[lbo-talk] 2 fascinating talks by Prof. Shlomo Sand, (Tel Aviv U.) Thursday and Friday in NYC

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 13 15:28:28 PDT 2009


What you have to realize is that there were two kinds of Jews in Ukraine and the Caucasus and Lithuania, that is, there was roughly one religion shared by two (more than two) different ethnic groups, only one of which is called "evrei" (Jew) in Russian. There were 1) the Jews (evrei) who became part of the Russian Empire when Catherine the Great took in the territory that became the Pale. Then there were 2) the Turkic Jews (the Tats in Dagestan, the Krimchaks in the Caucasus, the Karaim in Ukraine and Lithuania, and the Georgian Jews). They were totally (are) totally different ethnically and as a result were not subject to the laws that governed lives of evei in the Pale (because their ancestoes had not killed Christ). That's why Russian uses different terms for an ethnic Jew and for a religious Jew. These Turkic Jewish groups may or not be Khazar remnants, but the Russian Empire thought they were, and they thought they were.  

----- Original Message ---- From: joel schalit <jschalit at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Wed, October 14, 2009 1:29:04 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 2 fascinating talks by Prof. Shlomo Sand, (Tel Aviv U.) Thursday and Friday in NYC

My paternal great grandmother dressed every bit the part of a Turkish peasant, and she was a Sephardi, from Poltava, who immigrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1882. The idea that there were Sephardim in that part of the Ukraine, and that they dressed like that, speaks reams about the kinds of migratory patterns Sand speaks of.

Best, Joel



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