November 13, 2014

  • No.Europe's Jews are not Khazars

    Beginning in the 8th century CE, the Khazar royalty and notable segments of the aristocracy converted to Judaism; the populace appears to have been multi-confessional—a mosaic of pagan, Muslim, Jewish and Christian worshippers—and polyethnic. A modern theory, that the core of Ashkenazi Jewry emerged from a hypothetical Khazarian Jewish diaspora, is generally treated with scepticism. This Khazarian hypothesis is sometimes associated with antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
    The conversion of Khazars to Judaism is reported by external sources and in the Khazar Correspondence, Hebrew documents whose authenticity was long doubted and challenged, but now widely accepted among specialists as either authentic or as reflecting internal Khazar traditions.Conversion of steppe or peripheral tribes to a universal religion is fairly well attested phenomenon.Both the date of the conversion, and the extent of its influence beyond the elite, often minimized in scholarship, are a matter of dispute, but at some point between 740 CE and 920 CE, the Khazar royalty and nobility appear to have converted to Judaism, in part, it is argued, perhaps to deflect competing pressures from Arabs and Byzantines to accept either Islam or Orthodoxy.

    The fact is that archaeology shows that it is impossible for the Jews of Europe to be descended from the Khazarian converts, no matter what claims are made by the detractors of Israel and those steeped in antisemitism.

    A simple search of the oldest synagogues in Europe proves them wrong.The oldest synagogue in Western Europe uncovered in an archaeological dig to date is the Ostia Synagogue in the ancient Roman port of Ostia, in Italy. The present building, of which partial walls and pillars set upright by archaeologists remain, dates from the 4th century. However, excavation revealed that it is on the site of an earlier synagogue dating from the middle of the 1st century CE, that is, from before the destruction of the Temple.The Bova Marina Synagogue site in Bova Marina, Calabria. This site was discovered 1983. The remains of this ancient synagogue has been dated to the 4th Century

    The Köln Synagogue in Cologne, Germany has been excavated 2007/2012 and dates clearly pre Carolingian (bef. 780/90). There is at the moment some strong evidence that it dates back to the early 4th century when emperor Constantine in 321 issued a privilege for the Cologne Jews. This has been confirmed recently by the find of a rainwater mikveh of the 4th century inside the building complex

    .The Polycharmos Synagogue, of Stobi, Macedonia, was discovered in 1974; it was adjacent to a Christian church. The Synagogue site, itself, has an archaeological record of two (2) older Synagogues under the foundation of the Polycharmos Synagogue dating to the 4th century BCE.

    If the Khazars were the ancestors of European Jewry, they built synagogues around Europe 300- 500 years before they converted.