Wall St Journal: Where Do Jew Come From? - "The Invention of the Jewish People"

Enter Shlomo Sand. In a new book, "The Invention of the Jewish
People," the Tel Aviv University professor of history argues that
large numbers of Khazar Jews migrated westward into Ukraine, Poland
and Lithuania, where they played a decisive role in the establishment
of Eastern European Jewry. The implications are far-reaching: If the
bulk of Eastern European Jews are the descendents of Khazars—not the
ancient Israelites—then most Jews have no ancestral links to
Palestine. Put differently: If most Jews are not Semites, then what
justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East? By
attempting to demonstrate the Khazar origins of Eastern European
Jewry, Mr. Sand—a self-described post-Zionist who believes that Israel
needs to shed its Jewish identity to become a democracy—aims to
undermine the idea of a Jewish state.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703746604574464023091024180.html

OPINION: HOUSES OF WORSHIP OCTOBER 29, 2009, 8:34 P.M. ET Where Do
Jews Come From?

By EVAN R. GOLDSTEIN

This much is known: In the mid-eighth century, the ruling elite of the
Khazars, a Turkic tribe in Eurasia, converted to Judaism. Their
impetus was political, not spiritual. By embracing Judaism, the
Khazars were able to maintain their independence from rival
monotheistic states, the Muslim caliphate and the Christian Byzantine
empire. Governed by a version of rabbinical law, the Khazar Jewish
kingdom flourished along the Volga basin until the beginning of the
second millennium, at which point it dissolved, leaving behind a
mystery: Did the Khazar converts to Judaism remain Jews, and, if so,
what became of them?

Enter Shlomo Sand. In a new book, "The Invention of the Jewish
People," the Tel Aviv University professor of history argues that
large numbers of Khazar Jews migrated westward into Ukraine, Poland
and Lithuania, where they played a decisive role in the establishment
of Eastern European Jewry. The implications are far-reaching: If the
bulk of Eastern European Jews are the descendents of Khazars—not the
ancient Israelites—then most Jews have no ancestral links to
Palestine. Put differently: If most Jews are not Semites, then what
justification is there for a Jewish state in the Middle East? By
attempting to demonstrate the Khazar origins of Eastern European
Jewry, Mr. Sand—a self-described post-Zionist who believes that Israel
needs to shed its Jewish identity to become a democracy—aims to
undermine the idea of a Jewish state.

Published in Hebrew last year, "The Invention of the Jewish People"
was a best seller in Israel. In March, the French translation, also a
best seller, received the prestigious Aujourd'hui Award, which honors
the year's best nonfiction book. Past winners include such
intellectual titans as Raymond Aron, Milan Kundera and George Steiner.
"The Invention of the Jewish People" is being translated into a dozen
languages. Mr. Sand is delivering lectures this month in Los Angeles,
Berkeley, New York and elsewhere.

What should we make of Mr. Sand's radical revisionist history? There
is reason to be very skeptical. After all, we have been here before.
In 1976, Arthur Koestler published "The Thirteenth Tribe," which
argued that Diaspora Jews were a "pseudo-nation" bound by "a system of
traditional beliefs based on racial and historical premises which turn
out to be illusory." The genetic influence of the Khazars on modern
Jews is, he wrote, "substantial, and in all likelihood dominant."
Koestler's speculations were not novel. The connection between the
Khazars and the Jews of Eastern Europe had been debated by both
scholars and conspiracists (the two are not mutually exclusive) for
centuries.


In "The Invention of the Jewish People," Mr. Sand suggests that those
who attacked Koestler's book did so not because it lacked merit, but
because the critics were cowards and ideologues. "No one wants to go
looking under stones when venomous scorpions might be lurking beneath
them, waiting to attack the self-image of the existing ethnos and its
territorial ambitions." But Koestler was himself uneasy about
scorpions. The Khazar theory, he knew, was an article of faith among
anti-Semites and anti-Israel Arab politicians. Just a few months
before "The Thirteenth Tribe" was published, the Saudi Arabian
delegation to the United Nations declared Zionism illegitimate because
it was conceived by "non-Semitic Jews" rather than "our own Arab Jews
who are the real Semites." (An Israeli ambassador, wrongly, countered
that Koestler's book had been secretly subsidized by the
Palestinians.)
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