There is growing, irrefutable evidence, however, that
the Crimean Khazars, whose kingdom extended over what is now the
Ukraine to the Caspian Sea, officially converted to pure Mosaic Judaism in
861 under the rule of King Bulan. The Khazars do not appear to have been a
people unto themselves, but rather a blend of many races resulting from
the heavy trade that was going on at the time. The campaign of the Rus
(Russian) Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev effectively broke the back of the
Khazarian empire in 965 AD, although Khazar itself continued until at
least 1030 AD. Under the growing persecution of Kiev Rus in the 11th and
12th century, the Khazars disappeared as a people. Nonetheless, there is
overwhelming evidence that at least a portion of the Jewish Khazars fled
to Eastern Europe and north into Poland and Lithuania.
Some people have taken this body of
evidence and claim it proves that the Abraham Ashkenazim Eastern European
Jews were of the Khazar bloodline, rather than the bloodline. In his book
God's Covenant People, evangelist Ted R. Weiland cites mostly third party
and circumstantial evidence in a convincing way to conclude the East
European Jews were not Semites (blood descendants of Shem and Abraham).
"Since they are not Semites, then today's Jews certainly can not be
of Abraham's lineage because Abraham was a Semite... descended from Shem,
the Son of Noah. Following the same line of reasoning, since today's Jews
are not Semites, they can not be Israelites either because Jacob/Israel
was also a Semite, a direct descendant of Shem through Abraham." 1
Are the ten lost tribes of Israel the
Celtic-Saxons that populated the US?
If today's Jews are not heirs to the Covenant promises
to Abraham, then who is? Weiland believes it is the Celtic-Saxon races who
populated England. He and others in this movement believe the Celtic-Saxon
races are true descendants of the ten tribes of Israel who were
assimilated during the Assyrian exile. Weiland provides no direct evidence
for this conclusion because evidence of what happened to the ten tribes is
even more scarce than what happened to the Khazar Jews. Most historians
accept the melting pot theory that the captive ten tribes intermarried
with other races, and having lost their identity as Israelites, migrated
over the centuries to the southeast, north and northwest.
Those that believe modern Jews are not
bloodline Israelites claim the descendants of the ten lost tribes migrated
across the Caucasus Mountains through what is now the Ukraine and became
the white (Caucasian) Celtic-Anglo Saxon Europeans. It was the British
(Celtic-Saxon) that colonized the world, especially that of the United
States. For the moment, let us say they did. Weiland then attempts to
prove that the British colonization of the world with its
Israelite/Celtic/Saxon blood linage, and especially that of the United
States, fulfills the various prophecies dealing with the future of Israel.2
Therefore, God's real covenant people are white Europeans and the
nation of Israel is the United States.
For instance, in Genesis 12:1-3 God
promises Abraham that he will "...make you a great nation and make
your name great..." Other Old Testament passages promise the same
thing. Weiland claims that Israel has never been a great nation or had a
great name, at least in comparison with Britain or the United States.
Weiland also claims that "no one can deny that wherever the
Celto-Saxon peoples have migrated, greatness of some sort has almost
always followed them." 2b In another example, Genesis
13:16 proclaims "I will make your descendants as the dust of the
earth; so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your
descendants can also be numbered." Even today, notes Weiland, the
Jews number only about 17 million, while "it is estimated that there
are approximately 1.5 billion Celto-Saxon people, with somewhere between
265 million to 275 million in America alone." 2c
Similarly, Weiland, provides numerous
prophetic examples that provide excellent correlations to what has
happened in the United States, but not yet Israel. Therefore, he concludes
that the United States has become the new Israel and has fulfilled all
prophecies concerning Israel. Yet, correlations do not prove cause and
effect. After all, 100 percent of the people who drink water die. Water,
however, kills only a very small fraction of them. No matter how good the
correlations, if the first premise--that the non-Semitic Khazar Jews
dominate the bloodline of today's Jews and are not Abraham's
descendants--is not correct, then the prophetic correlations with the
United States have nothing to do with God's covenant.
Just because the prophecies have not yet
been fulfilled, does not mean that God will not fulfill them during the
thousand year reign of Christ following His return. In fact, Revelation
strongly suggests Israel will become a great nation and will fulfill all
the prophecies God said about it. And, God was very clear when he said in
Deuteronomy 30:5 that "He will bring you to the land that
belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it."
Clearly he meant the land of Israel, not the United States.
Weight of historical evidence
The issue boils down to whether Weiland and others are
correct in their "proofs" that there is very little Semitic
genetic material in modern Jews because of their Khazar heritage.
Unfortunately, that does not match up with historical research. For
instance E. Ringelblum found that Semitic Jews from Western and Central
Europe played an equally important role in defining the East European Jew
as the Khazar Jews. His analysis, published in pu Z'ydzi w Polsce
Odrodzonej Ringelblum, states "that the diffusion of Jewish Khazarian
elements into the Polish kingdom appeared only after the Khazarian kingdom
fell. A lot of documents and different town-names attest to the early
Jewish immigration to Poland.... At the same time there was another Jewish
immigration and colonization from the west, from Germany. Lots of
antagonism existed between the eastern and western Jewish immigrants
because there were different types of city-buildings.... The Khazar
people, usually peasants, used primitive tools and were people with less
culture. There was antagonism with the more advanced German Jews." 3
Nathan Ausubel, also found that
"the first Jews must have come from the Crimea.... In time, these
Khazar Jews blended with the other Jewish elements in Poland and
ultimately lost their ethnic group identity." 4 Historian
Adam Vetulani disagrees with Ausubel only slightly, "Polish scholars
agree that these oldest [Polish Jewish] settlements were founded by Jewish
emigres from the Khazar state and Russia, while the Jews from Southern and
Western Europe began to arrive and settle only later...and that a certain
portion at least of the Jewish population (in earlier times, the main
bulk) originated from the east, from the Khazar country, and later from
Kievian Russia." 5 Arthur Koestler even goes so far as to
say in his book The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its
Heritage that "although the numerical ratio of the Khazar to the
Semitic...is impossible to establish,... the Khazar contribution to the
genetic makeup of the Jews must be substantial, and in all likelihood
dominant." 6
There can be little doubt that the
Khazar Jew bloodline had an important impact on the East European Jews.
But, not all Khazar Jews migrated north. There is evidence many converted
to Christianity or Islam and were absorbed into the general population in
what is now the Ukraine. "By the end of the 10th century they [Khazar
Jews] succumbed to the Russians, and after maintaining themselves for a
short period in the Crimea, some gradually embraced the Christian or
Moslem faith, ceasing to exist as a separate people, though many joined
with their Jewish brethren" to the north. 7
It seems certain to historians that the
East European Jews were a mix of Jews from the "Rhineland in Western
Germany," the "area of the modern Czech Republic," and from
Khazar in what is now the Ukraine.8 Benjamin Harsav suggests
that "The label 'Ashkenazi' does not necessarily mean that all
Ashkenazi Jews came from Germany but that they adopted the cluster of
Ashkenazi culture which included the specific Ashkenazi religious rite and
the German-based Yiddish language. Thus, it is plausible that
Slavic-speaking Jewish communities in Eastern Europe (which existed there
from early times) became dominated in the sixteenth century by Ashkenazi
culture and adopted the Yiddish language." 9
One
of the most peer-respected historians on the subject in the past few years
is Kevin Alan Brook, who has spent years researching this issue
culminating in the book published in 2000,
The Jews of Khazaria . In summarizing
his findings, Brook found that "No Polish place-names were
[directly] named after the Khazars," nor "did Polish shtetl
life...derive from the Khazars." Contrary to some of the historians
cited above, Brook concludes that "The majority of Polish Jews came
from the West, not the East," but not by much, and "most
Ashkenazi Jews have Germanic, not Turkic, surnames and customs."
Nonetheless, insists Brook, those who would argue that the Khazar Jews did
not play a significant role in defining the East European Jews "are
full of falsehoods and written for reasons other than in the spirit of
objective scholarly inquiry."10
Genetic testing
"Eastern European Jews
predominantly have ancestors who came from Central Europe rather than from
the Khazar kingdom," asserts Brook. He also found that "The
Ashkenazi Jews are also the direct descendants of the Israelites. Genetic
tests seem to indicate some ancestry from the regions known today as
Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and Iraq." A study
by Dr. Michael F. Hammer, et al. shows an even more striking Israelite
heritage. The Hammer study, based exclusively on the Y-chromosome
(paternal), shows that Ashkenazi Jews are more closely related to Yemenite
Jews, Iraqi Jews, Sephardic Jews, Kurdish Jews, and Arabs than they are to
European Christian populations.
According to Brook, however, Hammer's
"results contradict some other genetics studies, as well as
historical evidence from three continents, and red flags have been raised
by many knowledgeable observers who question Hammer et al.'s methodology
and conclusion after noticing flaws and inconsistencies in their
report." On the other hand, Hammer found an "unknown"
genetic component mixed in with the Israelite DNA. He notes that "In
spite of the tendency of prior studies to summarily dismiss the
possibility, a single source for the 'foreign' male genetic component in
the Ashkenazi Jews...could be the medieval kingdom of Khazaria."
Hammer recommends a genetic study of ancestral Khazarians to determine
their genetic contribution. The problem is, however, there remains no
known Khazars from which to draw a sample.
Brook concludes, "For now, I can
point out that the Israelite [genetic] traces among the East European Jews
came from three sources: (1) Sephardic Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal and
resettling in Lithuania and Poland, (2) Roman Jews, and from (3) Khazarian
Jews who merged with Israelites, just as the Schechter Letter states 'they
became one people.' Are all Jews around the world descended from the
Khazars? Certainly not. But, it is rational to conclude that some of them
are." 10
In conclusion
While the evidence of Khazar
"dilution" of the Semitic bloodline is overwhelming, it is also
certain that the Abraham bloodline does exist within the overall Jewish
population in both the world and in Israel. Unless there is a vast
conspiracy among dozens of historians from many countries over the past
100 years, those who insist that the Jews in Israel are not direct heirs
of Abraham are wrong. They are Abraham's heirs, and therefore eligible for
all of God's promises (good and bad) for His Chosen People. That leaves
the question of why leaders of the "Jews are not Israelites
movement" have ignored this overwhelming evidence to say that the
Abraham bloodline no longer exists in the Jews, but in them. That
is exactly what the early Catholic Church led their followers to think and
millions of Jews were persecuted and killed. Perhaps it has something to
do with Revelation 12:13-17, 1 Timothy 4:1-2 and 2 Timothy 3:1-9.
One last thought to chew on or spit out
as you wish. If a significant portion of the ten lost tribes of Israel did
migrate northwest across the Caucuses Mountains, it is probable that a
significant portion would have settled in Crimea and what is now Eastern
Ukraine, infusing the Abraham bloodline in at least part of the Khazars
Jews. Ironically, rather than being the early Celts and Saxons, the
remnant of the ten tribes could have been the partial seed of the Khazar
Jews, who after settling in Eastern Europe intermarried with their
Judean/Benjamin ancestral cousins who had migrated from the Mediterranean
via Western and Central Europe. It would be the literal fulfillment of
Ezekiel 37:15-29:
```This is what the Sovereign LORD
says: I am going to take the stick of Joseph—which is in Ephraim's hand—and
of the Israelite tribes associated with him, and join it to Judah's stick,
making them a single stick of wood, and they will become one in my hand.'
...I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I
will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land.
I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel."
We may never know if this has any truth
this side of heaven. But God does work in mysterious ways. V
mc
___________________________________________
Sources:
- Ted R. Weiland, in God's Covenant People, Yesterday,
Today and Forever. (Scottsbluff, NE: Missions to Israel, 1997, 3rd
ed.). Page 69-70.
- Ibid, Starting on page 75. 2b: Page 85. 2c: Pages 87
and 91
- E. Ringelblum, in Z'ydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, edited
by A. Hafftka, Itzhak Schipper, and A. Tartakower (Warsaw, 1936), page
38.
- Nathan Ausubel, in Pictorial History of the Jewish
People (New York, NY: Crown, 1953), page 133.
- Adam Vetulani, in his article "The Jews of
Mediaeval Poland," in Jewish Journal of Sociology, volume 4
(December, 1962), page 274.
- Arthur Koestler, in The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar
Empire and Its Heritage (London: Hutchinson, 1976 and New York, NY:
Random House, 1976), page 180.
- David Bridger and Samuel Wolk (editors), in article
"Khazars" (pp. 265-266) in The New Jewish Encyclopedia (New
York, NY: Behrman House, 1962), page 266.
- Alexander Beider, in his article "The Influence
of Migrants from Czech Lands on Jewish Communities in Central and
Eastern Europe," in Avotaynu, volume 16, number 2 (Summer 2000),
page 20.
- Benjamin Harshav, in The Meaning of Yiddish (Los
Angeles and Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pages
5-6.
- http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-diaspora.html
http://www.khazaria.com/
