Word: koestlers
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Since Arthur Koestler writes that most American and European Jews trace their origins to the non-Semitic Khazars [Aug. 23], whom should the anti-Semites hate now? The Arabs...
Unfortunately, Koestler omits the charming details of this conversion by comparative shopping. Instead, he offers the politics of Third World neutralism, arguing the possibility that a Jewish Khazaria could better deal with both Christians and Arabs. Such Realpolitik has a certain commonsensical appeal, but it also leaves out the less rational motives for human behavior-those motives that seem to be responsible for most of history...
...addition, Koestler offers a blizzard of information but not enough hard facts to support his thesis. As in the past, he is a master of the conditional assertion ("This would be added evidence ..."). Unfortunately, the approximately four-century history of Khazaria is thin in primary source material. The kingdom seems to have flourished as a crossroads of East-West trade. Persecuted Jews from Byzantium are believed to have flocked to Khazaria, where they intermarried with their Caucasian coreligionists. When Genghis Khan's Mongols swept westward in the 13th century, Khazaria's Jews fled to Eastern and Central Europe...
Stamped Kosher. Given the complex genetic blending that has occurred during Europe's history, Koestler's position is all too facile, despite the obvious effort and time the author spent on his study. It is not that he is unaware of the subtle traps and deadfalls of racial theory. In fact, he does his usual imitation of a Renaissance man by including mathematical formulas derived from a biochemical blood index. But Koestler's enthusiasm for the idea of a non-Semitic Jewry threatens to drown his own carefully drawn qualifications...
This conflict between sense and sensationalism causes some problems. Koestler is fearful, for example, that his book might be used to undercut the foundations of Israel. If most Israelis are really descended from Caucasian nomads who stamped themselves kosher 1,200 years ago, how can they claim...