On Jan 15, 2010, at 3:17 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
> I know this is kind of an oldish thread, but... I've been reading L.
> Sprague De Camp's 1970s biography of HP Lovecraft, and apparently
> this idea that Eastern European Jews are fake Jews descended from
> Asiatic Khazar hordes was a common belief among American racists in
> the early 20th century, such as Lovecraft. (Amusingly, since his
> wife was a Ukrainian Jew. Racists are weird.) So I think the use to
> which Koestler put to the idea is a lot more original than the idea
> itself.
>
"fake?" "hordes?" In any event the idea of the Khazars as the
Ashkenazim is a bit older than that. As Koestler noted, the tenth-
century leader of the oriental Jews, Saadiah Gaon, identified the then-
flourishing Jewish empire as descended from the Biblical character
Ashkenaz. Since Saadiah lived in Babylonia he had access to
traditional information about where were the "Mountains of Darkness"
beyond which Sargon II deported Israelites in the late eighth century
bce.
My original reply to the original message:
On Nov 29, 2009, at 8:52 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, Chris Doss wrote:
>
>> This is why attempts like that of Koestler (his was bogus anyway, I
>> think, since Eastern European Jews, with the possible exception of
>> a few small Turkic groups, are probably not descended from the
>> Khazars) to argue rationally with anti-Semites are totally fruitless.
>
> It's worse than that, actually. It's not only that it's pointless
> to argue rationally with an idee fixe. And it's not only that his
> archeology was bad. It's that (a) his argument depended on
> accepting the anti-semites' first premise, namely if Christ was
> killed, some people must be collectively responsible, including unto
> their descendants 2 millenia later; and (b) it threw the Sephardim
> under the bus. He only proved the Ashkenazi didn't do it.
It would seem that neither of these gentlemen has read The Thirteenth
Tribe, which is about the history of his people (the Hungarian Jews
knew they came, with the Magyars, from the East not the West) and no
more a work of archaeology or anti-anti-semitism than The Midwife Toad
is a work of anti-anti-Lysenkoism. And it has not a word about the
"Christ-Killer" race slander.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com>
>
> ....It's worse than that, actually. It's not only that it's
> pointless to argue rationally with an idee fixe. And it's not only
> that his archeology was bad. It's that (a) his argument depended on
> accepting the anti-semites' first premise, namely if Christ was
> killed, some people must be collectively responsible, including unto
> their descendants 2 millenia later; and (b) it threw the Sephardim
> under the bus. He only proved the Ashkenazi didn't do it.....
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos