Rating: 
Summary: Out of date and disproven by new evidence
Review: The culture of the Khazars, a central asian tribe that adopted Judaism over 1000 years ago and was then destroyed by Gengis Khan, is a facinating subject worthy of study. Sadly, it always gets mixed up with an old 19th century idea that modern European Jews are decended from the Khazars and not the biblical Jews. That theory, highly popular in the middle 19th century served the duel use of, for some, proving that the Jews around Europe were not the same as those of the Hebrew Bible, giving great comfort to anti-semitic Christians. For others, they wanted to prove that Jesus was not Jewish, a strange branch of racist psudo-theory that goes on even today.In the 19th century Jews could simply role their eyes but had no evidence to disprove the theory. The best evidence against the Khazar theory was lingustic, as neither Hebrew nor Yiddish seems to contain any trace of a cetral asian language. Now, with gentic evidence, we can positively identify common ancestry of Jews from areas as far flung as Germany, Spain, Yemen, and Russia. Identical Y chromosome markers can be found among members of every community. While it may be that some Khazars married into the larger Jewish community, the evidence indicates that it never happened in overwhelming number. Indeed, their is considerable historic evidence that the Khazar were largely cut off from the rest of the Jewish world. Many reviwers point to the idea that many European Jews show non-middle eastern features (blue eyes, blond hair, etc.) However, the existance of large scale conversion to Judaism is a clear historical fact. Particularly before Christianity became firmly rooted in Eastern and South Eastern Europe, many locals converted to Judaism. Many of the modern Jewish attitudes against conversion are in fact reasonably recent, tracable to the strong and often violent action Christians took against communities where individuals chose to become Jews. Given the vast amount of genetic evidence against the theory one has to wonder why it still gets so much play. After all, if all Jews contain common genetic markers from locations across the world, what possible evidence could be for this strange theory?
Rating:
Summary: The Next Hate War
Review: This book has become a sort of Bible of Anti-semitism and the so called "Chrisitan Identity" movement. The premise is that pagans and barbarians are the true ancesters of the so-called Ashkenazi Jew (European/ American Jew). This means that the true Jews of Jesus Christ day, the Israelites and Hebrews of the Bible are in no way related to the Jews we see today in America and Israel, who are in fact, Huns,Turks, Magyars and other "mud race" derivatives that populated Eastern Europe.
Where are the Jews of Jesus' day? They migrated to Europe and the sons of Yacob (Sax-sons) became the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians and other proper Aryan derivatives. Thus, hating the Jews is really akin to hating the brutal Khazars who co-opted the Jewish religion during the Dark Ages. Thus, the Aryan Nations do not hate Jews but using this book and others like it, can show that they are the true descendents of the Hebrews. Read this book if you like historical revisionism, but beware of the hatred that this book causes as it becomes the basis for a worldwide attack on Khazars, "false jews", "Orthodox jews, etc.
STOP HATRED!
Rating:
Summary: a defamation text
Review: This is actually an anti-simitic text that claims that Judaism is descended from the Khazars. One problem with this argument is that many Jews actually do resemble their arab and Simitic cousins in the middle east. Many Palistinians have fair, blond, features, but that doesn't mean they are not Arabs, it just means they intermingled with europeans crusaders. The reality is that the Khazars NEVER immigrated to Khazaria, they were whiped out by the mongols. Most of the tribes of the Caucuses were not emigratory tribes, like the armenians and Georgians and Chechens, they were sedintary and like the Khazars they weathered the storm of invasion. Unfortunatly the Khazars did not weather the storm very well and they disappeared, but they NEVER moved to europe and this book is full of hateful remarks and polemics against the Judiasm, very offensive.
Rating:
Summary: a defamation text
Review: This is actually an anti-simitic text that claims that Judaism is descended from the Khazars. One problem with this argument is that many Jews actually do resemble their arab and Simitic cousins in the middle east. Many Palistinians have fair, blond, features, but that doesn't mean they are not Arabs, it just means they intermingled with europeans crusaders. The reality is that the Khazars NEVER immigrated to Khazaria, they were whiped out by the mongols. Most of the tribes of the Caucuses were not emigratory tribes, like the armenians and Georgians and Chechens, they were sedintary and like the Khazars they weathered the storm of invasion. Unfortunatly the Khazars did not weather the storm very well and they disappeared, but they NEVER moved to europe and this book is full of hateful remarks and polemics against the Judiasm, very offensive.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but inaccurate
Review: While Koestler presents an intriguing theory and a well written book, there is absolutely no credibility to his ideas. No serious historian will use his book when researching the history of Eastern European Jews. For example the vast majority of the Jews in that area were not converts from Khazaria but rather moved into Eastern Europe from Germany and other Central European countries. That this book is even considered serious to some is a disgace of history. Not that Koestler is entirely incorrect. There was a country called Khazaria and its leaders did convert to Judaism, and there are most likely Jews today who came from Khazarian ancestry, but frankly there the known facts end. This may have well been historical fiction. Hopefully one day someone with a famous name will write a book that tells the truth about Jews in the area.
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