Why I Do Not Believe The Khazar Theory
The Mother of all Disclaimers
*Reader be warned, this post is a divergence from the normal topic of theology.
One of the claims that I almost can't go a day without hearing is the Khazar theory. About 15 years ago, I heard this theory for the first time. It was presented to me through some of Alex Jones's work. Before the internet was so censored and sterilized, one could find plenty of content on this theory via a simple Google search. It was nestled next to other conspiracy theories, many of which have since come true. At the time, I did not give it much thought. It seemed like an outlier theory, with only the extreme fringe being interested in it. Since then, it has exploded in popularity- sometimes also connected to the Ten Lost Tribe's Theory or the Black Hebrew Israelite Theory.
From my experience, the Khazar theory attracts three groups of people.
Historically, it has attracted the KKK and white supremacists (I mean this definition in the literal sense of white supremacy, not just people who disagree with Israel).
The second group of people are Arabs and people sympathetic towards the Palestinian position.
More recently, a third group of people who I would label as "Truthers," "Patriot Community," "America First," or some adjacent title.
I am not going to the great pains of writing this article for the first two groups mentioned. Arab historians have done great work dismantling this theory within Arab circles, even though it would be seemingly to their benefit if the Khazar theory were true. Interestingly enough, David Duke, a prominent leader of the KKK, was once a proponent of the Khazar theory but has since disavowed it because of the overwhelming genetic evidence in opposition.
It is the third group that is my primary audience. First, I want to acknowledge that I am highly sympathetic toward people's search for truth, and I have no judgments about "pulling the truth thread" and seeing where it leads. I would consider myself to share a motivation for that same reality. I am even more sympathetic to people's search for truth over the last decade when it is obvious that we are in an overt propaganda war and are seemingly lied to in every way.
With that being said, in a post-truth world, it has become apparent to me that many people will believe an idea simply because it is contrary to the belief they previously held- as if a novel idea is more accurate than the previous idea they had just because we are all more or less working under the assumption that many of our previously held beliefs are not valid. Memes, infographs, doctored photos, short video clips that are AI-generated, and many other unverifiable and outright false internet media types dominate the discussion space. I wonder if we have sometimes simply traded one deception for another- swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction out of our desire to avoid a perceived lie.
As a final disclaimer, I understand why my Jewish friends are reluctant to interact with many of the arguments that fall within the Khazar theory and other similar arguments. Many of the people using this theory include it alongside the medieval and historical polemics that have been used against the Jews forever. I can feel the outright exhaustion in many of my Jewish friends at having to interact with this recurring zeitgeist towards their people. My only thought towards this, besides sympathy, is that to wage war, you must go where the battle is. So, if the energy of a lie is at a particular focal point, it does no good to avoid it; it must be met head-on.
Ignoring or censoring it does not make it go away and, in many cases, strengthens it. At the same time, I am also aware that in some of the people who argue for the Khazar position, the spirit of anti-semitism and the antichrist is strong within them, and the love of truth does not seem to exist in them. So, I understand why Jews struggle when interacting with the existential claims upon their existence.
I also understand that many have been attracted to this theory because of their love for Jewish people, or at least what they perceive as helping the Jewish people. They believe that a group of evil people masquerading as Jews has brought great damage to the reputation of all others Jews and they wish to distinguish between these groups. However, I believe that this ultimately just feeds into the narrative that the anti-semitic Khazar-theory-embracers have allowed into their hearts and minds. Unfortunately, not always, but much of the time, proponents of the Khazar theory are the most rancid of anti-semites.
With that said, to those interested in truth, let us reason together.
What is the Khazar Theory, And Why Has It Become Popular?
The Khazar theory is a theory "that postulated that Ashkenazi Jews were primarily, or to a large extent, descended from Khazars, a multi-ethnic conglomerate of mostly Turkic peoples who formed a semi-nomadic khanate in and around the northern and central Caucasus and the Pontic–Caspian steppe." ("Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry," n.d.)
The Khazar theory opposes the prevailing explanation, which states that the Jews settled in and around the Rhine River in Germany. The German Diaspora explanation is where the consensus currently lies. This might seem like an irrelevant issue. It is not simply a discussion around the origin of the Ashkenaz as much as the proponents of the Khazar theory stating that the Ashkenazi Jews are not real Jews.
In layman's terms, the Khazar theory suggests that all, or the majority, of Ashkenazi Jews are not Jews at all and are instead descendants of the Khazars. The Khazars were a nomadic group in the central Caucasus during the 8th and 9th centuries. The theory suggests a mass conversion of the Khazars (to Judaism) in the 8th and 9th centuries and that the Ashkanzi Jews of today are descendants of the Khazars, not Abraham.
This theory was popularized by Arthur Koestler, who wrote the book The Thirteenth Tribe. Interestingly, Koestler wrote this book in hopes that it would curb anti-Semitism, as he believed that Ashkenazi Jews were not real Jews. He thought that if the world stopped believing the Ashkenazi were Jews, then maybe the hate of the rest of the Jews would go away. It appears to have had the opposite effect and has now become a primary source of antisemitism.
In 2008, a Jewish man named Shlomo Sands re-invigorated the theory with his book, "The Invention of the Jewish People." According to his statements, Sand, a self-avowed post-Zionist who teaches at Tel Aviv University, is apparently driven by the desire to prove that Ashkenazi Israelis are interlopers in the Middle East. Shlomi is not a scientist or geneticist but a writer inspired by Kesler's theory.
There has only been a single voice within the world of science that has came out in support of the Khazar theory from a genetic standpoint. A Jewish postdoctoral researcher, Eran Elkaik, produced a research paper for Oxford University Press. We will discuss this in further detail below.
What makes this theory especially interesting is that the first people to highlight that there even was a conversion of Khazars to Judaism were the Jews themselves. As with every falsehood, you can find elements of truth within this theory. You can read about the Khazar conversion in the Jewish Encyclopedia (Rosenthal, n.d.). What is not clear is how many people converted. Was it the royal Khazar family, the entire Khazar population, or some of both? As we will find out in this article, the number who converted to Judaism does not matter. It should also be stated as an aside that a proselyte conversion to Judaism is considered to be a full Jew in every sense of the word, according to Judaism (This point is not relevant for this article but it’s helpful to know).
Bernard Lewis, who has been called "the most influential postwar Historian of Islam and the Middle East" ("Lewis, Bernard 5956-", n.d.) and one of the foremost Semitic experts, says this about the Khazar theory in his seminal work Semites and Anti-Semites:
"This theory… is supported by no evidence whatsoever. It has long since been abandoned by all serious scholars in the field, including those in Arab countries, where the Khazar theory is little used except in occasional political polemics." (Lewis 1999, #48)
We can also look at Douglas Dunlop, who has been called the "most esteemed scholar of the Khazar monarchy. Dunlop had command of the many languages needed to study the Khazars, information which is found in Arabic, Byzantine, Hebrew, and Chinese literature." ("Douglas Morton Author", n.d.) This is what Dunlop said regarding the Khazar theory:
"The theory that Eastern European Jews were descendants of the Khazars can be dealt with very shortly because there is little evidence that bears directly upon it, and it unavoidably retains the character of mere assumption." (Dunlop 1967, #261,263)
Why Has This Theory Become Popular?
The reason why this theory has become popular, in my opinion, is far more interesting and telling than the Khazar theory itself. There are two primary reasons why this argument has gained popularity. First, many people use this theory to delegitimize the state of Israel. If proponents of this theory can disconnect the Ashkenazi Jews as really being Jewish, they think they can dissolve the Jewish claim of the Jewish right of return to Israel. Many people who think this don't seem to realize that 55% of the Jews in Israel are Sephardim, while Ashkenazis only make up 45%. ("ISRAEL: THE SEPHARDI-ASHKENAZI CONFRONTATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS," n.d.) So, even if the Khazar theory is true, they would still have the Sephardim Jewish claim on Israel.
Second, this theory is frequently used to explain Jewish power and influence. This can most easily be seen through the arguments of Rothschild, Soros, Illuminati, and Jewish power theories. When the Khazar theory is presented this way, it more or less follows the claims of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If you are unfamiliar with this, you can read this brief article on the Protocols here. Essentially, this line of reasoning seeks to remove the title of Jew from these global power brokers by claiming they are not Jewish but are instead counterfeit Jews. You will often see this used next to the misapplied verse in Revelation 3:9, "Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you."
I will address both these arguments at the end of this essay, but first, I'd like to evaluate the legitimacy of the Khazar hypothesis. Before diving into the heart of this article, I want to touch on one common misconception I see in many arguments: a lack of understanding between race and parentage.
Race vs. Parentage
One of the ways I see the Khazar theory expressed is through race. Essentially, it says that because some of the Jews are white, they must not be real Jews since Jews should be brown or Middle Eastern. There are multiple issues with this line of thinking. First, no one knows what color the Khazars were; in all likelihood, being steppe people, they were closest to Asians. More importantly, though, the claim of being descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not a racial claim but a claim of parentage.
As an example, imagine that I, a white man, marry an Asian woman. We have children, and then she dies. I remarry with an African American woman, and then we have children, and she dies. I then married again for a third time with a Spanish woman and had children with her. I would have three sets of descendants who were racially Asian, African-American, and Spanish, but they would still all be my descendants, even though they are a mixture of different races. One could see how, with 12 tribes (descendants), this could happen very quickly. Race is an entirely irrelevant way to judge Jewish lineage.
David Duke, Grand Wizard of the KKK, has even acknowledged how racial appearance does not reveal genetics or parentage. He appears to be doing it for nefarious purposes, but he comes to this same understanding.
When interacting with the Khazar theory, one of the main argument points is due to the appearance of race. You see this in the Ashkenazi (literally means German) vs. Sephardim (literally means Spanish) argument. The Ashkenazi typically have a European or "white" appearance, while the Sephardim are more Spanish or Middle Eastern. Because of this, people argue that this appearance of race is a clear tell that the claims of the Ashkanazi are false, but this is simply inaccurate.
Now, we are going to examine the claims of the Khazar theory and evaluate the hypothesis of the Khazar claim through two lenses: genetics and linguistics.
*As an aside, I'd like to state that I believe genetics, race, and blood to be a completely inaccurate way of evaluating Jewishness but am doing so in this case just for the sake of interacting with the Khazar theory.
Genetics and the Khazar Theory
The most damning aspect of the Khazar theory is the genetic similarities that both Ashkenazi and Sephardim have, that other groups of people do not have. This is due to something called the Cohen gene. Due to the strict marriage laws around the priests (Kohens or Cohens) of the Old Testament, genetic studies have determined this unique Cohen gene that is only found in the Ashkenazi and Sephardic people. This is pretty amazing when you think about it. Genetic research can find a common ancestor between the Ashkenazi and Sephardim that existed in Israel during the 5th century BC. I do not want to dive into the specifics of this too much because it is heavy in the research, but I will link to relevant scholarship on the issue below.
The layman's version explanation of this is that there was a scientific discovery of genetic expression that is now called the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) found in Ashkenazi and Sephardim Jews. This genetic expression can be traced back to the biblical Cohen gene 5th century BC. As one study highlights:
"It has been known for over a decade that a majority of men who self-report as members of the Jewish priesthood (Cohanim) carry a characteristic Y chromosome haplotype termed the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH). The CMH has since been used to trace putative Jewish ancestral origins of various populations. Based on genotypes at 12 Y-STRs, we identify an extended CMH on the J-P58* background that predominates in both Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Cohanim and is remarkably absent in non-Jews." (Skorecki 2009)
To take this further, this study in the National Library of Medicine states:
"The origin and history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population have long been of great interest, and advances in high-throughput genetic analysis have recently provided a new approach for investigating these topics. Based on genome-wide data, we and others have argued that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to Europe and the Middle East. It has been claimed, however, through a reanalysis of some of our data, that a large part of the ancestry of the Ashkenazi population originates with the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking group that lived to the north of the Caucasus region ~1,000 years ago. Because the Khazar population has left no obvious modern descendants that could enable a clear test for a contribution to Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, the Khazar hypothesis has been difficult to examine using genetics. Furthermore, because only limited genetic data have been available from the Caucasus region and because these data have been concentrated in populations that are genetically close to populations from the Middle East, the attribution of any signal of Ashkenazi-Caucasus genetic similarity to Khazar ancestry rather than shared ancestral Middle Eastern ancestry has been problematic. Here, through integration of genotypes from newly collected samples with data from several of our past studies, we have assembled the largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins. This data set contains genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations that span the possible regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry: Europe, the Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate. The data set includes 261 samples from 15 populations from the Caucasus region and the region directly to its north. These have not previously been included alongside Ashkenazi Jewish samples in genomic studies. Employing various standard techniques for analyzing population-genetic structure, we found that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations and, among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews to populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.” ("No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews," n.d.)
One of the things I have noticed in my research on this topic is that both sides of the discussion repeatedly state that no one knows who modern Khazars would be, so there is no way to validate the Khazar theory for the people attempting to prove it. You would need access to modern Khazar genetics to test against the Ashkanazi. Even more compelling is the reality of the genetic similarities between Ashkenazi and Sephardim that can be traced back to a single origin in 500 BC. This genetic similarity is, equally as important, not found in any other group. The Khazar claims were in the 8th and 9th centuries, so almost fourteen hundred years previous we can show genetic sameness in the Ashkenazi and Sephardim through the Cohen gene.
The dissenting voice I mentioned above, Eran Elhaik, is the lone voice in genetics. He has done research that he claims leads him to support the Khazar theory. He states in his abstract:
"The question of Jewish ancestry has been controversial for over two centuries and has yet to be resolved. The "Rhineland hypothesis" depicts Eastern European Jews as a "population isolate" that emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrated eastward and expanded rapidly. Alternatively, the "Khazarian hypothesis" suggests that Eastern European Jews descended from the Khazars, an amalgam of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries CE and converted to Judaism in the 8th century. Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman Jews continuously reinforced the Judaized empire until the 13th century. Following the collapse of their empire, the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is therefore explained by the contribution of the Judeo-Khazars . . . We applied various population genetic analyses to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries." (Elhaik 2013, #61-74)
Elhaik's research produced a wide range of scientific responses. Three different scientific research teams in Russia, Europe, and America have responded to Elhaik's research, and all find it unconvincing. More importantly, they all (including Elhaik) agree on the following aspect, which as mentioned above, is that proponents of the Khazar theory have difficulty because no one knows who the Khazars were genetically, so there is no way to tie modern research to them. Elhaik agrees with this but has used Armenian and Georgian ancestry as a stand-in for the Khazars. Elhaik's opponents demur at this use of Armenian and Georgian as a stand in for the Khazars because of the reasons below.
Research on Armenian ancestry, which Elhaik himself uses, has found that out of all Caucasus people groups, Armenian and Georgian genetics are the least diluted in the entire region, thus making them the least likely to have absorbed significant populations. (Genet 2011) This disproves Elhaik's hypothesis of using the Armenian gene as a stand-in gene for the Khazars, and this evidence comes from an area of study that is in no way connected to the Khazar or Jewish questions. What this study has shown is that the Armenian and Georgian genes that Elkaik has used as the prototypical Khazar genes are actually the least likely to be Khazar genes since the genetic expression has remained essentially unchanged for the last 1,500 years. This study came out of a genetics study simply related to general Caucasus genetics research that had no interest in the Khazar or Jewish origin theories.
Another aspect of Elhaik that I find interesting is that he does not believe in the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob story, meaning he does not believe in a common Jewish parent. He is very clear in his attempt to dislocate any Jewish relevance to the biblical story.
At this point, I have a few thoughts. I am not a scientist, nor are genetics my expertise. It seems that scientific research is similar to theology and other academic disciplines. Teams of researchers will use publicly visible and available data sets to make claims and hypotheses, and other scientists will comment on this. Just because Elhaik is the lone proponent of the Khazar theory in the scientific space, I do not believe this inherently makes him wrong. I think it significantly weakens his argument, mainly since the claims he makes on the Armenian and Georgian similarities have been disproved by other research unrelated to this topic. It is also telling that the consensus against his research is multi-national and put together by Jewish and non-Jewish scientific teams.
It is not surprising to me that a Jewish scientist would also like to find a way to distance the Jews from the claims of modern Israel. This avoidance is more common than one would think in Jewish thought. There is almost an embarrassment or avoidance by some Jews of the biblical claims about Jews and Israel. The theological thoughts on this is that there are Jews who wish they could "rub off" the divine claims over their flesh. I am also unsurprised that Elhaik openly denies the biblical claims of Jewish parentage through Abraham, Isaac, and David.
Thankfully, though, there is another way of evaluating the Khazar claim that is not based on genetics: through linguistic modalities.
Linguistics
One of the dead giveaways to the Khazar claim is that of linguistics. If the Khazar theory was true, there should be linguistic evidence of this reality within the language of the Ashkenazi, which is Yiddish. The word "Yiddish" is derived from the German word for Jewish. The most prevailing theory and analysis from linguistic science is that the basic grammar and vocabulary of Yiddish, which is written in the Hebrew alphabet, is Germanic (Weinreich, n.d.). It is unheard of that a group of people as large as the Ashkenazi could remove evidence of a Khazar-influenced language within Yiddish if this were part of their origin story.
Now, there is almost uniform agreement on the above. There is only one noticeable objector. Our rebel scientist above, Elhaik, partnered with a linguistic teacher at Tel Aviv University, Paul Wexler to put forward linguistic research in support of the Khazar Theory. Here is where things get reallyweird. The main critique of Yiddish being of German origin came from a highly respected linguistic journal in the US called Language. This review was a withering critique of the prevailing position of Yiddish as being of Germanic origin. It was also fiercely supportive of Wexler's position that the Yiddish came from Turkish origins.
This review was written by one, Pavlo Slobodjans'kyj. As it turns out, the world of linguistic researchers is relatively small. No one had ever heard of Pavlo Slobodjans'kyj. He had strong opinions on this issue for being an unknown researcher. This is where it gets even more bizarre. Slobodjans'kyj's research called out a famous Yiddish researcher named David Katz. Katz wanted to know who this Slobodjans'kyj was and why he had never heard of him, so Katz went to the physical address of where this research paper was submitted from, and lo and behold, he found it belonged to Paul Wexler's (our dissenting linguistics professors above), mother-in-law. When Katz knocks on the door, she answers and then tries to deny that she submitted this on behalf of her son-in-law, Paul Wexler. You can read about the whole thing here. (Ungar 2014)
Obviously, in the world of academic research, pseudonyms are highly frowned upon. Even more so when it is discovered that the author criticized everyone's research but not his own and did not do this under his real name. The Language Journal ended up removing Wexler's "research." It is also worth noting that Wexler, like Eihaik, "denies the existence of the Jewish people." (Kaplan 2016)
It is pretty clear that if you stoop to falsifying research and presenting academic attacks under pseudonyms, you might not have the high position.
So, How Did The Ashkenazi Population Get So Big?
I hear this question a lot from the Khazar theory proponents, and even Elhaik states it in his abstract above. It is not as difficult to answer as it might seem.
As Stampfer points out: "Populations do not grow arithmetically; they grow—not unlike credit card debts—exponentially. The Afrikaners in South Africa started from a group of about 2,000 settlers who came in the late 17th century. Today, roughly 13 generations later, they number about three million. A little over three hundred years ago, five thousand French immigrants came to Quebec; their descendants now number about 6.5 million." (Stampfer, n.d.)
When it is allowed to happen, groups of people populate quickly. Considering that even the historical evidence shows that Jewish movements in Germany was relatively welcomed and that, for many centuries, they were allowed to flourish, it should come as no surprise that the Ashkenazi population grew as it did until Nazi Germany.
A Word On Jewish Power Theories
We are experiencing a tidal wave of anti-Jewish rhetoric, and what is often the centerpiece of these discussions is Jewish success. When people from the "truther" and "patriot” camps propose the idea of the Khazars; I think they often do so with good intentions. I think they are trying to find a way to criticize specific people (Rothschild, Weinstein, and Zuckerberg, etc) while not being critical of Jewish people. If Ashkenazi are not real Jews, then people are free to criticize some of these power brokers at will without being accused of being anti-semitic.
Truth aside, I wonder if the cost is greater than the gain while attempting this route. At most, there are anywhere from 100-500 "conspiratorial names of fame" that are being frequently used as stand-ins for the entire Ashkenazi Jewish race of over eight million people. What I mean by this is that the names that are used to highlight Jewish influence (Rothschild, Weinstein, Fink, and Altman, etc.) become how many people start to see the entire Jewish people group.
I am trying to imagine how white people would respond if we were made to defend every evil thing the worst people within our "group" did. How am I supposed to defend my race against the actions of Bill Gates, Hitler, Ted Bundy, Hugh Hefner, Bill Clinton, etc? I hope people can see how uncalled for this way of thinking is, especially for believers. Every man is judged by his actions before the Lord. What has become very clear to me is that the people who notice Jewish evil never call out the Jewish good they see in the world. It is always selective noticing, emphasizing, and highlighting a specific narrative.
So, what can we say about a seemingly Jewish success and influence?
I tend to think that there is a supernatural favor on the Jewish people; even when some of the Jewish people do not live up to their calling, the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. Jewish success has been discussed and pondered on for thousands of years, this is nothing new. Even going further back in the biblical text, Jacob, Joseph, Daniel, Esther, and many more rose to the top the largest kingdoms in the world. How does this continually happen, time and time again? We have the same stories during Rome and the medieval times as well, long before the Khazar theory. Do we need to resort to conspiracy when the more straightforward explanation might be spiritual?
Mark Twain masterfully wrote about this in Harpers in 1899 when he stated:
"If the statistics are correct, the Jews constitute but one per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.
He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages, and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" (Twain et al., n.d.)
To answer Twain's question on Jewish immortality, do we need to resort to conspiracy to explain Jewish favor, or is this secret found within the divine hands of our creator?
Leo Tolstoy, an Orthodox Christian and one of the finest novelists of all time, said this in 1891 in an article called, What is A Jew:
"The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he who neither fire, sword, nor Inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first to produce the Oracles of God. He who has been for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself." (Tolstoy 2015)
From my experience, many people have a hard time interacting with the paradox that Jewish people have a kind of favor even when some of them are doing evil. They struggle to see beyond the now to the future destiny of the Jewish people. In Paul's magnum opus on the Jewish people's ongoing election in Romans 11, he reminds his gentile audience that even when the Jews are enemies of the gospel, they are beloved for the sake of the forefathers. He reminds us that the gifts and callings are irrevocable, even when some of the Jewish people are in an unregenerate state.
These realities speak far louder to me than conspiracy claims do on why the Jewish people are so successful and influential. I don't think this means that we are not allowed to criticize evil when we see it—Jewish or Gentile. If the Jews were hoping to paint themselves in a more positive light, they could have probably written a better narrative than the Biblical one. It is clear that, at times, the Jewish people, and some more than others, are unfaithful, and since they have a supernatural favor their unfaithfulness is more painful for the world. What is equally valid is that God's faithfulness will eventually ransom the Jewish people.
I also don't think this means we must unquestioningly support anything and everything Jews or Israel do. I think discussions around how and when we as a nation should support Israel are completely fine for citizens of a nation to have.
While I generally support Israel's claims, I do not tie the spiritual destiny to every action the modern state of Israel takes. To quote Mark Kinzer, an opinion I agree with when he says: "I believe that the Zionist project emerged under a divine impulse and deserves ecclessial support. At the same time, I have distinguished between Zionism (as a national, moral, and spiritual program) and the State of Israel (as an inevitably flawed political instrument of that program). Moreover, I have also insisted on the necessary distinction between the current reality of Jewish national life in the land and the eschatological restoration of Israel to which it gestures." (Kinzer 2018, #17)
To Conclude Our Journey Together
I have outlined why I do not believe the Khazar theory is true as it relates to the Ashkenazi being of Khazar origin. In my view, genetic, linguistic, and historical evidence do not support this theory. Between these three disciplines, evidence from multiple nations, non-Jewish, and Jewish scholarship does not lend itself in favor of the Khazar theory.
I also find it compelling that the "scholarship" that has been positioned in favor of the Khazar theory has been riddled with error and, at times, pseudo-names and shadow games. It seems clear to me that the few scholarly proponents of the Khazar theory are motivated by not just disbelief in the Bible but by outright animosity towards the idea that the Jewish people are indeed a people at all.
Some will say science is corrupted, and therefore we can't trust science on this issue. We can't trust linguistics because linguistics is compromised, and historians are also compromised. Everything is compromised but personal opinion. This feeling is indeed a problem that many, including myself, can find themselves in. Where does that leave us, though? Are we to trust internet claims that amount to nothing but conjecture simply because we believe everything else is so polluted? Is that really the best way to discern truth in wisdom? One could equally claim that the creators and proponents of the Khazar theory were corrupt and had their own evil agenda. If not compromised outright, then so driven to imagine a narrative of their own making. We should be willing to give ground to the decades of publicly available research (also publicly available to be criticized), across multiple continents, in multiple disciplines that don't even have to do directly with the Khazar theory, not readily believe in a theory that was more or less created by a journalist?
To take this idea further. It is easy to see how medical scholarship could be tainted when pharmaceutical companies fund it. There is an obvious conflict of interest as there is something for pharmaceutical companies to gain from skewing studies in their favor. The same cannot be said for Khazars pretending to be Ashkenazi Jews. What do they have to gain from pretending to be a group of people who have historically been hated and abused by the world around them?
Look at the higher education across the West; it is overrun with Palestinian sympathizers and the most anti-Israel leadership on the planet. Are we really supposed to believe that if there was a genetic way to show Ashkenazi Jews weren't real Jews, they wouldn't be publishing this research as a means to remove this people group from the land?
Linguistics researchers are normally some of the planet's most ordinary, bookish, and un-conspiratorial people. What would be their motivation for hiding linguistic evidence if it was true?
Next in line would be Arab Historians who equally find this claim unfounded. This group would benefit from the Khazar theory being true, yet they believe it is an untenable position.
In addition to this, I have also outlined why I do not believe one must resort to conspiracy to explain Jewish success. I do not doubt that people conspire and that people with high levels of wealth and power conspire more than most. I have even less doubt that this is true for every man and woman not submitted to the Lord, Jew or Gentile. I also don’t doubt that at times people have found it advantageous to be Jewish when they are not. Though in most eras, it feels almost laughably hilarious that anyone would want to be Jewish considering the cost that Jews have paid for being Jews.
Though, what seems equally apparent to me is that the Lord's hand is at work in Israel and with the Jewish people. The Jews don’t run the world, the God of the Jews runs the world and there is a huge difference that seems to confuse people. I find the Cohen genetic reality a sign of God's faithfulness to the Jewish people. He has found a way to bring back the people scattered to the ends of the earth, just like He said He would. It does not matter how many Rothschild signs exist in Israel; the work that is happening there is divinely inspired, and even the Rothschilds are mere pawns on God's chessboard.
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