Palestine Series, Episode 6 – Jewish Communities in Europe: From the Middle Ages to Jewish Emancipation in the 19th Century

With the Ottoman Empire fully established and ruling Palestine, we’re now shifting our attention to the development of Jewish communities in Europe. Traditionally Jewish communities were largely divided into three, Ashkenazi Jews (Ashkenazim), Sephardic Jews (Sephardim), and Mizrahi Jews (or Mizrahim). This episode endeavours to put the last building blocks in place before we deal with the founding of Zionism and their new Layer 3 Narrative in Episode 7.

E6.1 Jewish Communities in Europe

E6.1.1 The Growth of Jewish Communities in Europe

• We explored in Episode 3 and 4
  • How Judaism spread with Hellenization through the Greek Empire and that there was already a sizable Jewish population in Rome in the 1st century BCE
  • Large-scale conversions to Judaism around the Mediterannean (Greece, Rome, Antioch), North Africa (Egypt, Queen Qahina’s Kingdom and several Berber tribes), the Middle East (Himyar, Damascus, Persia) and the Caucasus (including Khazaria)
• We know from Episode 4 that there was no forced exile of Jews from Palestine in 70 CE, and from Episode 5 that there was no forced exile in 638 either
• By the start of the Middle Ages there was a significant Jewish presence in Europe, with most of them in Southern Europe (Greece, Rome, and Iberia)
  • I define the Middle Ages as the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 (or more roughly 500 – 1500, when the Roman Catholic Church ruled with an iron fist)
• Both conversions and migration patterns for the major Jewish “diaspora mothers” will be covered in E6.2 – E6.4 below
• But before we do, we’ll first look at the development and conditions of the Jewish communities in Europe in general

E6.1.2 Discrimination, Persecution and Expulsion

• Although there was no expulsion of Jews by the Romans in 70CE or by the Caliphate in 638 CE, there were plenty of discrimination, persecution and expulsion in Europe mostly under Christian governments
• The Jewish communities developed quite differently than the Christian communities: decentralized, community-based, smaller and without political power or influence
• This lack of political power was exacerbated by rising Christian antisemitism and hostilities, which led to discrimination, persecution and expulsions by Christian governments throughout Europe. It took a turn for the worst when the Pope created the first Jewish ghettos (E6.1.3 below)
• Some key examples of the growing Christian antisemitism (and 1 Muslim example)
  • The 1066 CE massacre of 4000 Jews at the hands of Muslims in Granada, Spain
  • The massacre of Jews in the Rhineland in 1096 during the First Crusade
  • Massacre of Jews in France during the 2nd Crusade (1147)
  • The Edict of Expulsion by King Edward I in 1290, expelling all Jews from England
  • Attacks on Jews during the Black Death epidemic (1348-1351), including 900 Jews burnt to death in Strasbourg in 1348
  • Expulsion from France in 1394
  • Expulsion from Austria in 1421
  • The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 to eliminate Christian heretics, but they also focused on insincere Jewish conversions to Christianity
  • In 1492, King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I of Spain issued an Edict of Expulsion, which banished Jews from their Christian kingdom
  • Some general sources, which should always be used in conjunction with critical, academic sources: [1] [1b] [2] [4]

E6.1.3 Jewish Ghettos

• Although Jewish communities were mostly decentralized and grouped together, and they experienced various forms of discrimination and hositility, they were not legally confined to ghettos until 1555
• On 14 July 1555 Pope Paul IV issued a papal bull (“Cum nimis absurdum” / “Since it is absurd”) [1b] [3] [4] [5]
• It is crude and harshly-worded bull in which
  • He explicitly continued the established Christian antisemitism by stating that Jews were condemned to eternal slavery by god due to their own fault (for killing Christ)
  • He took this antisemitism one step further by imposing a series of restrictions on them in the Papal States: forced to wear yellow badges/hats to identify themselves as Jews, restrictions on owning property and commercial participation, tighter banking regulations for Jews, they were not allowed to use Christian servants or nurses, etc
  • The worst of these restriction was legally forcing Jews to only reside in separate, cordoned off and sanctioned neighbourhoods. This established the Roman Ghetto in a poor part of Rome, which was locked at night. The ghetto system was implemented with “unrelenting cruelty” [5]
• The Ghetto system was widely implemented in Europe and often were poor and overcrowded areas: throughout the Papal States, Croatia (Dubrovnik and Split), Czech Republic (Prague and Trebic), France (Avignon), Germany (Frankfurt and Friedberg), Hungary (Budapest), Italy (Mantua, Piedmont, Venice), and even in Poland and Lithuania (Krakow and Kazimierz), where the Catholic Church opposed the tolerance of these two countries towards Jews
• The ghetto system was abolished after the Enlightenment, as part of the secular emancipation of Jews (see E6.1.4 below), but vigorously reinstated by the Christian Nazis during WWII. There were at least 1,100 Jewish Ghettos established by the Nazis in Eastern Europe.

E6.1.4 Jewish Emancipation

• Jewish emancipation in Europe was a slow, gradual process, very much as a result of the Enlightenment [2] 
• Defining the Enlightenment
  • The following quote provides a good working definition of the Enlightenment “The age of Enlightenment in European thought runs from the late 17th to the late 18th century and is characterized by the growth of science and by the challenging of dogma and pursuit of freedom in academic, political, and personal life” [6]
  • The main Enlightenment Philosophers: John Locke (1632-1704) and John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) in England, David Hume (1711-1776) and Adam Smith (1723-1792) in Scotland, as well as Montesquieu (1689-1755), Voltaire (1694-1778) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in France
  • An important new story emerged with the Enlightenment: that of equality, personal freedoms and human rights (in contrast with the religious story of obedience to the aristocracy and the Church as the representatives of god on earth, including the supposed Divine Right of Kings)
    • A famous and relevant quote in this regard is from the French Philosopher Denis Diderot (1713 – 1781): “Man will never be free until the last king was strangled with the entrails of the last priest”
    • The Enlightenment played a major role in succesfully diminishing the political influence of both the Church and the aristocracy, leading to free thinking and the prospering of science
  • The success and impact of the Enlightenment also caused a major improvement in the position and condition of Jewish communities in Europe

• The French Revolution (1789-1799) was both a result of Enlightenment thinking and part of its implementation. Both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution were strongly opposed by the Pope and the Catholic Church
• Key developments in Jewish emancipation after the Enlightenment and the French Revolution:
  • In the Holy Roman Empire the first steps towards Freedom of Religion were introduced by Emperor Joseph II. He was a Catholic and a supporter of the Enlightenment, who introduced several reforms within his empire
    • The Holy Roman Empire should not to be confused with the Western Empire (which fell in 476) or the Bizantyne Empire. It was a loose and complex federation of kingdoms, semi-autonomous states, city-states in Western and Central Europe, which existed from 896 to 1806. Germany and Austria formed the backbone of this empire, which was mostly ruled by the Habsburg Monarchy
    • On 2 Jan 1782 Joseph II issued the Edict of Toleration for Jews, which extended religious liberties to them and which also allowed them access to commercial professions and trades. Some discrimination still remained
    • Pope Pius VI personally visited the Emperor in March 1782 to convey his displeasure and opposition to these reforms
    • It is important to note that these first steps towards Freedom of Religion and the emancipation of Jews in Europe were the initiatives of the state and staunchly opposed by the Pope and the Catholic Church
  • On 28 September 1791 the Jews of France received instantaneous emancipation with the Law on the Emancipation of Jews, due to the French Revolution
    • It was the first law anywhere in Europe to provide Jews full emancipation, and it became a model for the rest of Europe. Although, in most other countries this emancipation was a slow and gradual process 
    • Napoleon emancipated Jews in all the areas of Europe he conquered. His conquests also led to the disbanding of the Holy Roman Empire
  • In 1870 the Papal States became part of the Kingdom of Italy when they took Rome from the Pope and opened the Jewish ghettos. The walls of the Roman Ghetto were demolished in 1888 (333 years after it was created by the pope)
• Other notables dates of Jewish Emancipation:
  • 1830: Belgium and Greece
  • 1834: Netherlands
  • 1839: The Ottoman Empire
  • 1858: The UK, with The Jews Relief Act
  • 1867: The Austro-Hungarian Empire (to some extent the successor of the Holy Roman Empire)
  • 1871: The German Empire
  • 1917: Russia
  • 1978: Spain.

E6.2 Ashkenazi Jews

• All Jewish communities in Europe was by no means homogenous. They varied in terms of language, culture, lithurgy and origins (both geographical and ethnic)
• The predominant community was the Ashkenazim
• “Ashkenazim” is the term typically applied to Jews from Central European, Eastern European and Russian descent. There are differences of opinion about the origin of both the term and the people
• An introductory article on the different Jewish communities can be found on the “My Jewish Learning” website. It is more objective than many Jewish sources, although it still presents parts of the Zionist narrative in places. Like for any source, it pays to read it critically and consult other sources too [6b]. At least they fully acknowledge “The Jewish world is more ethnically and racially diverse than many people realize”

E6.2.1 The Zionist narrative about the Ashkenazim

• That they are direct descendants of Jews from Judea who were forced into exile by the Romans in 70 CE
• They migrated mostly to Rome and from there on to the Rhineland (in present-day Germany and France)
• Yiddish developed there as a Germanic language
• These Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews then migrated eastwards to Eastern Europe and north to Russia, due to their persecution in Western and Central Europe
• This simplistic and linear storyline is the narrative you’ll encounter as fact when you consult Zionist sources. It is called the Rhineland Hypothesis by more critical historians

E6.2.2 The Rhineland Hypothesis critically evaluated

• I make additional effort with this section due to both its significance and the controverse surrounding it. I pay special attention to the evidence and sources, which can be used for further reading too. Even so, there is still a limited amount of space (and time) I can allocate to this episode  
• The Jewish community in Germany and France was very small in the 11th – 13th century (estimates vary between a few hundred and a few thousand) [7]
• Over time an increasing number of historians (many of them Ashkenazim themselves) became quite critical about the Rhineland hypothesis, the lack of evidence for it and the many issues it cannot account for
• The Rhineland Hypothesis suffers from Major Flaws. Four of these will be covered below

• Issue 1: Demographics
  • Firstly, the Rhineland Hypothesis simply cannot account for the enormous population increase
    • From between a few hundred and a few thousand Jews in the Rhineland in the 11th to the 13th century to 500,000 Eastern European Jews in the 15th century and then to 8 million in the 20th century (the vast majority of Jews worldwide)
    • In addition, this growth should be seen in the context of (and despite) severe population setbacks, like the Black Plague, and several wars, uprisings and massacres
    • In order to get around this demographic issue, some proponents of the Rhineland hypothesis postulated a much smaller Jewish population in Eastern Europe in the 15th century (only 10,000 – 30,000). This poses other problems:
      • It just moves the demographic issue further into the future. It is not possible for such a small Jewish population to turn into 8 million in 5 centuries
      • It still does not get around some of the other issues
      • Lack of supporting evidence
  • A second question it leaves unanswered is why there was only an explosion of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe and not in the Rhineland too, especially since
    • There was no birth control
    • And socio-economic conditions were better in the Rhineland, and therefore more conducive to population growth

• • Some of the best sources on the demographic issue are from Jits van Straten [8]. Van Straten is a Dutch Ashkenazi Jew who became intrigued by the ethnic origin of the Ashkenazim while living in Israel in the 1960s and noticing the big differences between the Morrocan, Indian, Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews (and how much they physically differed from the Jews back in the Netherlands)
    • “I grew up with the notion that Jews had hardly married non-Jews, and that they had not bothered with converting non-Jews. If this was true, how could it be that after 2,000 years of diaspora, there were Jews who looked like Europeans, Moroccans, Indians, or Ethiopians, if they all originally originated from the Land of Israel? To answer this question, it seemed a good idea to investigate the matter myself.” [9] and “I decided to investigate the controversy myself, as I wanted to find out what was the origin of East-European Jewry, although I had no preference for either theory” [10]
    • Van Straten also published four papers on the topic in which he focused on the population growth issue [11] [12 [13] [14]
    • He concluded that the Rhineland Hypothesis is neither backed by evidence nor plausible. In this regard he also makes the interesting comment “From the beginning, my position was that when someone claims a theory, he or she should provide evidence for this theory, or should at least make it plausible. I consider this the only correct way, scientifically. For example, there is no evidence for mass migrations of German Jews during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, I was criticized a number of times for not being able to prove that they did not take place. That is putting the burden of proof in the wrong place… I couldn’t escape the impression that East European Jewish historiography is based more on wishful thinking than on proven facts” [15]

• Issue 2: Migration Evidence
  • There is no evidence of such a large-scale, early migration of Jews from Western to Eastern Europe, and neither is there for a gradual but ongoing migration
    • In “The Jews in the Byzantine Empire, 641 – 1204” Joshua Starr (who was very familiar with this period and with the Byzantine records) argues that “it is inconceivable that a band of Jews should have come through Central Europe at this time, and have lived to tell the tale” [16]
    • The first evidence of a migration from Germany to the more tolerant Eastern Europe is in the 14th and especially the 15th century, due to prosecution and expulsions in Western and Central Europe
      • At this stage there was already a much larger Jewish community in the Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania than in the Rhineland
      • And even then the evidence for this 15th century migration from Germany is sketchy. There are comprehensive records of German Jews and their expulsion in the 15th century, including where they migrated to (as recorded in the “Germania Judaica“)
        • Jits van Straten carefully studied these records and found no evidence of any German Jews that went to Poland and Lithuania [17]
        • These records indicate that the Jews typically moved to other places in the vicinity, in some cases they just moved to another village across the river and many also returned to their homes after a while
        • It was only in England and Spain that Jews were completely expelled from the country. It did not happen in Germany

• • Instead there is strong evidence of northwards and westwards migration from the Caucasus, from the Kingdom of Khazaria and surrounding areas
    • Known as the Khazar Hypothesis or the wider “Irano-Turko-Slavic” Hypothesis
    • The appearance of these Jews in Eastern Europe coincided with both the expansion and then the decline of the Khazar Empire
    • The Khazars converted to Judaism in 740 CE, attested to by several Arabic and Hebrew sources (also covered in Episode 4, E4.3)
    • The Khazars expanded into the Ukraine (Kyiv and Lviv) in the 100 years following their conversion in 740 CE 
    • Probably the most definitive scholarly work is by the Oxford educated British historian Prof D.M. Dunlop, who was Professor of History at Columbia University. He wrote the comprehensive “The History of the Jewish Khazars” in 1954 using extensive historical and scolarly sources and was regarded as the leading experts on the Khazars
      • He raises the puzzling question why the history of the Khazars were not written before, given its significance and the volume of material available in several languages (Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Russian, Persian, Turkish, and even Chinese)
      • Some of the “substantial amount of material” he used
        • “A continuous account of the Khazars was in fact given by the Cambridge historian J. B. Bury, in a chapter of his History of the Eastern Roman Empire” [18]
        • Chapter V deals with “The Khazar Conversion to Judaism according to the Arabic Sources”. These Arabic sources also covers their major wars with the Khazars, including the Khazars military success against them
        • Chapter VI deals with “The Khazar Conversion to Judaism according to the Hebrew Sources” (showing that Judaism became the Khazar state religion in 740 CE)
        • He uses records of the Byzantine Empire about their dealings with the Khazars
        • He uses several Russian sources, including the Russian Chronicle, published in French in 1884
      • He quotes the Russian Chronicle which indicated that the Jewish Khazars already ruled Kiev in present-day Ukraine before 862 CE [19]
      • He also concluded that there is not sufficient evidence that all/most Ashkenazim are from Khazarian descent
    • The Russians conquered most of the Khazar lands and ended their kingdom around 970 CE. This led to the Khazars in Russia and the Ukraine becoming part of the new Russian state
    • There was already a Jewish Khazar presence in Poland before, but the fall of their kingdom led to a larger migration to the southern and eastern parts of present-day Poland according to the Polish historians Kazimierz and Piechotka [20]
    • The migration of remaining Jewish Khazars to Poland after the Mongols destroyed their remnants in the 13th century, as indicated by several historians (Godding-Gandolf, Levin, Kurzband, Weinberg, Ausubel) [20]
    • From the Ukraine Jews migrated to Poland (where they established a sizable community by the 13th century) and from there the migration continued east and north to present-day Lithuania, Belarus and Russia
    • Van Straten points out that there was a thriving Jewish community in southern Russia from well before the Kingdom of Khazaria and that the early presence of Russian speaking Jews in Eastern Europe is a clear indication that the migration was bidirectional between Russia and Poland. There is evidence for this from the 10th century and the main reasons seem to be:
      • The Silk Roads and trade
      • Regime changes and shifting borders
      • Minor persecutions
    • He agrees that the evidence indicates Ashkenazim are largely descendants of converts, but not only from Khazaria, from southern Russia too. Other researchers broadened this base to other Slavic lands 
    • There was also ongoing conversions in Eastern Europe and Russia, evidenced by
      • Centuries of meticulous Jewish burial records
      • The Rabbinical literature referring to the “mityahadim” (converts)
      • Several specific instances of bigger conversions, like the “Judaizers” at the time of Ivan III in Moscow
    • A combination of these two factors do account for the size and rapid growth of Eastern European Jewish communities:
      • Migration from the big Khazarian Kingdom, other Slavic and central Asian lands
      • Ongoing conversions
    • Conversely, the absence of both these factors account for the lack of a similar Jewish population explosion in the Rhineland:
      • No large-scale inflow of Jews
      • No conversions. In Christian Europe, Jews experienced severe discrimination, as covered above. This included:
        • Some forced conversions to Christianity
        • A legal prohibition to proselytize in Christian countries (like in the Caliphate).

• Issue 3: Linguistic Analysis and the Origins of Yiddish
  • Jewish scholar, Isaac Baer Levinson, published in 1828 that “some generations earlier” Eastern European Jews only spoke Russian in some parts and that “Ashkenazi Jewish” (Yiddish) have not spread to those areas yet [21]
  • Jewish scholar, Abraham Harkavy, published “The Jews and the Language of the Slavs” in 1867 in which he wrote “The first Jews who came to the southern regions of Russia did not originate in Germany, as many writers tend to believe, but from the Greek cities on the shores of the Black Sea and from Asia, via the mountains of the Caucasus” [22]. He argued that the majority of Jews spoke a Slavic dialect before the 17th century
  • Important Yiddish vocabulary is from Khazar, Slavic and Turkic origins as Yitzhak Schipper pointed out as early as 1923
    • Key religious terms, like the Yiddish word “to pray” is “davenen” with a Turkic origin
    • Place and animal names
    • Given and family names, like Glukhey, Kravchik, Momotlivyi, Riabchik, Zubets, Ogron, Pcholka
  • In 1924 the philologist Mathias Mieses concluded that it was impossible for Yiddish to have come from western Germany (contrary to the general consensus based on the Rhineland hypothesis)
  • A major breakthrough about the origins of Yiddish came in 1993 when American-born Tel Aviv linguist, Paul Wexler, published an authoritative linguistic analysis of Yiddish [23]. This was complemented by later studies in 2016 and 2017 [24] [25]
  • This is also known as the Sorb Hypothesis (proposed by Wexler):
    • Yiddish originated along the central Eurasian Silk Roads, borne out by genetic evidence and the existence of more than 250 terms related to buying and selling in Yiddish
    • Yiddish grammar and phonology are Slavic and it resembles the Sorb language
    • Its vocabulary was influenced by German through a later process of relexification, for example in 15th century Poland under the influence of German Jews from the Rhineland
    • It was one of more than 20 languages that went through such a process of relexification. Other examples were Esperanto and contemporary Sorbian
    • The Sorb hypothesis is plausible (and certainly more than the Rhineland hypothesis which is not). It seems like the most likely hypothesis at the moment
  • It took centuries for Yiddish to become the main language of Ahskenazi Jews in Eastern Europe
  • Another good source on Yiddish: [26]

• Issue 4: Dress
  • The dress of East European Jews were not the same as that of the Jews in the Rhineland
  • Several aspects of their dress were not from Germany. For example, the yanulke and the fur hats were similar to the dress in the Caucasus and not the Rhineland. The term “yanulke” is actually another Yiddish word with either a Turkic or a Slavic origin. There is some disagreement among scholars, but it does not have a German origin [27]

• Issue 5: DNA Research
  • DNA Research is so signficant for this evaluation that it will be covered in a separate section (in E6.2.3 directly below)

• There are several other scholarly works on the topic going back almost two centuries, providing evidence for this. These works are based on extensive historical and also archeological research. A few examples:
  • Paul Kokovtsov published “Hebrew Khazar documents” in 1932
  • The archeologist Mikhail Artamonov published “Studies on Khazaria’s Ancient History” based on the archeological expedition he led
  • Ben-Zion Dinur, Jewish historian, Zionist and Israel’s Minister of Education in the 1950s wrote that Khazaria was “a Diaspora mother, the mother of one of the greatest of the Diasporas – of Israel in Russia, Lithuania and Poland” [28]
  • Peter Golden completed a doctoral dissertation in 1970 “The Q’asars: Their History and Language as Reflected in the Islamic, Byzantine, Caucasian, Hebrew and Old Russian Sources”

• • One of the more recent (as well as controversial) works is “The Thirteenth Tribe” published by Arthur Koestler in 1976. He was a secular Ashkenazi Jew born in Budapest and this is not an academic publication
    • This book used substantial scholarly works, like Harkavy, Bury and Dunlop. He also draws on primary sources from the Bizantyne Empire, like De Administrando Imperio written in the 10th century by Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, which includes several passages on the Khazars [29]
    • His conclusion: “The large majority of surviving Jews in the World is of Eastern European – and thus perhaps mainly of Khazarian – origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that genetically they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigur and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” [30]
  • I also site a 1977 article by Rabbi Bernard Rosensweig of New York City who attempted to do “a thorough refuting” of Koestler’s book [31]. It is noteworthy (and is referenced) for several reasons
    • His strong support for the Rhineland Hypothesis
    • For some valid counter arguments, for example questioning the value of Polish coins with Hebrew letters as Khazarian evidence
    • For his biased black and white views. For example:
      • He immediately sets out to discover the nefarious motive Koestler had to have, and tells us that “I am convinced, he is motivated by an implacable hatred of the Jewish religion” [32]
      • Rosensweig’s problem with the Khazar hypothesis is that it “has been used by the enemies of the State of Israel to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to its ancestral homeland” [33]
      • He tries to get around the demographic problem by arguing for a small Jewish population in Poland by the end of the 15th century (10,000 to 30,000)
      • In several places he claims that “all” of the evidence supports his position
      • His emotive language, like “nefarious propaganda”, “venemous diatribes”, “implacable hatred” etc
      • In his view every Jew only has 1 of two options: “Those Jews who are committed to Judaism must draw the consequences of their commitment and return to the Promised Land; all others must solve the ‘Jewish problem’ by renouncing their faith and taking the path which leads to assimmilation” and Koestler “unashamedly opted for assimmilation” [34]
        • There is no nuance, no alternatives and certainly no allowance for people (like many highly respected Jewish historians) who simply follow the historical facts in an objective way. If you question his narrative, you are the enemy
        • He (and his article) is an excellent example of viewing the world solely through the thick lense of a religious and ideological narrative, all the while calling Koestler’s view a “theology”
      • It is also an example of the discussions Van Straten called political and no longer scientific, and what Sand refers to as the change in Zionist attitudes towards the historical facts about the Khazaria diaspora since the 1960s
      • In addition, it is also an example of Religious Zionism, which will be defined with Zionism and Christian Zionism (and Jews) in Episode 7
  • “The Invention of the Jewish People” by Shlomo Sand in 2009. He is a Jewish historian and Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi (and is regarded as one of the “new historians”). Reading chapters 3 and 4 is especially relevant and significant [34b]
• Despite all these sources and evidence there are Zionist organizations today writing about “the mythical Kingdom of Khazaria”. They don’t have the slightest interest in facts not supporting their narrative. One could retain a modicum of intellectual integrity by questioning if some/most Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of the Jewish Khazars, but not when claiming the Kingdom of Khazaria is “mythical”.

E6.2.3 DNA Research

• DNA research is playing an increasingly important role in adding additional insights to archeological findings and historical research. With this new DNA research we see a very similar situation than with biblical archeology:
  • DNA technology is improving in accuracy (like full genome analyses which became possible from 2010), and
  • Religious and political narratives initially bringing a strong bias to research, but gradually starting to play a smaller role in the interpretation of scientific data
• Some early criticism about this bias in the genetic science:
  • Israeli geneticist, Raphael Falk, wrote a book about Zionists and their efforts to find scientific evidence for a Jewish race in 1994. He states that  these researchers “first fired his arrows, then drew the target around them” [35]
  • In 2003 Nurit Kirsh (another geneticist, at the Hebrew University) investigated the earlier genetic research into Jewish ancestry and found that it was in service of ideology. It was not clear to what extent this can simply be explained by bias or by a deliberate agenda [36]
  • Several genetics studies of the new “Jewish Genetics” science have been debunked, some claiming scientific proof that most Jews can be traced back to 3 male ancestors 8000 years ago, or 40% of all Askenazis can be traced back to 4 matriarchs, or even the discovery of a “priestly gene”
  • In my view a legitimate question to ask is this “If the Bible, Judaism and Zionism did not exist, what were the chances that these scientists would have reached these conclusions?” 
• There is by no means complete/final clarity about some of these issues, but big progress has been made and some erroneous narratives have already been debunked
• A few earlier ground-breaking genetic studies, despite limitations in the technology 
  • A 1997 Medical study (“Identical MHC Markers in Non-Jewish Iranian and Ashkenazi Jewish Patients with Pemphigus Vulgaris: Possible Common Central Asian Ancestral Origin”) published in “Human Immunology” [37] found that:
    • “From the genetic point of view, the Ashkenazi Jews have very different diseases than Sephardic or Oriental Jews: Gaucher’s disease or Tay-Sachs disease versus familial Mediterranean Fever or G6PD deficiency, for example”
    • “Previous studies showed that almost all Ashkenazi Jewish patients with pemphigus vulgaris carried the extended haplotype [HLA-B38, SC21, DRB1*0402, DQB1*0302] or [HLA-B35, SC31, DRB1*0402,DQB1*0302] or class II fragments of them”
    • The study concluded that Iranians with the same haplotypes can best be explained by the Caucasus origins of the Ashkenazis via the Khazaria Kingdom
  • A 2002 study (“Protein electrophoretic markers in Israel: compilation of data and genetic affinities”) published in The Annals of Human Biology, using new, more reliable electrophoretic markers highighted two significant findings [38]:
    • That previous studies using older technology and finding that Ashkenazi Jews mostly originated from the Middle East were inaccurate and flawed
    • That genetic evidence indicate that few of them originated in the Middle East and that different Ashkenazi communities don’t share genetic similarities
    • A quote from their conclusion: “In contrast to the conclusions of several previous studies, there was no evidence for close genetic affinities among the Jewish populations or for a Middle Eastern origin for most of them. Since the study is the first to use only the more reliable protein electrophoretic markers, and an appropriately comprehensive panel of non-Jewish populations, the results are regarded as the most reliable available to date.”
  • Several other studies confirmed that Eastern European Jews had virtually no genetic link to the land of Israel, but their other results were ambiguous

• However, the big breakthroughs came over the last 15 years
  • The first major DNA study to effectively challenge the commonly accepted narrative was published in Oct 2010 by Avshlom Zoossman-Diskin “The origin of Eastern European Jews revealed by autosomal, sex chromosomal and mtDNA polymorphisms” in Biology Direct [39]
    • It found that “According to the autosomal polymorphisms the investigated Jewish populations do not share a common origin”
    • It still had some mixed and ambiguous results, due to limitations in the technology
  • A landmark study was published on 14 Dec 2012 in “Genome Biology and Evolution” by Jewish-American geneticist Dr Eran Elheik, who is Associate Professor of Bioinformatics at Lund University in Sweden (and a Yiddish-speaking Askenazi) [40]. This seems to be the very first full genome analyses applied to the origins of Ashkenazi Jews
    • It compares the Rhineland and Khazar theories for the origins of the Ashkenazis
    • It points out the limitations of several DNA studies of the previous decade which resulted in ambiguous results, due to the fact that full genome analysis was not available yet
    • “Our first analyses revealed tight genetic relationship of European Jews and Caucasus populations and pinpointed the biogeographical origin of European Jews to the south of Khazaria”
    • “We show that the Khazarian hypothesis offers a comprehensive explanation for the results, including the reported Southern European (Atzmon et al. 2010; Zoossmann-Diskin 2010) and Middle Eastern ancestries (Nebel et al. 2000; Behar et al. 2010). By contrast, the Rhineland hypothesis could not explain the large Caucasus component in European Jews, which is rare in non-Caucasus populations (fig. 5), and the large IBD regions shared between European Jews and Caucasus populations attesting to their common and recent origins.”
    • “Our findings thus reject the Rhineland hypothesis and uphold the thesis that Eastern European Jews are Judeo–Khazars in origin”
    • It raises the question how the Rhineland Hypothesis (without evidence and steeped in supernatural reasoning) managed to become the primary scientific hypothesis
    • It acknowledges the limitations of the current study and recommended that further studies will be required to flesh out this picture
  • Another landmark study was published in February 2016 by Das et al in the Genome Biology and Evolution Journal [“Locating Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Acient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz” by Das, R. et al, in “Genome Biology and Evolution”, 29 Feb 2016]
    • Regarding the study:
      • They evaluated the Rhineland Hypothesis and the “Irano-Turko-Slavic” Hypothesis (wider than the Khazar Hypothesis) by doing a full genome analysis of 393 Ashkenazic, Iranian and mountain Jews, as well as more than 600 non-Jewish genomes from populations in the areas relevant to these two hypotheses
      • The Jewish genomes included 186 descendants of sole Yiddish speakers, which was a first
      • They used the leading edge Geographic Population Structure Analysis
      • They use the abbreviation “AJ” for “Ashkenazi Jews” in their report
    • Key findings:
      • “The Rhineland hypothesis is unsupported by our analyses and suffers from several weaknesses” [41]
      • “The most common Y haplogroups dominate the area between the Black and Caspian Seas and represent the major lineages among populations inhabiting Western Asian regions, including Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus” [42]
      • “Our autosomal analyses highlight the high genetic similarity between AJs and Iranians, Turks, southern Caucasians, Greeks, Italians, and Slavs” [43]
      • “Remarkably, our findings echo Harkavy’s, who wrote in 1867 that ‘the first Jews who came to the southern regions of Russia did not originate in Ashkenaz [Germany], as many writers tend to believe, but from the Greek cities on the shores of the Black Sea and from Asia via the mountains of the Caucasus’ ” [44]
      • More specifically: “We traced nearly all AJs to major primeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages, whose names may be derived from ‘Ashkenaz’ ” [45]
      • They commented on the fact that linguistic and DNA analyses were mutually supportive
      • One of their most interesting conclusions is that the majority of genetic findings (that there is a very limited genetic link between Ashkenazi Jews and middle Eastern populations) “have been consistently misinterpreted in favor of a Middle Easten Judean ancestry, although the data do not support such contention for either Y chromosomalor genome wide studies”. “To promulgate a Middle Eastern origin despite the findings, various dispositions were adopted. Some authors consolidated the Middle East with other regions…” [46]
        • They list a number of authors and studies showing these biased findings not supported by the data: Seldin et al (2006), Kopelman et al (2009), Tian et al (2009), Atzmon et al (2010), Behar et al (2010), Campbell et al (2012), Ostrer and Skorecki (2012). We’ll come back to Ostrer below
        • Given the explicit “dispositions” these authors had to take to create a non-existing link to Judea one has to wonder if this is indicative of an agenda and not a mere bias
  • Das et al published a follow-up study in  in 2017 [“The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish” in “Frontiers in Genetics” [47]
    • What is exceptionally interesting and significant about this study is that they also did “an ancient DNA analysis of six Natuhans and a Levantine Neolithic (Lazaridis et al, 2016) some of the most likely Judaean progenitors (Finkelstein and Silberman, 2002; Frendo, 2004).” [48] and compared their 2016 results against this analysis
    • Their key findings with the ancient DNA analyses:
      • Ashkenazi Jews had a small residual Levantine ancestry (only 3%), which “rule out an ancient Levantine origin for AJs”
      • Palestinians on the other hand, had a 58% Levantine ancestry, confirming the historical and archeological evidence published by Ben-Gurion in 1918 (see Episode 5)

• More on the bias and flaws in DNA population research
  • Dr Eran Elheik (who conducted the study above in 2012) is on the fore-front of DNA research and took his criticism of DNA population research one step further. He is of the view that most of the population genetic research of the last few decades has limited value and is unreliable. This is due to the flaws of the widely used PCA method (Principle Component Analysis)
    • In 2022 he conducted a new study in which he investigated the 12 most common uses of PCA, showed its unreliability and how easily it can be used to reach different results especially when biased scientists are involved
      • The Study itself, published in Scientific Reports (“Principal Component Analyses (PCA)-based findings in population genetic studies are highly biased and must be reevaluated”) [49]
      • “We reasoned that if PCA results are irreproducible, contradictory, or absurd, and if they can be manipulated, directed, or controlled by the experimenter, then PCA must not be used for genetic investigations, and an incalculable number of findings based on its results should be reevaluated. We found that this is indeed the case” [49]
    • A popular article about this study (“Study reveals flaws in popular genetic method”), on the website of Lundt University in Sweden [50]
    • He spent most of the past decade pioneering more reliable methods and tools for genetic population research
    • It is important to note that researchers finding support for the Rhineland Hypothesis in their research, naturally disagree with Elheik.  
  • More about Harry Ostrer (listed in the 2016 Das et al study above, as an example of reaching findings unsupported by the data)
    • He was part of a study “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era” which found DNA support for the Rhineland Hypothesis. Elhaik conducted email correspondence with Ostrer in 2010 to get access to the data set he used for the findings, and was told:
      • That the data set was not publicly available
      • He could collaborate with the team if he met several criteria, including providing proof that his research would have a “non-defamatory nature towards the Jewish people”
    • “That last requirement, Elheik argues, reveals the bias of Ostrer and his collaborators” [51]
    • To this I would add:
      • Research findings not supporting the Zionist narrative is clearly “defamatory in nature towards the Jewish people” in the mind of scientists like Ostrer
      • One cannot conduct science if only 1 outcome is acceptable, one has to follow the evidence wherever it leads
      • For more than a century Biblical archeology conducted archeology in exactly this biased way, and found support for the Biblical narrative wherever they looked. Today this was completely debunked as discussed in Episode 2
  • Shlomo Sand indicated that the more recent DNA research (which was not available when he published his book in 2009), confirmed his views and the other historical and linguistic evidence. He also pointed out the irony that when the Nazis (unsuccessfully) tried to prove the Jews were a race, that was regarded as antisemitic at the time, but when researchers today find that Jews are not a race or a single ethnic group, that is now regarded as antisemitic by Zionists [51]
• Bottom line
  • The findings of the latest DNA population research does not support either a German or a Judean origin for the majority of Ashkenazi Jews
  • Instead it provides support for the Ashkenazi origins in the northeast of Turkey, Iran, and the mountains of the Caucasus (including an area which used to be part of the Kingdom of Khazaria).

E6.3 Sephardic Jews

• “Sephardim” refers to Jews who originated from the Iberian Peninsula, present-day Spain and Portugal [52] [6b]

E6.3.1 The Zionist narrative about the Sephardim

• That they are direct descendants of Jews from Judea who were forced into exile by the Romans in 70 CE, and specifically that the Romans took thousands of Judean Jews as slaves to Iberia
• Some admit that very little is known about these early settlements, and that there were “a few conversions in some cases”.

E6.3.2 Assessing the Historical Facts about the Sephardim

• There is very little evidence of a Jewish presence in Iberia during the 1st century CE
• The first reliable evidence is from the 4th century, and it shows that by then there was already a sizable Jewish community
• The most likely two sources for this community are
  • The large Jewish community of converts in Rome (soldiers, merchants and slaves)
  • The Jewish community of converts in North Africa, directly south of Spain
• There are several reasons for this:
  • Both these areas (Rome and North Africa) had large communities of proselytized Jews
  • Both are much closer to Spain than Palestine
  • This fits the pattern of other Jewish communities that appeared around the Mediterannean
  • There is no evidence of a Jewish migration from Palestine to Spain
• It is not impossible that some of them were from Judean origin, but that is likely only a small fraction
• The French historian, Ernest Renan, in a famous 1883 lecture in Paris (”Judaism as Race and Religion”) [53]
  • Quoted Cassius Dio’s assertion (as early as the 3rd century CE) that the term “Jew” no longer applied to people from Judea, but to people practicing the Jewish religion
  • Showed how Jews converted their slaves and that their synagogues functioned as a place friends and neighbours got together, leading to further conversions
  • Asserted that the majority of Jews in Gaul, Italy and surroundings were local people who converted to Judaism
  • He concluded that the Jews of France did not differ ethnically from the protestants
• One of the most significant pieces of evidence is the evolution of their language and ethnography. Paul Wexler, a philological archeologist, in Tel Aviv, published an impactful study in 1996 (”The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews”) [54]. In it he shows:
  • Hebrew and Arameic only made their appearance in Jewish texts in Iberia in the 10th century
  • This is conclusive evidence that the first Jewish inhabitants of Spain did not come from Judea and did not speak Arameic or Hebrew
  • Arabic was initially the major influence as well as Berber dialects, like Tashelhit and Terefit, which are closely related to Arabic
• The historian, Solomon Katz, who served for 56 years at the University of Washington (as Professor in History, Head of the Department of History and Dean of the Faculty) showed that there is plenty of evidence for ongoing Jewish proselytism in Iberia during the 5th – 7th centuries (before the Muslim conquest) [55]. He devotes the entire Chapter 4 to it, including the Christian laws introduced against it and the specific penalties which applied at different times. This chapter makes for interesting reading
• With the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Visigoths (one of the Germanic tribes) ransacked Rome in 410 CE and conquered the Iberian Peninsula to form a Visigoth Kingdom in the 5th century, even before the final fall of Rome in 476 CE
• The Visigoths kings converted to Christianity in the 6th century
• The Jewish community in Spain experienced restrictions and oppression from the Visigoths, especially after they converted to Christianity (for example the outlaw of Jewish proselytism mentioned above). Some Jews fled these conditions to go to (or return to) North Africa
• In 711 Muslim forces (the “Moors”) invaded Spain:
  • This was not an Arab army from Syria, but a Berber force of 7,000 men from North Africa under Tariq ibn Ziyad. He was from the Nefouca tribe, a Judaized tribe of the Berbers, and acted under the authority of the Umayyad Caliphate
  • The Jews in Spain welcomed the Muslim invaders, much like 80 years prior when the Muslims conquered Palestine from the Bizantine Empire. The Christian oppressed the Jews and there was a lot of animosity between them
  • In this case other factors were at play too:
    • A part (or even most) of the Berber soldiers were Judaized, so they shared the same religion as the Jews in Spain (and some of them possibly recently converted from Judaism to Islam)
    • There are also theories that part of the Jewish community in Spain originated in North Africa and were also Berbers, so the invading force possibly shared both their religious and their ethnic background
    • And a related theory is that some of the invading force consists of Judaized Berbers who fled oppression in Spain and now returned with the Berber army for revenge
  • There are a large number of sources (Christian, Arab and Jewish) confirming how the Jews welcomed the invaders, assisted them, joined their forces and received senior administrative positions after the conquest. One Arab source quoted by the famous Zionist historian, Ben-Zion Dinur in “Israel in Exile” [56]: “The third regiment, which had been sent against Elvira, besieged Granada, the capital of that state, and entrusted the blockade to a local force made up of Muslims and Jews, and that is what they did wherever Jews were found”. Dinur also quoted Spanish sources claiming that the entire Berber force were Jewish converts.
  • Neither Dinur nor other historians, argued that this was a Jewish conspiracy or a joint war effort, but rather that cooperation developed during the invasion
• After the Berbers conquered Spain in 718 and it became part of the Muslim Caliphate, Jews experienced “A Golden Age” in Spain over the next 300 years or so. They spoke Ladino, a mixture of Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, French, and Bulgarian with Hebrew and Arameic later mixed in too
• With time more fundamentalist Arabs migrated to Spain, resulting in discrimination and dhimmi status for the Jews. In 1066 CE a massacre of 4000 Jews at the hands of Muslims occurred in Granada, which more or less signified the end of the “Golden Era”
• As the Christians reconquered Spain conditions worsened for the Jews
  • In 1391 Jews were compelled to convert to Christianity in the Castile region
  • The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 to eliminate Christian heretics, but they also focused on insincere Jewish conversions to Christianity
  • And in 1492, King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I issued an Edict of Expulsion, which banished Jews from their kingdom
  • Most Jews fled to North Africa and parts of the Ottoman Empire, while about 60,000 stayed and mostly converted to Christianity
• So the Sephardim, who originated in Rome and North Africa, intermixed with Spaniards, Portuguese, French, Berbers and Arabs in Spain, then ended up in various parts of the Ottoman Empire by the end of the 15th century, including back in North Africa. There are also indications of a small number of Sephardim making their way to Central Europe, like Hungary, and possibly from there into Poland and Lithuania.

E6.4 Mizrahi Jews

• “Mizrahi” is a socio-political term describing “Oriental” Jews from Arab and/or Muslim lands, including Jews from North Africa. There are indications that some Mizrahi Jews also made their way from Persia and Syria to Khazaria and Central Europe
• There is a large overlap between the Mizrahim and the Sephardim (which should be clear from the section above on the Sephardim). They are often conflated or at least bundled together
• The Ashkenazi establishment in Israel coined the term “Mizrahim” in the 1950s in response to the large wave of immigrants from Arab countries at the time. The immigrants soon began to use the term to describe themselves as well [57] [6b]
• After 1948 there was an influx of Mizrahi migrants, as Middle Eastern countries started to discriminate against their local Jewish populations due the deteriorating relationships since the 1948 war (see Episode 9 for more details)
• With the new arrivals there was immediately somewhat of an unofficial hierarchy in Israel
  • With the Ashkenazim as the lighter skinned and well-educated Jews from Europe, who were all new  immigrants, but the driving force behind the new Jewish State, and in all the leadership positions. They were also largely secular and displayed a surprising open derogatory attitude towards the local Jews 
  • The Mizrahim, often darker skinned, with less influence and complaining of discrimination. They were typically more religious, and did not share the Ashkenazi ideology of Zionism
  • All of this led to the perception among Mizrahim that the Ashkenazim was just another group of colonialists to replace the British
  • This was exacerbated when the young Israeli state was unable to cope with the large influx of immigrants, had to house them in tent towns, with Ashkenazim immigrants getting better treatment and were quicker allocated with proper and better housing.
  • One of the reliable sources covering this is a secret CIA report from 1982, which was declassified in 2007, and which is still available on their website. They developed this report when they became concerned about potential violence between the Askenazim and Sephardim in the 1980s, but this goes back to a dynamic which started earlier [58]. The CIA bundles Sephardim and Mizrahim into one and collectively call them Sephardim
  • With time assimilation increased
• Avi Shlaim, an Iraqi-born Jewish historian who regards himself as an “Arab Jew”, called his memoirs “Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab Jew”. He described the humilation and bigotry they experienced at the hands of the Ashkenazi Jews when they landed in Israel in 1950 and were all sprayed with pesticide, while many of these Iraqi Jews were well-educated, wealthy or academics (see Episode 9 for more details) [59] [60] [61]

‘The Jewish world is more ethnically and racially diverse than many people realize’ – My Jewish Learning Website

E6.5 Palestine Series, Episode 6 – CRITICAL INSIGHTS

E6.5.1 INSIGHT 1 – Ongoing Jewish Conversions

• There are several constant themes running through this historical overview. One of the major ones is the ongoing (and often large-scale) conversions to Judaism, despite popular belief to the contrary
• We’ve seen in previous episodes how large-scale conversions to Judaism by people from North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Russia, Eastern Europe, Rome, the Iberian Peninsula etc contributed to the expansion and spread of Jewish communities around the world. Most of them had no ethnic Jewish origins, as increasingly born out by modern DNA research. Episode 4 covers these historical conversions in more detail
• As shown above (E6.2), conversions were one of the causes of the explosion in the Ashkenazi population in Eastern Europe
• And as shown in E6.3 above there is plenty of evidence of ongoing conversions among the Sephardim
• Bottom line: “Not only were conversions to Judaism before and after the beginning of the Common Era frequent, but conversion was also a very informal matter” [62]
• Other sources for further reading: [63] [34b] 
• There were still large-scale conversions to Judaism as late as the 20th century
  • In 1948 there were large numbers of the Jewish community of migrants whose spouses and children were not Jews, like a Jewish man who married a “gentile” Russian/Polish/German wife before emmigrating (and if the mother was non-Jewish, so were her children). All these non-Jews were quietly registered as Jews with the formation of the State of Israel (as they made every effort to engineer a “Jewish” majority). Most of these were of Russian or Eastern European descent
  • In 1968 with a big influx of Polish Jews more than 30% of the new arrivals were not Jewish. This led to Clause 4b to be added to the Law of Return which allowed non-Jewish spouses, children and grandchildren to migrate to Israel and gain automatic Jewish nationality. This became known as the “grandchild clause” as one just needed one Jewish grandparent to become Jewish
  • And as shown in Episode 4 (E4.3), most of these “Jewish” grandparents were not ethnic Jews either. They were the descendants of proselytized Jews from a very wide variety of other ethnic origins
• Conversions continue to this day
• In Episode 7 we will finally define the term “Jewish” in view of all this historical and scientific information.

“There are several constant themes running through this historical overview. One of the major ones is the ongoing (and often large-scale) conversions to Judaism, despite popular belief to the contrary”

E6.5.2 INSIGHT 2 – Religious Persecution 

• History is filled with examples of wars, discrimination and persecution between the Abrahamic religions
• The worst persecution was that of the Jews by Christians, covered in this episode. Some of the worst examples are:
  • The Jewish massacre by the First Crusade in 1096
  • The expulsions of Jews from Spain by the christian King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I in 1492
  • The introduction of Jewish ghettos by the Pope in 1555
• On the other hand, the emancipation of Jews in Europe was largely the result of the Enlightenment (including the French Revolution and Napoleon)
• After this emanicpation in France there were gradual legal reforms by European Governments
• These reforms were staunchly opposed by the Pope and the Catholic Church 
• Refer to E6.1.4 above for detail.

E6.5.3 INSIGHT 3 – Changes in Zionist Attitudes towards Khazaria from the 1960s

• There are extensive sources and evidence about the Jewish Khazars from the powerful Kingdom of Khazaria (covered in E6.2.2 and E6.2.3 above, as well as in Episode 4 – E4.3.3). Many of these are scholarly works by historians, and some of them are primary records of the Byzantine Empire. This was fully acknowledged by Zionist historians until the 1950s
• This changed after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent wars and controversies [64]:
  • Khazaria was removed from the Israeli school curriculum during the 1950s
  • Zionist historians did not research or write about Kazaria. There was no publication in Hebrew on the Khazars since 1951
  • It became a controversial topic, in which historical evidence which did not support the Zionist narrative (and specifically the Rhineland Hypothesis) was branded as “mythical”, the work of “self-hating Jews” and later even as “antisemitic”
  • Regarding the controversy Koestler’s book caused and the highly emotive responses from some Zionist historians, Shlomo Sand (himself a Yiddish speaker) makes this observation: “Nevertheless, the fact is that until the 1960s the assumption that the majority of the Yiddish people did not originate in Germany, but in the Caucasus, the Volga steppes, the Black Sea and the Slav countries, caused no shock, and was not considered anti-Semitic as it was after the early 1970s” [65]
• Van Straten also pointed out the change of tone since Polak’s 1943 book, which still received a balanced scholarly response:
  • “As mentioned before, in 1943, Polak published his book Khazaria in
    what was then Palestine. In the review by M. Landau (1944, see p. 19-20),
    we see a normal way of criticizing a book, with arguments that are to the
    point. We jump to 1972. In the introduction of chapter II, I referred to the
    Polish-Jewish historian Weinryb with the following quote: ‘The Khazar
    hypothesis has a certain dramatic background and was propounded as a
    result of large-scale falsifications in the nineteenth century.’ This is no
    longer a balanced criticism. ” [66]
  • Regarding some of the personal attacks on Koestler: “The criticism by Toch shows what the discussion about the Khazars has come down to. We are no longer dealing with a good scientific discussion, but with a political one. This is not the way a historical subject should be treated.” [67]

E6.5.4 INSIGHT 4 – Don’t take Scientific Findings at Face Value

• Most people tend to regard scientists as dispassionate and objective professionals, and their research as definitive and unambiguous
• Unfortunately, life (and science) is a lot more messy than that
  • Science involves complex methodological and epistemological issues
  • All scientists do not have the same level of competence and integrity
  • Scintists legitimately have widely divergent views on myany technical issues
  • Commercial sponsorships and vested interests can play a role in the intepretation of data
  • And narratives can play a big role in the interpretation of scientific data
• In Episode 2, when I reviewed the Level 1 Zionist Narrative of a Chosen People and their Promised Land, I evaluated the evidence and pointed out how the findings of archeology and especially Biblical archeology changed over a century from fully supporting this narrative to completely debunking it. There were 2 major reasons for that
  • A significant improvement in the methods, technology and tools, and their accuracy
  • The influence of religious narratives played a sharply decreasing role in the interpretation of data over time. Initially, Biblical archeology used to find evidence for the biblical narrative wherever they looked. Today the science has fully debunked that narrative, but it took about a century to get there
• So when a variety of scientists started using genetic research to look into the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews, it was always a given that Zionist scientists would be influenced by their narrative, and that is exactly what has been happening for a few of decades now
  • There is a world of difference between trying to prove your narrative and dispassionately looking at the evidence, following it wherever it leads
  • Sometimes one has to ask if some of these scientists are merely biased or whether they actually have a deliberate agenda
• In E6.2.3 I referred to DNA studies with contradictory findings. Some of this was due to improved methods, technology and tools, while others were the result of bias (and I pointed out some of this academic debate). I site one more publication here by a world-leading DNA researcher and his peer review of another study [68]
  • ” A careful examination reveals grave concerns regarding all the aspects of the study from the identification of the “Khazar” samples, the choice of environment for ancient DNA sequencing, and the analyses. The authors did not disclose the data used in their study, and their methodology is incoherent. We demonstrate that their analyses yield nonsensical results and argue that none of the claims made in this study are supported by the data unequivocally“
  • This is a rather scathing peer review, and it shows just how essential it is to be critical about any research report
  • All research does not carry equal weight
• Of course, most of us do not have the scientific knowledge to critically assess research outside our field of expertise. However, I regard the following as useful when dealing with research findings, especially controversial ones where specific narratives may be at play:
  • Do not accept any research on face value and realise that it is possible to find research supporting several incompatible positions
  • Read research reports critically and be aware of potential bias at play
  • Be mindful of your own bias too, and don’t cherry pick studies which suit your views
  • Look for peer reviews
  • Look at the research findings of other researchers too
  • Even then it can still be quite challenging, but it is a reasonable starting point.

“There is a world of difference between trying to prove your narrative and dispassionately looking at the evidence, following it wherever it leads”

E6.5.5 INSIGHT 5 – The Origins of Ahskenazi Jews

• Although the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews are complex, messy and not fully understood yet, the body of evidence reached more than critical mass that the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are neither descendants of the ancient Judeans nor of German Jews from the Rhineland, but from the Kingdom of Khazaria, other Slavic lands, Turkey, Russia, as well as central Asian and other Middle Eastern countries
• Reality is far more complex than the simplistic Rhineland Hypothesis, which has now been debunked
  • Some of the Ashkenazi Jews could possibly be descendants of the Judeans, but that is likely to be a small percentage
  • Some of them could be descendants of German Jews, but likely a small minority
  • All (or even most) of them are probably not descendants of the Khazars
  • It is impossible to tell how many are from Khazaria, other Slavic lands or other central Asian or Middle Eastern countries
  • Although the majority of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century went to north Africa and parts of the Ottoman Empire, there are indications of some Sephardic Jews making their way to central Europe and from there possibly to Poland
    • These Sephardic Jews were mostly not from Judean origin either, but converts from Rome, North Africa and Spain itself
  • There are indications that some Mizrahi Jews made their way to Central and Eastern Europe, over and above the Iranian Jews. Most of these were converts from Middle Eastern (Syria and Persia) and north African countries (like Berber tribes)
  • Eastern Europe was therefor an enormous, diverse and very messy melting pot
    • This is the region where the vast majority of the world’s Jews lived by the start of the 20th century (by some accounts 90% of all Jews)
    • This was also the intellectual centre of Judaism with important new developments. For example, Hasidic Judaism developed in Poland in the 18th century
  • It is clear enough from historical and DNA research that a substantial part of Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of a very wide variety of different ethnicities due to
    • A consistent theme of conversions to Judaism for about 2500 years
    • Large-scale migrations and mixed marriages with local populations
    • Political conquests and the impact of different rulers on the gene pool
  • As DNA research becomes ever more sophisticated, this picture will undoubtedly become much more clear with time, but it is already a well-established scientific fact that there are limited genetic similarities between different Jewish communities, and virtually no genetic link to the ancient Judeans.

“Although the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews are complex, messy and not fully understood yet, the body of evidence reached more than critical mass that the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are neither descendants of the ancient Judeans nor of German Jews from the Rhineland, but from the Kingdom of Khazaria, other Slavic lands, Turkey, Russia, as well as central Asian and other Middle Eastern countries”

E6.5.6 Insight 6 – The Ethnic Irony in Israel

• Insight 5 above has to be combined with Insight 1 and 2 of Episode 5 (that the Palestinians are actually to some extent, possibly mostly, descendants of the ancient Judeans
  • This was acknowledged in publications by two key Zionist leaders, Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister) and Ben-Zvi (a future Israeli president) as covered in Episode 5
  • They provided sound evidence and strong arguments for their conclusion. There can be little doubt that at least some Palestinians are in fact descendants of the ancient Judeans, who converted to Islam after 638 CE, and became part of a gradual Arabization of the country
    • Yitzhak Ben-Zvi wrote “Obviously it would be mistaken to say that all the fellahin are descendants of the ancient Jews, but it can be said of most of them, or their core” [69]
    • Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi were of the opinion that they (Ashkenazi Jews) and the Palestinians had a shared ethnic origin, and initially thought that would be helpful in finding common cause. They completely walked away from this position after the riots of 1929
    • Some of the key evidence they presented in their 2 books:
      • 210 Occupied villages in Palestine still had Hebrew names
      • Also “tens of thousands” place names remained Hebrew (like springs, streams, mountains, ruins, settlements, valleys and hills)
      • There was a code of “fellahin law” known as Shariat al Khalil (the laws of the Patriarch Abraham), which was in use with Islamic law
      • Many villages did not only have mosques, but also shrines of the 3 Israelite patriarchs, kings and prophets
• DNA Research (like the 2017 study quoted in E6.2.3 above) confirmed the historical and archeological evidence now
• The significant twist out of Episode 6 is that most of the Ashkenazim are actually not ethnically descendants of the Ancient Judeans. So the Zionists who claimed that they had no ethnic roots in common with the Palestinians were actually correct after all. However, in an incredible twist of irony, it is for the exact opposite reason they imagined:
  • The Israelis, claiming to be descendants of the Ancient Judeans, mostly are not
  • While Palestinians, who don’t claim this lineage, mostly are 
• Reality can be stranger than fiction, and narratives can survive and be influential if they are ahistorical, and even if they claim the exact opposite of the historical record.

“The significant twist out of Episode 6 is that most of the Ashkenazim are actually not ethnically descendants of the Ancient Judeans. So the Zionists who claimed that they had no ethnic roots in common with the Palestinians were actually correct after all. However, in an incredible twist of irony, it is for the exact opposite reason they imagined:
* The Israelis, claiming to be descendants of the Ancient Judeans, mostly are not
* While Palestinians, who don’t claim this lineage, mostly are”

We are now ready to proceed to Episode 7 and investigate the founding of Zionism and the new narrative that entailed.

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