General Russian consensus (caveat -- I am no expert) seems to be that both the Karaite Jews of Ukraine/Lithuania and the Crimean Tatars are of Khazar origin, the latter having converted to Islam. Interestingly, the Karaite Jews (who got equal right in the 1860s, supported the Whites and later infamously collaborated with the Nazis -- but who can blame them? What was the option?) and as far as I know the Georgian and Mountain Jews were treated differently under the tsars than the "Polish" Jews of the Pale, maybe because they were viewed as indigenous. As far as I can tell the Karaites were viewed as just another Turkic tribe who happened to go to synagogue.
The word "Zhid" was replaced by "Yevrei" (Hebrew) officially in the late 1700s by Imperial Decree of Her Majesty Catherine the Enlightened Despot, supposedly because of intervention by her lover, the philo-Semite Grigorii Potemkin. He should be remembered for that, not the villages thing. ;)
--- Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
> This seems to be strong support for the old theory
> (popularized
> by Koestler in "The Thirteenth Tribe") that the East
> European
> jewry, whose language came to be known as Yiddish,
> originally was largely
> composed of Khazarian Jewish refugees from the
> Mongol invasions.
>
> Shane Mage
>
> "Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and
> does not
> consent to be called
> Zeus."
>
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
____________________________________________________ Sell on Yahoo! Auctions – no fees. Bid on great items. http://auctions.yahoo.com/