Are today’s Jews descended from the Khazars? Empirical evidence negates theory

The theory that Jewish people are descended not from the 12 tribes of Israel but from an Eastern European kingdom called Khazar has been gaining traction again, but is there any truth to it?

Academic and specialist in Semitic languages, Dr. Michael G. Wechsler, has collated evidence pointing to the contrary, declaring the theory “scholastically debunked.” In a video released last Monday, Wechsler explains that this theory, lately promoted by the likes of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, has been widely rejected by historians, archaeologists, linguists, and geneticists.

Proponents of the theory say the Khazars, a nomadic people group of central Asia who converted to Judaism around the 9th century, were the true ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews today. Wechsler highlights the 1972 book by Hoshaat Harkavi, “Arab Attitudes to Israel,” which describes how this claim has been “peddled in the Arab world as an ideological weapon, targeting the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

Strangely, another book, “The Thirteenth Tribe” by Arthur Koestler in 1978, also endorsed this theory, despite Koestler being Jewish. He believed that distancing the Jewish people from the 12 tribes of Israel would deflect antisemitic hate, but in fact, it was antisemites who embraced the Khazar Theory with enthusiasm.

The Saudi Arabian delegate to the United Nations claimed that the theory “negated Israel’s right to exist," and neo-Nazi magazine, "The Thunderbolt" declared it the “political bombshell of the century” (Scammell, Michael. Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, 2009, p. 547). Today, the theory is popular among Palestinians, with the Palestinian Authority. President Mahmoud Abbas, religious leaders, and the media have all reinforced these claims.

The theory suggests that after the fall of the Khazar Empire in the latter half of the 10th century, the converted Khazars emigrated to Europe, establishing what is known as Ashkenazi European Jewry today, despite the fact that Jews had long been living in Europe before the Khazar Empire's dissolution.

Wechsler points out that the majority of Israeli Jews today are, in any case, not Ashkenazi but descended from Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews, “who have an established and well documented history in the Middle East and Mediterranean basin, including the land of Israel,” and blasted the Khazar Theory as “soundly disproven by the meticulous work of manifold scholars and scientists.”

Summarizing the main reasons for its rejection, Wechsler first outlines the unreliability of the few historical sources that might support the claim. He refers to “a handful of references in Muslim Arabic works, which were either contemporaneous with the Khazar Empire or composed soon after it was conquered by Svyatoslav of Rus around 970 CE,” which he says are based on “rumor and hearsay.”

There are also two Hebrew documents, a letter by the supposed king of the Khazars to the prominent Andalusian Jew Ḥasdai ibn Shapruṭ and an account of the Khazars' supposed conversion, which he says contradict each other and have been rightly judged to be pseudepigraphal.

Wechsler then argues that the notable silence from other classical Muslim historians and geographers, as well as from contemporary Jewish and Christian sources, also undermines the theory. That the Khazars existed is documented; that they were Jewish, not so much.

Professor Charles Stampper wrote, "In addition to this broad textual silence, there is no material evidence for the conversion of the Kazars to Judaism, or even for the presence of a significant Jewish community in Khazar lands.”

As an expert in Semitic languages, Wechsler also notes the absence of linguistic elements linking Ashkenazi Jews to the Khazars.
Neither the Germanic Yiddish language nor Jewish names show any influence from Central Asian languages. Rather, the linguistic roots support the veracity of the “long accepted scholarly view that Ashkenazi or European Jewry arose through migration up the Italian peninsula into the trading cities of the Rhine Valley, whence, after adopting the German stock of Yiddish, they eventually branched out into Europe and eastward into Russia,” he says.

The way Khazars are recorded as bowing prostrate to honor other men also casts serious doubt on claims that they had converted to Judaism, since Jews refuse to bow to anyone except God, which is what got Mordechai in such trouble in the biblical book of Esther.

A Jewish commentary by Saadia Gaon from around 935 C.E. states of the Khazars, "before the man of the best qualities among them, they do indeed prostrate themselves and worship him." Not exactly kosher.

In addition to all this historical evidence, Wechsler also cites proof that there is no meaningful genetic connection between Ashkenazi Jews and the Khazari people. He states that a 2012 paper, which made the link, has been rejected by the majority of geneticists because of several severe methodological flaws,” since it uses Caucasians, Armenians, and Georgians as DNA proxies for the long-gone Khazars, “despite there being no proven link between these groups.” 

Conversely, he presents a plethora of work on Jewish genome history by other researchers, including some of the field's leading geneticists such as Harry Ostrer, Michael Hammer, Gil Atzmon, and Doron Behar, saying their work consistently confirmed Behar’s conclusion that “Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations,” which trace back to the Levant.

“Even if there were some partial genetic link between the Khazars and Ashkenazi Jewry,” says Wechsler, “this would not matter since the borders of Jewish ethnicity have always been permeable to inclusion by means of conversion.” 

He continues, “The theoretical infusion of Khazar DNA into the collective Jewish genome would have no more bearing on the issue of collective Jewish indigeneity to the land of Israel than the actual infusion of Arab DNA into the collective Egyptian genome has on the issue of collective Egyptian indigeneity to Egypt,” before outlining the many different ethnic backgrounds that make up the Palestinian populace today.

Wechsler believes that the Khazar Theory, so often wielded against Jewish claims to indigeneity to the land of Israel, is roundly debunked due to its lack of strong historical, linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence. “Even if partial Khazar ancestry existed, it would not invalidate Jewish identity or indigeneity,” he concludes.