[lbo-talk] Saudi anti-Semitism

[Chris Doss]

AFAIK the best contenders for remnants of the Khazars are probably the Karaim (not that there are many left) and Crimean Tatars (two related groups), the Krimchaks, and maybe the Tats (sometimes called Mountain Jews) of Dagestan and elsewhere in the Caucasus. For one thing they have the advantages of being 1) Turkik and 2) having unusual forms of Judaism (the Crimean Tatars are actually Muslim but have close connections to the Karaim). In fact this argument was made as far back as the mid-1800s by a Karaite scholar -- who went as far as forging documents -- as part of the (successful) campaign to get the Karaim non-Jewish legal status in the Russian Empire.

I actually met a Tat once. I couldn't believe it. They almost seemed almost quasimythical. ;)

--- On Thu, 7/17/08, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> I gather the Khazar/Caucasian mountain theory of the origin
> of the Ashkenazi Jews is disputed. (Well, what to do
> scholars do except for dispute things). It's a
> contender but there are others, I forget what. Even if it
> is true does not mean, however, that that some eastern
> European Jews are not at least in part descendants of the
> victims of the Crusaders' Programs. Jews migrated all
> over the place and kept kept chucked out of one place or
> another, and might have gone west, then been forced back
> east or migrated back east. 
>