to the growth rate.

Jewish law, and especially Ashkenazi culture, encourages building large families. It is therefore no surprise that the early Ashkenazim multiplied rapidly. They had favorable economic structures in Poland (trades rather than farming), allowing for massive growth, as well as an extremely religious culture further incentivizing large families. Health and medicine at the time were rapidly improving with the Renaissance, further facilitating large growth.

Compared to their non-Jewish neighbors, they would have given birth to more children, as well as having more children survive infancy. Jewish couples were encouraged to build large families, specifically having intimate relations during ovulation. Additionally, Jewish couples – specifically girls – were married at a younger age than non-Jews. This would provide more time for younger women to bear children. These children born had a lower infant mortality rate than their counterparts due to social and maternal practices, like economic means and breastfeeding.^[73] Therefore, there were more children, children who had a better chance of survival – leading to a higher growth rate. In addition to this, because of early marriage ages, not only was there more time for a woman to have more children, but also the general generation average decreased, allowing for more generations in any given timespan. More generations add significantly to a higher growth rate. One final factor in the higher fertility rates in Jewish communities of Eastern Europe was remarriage.^[74] Jewish law made it much easier to remarry, compared to the Christian objections to divorce. Easier remarriages would result in more marriages and more children.

Perhaps we can observe that the Jewish communities in general had better survival rates than their counterparts from the 14th-century black plague. If we are to trust the accounts of the anti-Semites back then, many less Jews died in the plague. The reasons are still being debated, but an argument is to be made that the Ashkenazi Jewish lifestyle – be it religious or economic conditions – favored a healthier, hygienic population.

We know that the death rate in cities in Medieval Poland was much higher than the countryside (poor sanitation, polluted water, etc). If Jews took advantage of the countryside’s economic opportunities (for example, tavern-keeping – perhaps the most popular Jewish career at the time), then there would have been much less Jews in the cities on average. Indeed, the Shtetl culture begins at that time. Shtetl refers to the small villages occupied by Jewish communities throughout the Polish countryside. Less urban dwellers would result in even higher survivability rates than their Polish counterparts.^[75]

Having established the conditions supporting a larger population growth, now let’s turn to other examples of such growth throughout history. There are other examples of mass population growth throughout history, like the early American Quakers of the 18th-century and the French of Quebec, as well as many modern-day countries like Niger which boasts a 6.7 average of children per woman and Mali with 6.1.

Even beside this all, the Khazar myth would still fail to explain the sudden boom of Jews in Eastern Europe. There would be a few hundred year gap between the downfall of Khazars by the Kievan-Rus in the 10th-century and the sudden emergence of major Jewish life in the Eastern European region. Therefore the Khazar myth would have to contend that they too experienced a sudden population boom only starting in the 13th-16th centuries.

Genetic studies repeatedly confirm that there was a major bottleneck in the early Ashkenazi population, confirming what we already know – that the Ashkenazi population descends from a small group of people that quickly populated. Hereditary Ashkenazi diseases are yet another indicator of this genetic bottleneck.

(2) Called Ashkenaz: The term “Ashkenaz” is a biblical place mentioned in Genesis 10:3. Which place does it refer to? The name is related to the Assyrian Aškūza (Aškuzai, Iškuzai), a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian highland of the Upper Euphrates area. They were living primarily in the Eurasian steppes of Kazakhstan, in Russian steppes of the Siberian, Ural, Volga and Southern regions, and in Ukraine. The region was called Scythia. To this day, there is a city named Iskenaz in Northern Turkey. This fits with the Khazar hypothesis which places the original “Ashkenazim” in the biblical area of Ashkenaz.

But a simple glance at the literary records of the time reveal what Ashkenaz was referring to at that time. Rashi (11th-century) in his commentary on Deut. 3:9 refers to the Germanic language as “Ashkenaz” and the Slavic as “Canaanite,” apparent biblical nicknames given to those regions.^[76] Other biblical names will be applied to other parts of the newly discovered European lands of the Jews (e.g. Zarephath of I Kings 17:9 for France, despite originally referring to a Tyrian city). Babylonian scholar Rav Hai Gaon (early 10th century) mentions Ashkenaz in a responsa with Zarephath (France) and Aspamia (Spain) directly following it, implying that it is indeed a reference to Germany.^[77] Spain would come to be known as Sephard, a biblical name mentioned in Obadiah 3:20, most likely originally a place in Asia Minor (Lydians were known as Sparda to the Persians). The association of Germany to the biblical Ashkenaz in Asia Minor is likely based on Midrash Rabbah 37:1.^[78] The 12th-century historian Benjamin of Tudela makes mention of the “land of Alamannia, otherwise called Ashkenaz” and its many Jewish communities along the Rhine river of Germany.^[79] There are no references to the original Lydian land of Ashkenaz at this time, making it clear to what region the Ashkenazim of that time belonged to.

(3) Elhaik’s DNA test: Eran Elhaik is a Tel Aviv University geneticist who is frequently quoted by proponents of the Khazar myth. The reason why he is quoted is because he is from the only geneticists who came out in favor of the myth, based on a DNA study he performed in 2012.^[80] The vast majority of geneticists and historians disagree with him, and we’ll see some of the reasons why. DNA studies typically involve many co-authors as a sign of credibility, as was the case with all the studies presented above. Elhaik’s papers are generally solo.

Among his absurd Ashkenazi origins conspiracies is that Yiddish was invented to be a secret language for Jewish merchants and is of Iranian-Turkic-Slavic origins.^[81] He uses this disproven Yiddish theory of Paul Wexler to support his conclusions. We discussed the origins of Yiddish earlier. I would point out that in contrast to the other few historians or linguists that advocate for the Khazar myth, Elhaik is much less motivated by politics or ideology. He seems to just have stumbled into a pit that his dignity does not allow him to leave, causing a deep bias that defies all arguments against the myth he is advocating for. But agenda aside, let’s delve into the data itself.

Elhaik’s 2012 genetic test claims to have found strong similarity between the DNA of Ashkenazim and that of Khazars. A number of obvious issues immediately arise:^[82]

1. Limited sampling: Only 8 male samples were used for the testing of Ashkenazi Jews (AJs) – a tiny sample size for ordinary genetic tests.^[83]
2. Surrogate populations: No Khazar DNA was tested. This is because there is no trace of Khazars other than the literary and archeological record. They no longer exist as a people, having been absorbed into the local populations (assumed to be Turkic, Slavic, Caucasian, and Iranian). They left no human remains, perhaps due to practicing cremation on their dead. So to bypass this issue, Elhaik used Armenians as proxies for Khazars. This is an error since they are at the very edge of the Khazar empire and below it. They have been shown in previous genetic studies to be similar to many Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Peoples.^[84] So if we are assuming Ashkenazic Khazar descent on the basis of similarity with the Armenians, then we must apply the same logic to all these native Middle Eastern groups! The same applies to Georgians, who are also at the tip of the Semitic lands, giving them much Semitic DNA. Lastly, he used Azerbaijani Jews as proxies for Kahazars, when we know that they came from Persian Jews rather than being a Turkic people who converted to Judaism.
3. Other Middle Eastern groups with Caucasus DNA: To support his theory that AJs descend from Khazars, he provides a chart to demonstrate the large Caucasus DNA in AJs. The chart can be found here. But if we look at the other Middle Eastern groups in the chart, we see that they too have this Caucasus DNA, almost in identical levels to AJs. The Syrians and Lebanese, the two neighbors of ancient Israel, have significant levels of the Caucasian DNA. Iraqi Jews as well have a modest amount. This demonstrates that Caucasus DNA is endemic to the Middle East rather than it being the product of a mass Khazarian conversion. That’s why Cypriots as well have this Caucasian DNA, in similar levels to AJs, since they were a mixture of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern populations who migrated to the area. The AJs too are a mixture of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern populations, with a bit of east European admixture as well. Additionally, Northern Italians, who are the most genetically related to AJs according to recent studies (cited above), carry large amounts of West Asian (Caucasian) DNA, likely due to ancient migrations there from the Caucasian Pontic-Caspian Steppe.^[85]
4. Other Jewish groups with Caucasus DNA: Further demonstrating that this is a Middle Eastern feature rather than a Khazars-turned-AJs feature, are the ethnicities that Elhaik decided to omit from the chart. Using the same data used by Elhaik, this blogger created a chart showing that Sephardic and Moroccan Jews have the same Caucasus DNA just as AJs do. Nobody claims that the Sepharidim descend from the Khazars since that their timeline begins much before the Khazars and are on the other side of the continent from the Khazars.
   Furthermore, a much broader genome-wide analysis by Behar et al. 2010 showed that all Jewish groups shared Caucasus DNA, not just AJs as Elhaik selectively placed in his chart.^[86] Similarly, almost every other major group in the Middle East region shared this Caucasian genetic marker, reminiscent perhaps of the early Bronze Age migrations from the Caucasian hunter-gatherers and early farmers.^[87] Other studies showed similar results.^[88] Thus, Palestinians, Druze, Samaritans, and some Bedouins were all found to also host these Caucasus genetic markers.
5. GPS method: The unconventional, simplistic “GPS” method of geolocating an isolated ancestry that Elhaik uses has some serious logical flaws and is therefore not used by other geneticists in complex cases like the Ashkenazi origins.^[89] But even if we grant authority to his novel historical tracking tool called GPS, there seems to be an interpretation bias in his paper towards the Khazar myth he is advocating for. He uses the geographical origin coordinates of 38 ± 2.7° N, 39.9 ± 0.4° E for Eastern European Jews, and 35 ± 5° N, 39.7 ± 1.1° E for Central European Jews. This vague large geographical location takes up swaths of Turkey and parts of Syria. While in the paper he assumes for us that this is near Khazar, in actuality this region is slightly closer to Jerusalem, on most occasions, than it is to the ancient Khazar capital of Atil.
6. Conflicts with larger data results: A much broader test involving a dataset from around the world found no relations between Ashkenazim and Khazars.^[90] Not only was that study involving a larger dataset, it also has 30 co-authors, including very reputable ones, versus Elhaik’s solo study. Another large-scale study on the maternally-inherited mtDNA, suggests that approximately 80% of Ashkenazim descended from European women, predominantly Italian, in sync with the Rhineland hypothesis and in contrast to the Khazarian.^[91] Another study, involving the paternally-inherited Y chromosomes, suggests a predominantly Levantine origin for AJs.^[92]
7. Denies the history: Beside all the issues of Elhaik’s test itself, it goes against all the literary, archaeological, linguistic, culture, and migration patterns discussed above. To further reflect on his ignorance of basic Jewish history, let us look at this paragraph he states in his paper:

“A major difficulty with the Rhineland hypothesis… is to explain the vast population expansion of Eastern European Jews from fifty thousand (15th century) to eight million (20th century)… This growth could not possibly be the product of natural population expansion, particularly one subjected to severe economic restrictions, slavery, assimilation, the Black Death and other plagues, forced and voluntary conversions, persecutions, kidnappings, rapes, exiles, wars, massacres, and pogroms”

Almost all these projections he places on Polish Jewry are inaccurate. He mentions “severe economic restrictions” in Poland, when in actuality the Jews were given many privileges that assured their relative economic prosperity for the first several centuries. The Jews had monopolies over certain industries, and often played a middle role between the serf peasants and the nobility. He continues by assuming the eastern AJs were affected by “slavery.” There was no institutionalized slavery of Jews and if there were individual instances it was very rare.

Next up he mentions “assimilation.” All available evidence shows that assimilation was quite rare in the very religious and insular Jewish communities until the late 19th-century. He oddly makes mention of the Black Death, which was in 1347 – before the 15th-century population estimate he gave right earlier. The Black Death is therefore irrelevant to the question of population growth from the 15-20th centuries. He mentions “forced and voluntary conversions”; this was actually very infrequent in the more tolerant Polish empire. “Persecutions” were also much less common in Poland, and “kidnappings” were a rarity until the Russian Czarist Empire. There were no “exiles” in Eastern Europe, and the Jews were largely unaffected by “wars” until the 20th-century.

The question of a Khazarian Jewish kingdom

This whole discussion up until now is of course assuming there was a mass Khazar conversion, where a massive, powerful empire converted to Judaism. But what if this isn’t the case?

There’s minimal evidence that the nobility of Khazar converted, making it possible but far from certain. Many historians have questioned the intriguing narrative of a Khazar conversion.^[93] Indeed there is much evidence against it. But even if we assume that the nobility did convert, this does not infer that the population did as well. There are indeed examples elsewhere of a nobility converting to a new faith but the people rejecting it.^[94] The nobility’s conversion was likely extremely vague and irreligious, having little impact on the general populace. Some scholars suggest it was a Karaite form of Judaism, distinct from the Rabbinic form of Judaism prevalent at the time.^[95]

While there is ample evidence of Jewish life in all other areas of Jewish life at the time, including in the Far East, there is a notable absence of evidence for the kingdom that allegedly converted to Judaism. The fragmented evidence presented by its proponents only suggests a nobility converting – not a population converting. There is evidence for small groups of Jewish traders (Radhanim) who lived through the route to China passing along the Khazar lands. But we have no reason to assume they are converts. Jewish life there was scarce. That’s why there are so few archaeological records of Jewish symbols, writings, or outside references to the Jews in the area at that time. In contrast, places like Germany and Bohemia at this time have thriving Jewish communities that leave over a noticeable trace in the archaeology and literature of the time.

It will take another four to five centuries until ample Jewish life in the region (specifically, western Ukraine) becomes noticeable, far long after the Khazarian kingdom converted to Islam in the tenth century. Thus, the whole basis of the Khazar myth is in itself an error.

The Rabbinic Migration Theory

To circumvent all the historical issues with the Khazar hypothesis, some more-reasoned advocates suggest that many Jews did indeed migrate from the Rhineland in Germany to Eastern Europe. However, they posit, the dominant Ashkenazi population in Eastern Europe was Khazarian.^[96] This Western European population was much more literate and cultured than the native eastern AJs and thus they had a far larger cultural impact on the AJ society.

This theory is used to explain the emergence of Yiddish as the dominant language. It also explains the Rhineland customs, liturgy, and laws that would penetrate eastern AJ society. It also explains the family trees of well-respected rabbinic dynasties going back to Germany and Bohemia. It also explains the Southern/Central European DNA found among AJs. But still, the majority of eastern AJs would have been local natives, stemming from Khazaria. This is the rabbinic migration theory suggested by a few academics.

Yet as dandy as it sounds, this theory does not hold up to careful scrutiny. Here are several issues with the theory:

1. It doesn’t properly explain the genetic studies. The genetic studies demonstrate a small amount of Eastern European DNA and a high amount of Southern/Central European (Italian) DNA. This suggests that the bulk of the AJ population stemmed from the west of Europe rather than from the east.
2. There is no evidence for significant Jewish populations living in Eastern Europe until much after the fall of Khazaria. The Jewish communities only spring up there after the western AJs flee eastward, in a visibly eastward migration (discussed earlier).
3. The rabbinic migration theory fails to explain the predominantly Germanic surnames amongst eastern AJs. These surnames suggest a family origin in Germany/Bohemia for a majority of AJs.
4. The language of the alleged native eastern AJs would not have been replaced by rabbinic families moving into town. The claim is that the rabbinic families were more literate and therefore their language would have been taught to the people by the rabbinic teachers who spoke Yiddish. However, this assumes that a minority population can replace the majority’s language just by being the teachers’ class. This is an unsupported claim. It is much more likely for the majority’s language to replace the minority’s since language is used much more in secular life than in religious academic life. In fact, in the case of Yiddish, it’s not even a religious language to begin with. Jewish religious texts in Europe were written in Aramaic-Hebrew almost exclusively, with very few instances of works being written in Yiddish.^[97] Thus, the rabbinic teachers from Germany would not have penetrated Yiddish into the academic culture of eastern AJs. And even if it did penetrate academic language, it wouldn’t have become the standard language in secular life (just as Judeo-Aramaic hasn’t become the language of western AJs). We can therefore assume, that had there actually been a much larger Judeo-Slavic speaking population in Poland, they would not have switched their native tongue to the minority rabbinic class migrating into their cities.
   Additionally, simple household cultural foods – which tend to be preserved in a language for much longer^[98] – are almost all of Western European origins (Yiddish). Examples of the most common AJ cultural foods include gefilte fish, cholent, kreplach, kugel, and kichel – all of Germanic origin (and cholent from French). The only counterexample is latkes (oil-fried potato patties), which is a Slavic word since it is a Slavic dish the Jews adopted while living in Poland. In fact, the Jews of Germany wouldn’t have had latkes since potatoes, native to the New World, were not yet discovered at that time.
5. There is no recorded evidence of early friction between the local AJ customs and that of the newcomers. Had there actually been a much-established Jewish presence in Eastern Europe, we would expect them to have developed their own customs and laws. These customs and laws would have often been in conflict with the western newcomers. Such a conflict of religious culture would have been documented in the many written rabbinic responsa of the time. Instead, we see a single Rhineland culture penetrating into the newly settled Eastern European cities. This makes sense, since there were no large established Jewish communities in Poland until that time.

Suffice it to say, the Khazar myth has no leg to stand on and the only reason it still exists is thanks to the brainless, uneducated Jew-haters. I hope and pray that the haters find inner peace of mind so that they will no longer need to project their internal issues onto a convenient scapegoat who have suffered enough hatred over the generations of persecution. Kudos to you, dear reader, for making it to the end of this long discussion!