In speculating last night on the racial origin of Ashkenazi Jews, a friend passed along to me this site maintained by Kevin Alan Brook, Khazaria.com, dealing with the controversy over the origins of European Jewry.
Over a thousand years ago, the far east of Europe was ruled by Jewish
kings who presided over numerous tribes, including their own tribe: the
Turkic Khazars. After their conversion, the Khazar people used Jewish
personal names, spoke and wrote in Hebrew, were circumcised, had
synagogues and rabbis, studied the Torah and Talmud, and observed
Hanukkah, Pesach, and the Sabbath. The Khazars were an advanced
civilization with one of the most tolerant societies of the medieval
period. It hosted merchants from all over Asia and Europe. On these
pages it is hoped that you may learn more about this fascinating culture.
Among the historical paradigms for Jewish life in the U.S., why do we always batten on to the Holocaust, and the rise of the Jews in central Europe in the 1800s, resulting in anti-semitism? A story of disempowerment and dispossession and genocide. History doesn't repeat itself so neatly, as Tony Judt said 2 years back at NYU when he scolded Jews for convincing themselves that it was 1938 all over again. As Avraham Burg is saying now. Conversion may be the actual answer that American elites discover to the ascendancy of the Jews in the U.S., to the Jewish century, to the predominance of Jews in so many sectors of leadership. Journalist Campbell Brown, Mid East expert Anthony Lake, and power-wife Amy Emanuel are all converts to Judaism–and I imagine that respect for the powers-that-be played a part in their decisions. (Though yes, I admit that I lust after Dan Senor). Oh and Dara Torres. Conversion may also salve the Jewish fears re "continuity" and assimilation–the dropping Jewish numbers. You never know. I've said before that the Israel lobby has become an Establishment norm, imbibed and regurgitated even by the three-barrelled scions of the old order, Walter Russell Mead, son of a preacher man, now at the Council on Foreign Relations. I don't think this is a good thing, I see it as a form of corruption and brainwashing. C.f., Iraq. So do many others. But if Israel began treating its minority population half so well as we treat ours in the U.S., it could usher in a true golden age and light unto the world. Just a thought.
