Next year in Khazaria?

This is Arthur Koestler's controversial “The Thirteenth Tribe”, first published in 1976. Despite Koestler's best intentions, the book has become an anti-Semitic classic, supposedly proving that most Jews are really Turkic Khazars from southern Russia and hence can't claim ancestral rights in Palestine (curiously, the Palestinian Arabs are seen as true blue Canaanites under this scenario). I heard of Koestler's book the first time through an anti-Semitic screed, written by one Ahmed Rami.

The book's bad reputation is somewhat unfortunate, since the first half of “The Thirteenth Tribe” gives an excellent overview of the history of the Khazar Empire, an early medieval state formation north of the Black Sea, the Turkic rulers of which converted to Judaism for reasons of politic. Koestler also discusses Byzantine, Hungarian, Russian and Viking affairs. The Khazar theory is presented in the second half of the book. Today, genetic research on Jews shows that a substantial portion of the Ashkenazim really do descend from the Middle East and that most foreign admixture is from southern Europe rather than the Russian steppes. Koestler couldn't have known this, and I consider his tome a brave work of intellectual exploration.

It should also be noted that virtually *all* theories can be given anti-Semitic spins. That most Jews are “Semitic” could be used to prove that Jews are an “alien race” in Europe, which explains the seemingly peculiar fact that the Khazar theory used to be popular among liberal Jews before it became an anti-Semitic staple (since the theory entails the notion that Jews, being descended from many different ethnic groups, cannot be a “race” apart).

In the end, I give this work, equally fascinating and infuriating, four stars out of five.