Are Modern Jews Really Descended From Khazars?

By now, everyone in the White Nationalist/Pro-White scene is well familiarized with the narrative that modern Jews, specifically Ashkenazim Jews, have nothing in common with biblical Hebrews at all and are rather descended from a group of Khazarians who converted to Judaism around the 9th century CE, thus all Jews today are descendents of the Turkic Khazarians. But is this true? And if so, to what extent?

There does appear to be a period in the Khazarian Empire where some of the ruling class did convert to Judaism sometime between the 8th and 9th centuries CE, however the extent to which this conversion took place is uncertain. It appears that Bulan, the ruler of the Khazarian Empire during the 8th century, had converted to Judaism due to his wife, Serakh, described as a Jew, having encouraged him to study and adopt Judaism. A Jewess causing the elite of a nation to convert to Judaism. This, in turn created a safe haven for Jews from surrounding areas, as well as some partial conversions by every day citizens. If this is accurate, then this would be an indication that the Khazarian Empire underwent a "cultural enrichment" of Jews.

It is notable that the Khazarian people were of a Turkic ancestry, but most people are already aware of this. The real point of this article is that the Khazarian Jews were a small minority of people who followed Judaism, much like the Ethiopian Jews, and that they do not represent the entirety of Judaism, if any at all. If Jews from outside of the Khazarian Empire emigrated, due to the ruling class adopting Judaism, and became established in the Khazarian Empire, this would set the course for some degree of racial miscegenation, leaving the Khazarians and outside Jews as one amalgamation, rendering the Khazarians more so or less Jewish (the "real" Jews) by blood.

But just how Jewish were they in practice to begin with? According to Arab geographers at the time, including Idn Fadlan, the Khazarian Jews vaguely practiced Judaism and actually retained much of their Pagan (Tengrism) practices and customs. This corresponds with the general observation that only the ruling class and nobility had converted to Judaism, while the bulk of the citizens most likely had not. This would indicate that the proceeding generations did not practice Judaism and thus could not have gone on to represent the current Askenazi Jews. This would also indicate that not many Jews emigrated to the Khazarian Empire after the nobility and elites had converted.

So what happened to the Khazarians after their partial conversion to Judaism? Well, we know that sometime around 965 CE, the Kievan Rus' ruler, Sviatoslav I of Kiev, as well as his allies, conquered the capital, Atil, and ended Khazaria's independence. This left the Khazarian Empire in a very vulnerable place. The Islamic historian Idn al-Athîr writes that around 965 CE, the Khazarian Empire, now a subject of the Rus, was attacked by the Oğuz, an Islamic Turkic people. The Khazars had sought help from the Khwarezm, an Islamic Persian people, but were turned down due to them being "Pagan infidels", which speaks further to their partial conversion to Judaism, or lack thereof by the majority of Khazarians. This lead to the Khazarians converting to Islam in order to secure an alliance with the Khwarezm, which resulted in the repelling of the invading Oğuz Turks.

So how can the Khazarians be the modern Ashkenazim Jews when they became Muslims? There is no further history of conversion to any other religion in their history since this Islamification took place. After this Islamification, the Khazarians as a unique people seems to have ceased being. There are no "Khazarian Jews" today. Period. Therefore any claims that there are "Khazarian Jews" is false to begin with.

So where do these Khazarian-Ashkenazim theories come from? Well, the theory seems to have come about during the early 19th century CE, where some sources point to a Jewish Rabbi named Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788–1860) being the first person to propose this theory. Levinsohn also proposed that the Ashkenazi Jews were part of earlier Russian culture and had spoke Russian prior to have taken on Yiddish, attempting to paint the Ashkenazim as ethnic Russians, which would perhaps curb anti-Semitism in Russia, a form of Crypto-Jewry.

These speculations, largely based on the initial assertion of a Rabbi, snowballed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries with many arguments in favor, and against it. In 1976, Arthur Koestler wrote a book titled "The Thirteenth Tribe", in which he initially claimed that modern Ashkenazi Jews were, in fact, descended from the Khazars. However, Regarding the purpose of writing the book, Koestler's biographer, Michael Scammell, wrote that Koestler told the French biologist Pierre Debray-Ritzen that he "was convinced that if he could prove that the bulk of Eastern European Jews (today's Ashkenazim) were descended from the Khazars, the racial basis for anti-Semitism would be removed and anti-Semitism itself could disappear". Perhaps this was the same intentions of the Rabbi Levinsohn, who may have initiated the theory in order to try and paint the Ashkenazim as ethnic Russians. Other Jews would go on to make similar claims throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Many Christian Identitarians and the like will cite portions of this book while conveniently ignoring the rest, that is to say, cherry-picking.

What of the genetic tests conducted by 23andMe in 2017 that concluded that Ashkenazi Jews have Kahzarian ancestry? Well, a week after this news broke, 23andMe issued a follow-up statement declaring “the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews has been traced back to a population of Jewish people living between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea before the Roman exile", 23amdMe continued, “however, research suggests that Ashkenazi Jews who belong to your haplogroup may descend from a single male who… may have been a member of the Khazars, an enigmatic Turkic tribe that lived in Central Asia, and that converted to Judaism in the eigth century A.D.”. 23andMe never released the number of people who received the report though. The haplogroup in question, called variously R-M512 and R1a, is present in about 50% of Jews who descend from the tribe of Levi. But how can this be determined when the Khazarians were crushed and scattered by the early 12th century? There would have to be actual Khazarians, or at least known direct descendants of Khazarians, in order for such genetic markers to be determined. Which we simply do not have.

It is also worth noting that Ashkenazi Jews who do take such genetic tests often find their results stating something along the lines of "90% Ashkenazi" and "99% European". This is because the testing accounts for Ashkanzi simply being a "branch of European". That does not mean that they are Europeans or Aryans, but that is simply how 23andMe classifies such results.

In conclusion, it would appear that there may be a very small percentage of Khazarian genetics in modern Ashkenazi Jews, but this would he minimal, if that, as we simply do not actually know or possess Khazarian haplogroups or genetic markers. It is also highly suspicious that an actual Jewish Rabbi initiated this theory, as well as others pushing it in order to try and "extinguish anti-Semitism" by trying to go crypto at a historic and genealogical level, separating themselves from "Jews" in order to "avoid anti-Semitism". It is also very telling that the last we know of Khazarians was their conversion to Islam, and not Judaism or Christianity, though some of those may have scattered prior to the conflicts that lead up to their conversion to Islam.

Does this mean modern Ashkenazim Jews are "just Khazarians"? Absolutely not. Rather, they are likely a blend of various European, Turkic, Middle-Eastern, and Hebraic tribes. This also goes to show just how faulty of an argument Christian Identitarians have in their corner of the arena. This is one more piece of alleged "evidence" that would otherwise prove their "Adamic Aryan Herbew" narrative to be reliable taken down with historic facts and research. When it comes to such narratives that are presented by these folks (Christian Identitarians), one must do their own research to see how true such claims are. Research, research, research folks!

Thank you for your time and be well