In Episode 123 [15] of the CounterVortex podcast [16], Bill Weinberg discusses the history of Khazaria [17], the medieval Turko-Jewish empire in what is now southern Russia and eastern Ukraine. While the fate of the mysterious Khazars has won much attention from scholars [18]—and controversy [19]—because of what it may reveal about the origin of the Jews of Eastern Europe, this question also touches on the origins of the Ukrainian people and state [20]. Whatever the validity of the "Khazar Thesis [21]" about the ethnogenesis [22] of the Ashkenazim, it is the Ukrainian Jews [23]—such as President Volodymyr Zelensky [24]—who are the most likely to trace a lineage to the Khazars. In 2021, Zelenksy and the Ukrainian parliament passed a law [25] recognizing the cultural and autonomous rights of three indigenous peoples of the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula: the Muslim Tatars [26] and the Jewish Krymchaks [27] and Karaites [28]. Of any Jews on Earth, it is these last two groups that have the best claim to the Khazar inheritance—and are now a part of the struggle for a free and multicultural Ukraine, in repudiation of the Russian neo-imperialist project. Listen on SoundCloud [15] or via Patreon [29].
Books discussed: The Jews of Khazaria [32] by Kevin Alan Brook; The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage [33] by Arthur Koestler; The Kuzari: In Defense of the Despised Faith [34] by Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi
Research assistance: David Bloom
Production by Chris Rywalt [35]
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