Talk:Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry/Archive 6

ADF on 9/11
The term "Khazarian Mafia" sometimes is used by antisemitic media as a derogatory term for Jews, especially in connection with conspiracy theories such as 9/11. Nishidani (talk) 21:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Leads summarize. They are not places where youjust plunk stuff without glancing at the body of the article.
 * This is a recondite detail.
 * The ADL paragraph is too generic for a scholarly article.
 * I for one have read extensively on this topic, and no doubt there are some morons on the internet who connect the Khazar theory to 9/11, but it has escaped my radar.
 * WP:Undue applies here, apart from not reflecting any extensive text below on the Khazarian mafia or 9/11.


 * oppose change, support cite to the ADL. It's informative and is indeed quite common online. Perhaps you are simply not in touch with many internet forums like reddit or the youtube comments. Andre🚐 22:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Overall, it sounds much more like a factoid more suitable for the 9/11 or new world order conspiracy pages, linking back to here for expansion as to where the term ' Khazarian' derives from, but it is just that: derived from this subject. As a data point, it is entirely tangential and insubstantial to the topic here. Conspiratorial, antisemitic mumblings using this notion as a namesake neither add to nor detract from the actual hypothesis itself. It is moot point material. While it could be hosted in the section on related prejudice here, the ADL's specific take is not more relevant or worthy of mention than any of the other examples there, and is certainly not due in the lead at the level of source quality presented by a fleeting glossary entry. If it is a term with serious currency, there are bound to be better sources out there, and even if there are more reliable sources substantiating it, it would still be an aside here with no more relevance than any of the other content in the Antisemitism section. Iskandar323 (talk) 00:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't read twitter, reddit, facebook, instagram etc.etc. I will read any scholarly study of what those trash networks throw up. The antisemitic fringe-idiot aspect of Khazar conspiracy theories was around for decades, beyond the radar of most scholars until Barkun explored it and in doing so, provided us with an excellent scholarly RS for this rubbish. Most people who contribute to twitter, reddit, facebook, instagram probably wouldn't recognize the word 'Khazars'. If what the ADL states constitutes a significant field, then that will come under mainstream and scholarly scrutiny, and we will use it, but certainly not as a stand-alone undue piece of trivia in the lead.Nishidani (talk) 11:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Nishidani, I am not advocating you should dive into the wretched hive of scum and villainy of social media, but you should recognize that many people do including our readers and they will benefit from a reliable source such as the ADL providing information on such things. I agree the fringe-idiot aspect of the Khazar stuff is not new or unique to social media, but it happens to be by and large the most prominent existing modern usage of the thing. Yes, it's extremely pervasive and we are doing a disservice by not covering what RS educationally say about it. Andre🚐 14:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It's a matter of editing per rules. The addition fails WP:MOS on leads, and WP:Undue and perhaps WP:Recentism. The rule is, wait for a reliable source. The ADL is reliable for a lot of things, but way below the quality for sourcing which we have here. There is a whole genre of scholarship which follows all these trends in the rumour-circuits of the digital universe, and until one comes up that gives us hard data, and analysis, a wee para on the ADL's website defining the term has zero value. As you can see in recent edits, one strives to get a scholarly source, and then, add also the sources that scholarship drew on. The curious reader doesn't need to take anything on trust (I don't, in any case). When I read the ADL snippet, I wondered why they don't, as we have abundantly in the Soviet culture sphere where the Khazar-mafia crap is subject to serious analysis (Rossman, Shirelnikov etc) tell us more. That kind of 'stuff' just leaves me, a reader, wondering. I only watch TV to see a film once a day, and use only a few sites on the Internet, otherwise I live disconnected to chat because though a strong swimmer, I only venture out into the infinite sea of opinion when I can see a life-buoy of scholarship. I do, twice a day, for an hour or so chat around in bars, and have so in several countries this last decade. Whenever I've mentioned the Khazars, to young and old (I'm often asked what I do, then what I write etc)  no one to date has the slightest idea of what the fuck I am referring to, average, often but not always, well-educated italians, Americans, Australians, English, French, German and Japanese folks. They all work smartphones, Ipads, and social media quite intensively. That is why the ADL note is not enough. Who are they talking out, on what media, in which country, how widespread, if at all, is that usage? Nishidani (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I am also incredibly certain few people know who the fuck the Khazars were. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This is anecdata. Yes, the Khazars are pretty obscure and most people have not heard of them. But they are disproportionately used in antisemitic Russian/Ukrainian discourse. I'm perfectly fine with moving this content out of the lead and into the body, and simply summarizing differently in the lead. But the ADL is considered reliable for such topics. There's an academic work that covers history through the 70s-90s from the perspective of 2005 and one from 2001 and also appears as a chapter here. Here's an article from the Canadian anti-hate network which might not be suitable as a reference, but should lend credence to the idea that the Khazar Jewish antisemitic conspiracy theory is widespread Andre🚐 17:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Those sources are all about antisemitism, which has a section and is referenced in the lead, but none seem to mention the 'Khazarian mafia', which was the particular term inserted into the lead as asserted by ADL. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:15, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The ADL is sufficiently reliable to substantiate the truth of such a claim. There are indeed Qanon and neonazi individuals who have posited the existence of a Khazarian mafia as a conspiracy theory about Jews. Strange, but true. There is no actual entity in history or otherwise that would be known as the Khazarian mafia that I know of. Andre🚐 19:35, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay. The addition fails WP:MOS on leads, and WP:Undue and perhaps WP:Recentism. Nishidani (talk) 19:08, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I am fine with moving it to the section on antisemitism instead of the lead. Andre🚐 19:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Nope as I said, it is a shoddy source. You refer me to Shnirelman above with a link, apparently unfamiliar with the fact that we use him already in the article. There are many things to improve here, and just badgering on about antisemitism when one sees the word 'Khazars', and a single shoddy snippet of an opinion when the text covers that aspect well, is time-wasting. The article can't cram in every single element on antisemitism's vast and reticular history. The article must summarize what those popular sites you refer me to show no awareness of, the scholarship on the history of that hypothesis (incomplete: there's no mention of Carl Vogt  though both Weissenberg (1895) and von Kutschner (1909) use him, to note one of several things rereading this and the primary sources referred to, made me think of. Vogt is the idiot who seeded the Eastern/Western Jew meme into the pseudo-science of phrenology, and indirectly caused serious scholars to explain the 'Eastern Jew' as Khazarian.); the antisemitic angle (mostly done), and the genetics (pretty thorough but poor and misleading paraphrases in much of the material used). I know I'm biased: I don't want encyclopedic articles to just paraphrasse the clumsy and simplistic remarks of anonymous sources (who wrote the ADL para?). Anyone can google that stuff and form a strong opinion inn two minutes without even understanding the context that comes from: the reader deserves state of the art scholarship on all significant aspects, not trivia from the whispering margins.Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Why is it a problem that I brought up Shnirelman? Is he not relevant to shed some light on this? I'm not opposed to improving the rigor and the consistency of our academic material, but that doesn't preclude "shoddy" (according to Nishidani) but otherwise reliable (according to Wikipedia consensus) material from websites and reliable news sources. It's a net improvement for our article on Khazars to mention the "Khazarian Mafia" even though that is definitely not a real thing, just some weird conspiracy theory. You might be interested in the work by Valjean, User:Valjean/Essay/Why Wikipedia documents opinions and nonsense. Andre🚐 19:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay. I'll parse that trash for you. Measure it against what both the Khazar main article and the history described in this article state, and you get reductive caricature to the point of moronic simplification.
 * "Khazars were a group of Eastern European non-Jews who allegedly converted to Judaism in the eighth century. Some antisemites believe that modern Jews are descended from those Khazars, rather than from the ancient Israelites described in the Bible. This theory aims to dispute the legitimacy of those who practice Judaism today, undermining both the religious tenets of Judaism and Jews' historical connection to the land of Israel. Some antisemties refer to Jews as the 'Khazarian Mafia.' Some have associated the Khazars with ISIS and others have even claimed that the Khazarian Mafia is responsible for 9/11."

ADF is not a reliable source and can not be used as a source for anything. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 20:19, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Nope. WP:RSPADL Andre🚐 20:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * 'allegedly'. The consensus that the Jewish documents of the period refer to some real historic core in a conversion of some kind, in the Khazar elite. Our article gives the consensus and then gives the dissenting minority view (Shampfer/Moshe Gil). It is neutral.
 * 'Some antisemites believe . . .' Note that this immediate reference to 'antisemitism' ignores anything about Khazar history. The only thing that interests the ADL definition of 'Khazars' is that after 6 centuries in which Jewish scholarship discussed it, in the 20th century it was abused by fringe antisemites. So the ADK is only interested in defining a very broad topic and history, but creating the equation>:'Here the word Khazars, think antisemitism' even if this concerns only 'some' antisemites.
 * Some antisemities think that modern Jews are descended from those Khazars'. Note the ineptitude. The Khazarist antisemites argue that Ashkenazim descend from Khazars, not all Jews. To those who are familiar with the topic, one could also write:'Some Jews think that modern Ashkenazim are descended from those Khazars'.
 * An alternative is given: some antisemites (falsely) believe 'Jews' are Khazar descendants, as opposed to being descended from the Israelites. The latter is the unquestioned, implicit truth suggested by the extreme juxtaposition. No one believes Jews are descended from the Israelites tout court.
 * 'This theory aims to dispute the legitimacy of those who practice Judaism today.' Oh really? What scholarship on the issue states that? To argue for Khazar descent for Ashkenazim in the 8th century CE has no relevance to the 'legitimacy' of Judaism, whose core scriptures long precede the historical emergence of the Khazars, Jewish converts or not.
 * 'This theory aims to undermine . . .Jews' historical connection to the Land of Israel.' Historically, the theory existed for 150 years before the foundation of Israel, was largely entertained by Jewish thinkers. Both some Jews and some antisemites think that the hypothesis would undermine the cogency of the standard claim to make a state. That the area of Palestine/Israel has deep historic resonance for Jews is denied only by illiterate lunatics. Ergo loose and loaded language to engineer a prejudice.
 * Some Jews refer to Jews as the 'Khazarian mafia'. This is shorthand crap that circulates in Slavic antisemitic circles, as our article shows. The term is otherwise unfamiliar to English speakers.
 * Some associate the Khazars with ISIS. There you go. I've spent a decade, with some months of intense focus, while mostly just keeping abreast of the field, and failed to note the Khazar-ISIS connection. No doubt that crepitative idea farts its way around obscure social sites, but it is trivia. M;afia and ISIS ergo Khazars here is showcasing a trivial connection not to reveal anything, in my view, but to make sure readers, when they encounter the word Khazars, think of ISIS/mafia/9/11 =Jews, creating self-fulfilling prophecy. I.e. the average reader would never connect this up, but would be frightened into thinking, were they Jews, that when Khazars are mentioned there is nothing to it but code-language for a conspiratorial extremist antisemitic fantasies.
 * All this gimpy trivia was penned anonymously, clearly by an historical ignoramus, or a manipulative POV-pusher. That it finds a voice on the ADL's site doesn't thereby accredit the relevance. If anything, it undermines the general reliability of the ADL. We don't do one-eyed scarifying bullshit-artists on wikipedia. Now, I'm going to attend to the article, that needs close and serious review and overhauling/updating. I've already corrected sedveral errors in just the first two sections, while this pointless argufying drones on about what should never even have been considered RS let alone pertinent to the lead. Nishidani (talk) 10:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but you're conflating. The article can be improved. Wikipedia consensus also considers the ADL default reliable by established consensus. Now there can be a local consensus for specific statements that aren't reliable, but this is WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:IDHT, and WP:SOURCEGOODFAITH Andre🚐 12:14, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a laugh, citing WP:IDONTLIKEIT, when I argued that I don't like airhead comments, wherever they appear, even in the ADL website, and WP:IDHT, when you have repeated yourself ignoring any attempt to address the solid reasons given for dismissing a clearly inaccurate piece of dumddowned spin on the Khazars as adequate to minimal requirements for RS criteria on scholarship as the ideal venue for sourcing articles, particularly of this complexity.  Still, back to some serious reading and editing.Nishidani (talk) 15:01, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems that we disagree but when it comes to a policy-based reason why the ADL is unreliable we return to ad hominem arguments. You can look in the edit history of the article, but I am not one of the major contributors to this article. I am not saying that we need to say that the Khazars are associated with 9/11 or ISIS. But you are all over the place in your responses including plenty of fairly aggressive, throwing your weight around type of talk. I have never said you should stop editing with improvements. All I am saying is that there's a Qanon usage of the Khazar conspiracy theory. This theory involves a posited Rothschild Khazarian mafia or some other such nonsense. I am not saying we should make the whole article or the lead about that. But I do think if the ADL is mentioning it, while we don't need to verbatim copy the ADL, the ADL is presumed reliable enough to substantiate this, and that it's a net improvement to the article to WP:PRESERVE such content rather than summarily excluding it on the basis that ADL is unreliable (it isn't), or that some POV pusher or ignoramus must have added this (bad faith, and irrelevant). Andre🚐 19:00, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * NB: generally reliable - the standards of thoroughness in any given piece of content still apply: it doesn't mean than any old half-arsed glossary entry on their corporate website is suddenly gold-plated. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * For material this obscure, one could also quite readily cry WP:ECREE. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:39, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that's a well-formed and meaningful argument, but are we actually disputing that it is sufficiently well-sourced that such a conspiracy theory exists or just doing so to prove the point? I'm willing to do some research to improve sourcing about it, there also could be as Nishidani said, a RECENTISM bias. I still do think that the Qanon usage of the Khazar conspiracy is worth documenting provided and only provided that reliable sources document it. So it's valid to ask me to find more sources, but I still think the ADL is de facto reliable enough to be one of those sources purely for documenting the existence and basic characteristics of a conspiracy theory, much as we might use the SPLC or another kind of think tank sort of advocacy organization for basic factual research data about hate groups. Andre🚐 19:05, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The former. I'm genuinely not convinced at this stage that antisemitic conspiracy theories drawing in references to the Khazars specifically in some sort of NWO or 'mafia'-type setup, is a particularly widespread trope. It seems fairly fringe and worth supporting with multiple sources, but yes, I agree that if multiple sources align on this, then the ADL source is fine to stay as a reference point. I don't think it's badly unreliable, just a rather trivial titbit when taken in isolation. Alone, it does not present a particularly compelling case that these are memes that find currency in anything but most extreme of fringe circles. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:25, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * You can find this crap on QAnon and Stormfront and David Dukes and numerous other websites catering to the lunatic fringe. I've never read any of that 'stuff'. If I want to learn about a neurosis/psychosis, I read competent psychologists who delve into those kinds of discourse (and I certainly don't trust any tabloid or sketchy mainstream paragraph written for the general public. It's the same here. Efron 2013 mentions Stormfront, for example (and he's also interesting on genetics papers like those of Behar and Elhaik showing how embedded that scientific work still remains in conceptions that arose centuries ago). My caution is also due to the fact that billions of people are on social media forums, and anything can be said, shouted, touted and of course snipped out to give the impression that some group, religious ethnic or otherwise is under a massive threat. That is precisely why we need high quality analytical studies that use sophisticated statistical models that allow research to establish what noise out there has impact, and what is just marginal chat or rage by groupies of minor sites set up by grievance entrepreneurs.Nishidani (talk) 21:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with you it's loony stuff, but in case you weren't following US politics on the right, there are politicians and even trolls on this very website pushing antisemitic theories from the Republican Congresspeople such as Greene and Boebert. In fact a number of recent incidents with gun violence in synagogues or insurrections in Congress have centered on right wing conspiracy activists. I'm not at all trying to promote it or encourage you read it, but I do think Wikipedia should debunk it. Efron sounds like a good place for me to look next. Do I think that there's a lot of daily risk from right wing conspiracy stuff? No, but there are many worrying risks of right-wing fascism in the US. You're not obligated to peruse such distasteful material. However, I see value in educating if we can. Andre🚐 21:57, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Nishidani made a good point at 10:45, 16 June 2023 ("would be frightened into thinking, were they Jews, that when Khazars are mentioned there is nothing to it but code-language for a conspiratorial extremist antisemitic fantasies."). I saw several Jewish people fly off the handle on Facebook and Twitter whenever Khazars were mentioned in neutral and positive ways and the moderator of Facebook's "Tracing the Tribe" genealogy group started banning discussion of Khazars altogether. Also, the following review at Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5079905986) argued that the children's novel Black Bird, Blue Road had no right to have Jewish Khazar characters because that supposedly reinforces antisemitic ideas: "The claim that Khazaria was a Jewish kingdom is a long-standing inaccuracy that has been transformed into a pernicious lie by antisemites who want to deny the Jewish identity of Ashkenazi Jews. Despite having a Jewish author, this book is dangerously subversive antisemitism because it provides the scaffolding for the broader readership to believe that antisemitic Khazar origin stories are grounded in truth. Unacceptable that a major publisher would greenlight this." At the end of the day, the only sources that matter when it comes to Khazars are scholarly in nature, not the paranoid ravings of antisemites on social media and Bitchute. 172.58.242.203 (talk) 07:40, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * That's interesting, the gist of it is already in Singerman 2004, which is used here. But the banning of a Khazar children's book by a Jewish author indeed is symptomatic of the much more dangerous trend in the US to gut school or local libraries of anything politically incorrect. This manoeuvre started against the so-called 'woke' (what a stupid phrase) constituency, and now, with the principle spreading like Covid, has the unintended lashback effect of removing the Bible, something the originators of  bibliophobic book-disappearing hadn't grasped as the logical consequence of trying to control what children read. The art of education is not controlling what one reads: it's getting the young to learn to read, and training them how to read, anything, rather than have them sucked into the miasmic drivel of quick-fix impressionism they get on the basically illiterate webuniverse of social chat. There is a vast physical difference between sitting down, alone, and parsing slowly a book in your hand, and thumbing down a digital thread as you are interrupted by other distractive alerts, and constantly switch back and forth.
 * The only way to combat this - no one can muffle the airhead arseholery of twitterdom and Faecesbookless ranters on this or anything else is simply to stand outside the arena of discursive ranterdom, and get the historical facts down, thoroughly, calmly, neutrally on the default encyclopedia that is wikipedia. I may sound harsh in my contempt for meme machines and the meatheads who feed them to churn out an inhumane pabulum for an unwitting public of avid consumers, and flaunting a parlous insouciance to what might look like an ominous rumbling from the Dostoievskian underground of ressentiment, that global coalition of hate-spewing simpletons. But one should be wary of playing into their game. You never can with antisemites or any other hate-group's badgering antics. Dismiss Koestler as a 'black belt of Jewish self-hatred' is a catchy rhetorical gambit, but it only elicits in those who wish to believe this nonsense, the thought:'There they go again. The Jewish mafia who try to control any argument will say anything to hide their embarrassment, even attack their own.' and the to-and-fro of supercilious badinage kicks off again. The David Dukes of this world want to be noticed, want to be cited, at length. Every critical mention makes their day.Nishidani (talk) 08:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I completely agree. The banning of books should not take place. The "anti-woke" crusade is a joke and a sham at this point. However how I apply this admirable crusade against censorship and in favor of free information is to document and debunk these zombie wrong ideas, like an international Jewish conspiracy or what-have-you. Another book being banned by the anti-wokes is Maus. So I'm not quite sure how we go from "let's not censor/ban books" to "don't dismiss ideas from the David Dukes of the world because that is platforming them." These would seem to be 2 ideas in conflict. Andre🚐 19:40, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I can't see the transition. Books should not be banned-that only feeds into conspiracy theories.And we should just list the major antisemitic figures, like Duke, who use the Khazar theory to attack Jews. As the articles stands we do this. Should we give extensive details about Duke's use of Koestler or even Elhaik? No, that would be platforming Duke and his half-baked misreadings of the Khazar story. There is nothing original to Duke in this regard: he trots out, like all his kind,  the  crass clichés that the lunatic fringe has kept repeating since the 1920s.The best service wiki can do with stuff like this is to  detail the history of the concept, incidentally showing that Jewish scholars have had no problem discussing its merits and failings with that open-minded acuity that is a hallmark of their tradition. We show, for example, that people like Weissenberg explored it to lend dignity to Ostjuden who suffered immensely from slavic antisemitism, but also were somewhat looked down on by Western Jews. We show the theory proved to be heuristically very fruitful because the possible role of Jews in Khazaria spurred an intensive scholarly focus on that area which has been productive of many wonderful books and articles on a once obscure and marginal  area of history; we show that Poliak, two decades into his aliyah as a committed Zionist, could reformulate the theory, tie up what he saw as loose ends, and feel no embarrassment at suggesting large numbers of Jews might not have an 'Israelitic' descent; we could show that Koestler, so thoroughly Zionist that he militated in the Irgun, published his book not to invalidate the Israel he strongly supported, but to attempt (obviously he failed) to disarm the virulent tradition of antisemitism in Europe: 'if your  hangup is about 'semitic people' why attack communities among you for a millenium who do not descend from a semitic people' seems to be the point of his interesting but shaky thesis. To him, the Khazar theory was an powerful instrument to eviscerate the racist premises of antisemitism: Elhaik also can be read  in this sense -   he appears to think that being Jewish has nothing to do with race (genetics),  that an Ethiopean Beta or Yemeni Jew. or Kaifeng-descended Chinese person who has made aliyah, is a fellow-Jew regardless of their chromosomal idiosyncrasies.
 * Then we have our section of antisemitism, with its parade of fatuous grievance-mongering Jew-haters from the margins touting a dull cliché, which assumes that it is precisely 'race' which constitutes inexpugnably, a Jew. And it is no wonder that most of them would have been comfortable in Hitler's Germany. This is true even of the Christian identitarians and even Christian Zionists (a much larger constituency that your usual antisemitic rabble, as Singerman I think notes), who as most Jews and Israelis know, support Israel precisely because they are theologically convinced that Israel's existence is a necessary prelude to the extinction of Jews, the coming of the Messiah, and the redemption of Christianity, which mothered antisemitism, as the final outcome of history. Matched against the fascinating, predominantly infra-Jewish scholarly tradition of Khazar studies, the antisemitic crew are rather pathetic ignoramuses, who deserve, each briefly, mention only as antisemites, who would be so even if the Khazar theory did not exist. That is I think what we have in this article, which didn't start out to prove anything, but gives that impression after one has gone through the scholarship. We need to take as our model the same serene objectivity everywhere exemplified by the Encyclopedia Judaica (2nd ed.2007 vol.12 pp 108-114) which throughout shows no trace of anxiety or nervousness about feeding antisemitic feelings, or any intimidated need to rebut the morons who abuse the Khazar story to attack Jews. To tell Jewish readers to think that Khazars is just an antisemitic fantasy, as unfortunately far too many organizations that take on a remit to fight antisemitism, is to deprive Jews of a fascinating episode in their history, to impoverish  the immensely variegated dimensions of Judaism, and replace pride at traditions of great historical depth and variety with an unwarranted timidity and errant defensiveness.Nishidani (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Then we have our section of antisemitism, with its parade of fatuous grievance-mongering Jew-haters from the margins touting a dull cliché, which assumes that it is precisely 'race' which constitutes inexpugnably, a Jew. And it is no wonder that most of them would have been comfortable in Hitler's Germany. This is true even of the Christian identitarians and even Christian Zionists (a much larger constituency that your usual antisemitic rabble, as Singerman I think notes), who as most Jews and Israelis know, support Israel precisely because they are theologically convinced that Israel's existence is a necessary prelude to the extinction of Jews, the coming of the Messiah, and the redemption of Christianity, which mothered antisemitism, as the final outcome of history. Matched against the fascinating, predominantly infra-Jewish scholarly tradition of Khazar studies, the antisemitic crew are rather pathetic ignoramuses, who deserve, each briefly, mention only as antisemites, who would be so even if the Khazar theory did not exist. That is I think what we have in this article, which didn't start out to prove anything, but gives that impression after one has gone through the scholarship. We need to take as our model the same serene objectivity everywhere exemplified by the Encyclopedia Judaica (2nd ed.2007 vol.12 pp 108-114) which throughout shows no trace of anxiety or nervousness about feeding antisemitic feelings, or any intimidated need to rebut the morons who abuse the Khazar story to attack Jews. To tell Jewish readers to think that Khazars is just an antisemitic fantasy, as unfortunately far too many organizations that take on a remit to fight antisemitism, is to deprive Jews of a fascinating episode in their history, to impoverish  the immensely variegated dimensions of Judaism, and replace pride at traditions of great historical depth and variety with an unwarranted timidity and errant defensiveness.Nishidani (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Heavy use of Shlomo Sand
Shlomo Sand's book The Invention of the Jewish People is extensively used in this article, including as a source for facts. While Sand is noteworthy and should be discussed here, we should not be using his controversial book as a source for facts without attribution. Right? BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I totally agree. A noteworthy book, but clearly not the most trustworthy source regarding, say, the origins of Ashkenazi Jews, as genetic tests have already demonstrated. Tombah (talk) 17:15, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Sand is an academic expert, on what grounds would you say he cannot be cited for facts? Where other experts disagree then sure attribute both. But just saying "controversial" does not in any way mean "not reliable".  nableezy  - 17:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Virtually every academic book I read has an error or two, sometimes several (rereadiing a work by Ritchie Robertson recently, I noted he got a date wrong, out by a year for example). That doesn't make them untrustworthy. Since Sand deals extensively with the topic of this article, all that is required is for editors wishing to challenge him as a source for this or that fact, to show where he gets it wrong, and we use another source then. Nishidani (talk) 17:27, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd say the over-reliance on Behar is more worrying. As a pop-geneticist with a commercial operation providing genetic testing, he has a significant conflict of interest with the research that he engages in. It's in his interest for the data to be led towards the conclusion that a reading of genetic samples can produce meaningful, conclusive findings, since that is the fantasy his company sells. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * That isn't a legitimate criticism of Behar. His published genetic studies are not tied to his former position (Chief mtDNA Scientist) at Family Tree DNA - he no longer works there - in the sense of trying to foster any agenda through the company, although he did utilize numerous Jewish as well as non-Jewish Family Tree DNA customers' mitochondrial samples for which they had granted permission for use in studies like his because Family Tree DNA's database was larger than any other at the time so new discoveries were being made there that could not be made elsewhere at the time. He used those samples to expand the mitochondrial tree, which is a non-ideological pursuit. His main paper using them was entitled "A “Copernican” Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from its Root", https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322232/ Behar did not write the papers to advertise Family Tree DNA's services. Meanwhile, nowadays, another geneticist referenced in this entry, Eran Elhaik, overtly references his own commercial interests on his blog https://khazardnaproject.wordpress.com: "Over the years I developed many DNA tests and DNA testing kits for the public, health, and government from the Genographic Project to the Ancient DNA Origins. Below are some of my most popular public tests, including Ancient DNA Origins and its ancient DNA testing kit, the GPS Origins, and the Bronze Age test. Try them out." And he links to pages where some of those tests are offered for sale. (Genographic Project has been discontinued so there is no link to it.)172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The following advertisement was posted 18 May 2023 by Eran Elhaik at https://www.facebook.com/KhazarDnaProject/posts/pfbid0i3j9t3Vgt6sX5DYEBMkyp1n7JpB9WSW6JYsHQ5hMYZjbpMwEpSLf3nxM15Koo5T2l
 * "Discover the Untold Stories in Her DNA with Our Ancient DNA Origins Test!"
 * "Enjoy a 30% discount until the end of the month on all our tests and subscriptions!"
 * You have a problem with this sort of thing? 172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:27, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * There is already a very large section on criticism of Elhaik's study, so that's rather moot. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:40, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Iskandar323 I’m interested in this Ancient Dna Origins as I ran into them on a Facebook group. Do you know anything about them? Besides the fact that there are a lot of coupons! Doug Weller  talk 21:10, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Another professional geneticist with a commercial interest who was important in early genetic research was Bryan Sykes, founder of the company Oxford Ancestors. See, for example, Genetic history of the British Isles. 172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:40, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree largely with Bob - Sand is controversial, not authoritative, and should be attributed. That is also true for the more pro-Israeli-nationalistic authors as well. Andre🚐 22:51, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm in agreement with you two and Tombah on this.172.56.217.228 (talk) 22:57, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * If the criterion is 'controversy', then what applis to Sand would apply to Behar, and not simply for COI. It is obvious that much of the output on 'Jewish' genetics is agenda-driven, i.e. to ground the national claim that Israel's foundational policy, as premised on a 'return' of Jews to their homeland, in an ostensible empirically-demonstrated descent of all Jews from some original Israelitic 'stock' local to the area of Palestine/Israel. It is true also historically that the Khazar hypothesis was hijacked by antisemites to 'prove', not the obverse,, i.e. the non-indigineity of Jews to Palestine/Israel, but rather to claim Jews were not 'Caucasian' but 'Turks', 'Asiatic' and therefore a threat to white civilisation. The geneticists who pushed for a 'Levantine' origin haven't, after two decades, much ground to stand on - Behar's results elicit the same profile more or less as Elhaik's revised view, whatever component exists of a line in Jewish ancestry hailing from that area, is located much further to the north, northern Turkey.
 * Everybody challenging Sand here has been asked to provide examples of material harvested from Sand which are historically controversial. Silence. It is lazy to avoid close editing by simply making abstract challenges that relieve one of the effort to actually read the book and the related scholarship. but above this article, to identity what one considers problematical. So indicate where the text using Sand is problematical, so we can address the issue. Harry Ostrer makes bizarre claims in his book, which are totally unhistorical, and we don't use that crap. Likewise with Sand. The article as I originally wrote it has nothing at all to say about the merits of the Khazar hypothesis. In that sense, it was neither an endorsement or a rebuttal. It simply outlined the genealogy of the idea. Unfortunately, passionate POVs are aroused and the article gets jammed up by unreadable chunks of genetics which are tedious and whose only function is to disprove what doesn't need disproof. It is obvious that the 'Jews' do not descend from the Khazars, just as it is obvious that the 'Jews' do not descend from the Israelites, except as cultural heirs of the latter, which, for that matter, we all are, at least those of us who were and are raised within the framework of Western and Semitic civilizations.Nishidani (talk) 07:52, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I have seen you state this before. But I am not sure that is the necessarily the only interpretation (at the risk of derailing the conversation, which I hope not to do). Elhaik argues that that is what Behar's autosomal pca data for the Ashkenazi shows - a clustering in northwestern Turkey near the Bosphorus- and argues for an origin there. But that is not what Behar (or most others) conclude at all. And Elhaik goes on to argue, and his clustering shows, that the Ashkenazi Jews derive largely from eastern Turkey and Iran (both of which would be different genetically from western Turkey). Assuming that, his depiction of Behar's data is correct, it does not seem unlikely that a population of mixed Levantine (and/or other Near Eastern) and European ancestry could cluster in a position intermediate between the Levant and Europe (which is quite where northwestern Turkey near the Bosphorus is) - and might not necessarily indicate an origin in Turkey. And Ashkenazi Jews certainly do have significant European admixture. I am only suggesting this to point out that Elhaik's argument may not be as definitive as you may believe. Though certain I agree that more definitive research is desirable (using compairisons with ancient samples, including those from the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and various parts of Europe) to more remove or reduce what ambiguity may still exist. Skllagyook (talk) 11:08, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * As youn know, a cutting edge science's results are fluid. Elhaik 1 and Elhaik 2 are quite different, and, from memory, Elhaik 2016/17 reinterpreted Behar's work of 4 years earlier. It remains therefore to see -perhaps you know- if anyone, Behar et co, or others, contested Elhaik's rereading of Behar's evidence (or rather results, for unless I am mistaken, both Ostrer and Behar refuse any 'outsider' access to their databases). That is the proper procedure. As to 'Levantine' several genetics papers consistently confused this with Middle East, when the strict Levantine/southern Levantine derivation began to look increasingly thin. The introduction of 'Middle East' as a virtual synonym was astute rhetorically, but it faslsifies history and science to treat it as a synonym. Thirdly, the fundamental flaw in all these studies lies in an acceptance of an extremely flexible word like 'Jews', as if religion and descent imbricated. As you again know, they don't. And, again, the science of descent privileges the Tanakh rule of 'Jewish' descent via the patrilineal line, whereas rabbinic practice for 2 millennia has insisted on Jewish legitimacy as vectored through matrilineal descent. This has vast interpretative consequences, since the European data, in a religious sense, would strongly suggest that the religious definition of the Ashkenazim is invalid for that 'authentic Jewish' population. Genetics in short adopts a definition of Jew which Judaism repudiates, and all remain quiet on the embarrassing  dissonance.
 * In any case, I return to my point. The excessive nervousness shown in jamming the article with intricate (mostly copy and pasted) 'stuff' on genetics, to attack or defend Elhaik's original viewpoint is WP:Undue. All one needs is a link to the relevant pages on Jewish genetic questions, with a paragraph summarizing Elhaik 1, and responses (technically flawed in sampling, etc., with a brief couple of sentences citing the major research contesting it. Elhaik 2, summarized laconically, with then a summary of genetic papers citing and rebuffing the hypothesis 2017-2019. We should drop the politics of the Khazar hypothesis, and simply keep updating the paper on the curious meanderings the hypothesis had, from legitimate historical speculation mainly by Jews, through fringe antisemitic uses, modern historical treatments, and genetic failures to endorse it. Nishidani (talk) 11:34, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * And by the way, I don't think Elhaik is definitive. I started editing this area when I found it plagued by an upset editorial constituency that tried to get this dissonant voice suppressed as fringe, bizarre. Large quantities of newspaper comments by people who know nothing of the topic were thrown his way. I have never espoused the Khazar theory in any form. Elhaik's high competence in his field is obvious, but science is never definitive, and people uncomfortable with uncertainty should be more aware that complacency offers none of the wanted answers. Nishidani (talk) 11:57, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Elhaik is controversial and has met with strong criticism; he should be contextualized and placed in context along with those who have been critical of his novel hypotheses. Yes he is qualified and he has credentials, that's not at issue. But he is a minority view and should be placed in due weight. Andre🚐 16:35, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Controversial has nothing to do with reliability. You can’t just say I don’t like why a reliable source says and then demand attribution. If there are other reliable sources that dispute Sand then we discuss relative weight, but this game of trying to poison the well with attribution to solid sources because of the content of their work is a non-starter.  nableezy  - 12:41, 12 June 2023 (UTC)


 * But let's be clear: Sand and his critics are political, not simply dispassionate scientists and historians with no POVs, Sand has taken stands on issues, and he is more liked by the pro-Arab factions, while more pro-Zionist factions have criticized him along political lines. Sand's detractors portray the book as an assault on Jewish identity and the legitimacy of Israel He's publicly renounced his Jewishness and attacked Israeli racism, making him a lightning rod. He's seen some critique from more pro-Zionist historian Simon Schama for example. It's not for us to take sides or like or dislike, but to portray neutrally the controversy. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 15:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Let's be clear, dispassionate scientists and historians are as rare as hen's teeth in this area. We everywhere on wiki cite- no one challenges their use -  Benny Morris's books when we all know Morris's publicly stated views on Paòestinians are repulsive: has branded the entire Palestinian population as  barbarian serial killers, who should have been completely expelled in 1948. And Morris is, in many respects, a 'moderate'. Why single out Sand? And who are these 'pro-Arab factions'? Nishidani (talk) 18:38, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Morris has not been challenged as a scholar, while some of his political views are obviously highly contentious. We can use Morris as a source for facts (although not in this article, as it's not his area of expertise - although it's not Sand's either) unless he's been specifically challenged, even while making sure that we don't express his opinions in our voice. Sand is a different case; his actual scholarship has been widely challenged. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually he has been challenged because his I/P scholarship deals predominently in Israeli archives sources. His facts are the facts he elicited from those, and he regards oral memory (mainly Arabs) as unreliable. (The same bias long afflicted conservative Australian scholarship on the aborigines. In both cases, the written sources were those of the victor, as are consequently the facts that are deemed 'solid' as opposed to the memories of the victims (we don't extend that distinction to Holocaust studies, thank goodness). Sand is a bit like Martin Bernal. One would never use him for facts on philology, but classical scholars do recognize that his historical analysis of racist thinking in 19th-20th classical scholarship has much cogency. Nishidani (talk) 17:17, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * No one's singling out anyone. Nor is the issue about one's views. I'm sure many "old line" historians, who are largely white British or white American men, have repulsive views. In this case what we're discussing is the question of whether the academic world as a proportional representation of that world, generally views Sand (or anyone else) as authoritative. I agree with the OP that perhaps our usage of Sand and Elhaik, who I think most people would very much characterize as new line, dissident thinkers, who nevertheless may be bringing a lot of historical scholarship to bear on important questions, but not without pushback and rebuttal from the establishment. Thus is the way of academia, but Wikipedia is supposed to slightly lag, while being responsive to the important modern scholarship. However it is very much an open, and not settled question, how much the population of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, etc Jews can claim that at some point in perhaps 800 BCE or whatever, a Canaanish tribes person ancestor of theirs inhabited some land in the Levant and might share some recognizably Jewish traits. It's not for us to get involved in weighing the validity of these viewpoints. But it's also not the case that I can tell, that it's settled that Sand is authoritative. Shaul Bartal, of Bar-Ilan, is quoted saying that Sand is the Arabs' darling. You may determine which Arabs to whom he refers, I don't know. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 19:12, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Ooo ... I think we can settle the question of how many people have an ancestor in Canaan in 800BCE: that's probably about half the world's population by now. As for anyone working to identify "recognizably Jewish traits" (there's a phrase to make one squirm): that would presumably only be those foolishly meddling in the same scientific racism that was thought extinguished in the early 20th century. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent. This is a valid POV for the article and not scientific racism. By traits I mean that the shared culture and heritage would be familiar but different. It is not a question of what was the Middle Eastern ancestry - was it Jewish or non-Jewish? It's a common ancestor of both Arab, Jewish, and other non-Jewish populations, right? So yes, Jewish and non-Jewish traits, common and not-common, but that's why this topic is fraught. It's not scientific racism to say that there were diaspora peoples from X area in Y area and they had these DNA indicators of these ancestral populations. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 19:45, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * "Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent."
 * This is of course a meaningless statement empirically, crafted to sustain a myth. It is the unshakable, irremovable assertion of the lead of Jews. POV implies that it is a legitimate perspective, and not just the reflection of a myth. Australian aborigines largely share a common European ancestry, as a result of having undergone admixture with white populations of European descent. There! That's a game anyone can play to 'fix' an identity according to (dis)taste. The Levantine component of Ashkenazi profiles out at 3%, the figure gets larger if one counts Middle Eastern elements, and expands substantially if one considers European descent via the maternal line going back to 4000 years BCE. These are all exercises in rhetoric, that beg the simple question: why is a common identity primarily determined by some minor features of a genetic profile that overide every other consideration.Nishidani (talk) 20:13, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem is you are taking sides rather than portraying the controversy, as is evidenced in your message. You are putting your finger on the scale based on your own original analysis rather than simply surveying all the scholars and meting out according to how they weigh. You're right that 3% may be a number, though we could quibble numbers, but it's not useful to do so at this point. But 3% is also the number of genetic relationship to your own first-cousin. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 20:29, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Well then I would say to be more careful when you use the word "traits" in a discussion about ancestry and genetics, and say culture and heritage when you mean those things. Part of the precise problem in this topic area is the confusion of genetics with sociocultural heritage. Off the deep end, it is the attempt to assert genetic continuity as some sort of link to the past with real world meaning and real world ramifications, i.e.: justification for political goals, and this is where scientific racism very definitely rears it ugly head. But don't take it from me, take it from Falk, who alludes to it prominently, noting: Anti-Semitism conceived the socio-cultural traits of Jews to be a consequence of their biological essence. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:07, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Andrevan. I keep having to cite the following because editors don't appear to grasp the point (and I did not conduct any 'original analysis' in those figures. It gets even worse if you cite the huge gap between the various results genetic papers have come up with in the component analyses for the last twenty years). The point about 'cousins' is that:-
 * "How far back must we go to find the most recent shared ancestor for – say – all Welsh people or all Japanese? And how much further is it to the last person from whom everyone alive today- Welsh, Japanese, Nigerian, or Papuan-can trace descent. . . Speculative as they are, the results are a surprise. In a population of around a thousand people everyone is likely to share the same ancestor about ten generations. Some three hundred years- ago. The figure goes up at a regular rate for larger groups, which means that almost all native Britons can trace descent from a single anonymous individual on these islands who lived in about the thirteenth century. On the global scale, universal common ancestry emerges no more than a hundred generations ago-well into the Old Testament era, perhaps, around the destruction of the First Temple in about 600 B.C.Steve Jones, Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science Hachette 2013 p.27."
 * I have, and the situation is not rare, several nieces and nephews who could, had they a minimal awareness of these games, claim a right to aliyah, because in 300 years among hundreds of forebears and kin, there were a few Jewish folks, female or male. Were they to prioritize this thin element to make it trump every other genetic element, 99% of their known kin's Irish-English-Norman, and perhaps Indian (and god knows who else) descent could be refactored as irrelevant to their genetic profile, just as anyone with a 'Jewish-sounding' name and some linguistic heritage retained, whatever density of outmarrying occurred in the intervening 500 years of life in South America, for example, can claim Portuguese citizenship as a descendants of Sephardim expelled by the proto-fascist regnants of Portugal a half a millenium ago.  The results of the opportunistic business and identitarian farces created by that law are well-known. Of course, all of these people can become 'Jewish' if they choose to exercise that option, and good on'em, but it has nothing to do with genetic origins, but rather wangling one identity out of many for some other reason, emotional, political, social, economic, whatever.
 * Sand's book, even in just the incipit (forget the Khazar interlude) did usefully point out some of the chaotic shenanigans that emerge from recent innovations in laws about who is or can be a Jew, showing that pure descent is nonsense. That is why he upsets so many people, particularly geneticists who have little grasp of the complexities of historical reconstructions of identity. Nishidani (talk) 08:19, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * My original comment was trying to make a more modest point than that which has been argued over here. I'm not saying we should exclude him from the article or see his views as beyond the pale. He's obviously noteworthy. I'm simply saying we cannot use him as a source for facts without attribution. See below for why. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:24, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Controversial can be an issue for reliability: Sand is controversial in that his more recent and well-known (and highly noteworthy) work on the origins of the Jewish people (which is a departure from the historical area where he built up his expertise) is considered to be fringe pseudo-scholarship by many (not all) mainstream scholars. Anti-Zionist scholar Derek Penslar: Sand’s critique comes in the form of rhetorical assertions towards the end of the book, not painstakingly researched narrative, as was the case with the New Historians. The Invention of the Jewish People is not a work of scholarship at all, but rather the sort of passionate, articulate, but tendentious, selectively-researched work that in the western world increasingly dominates trade publishing aimed at a broad readership among the intelligentsia... Sand’s book represents a radically different phenomenon, not only because of its content, not only because it persistently seeks to be, and succeeds at being, outrageous, but because of its method. Historical scholarship can be refuted via counter-narratives based on publicly accessible source material. A polemic, imbued with passion and rhetorical flourish, can be shown to be shot through with falsehoods, yet the polemic’s arguments stand, because from the very start style dominates substance. Exposure of its distortions can be dismissed as the work of fussy, pedantic, and territorial scholars, the same ones who for decades have trumpeted the Jews’ sham peoplehood and therefore cannot be trusted... Sand’s internal logic is that of the conspiracy theorist, and he appeals precisely to people who see the Zionist project as a monumental exercise of bad faith. A sympathetic review in Socialism and Democracy said His fellow scholars were less comfortable with his work. Their common response pointed out that some of the new truths were not “new” and others were not “truths”.... That before Christianity acquired its dominant position Jewish rulers and employers had encouraged some of their subordinates to convert to Judaism was also known, though the scale and spread of that practice is disputed. Critics accuse Sand of inflating its scope by transforming conversion – forcible or voluntary, individual or group-based – from one among many contributions to Jewish demographic growth into the primary factor, without grounding such claims in solid empirical evidence, using instead meagre, fragmented and contradictory sources. That Sand is not a historian of antiquity or the Near East (his disciplinary specialization is modern France), does not help his case among professional colleagues. He is regarded by many as an “intruder”, who pursues a political agenda and, in the process, fits the evidence to a pre-conceived argument. Nicholas Wade, a genetics specialist, in an article for the NYT described Sand's work as "refuted". Colin Shindler said The reductionist approach of Sand also leads to selectivity. Some facts are chosen, others are not. Those selected are stretched to sketch out a generality... Quotations are often selected to fit an explanation while the context is missing. Another very sympathic take in the journal Dialectical Anthropology said Sand’s critical post-Zionist historiographies are extremely heterodox, highly controversial and have generally been met with approval by Marxian historians and other scholars who are critical of nationalism. However, more mainstream historians, especially in Israel, have been less than friendly to Sand’s approach, criticizing him for selective historiographic reading and the creation of a Zionist myth-believing historiographic strawman. A defence of the book in the Journal of Palestine Studies by anti-Zionist scholar Adam Sutcliffe includes this passage: Responses to this book by specialists in Jewish history (which Sand is not—he teaches in the “general,” that is, non-Jewish, history department at the University of Tel Aviv) have for the most part been sharply hostile, alleging, sometimes with strained coherence, that Sand’s argument is both obvious and wrong. It would be surprising, though, if this ambitious book, covering two millennia of Jewish history in three hundred pages, were empirically startling to specialists in the early periods through which it gallops; it would also be surprising if those specialists were unable to point to a few factual errors or misleading simplifications. Moreover, this avenue of attack misses Sand’s central thrust, which he spells out very clearly: “Please note: the present work . . . does not deal directly with history . . . its main purpose is to criticize a widespread historiographic discourse” (p. 22). The alternative account of Jewish history that Sand lightly sketches out here does not purport to be anything more than synthetic, speculative, and suggestive. I could go on, but the point is that the overwhelming majority of scholars, including those sympathetic to Sand's project, do not see him as a reliable source for facts without attribution or context. We should discuss his work here, as obviously noteworthy, but we should not use his text as a footnote for anything other than his own, attributed views. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:17, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure a lot of people hate his book, as they do Elhaik, and you get a mother-lode of expostulatory arguying, but the likes of a (epithet withheld) Nicholas Wade (Penslar is the only person there I take seriously). There is nothing wrong with scholarly works being polemical, from Marx to Popper and so on. You wrote above ' He's obviously noteworthy. I'm simply saying we cannot use him as a source for facts without attribution', and then put in a query ('clarify'), which was unnecessary if one actually consults the sources cited. I did so. Sand cited Levinsohn, and his citation is confirmed by Spolsky. So there is no need in that case, a specific fact, for attribution. As I said from the outset, if we cite a fact from Sand that looks problematical then raise this on the talk page. I actually once wrote to him over a quotation from Ben-Zion Dinur, and the good man took the trouble (I do this extremely infrequently, as with Martin Gilbert once) to check, provide further details, and confirm the veracity of the Ben-Zion Dinur's quotation. Penslar excels in a different form of scholarship, one I prefer, but you don't get to be an historian if you knowingly invent stuff, or screw up on sourcing, pagination etc. Sand simply used a very influential set of theses advanced in the 1980s regarding the formation of identity, and the way our concepts of peoplehood are historically manipulated, fabricated nor cultivated for specific national purposes, and applied it to the case of 'Jews'. if you look at his thesis historically, within Jewish discourse, then it is a defense of bo the Haskalah and Reformist Judaism's insistence Jews are defined by their religion, not by their ethnicity. It is the triumph of Zionism to have so thoroughly worked modern imaginations that its revolutionary redefining of Jews in terms of ethnicity and nationhood that many Jews themselves have forgotten how alien this was to the common sense view prevailing within reformist Judaism in the 19th century. Penslar is upset, Hobsbawm, an historian of great distinction as well, was not. The citations are, therefore, understandable as highly emotional reactions to a very touchy topic.The only sensible things is to distinguish what Sand advances as an interpretation, from the matter which is presented as factual. If it isn't factual or looks dubious as a fact, you have a case. The problem is people overwork a talk page and don't do much to improve the page, which should, I repeat, simple give the genealogy of the idea of the Khazar hypothesis from its origins to its recent demise, neutrally. It is a fascinating story  and we need not be nervous in telling it. Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * That's not what the last review, for instance, says at all. It says he gallops through history, and specialists will no doubt be able to point out a few errors. That does not mean the work is generally erroneous. There's no reason to consider it more or less erroneous than any other sweeping work for any given statement unless said statement is directly contradicted by better sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The point of all this is to say that Sand is controversial and met with some amount of critique and therefore best seen as speculative rather than authoritative, and treated with some distance and qualification. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 16:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, no, if there is some dispute about something Sand is cited for then demonstrate the dispute with an opposing viewpoint from another reliable source. Just saying "he's controversial" does not at all mean he cannot be cited for facts. That is poisoning the well through attributing where others are not. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> nableezy  - 00:58, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess Bob from Brockley didn't offer a specific fact he was concerned with cited to Sand. I think the point is though that there's a legitimate controversy about Sand's work - whether it is polemical and whether equally, Behar, or other more pro-Israeli-ME-connection writers, whether they are, as some argue, nationalistic and therefore not trustworthy or perhaps there are polemical and controversial actors on both sides, and we should be attributing them both for any controversial statements. Again, OP can offer if there are some specific statements in question; I did not bring any. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 20:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to take one example, we cited him for Levinsohn's opinion. I can't find Levinsohn's own text in English, just quotations from it in others' texts. Sand's text includes a brief mention of Levinsohn with no context, e.g. no sense of what "these regions" meant and no quotation that included the word Khazars. He named the book Testimony in Israel in the body and Document in Israel in the footnote (the former is what it's usually called in English). He cites footnote 2 on page 33. (Raisin also give 33n2, even though he cites a different edition, but doesn't give the full quote. Raisin immediately follows his sentence on Levinsohn with one on Harkavi, as Sand does, leading me to wonder if Sand got it from Raisin.) citing Sand, we say Levinsohn's book was published in 1828, but it was actually published in 1823 and I am still unsure if he mentions Khazars. In other words, Sand turns out to a bad secondary source to use without attribution. I haven't checked the other facts we source from him but suspect, we'd find someone similar. With a real RS, you don't need to do these checks. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:37, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Levinsohn's text is in Hebrew. It's mentioned by many scholars, Weinryb et al., in this context. All Sand did, following up on his reading of several of the sources, was to go to a library in Israel and read the original, and then cite it directly in his his Hebrew edition. If you want the direct quote from Levinsohn just look it up Sand's Matai ve'ekh humtza ha'am hayehudi? All his English translator Yael Lotan did was render Levinsohn's text (1828), as quoted in Sand (2008), into English from Hebrew. Of course Levinsohn wrote classical Hebrew and perhaps Sand rendered that into modern Hebrew. As the quote from Raisin, who himself cited directly from Levinsohn, shows 'these regions' contextually refers to the general area of the Ukraine/Poland/western Russia (the lands of eastern Jewry). Avoiding OR I just linked to the three areas. Bob, Levinsohn's book was completed in 1823, yes, but not published till 5 years later. Sand has the correct date. but I think the clincher for Sand's reliability comes from Bernard D. Weinryb, (who elsewhere rebuffed the idea of a Khazar connection), but in his The Khazars: An Annotated Bibliography, in Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, Spring 1963, Vol. 6, No. 3 pp.111-129 p.119 he glosses the entry under Levinsohn with the description:'Hypothesis of Khazar origin of Jews in Russia and Poland.' Weinryb, like Wexler, read every primary source.Nishidani (talk) 12:53, 18 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Going through Nishidani recent edits (thank you for your hard work Nishidani), I think the issues are now mostly resolved. I attributed one more thing cited to him, as I couldn't find another source.) There's still a couple of facts citing him, and it strikes me that he is himself citing other secondary sources both times. (E.g. we quote an Israeli ambassador talking "an antisemitic action financed by the Palestinians", citing him; he gets that second hand from something published in French, Jacques Piatigorsky, "Arthur Koestler et les Khazars: L'histoire d'une obsession," in L'Empire Khazar. It would be good, for example, to be able to use that instead of Sand, in case there are translation issues. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:50, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks Bob. Not hard work, as opposed to time-consuming and I mainly worry that if I allow myself to get distracted here, my tomato crop will fall to aphids, and I'll be constrained to eat at McDonald's, a fate worse than death or dearth. I still hope that folks give me time tocomb back through this and recheck everything and add new material overlooked in the first recension. Sand cites Piatigorsky (who is a banker by the way with a yen for writing books as a sideline). Sand's second language is French, and there is nothing exceptionally surprising in the quote from Piatigorsky. I've seen insinuations that Palestinians (the authorities that is) finance antisemitism too frequently to think that odd, though one asks oneself where they'd find adequate funds in their budget for such a campaign, since they can't even finance their own health care -.:) In any case, this is further down the page, and I'll see what I can come up with.Nishidani (talk) 12:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Recent findings
Can anybody eleborate on this website: https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/khazars/about/background And maybe incoporate that information in this article on the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry. 77.60.121.89 (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)


 * No, FTDNA is a user submitted genealogy site, so it won't be used as it isn't reliable. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 16:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Add black hebrew isrealites
Add them to groups that claim that the jews are actually turkic 93.106.147.186 (talk) 10:08, 24 November 2023 (UTC)


 * They are there, at the very bottom of the article. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 03:50, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Unable to edit this article
I was going to fix a grammatical error in this article, but was prevented from doing so because it appears to be blocked from editing. Please fix this ridiculous situation! 98.123.38.211 (talk) 03:41, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * You can create an account and make 500 edits to obtain extendedconfirmed status. That's how it works for certain controversial articles due to a high volume of anonymous POV pushers and vandals. Andre<span style="border:2px solid #073642;background:rgb(255,156,0);background:linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255,156,0,1) 0%, rgba(147,0,255,1) 45%, rgba(4,123,134,1) 87%);">🚐 03:51, 25 November 2023 (UTC)