The Khazar Enigma

The Khazarim are an enigma. From what we understand of ancient Khazaria, it was a Tartar Kingdom on the borders of the Black and Caspian seas that thrived between the eighth and tenth centuries and as quickly as it arose, it vanished even more spectacularly by the late twelfth century. During its existence it minted its own currency, controlled the trade routes from East to West and back again, and was responsible for stopping the spread of Islam into Europe by defeating the Muslim armies in fiercely fought battles.
During the 7th and 8th centuries the Khazars fought several battles against the Umayyad Caliphate, which was attempting to expand its domination into the Caucasus. The first war was fought in the early 650 and ended with the defeat of the Arab forces led by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabiah just outside the Khazar town of Balanjar. But once again the Caliphate tried to expand through conquest between 710 and 730 but finally the Khazars, led by a prince named Barjik, invaded northwestern Iran and defeated the Umayyad forces at Ardabil in 730. The Arab governor Al-Djarrah al-Hakami was killed and the Khazars occupied the town. But Arab armies led by Prince Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik and later Caliph Marwan ibn Muhammad crossed the Caucasus and eventually defeated a Khazar army led by Hazer Tarkhan in 737, briefly occupying the Khazar city of Atil. But shortly afterward the Arab armies were forced back and Khazar independence was re-established. The last major battle between Khazar and Arab forces took place in 758, when the Khazar army under Ras Tarkhan invaded and occupied parts of Azerbaijan and Arran. The Arab pursuit of a Muslim empire through warfare never managed to penetrate into Khazaria after that. There are records that by the tenth century King Joseph of the Khazars reported to the Jewish histographer Hasdai ibn Shaprut that the Khazars had established trade relations with the Caliphate suggesting that the state of war had ended. King Joseph also indicated in his communications that his Kingdom practiced Judaism as its state religion which immediately led to rumors that it was one of the lost tribes of Israel.
That in itself was a mystery and it was later discovered through subsequent communications between Khazaria and Jewish scholars that there had been a mass conversion in the eighth century to Judaism, the story of which has been told in many books, the most famous being The Khazari which appeared in the twelfth century and was widely known a few hundred years later.
It is strange that events which are a thousand years old have now come back to haunt us today. Besides the Khazars being one of the most feared enemies of the Muslim world and still held in much disdain by that population, seeing them as the reason that Islam failed to stretch across the known world, they are now being revived into the Islamic propaganda machine for an entirely different purpose. It is the argument today, in regards to the Mid –east crisis that the Ashkenazi Jews that formulated the Zionist philosophy for the reestablishment of Israel, ethnically weren’t Jews at all, and therefore were never entitled to have the restoration of their ancient homeland. What these Muslim propagandists are claiming is that the Ashkenazi Jews are nothing but the descendants of the Khazars and they never actually disappeared as a civilization, merely migrated westward into Europe where they became recognized as being the Jewish populations of Poland, Ukraine and Romania that manifested in the twelfth century. Hence their new argument that Israel should not exist since it was established by a race that weren’t Jews. Of course the corollary would then be true that if they were Jews then the State of Israel has the right to exist and they have to realize that showing a picture of an Israeli soldier and writing on it that this is a Khazar does not mean he is any less entitled to live in the land of his religious beliefs. But for all others, whether they be Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Karaite, Bene Israel or Fellashim, they are entitled to live in the land of their origins. A land where they have been a continuous presence for three thousand years in one form or another even though Muslim historians attempt to gloss over that fact.
I am surprised at how many adherents this faulty theory of Ashkenazi being Khazars has garnered over the last couple of decades. Despite the genetic typing of Ashkenazi Jews as Semites, not to mention phenotypic characteristics which are more common to the eastern Mediterranean than to the Caucasus, there would still appear to exist this determination of these Muslim propagandists to insist that their flawed theory is the truth. One of their arguments being that amongst the Jew’s own books there was nothing but Sephardic Jews (North African and Spanish) in existence in the late eleventh century or why else would the meeting with the King of Khazaria have to be conducted by Sephardic Jews if he had close by Ashkenazi neighbours? Conveniently they choose to ignore the Mizrahi Jews in Arab lands who were very much a presence in that part of the world and who now live predominantly in Israel.
But let’s deal with the misconception of Ashkenazi’s not being descendants of original Jewish stock. I will admit that this book, The Kazari, does give that impression on first reading, and the emphasis that it was a great Sephardic sage from Toledo Spain that had to travel all the way to Khazaria to conduct the interview would suggest that there was an absence of East European Jews at the time. Hopefully, this is where I can put an end to any misconceptions that the Ashkenazi Jews were only the product of Khazars that had migrated west. Some probably were but far more Khazars probably became Karaites due to the similarities in language and beliefs between the two populations. A commentary amongst the Karaite authors lists the population of our people measuring around 400,000 at the time of Saadiah Gaon. This sudden burst in Karaite population made the Gaon furious as he considered the battle for Jewish minds being lost by the Rabbinate. I would think that the most likely explanation for this population explosion in the tenth century was the fact that the Khazars were being numbers amongst the Karaites.
One of the advantages of descending from a very old family is that in my personal library I happen to have some very old books that have been passed down into my possession from various family members. This one I’m about to discuss in particular was printed in Berlin in 1795. I know some of you are probably looking at the photographs of this book and probably cursing me for not taking better care of a two hundred plus year old book and keeping it under sealed glass, etc, etc, but books are meant to be held, to be touched, to be read. I have some even older than this one and I’m not ashamed to say that I finger through them often. But that is not the point of this article and any bibliophiles that wish to admonish me on proper book care please save it for another time. The point I wish to make is that the beauty of these older books is that they have not undergone the distortions and alterations of later translations. As much as old books should be considered sacred and should not be subject to adulteration, sadly that is not the case. In later attempts to embellish and perhaps even clarify as may have been the belief of these latter day editors the fact is that with every change something is actually lost, not gained.
For example, I have enclosed the front page of my book and what should be the identical front page from a copy over a hundred years later from Warsaw which I’ve taken off the web.
The translation of my older Berlin copy of the title and first paragraph is roughly as follows:

Book of the Khazari
Between the king of the nation of the Khazars and between the (associate/colleague/partner) whose name is blessed many times in heaven in dialogue about the details (history) of the king and his people.
The ancient and wise Judah son of Saul the Levite, knowledgeable of the languages of the Arabs recording and guarding that all is correct.

Whereas the same section translated from the younger Warsaw copy is as follows:
Book of the Khazari
Rabbi Isaac the Sangari whose name is blessed in heaven in honest dialogue.
Translated from the Arabic by Rabbi Judah Ha Levi the Sephardi


Immediately it can be seen that these two opening paragraphs, although having some words in common are for the most part entirely different. Judah Ha Levi was a famous Jewish poet, scholar and writer in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Born in Spain, he was naturally Sephardic and would have spoken Arabic fluently, living in an Arabic ruled society. Because he was famous, his name would lend authenticity to any book and it would appear that is what the later editors were trying to achieve. Without a high profile name, there would have been the fear that the book, the Khazari would have been accused of being a fake, or even worse, a fairy tale. My German copy of the book if you notice mentions a Judah ha Levi but he is the son of Saul. The father of the famous Judah ha Levi of Spain was named Samuel, not Saul. This would have created an immediate problem if someone was trying to attribute the original book to Judah ha Levi of Spain. We do know that Judah did write his own version of the Khazari and we also know that he based his book on earlier versions that he had come across. I would postulate that my German copy is based on one of those earlier versions. There is no mention of a Rabbi Isaac Sangari in its cover page because the person discussing the issues with the King of Khazaria was far greater than any rabbi. The word actually used in my older version of the book is suggestive of someone who could sit across from a king and be considered an equal or as a partner, colleague, etc. This individual’s name was blessed numerous times in heaven suggesting that he was a great leader of the Jews. Multiple blessing would infer that he was carrying an inherited blessing which I’ll discuss later in this article. As for Judah ben Saul the Levite, he was there for one reason only; his ability to translate everything both fluently and accurately between Arabic and Hebrew. He was a scribe and translator with no mention of him being the great poet and scholar, nor is there any mention of this person being Sephardic. Why? Because all that was a later addition and deliberate alteration in an attempt to have the book gain recognition by attributing it to someone famous at that time. As for Isaac of Sangari, it is thought this may be a reference to the region in Turkey known as Sangaros, but no one knows for certain. His addition to the manuscript came much later and the only letters or poems proving his existence were held in the possession of Avraham Firkovich, a leading Karaite scholar which only further emphasizes the Khazar-Karaite connection.
Therefore, my older version of this famous book would suggest that the Sephardic connection was a later addition and that it may have been Karaite influences on the Khazarim that actually took place in the eight century as the development of Karaite teachings were occurring simultaneously at that time.
Even in Judah ha-Levi, the Sephardic poet’s version, he admits that there were many things that the Jewish sage in discussion with the King of Khazaria said that were in common with his own beliefs. This would also imply that there were many things the sage said in the original document that weren’t. The Sephardic poet therefore decided to exclude these points of difference from his version. In itself this would imply that the Sage of the story had certain beliefs and practices that were contrary to Judah ha-Levi’s rabbinic Judaism. The act of exclusion is an admission by the poet that the original story wasn’t rabbinic. Although Judah ha-Levi does let it slip that the King of the Khazars only follows the Torah and the Prophets (Book 2 first paragraph) suggesting that his beliefs were more in line with Karaite doctrine as there is no belief in the Talmud he never bothers to expand on this statement.
Another point of interest is the division of the Khazari into five chapters or books. Each book focusing on a different aspect of the dialogue. These roughly correspond to the five books of Moses in the Torah, looking first at the reasons for Monotheism with similarities to Genesis, then a History of the Khazar Nation with similarities to Exodus, then religious outline as defined by a pious man similarities to Numbers, then the requirements of God and religious laws similar to Leviticus and finally the laws of Jewish practices and philosophies similar to Deuteronomy. This parallel to the adherence of the Torah as the main article of faith is quite enlightening and despite numerous comments that are considered anti-Karaite these would appear to have been added by ha-Levi to the original book in the twelfth century as in many cases their insertion seems out of context.
It is also very interesting that the Judah ha-Levi version concludes with the following Blessing:
Completed is the book with the help of God and His assistance. Praise without end be to the Giver of Help
This is very different from the Berlin version in my possession which concludes with the following:
Blessed is He who has a contract with Holy Israel
Who has gifted it with active salvation
Although complete with the welfare of the Lion of God,
There were speakers without wisdom desired by a foreign invitee.


There is obviously a considerable difference between the two conclusive blessings. Judah ha-Levi removed almost all the reference from those present in my version.
Why would he change it so dramatically? Because of what it inferred. Following the adoption of Judaism, there was a contractual obligation in one form or another. The king of the Khazars made this contract with the representative of Holy Israel. It was an actual contract between men, not with God as ha-Levi has tried to alter. And finally we have a reference to who the Jewish representative in the debate may have been. The reference is an old one. Much in the way my Hebraic name is Aryeh-Zuk meaning the Lion of Righteousness, this person was Aryeh-El, the Lion of God. Aryeh has been used often in the family of the Kahana. It was originally used as a name of honor by those in the Kahana that achieved a status of greatness an honor which this person richly deserved as the representative of Holy Israel. Even that title is quite unique, being all inclusive of Judaism across the globe and not rabbinic in nature. The Rosh Gelutha was the representative of Holy Israel. The Rosh Gelutha was the monarchical and spiritual head of Israel as a unified entity. He was both king and priest. He was the Exilarch, the descendant of King David ruling in exile. If we look at the time of the conversion, the initial similarities to Karaism and the fact that this person moved freely between the Islamic speaking world and Khazaria, these would point to Anan ibn David as the likely spokesperson. This would be in accordance to the mysterious reference world that he was a colleague or partner of the King of Khazaria. Who else but another King could be an equal?
So, in reference to the original premise that the Khazari implied that only Sephardic Jews existed at the time and that there was no Ashkenazi presence indirectly assumed from the exclusion of any mention of them in the book, a device which as absurd as it might sound is now being used in a very active propaganda campaign by Muslim clerics, the truth of the matter is that there wasn’t even an original reference to Sephardic Jews. The universal representative of Holy Israel is the only indicator of a Jewish presence and therefore the well established existence of this community world-wide was implied. A universal community that infers that there are many Jewish communities and sects and that they are all being represented here at the time of the discussion with the Khazar King. Whether some Khazar became Ashkenazi later on is not an issue. Some probably became Muslim too.
I think that I’ll follow this hub with several more on the Khazar history. The next article will be on the original adoption of Judaism by the Khazars. Several stories exist in that respect and two of them concern a woman, which is very contrary to the Judah ha-Levi version. I’ll call it A Khazar Love Story.

Explaining Karaite Teachings (A Short History)

Karaites are an oddity unto themselves. Whereas my adherance stems from the Karaite families located around the Black Sea, from Romania all the way into the Ukraine, you also had similar parcels of families in other locations such as the Baltic, Egypt, Turkey and Byelorussia. You would think being as small as we are, that there'd be uniformity in beliefs and customs, but that is hardly the case. In reading an interesting blog from a Latvian Karaite, I found that besides believing that her community was one of the last outposts of Karaim in the world, that her community had also adopted some Christian and Muslim teachings into their customs. I guess that this is to be expected considering the isolation of the communities and the fact that as a paternal hereditary society, the effects of intermarriage would be more pronounced.

During the nineteenth century, from the printing presses in Turkey there were printed a beautiful edition of the Karaite bible, consisting of the five Books of Moses or the Chumash. This edition was printed in Hebrew with a Turkish Tatar translation in parallel columns. It was arranged and paid for by the Karaite community in Ortakoi, a town near Constantinople, around 1835. To undertake such a project would indicate that barely 170 years ago, the Tatar influence on Karaite history would have been extremely strong. The reasons behind this will be touched upon briefly in my novel ZUTRA, a book that I hope to have released in the near future as soon as I find a new literary agent.
As Karaites, we also refer to ourselves as the B'nai Mikra (Children of Scripture), and as I had mentioned in previous blogs we attribute are beginnings to the imprison Exilarch, Anan ibn David (Kahana family) around 769 AD. The main differentiating point to Rabbinic Judaism is that the only authority accepted is that of the Bible but we reject the Talmudic rabbinic tradition. The major reason for this can also be viewed in some of my blogs but the overriding principle is that the Talmud is nothing but the contentions and impressions of men whom basically wished to enforce their beliefs of scriptural analysis above the direct word of God. Or put even in simpler terms, as soon as God needs an interpreter there's a problem. From its onset, Karaism constituted a serious challenge to traditional rabbinic Judaism, and as time went on Rabbinic Judaism felt it had to react in order to stem the flow and one of these was the slaughter of Karites instituted by Saadiah Gaon around 940AD which is touched upon in Shadows of Trinity http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html . Following the dispersal of this catastrophic event, the numbers dwindled and were concentrated in a few centers. If the main body of Jews and the Karaites differed in matters of faith, they shared the persecutions and pogroms until the incorporation of the Crimea and Lithuania into the Russian Empire at the end of the eighteenth century, when the situation began to change. In 1795, the Empress Catherine 11 permitted the Karaites to purchase land and relieved them of the double taxation imposed upon rabbinic Jews. In 1827, Karaites were not only exempted from the military draft, which meant twenty-five years of military service but also permission to circulate freely in centres of Russian culture. This situation only furthered the animosity that existed between the two Jewish communities and it was only prudent that Karaites distanced themselves as far as possible from Rabbinic Judaism. Fortunately when it came to the Czarist government all you had to dow was emphasize that there were fundamental differences between us and the Rabbic Jews, not only in beliefs and in history, but also from the genetic makeup as well. There is some truth to this n that phenotypically, there are quite a few differences between Ashekenazi Jews of Europe and Karaite Jews with their origins from Mesopotamia. They argued that they were not Jews but "Russian Karaites of the Old Testament Faith," which became their official designation according to the Czarist government. In 1840 they were granted equality of status with the Muslims, and in 1863 with native Russians, a considerable achievement which led to the appointment in 1843 of my ancestor Jakob Goldenthal as the Principal of the Jewish Districts around the Black Sea and based in Kishinev. Unfortunately this appointment did not go over very well, since it meant not only was Jakob in charge of those districts with large Karaite populations but also those with rabbinic populations. What the Rabbinic Jews viewed as his cosmopolitan assimilated makeup, his bastardized Judaism, and his tendency to write commentaries that emphasized the univerasility of Jewish beleifs within a Christian world led to his departure to greener fields in 1846, when he took a position at the University of Vienna and private tutor to the Empress Elisabeth. A position he would not have gained if not for his Karaite beliefs.
During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Russian Karaites increased in The Tatar translation of this Chumash was obviously for a select population of Karaites only. The group of Karaite scholars who edited the text and prepared the translation was headed by Abraham Firkowitz (1786-1874), an antiquarian scholar and bibliographer who as a leader of the separation campaign wrote messages to the Czarist government and collected documents to bolster the Karaite position.
It is rumoured that on occasion Firkowitz doctored the written record to support the Karaite claims of being a distinct ethnic group. So in retrospect the printing of this Chumash was a message being sent to the Czarist authorities that would have proclaimed, "We are very different from the Jews, even having our own veresion of the Bible which is a completely different language." For the intent and purpose of relieving the persecutions suffered by Jewish communities you can hopefully appreciate the motivation behind such an act.

The Trial of Jesus: Toldoth Jeshua

You're probably wondering what am I talking about this time. Well, it's pretty simple. I'm going to talk about another book I happen to have in my collection. You guessed it, it's called “Toldoth Jeshua". But what's it mean. Translated, it means the Generations of Jesus. Odd title you'd think since according to the New Testament, Jesus didn't have any generations to speak of. But this book that was written in about the 14th century and based on material from the second century had a lot of interesting things to say. I came into possession of this document after I wrote and published Caiaphas Letters, so its quite amazing that it confirms many of the statements I make as fact in my book.
One of the most serious libels made against the Jews was the blame for killing Jesus. Pope John Paul II fortunately condemned this libel and expunged it from the Roman Catholic teachings, and this should be appreciated, but it was long in coming and over the last two thousand years the number of Jews that died because of this libel was astronomical, especially when one considers it as a premise to the Nazi holocaust.
Now this may sound a little controversial coming from me but what if I was to say that it wasn’t really all the Church’s fault for fostering this belief in the first place? What if I was to say that the great sages of Judaism in the second century,the Tannim or these Rabbis of reverence that put together the Talmud were responsible for the libel themselves! That in an effort to show the world how strict they were as enforcers of God’s will, they were willing to spread a lie that either because their brains were too addled with age, or as a Karaite I beleive they were only interested in hearing the sounds of their own voices and were more than too happy to tell everyone a lie.”
What most people don't realize is that these so called paragons of virtue and Judaism actually wrote a section into the Talmud concerning their role in Jesus’ death! Let me tell you quickly what it said:
“It is taught that for all others liable for the death penalty, except for the enticer to idolatry, we do not hide witnesses. They light a lamp for him in the inner chamber and place a witness in the outer chamber so that they can see and hear him while he cannot see or hear them. One says to him,” Tell me again what you said to me in private.” If the prisoner repents, then good, but if he says, ‘This is our obligation and what we must do,’ then he is to be brought into the courtroom and stoned. And then they hung him on the eve of Passover.”
If you're trying to follow the connection let me explain that these Rabbis were trying to recall a very special meeting of the Sanhedrin that happened a couple of hundred years earlier. I'll point out some of their controversial comments. It was a night meeting, hence the need for the lamp. The courts of the Sanhedrin were held in buildings that relied on natural light, therefore it was prohibited to meet at night unless it was an emergency. In this case it obviously was one. But they got it wrong. The witnesses placed outside were there to come in and defend the accused. They already had their numbers to make up the tribunal inside. They were the judges, not the witnesses. As we know from the stories about that night, Jesus's witness refused to enter into the chamber and three times Peter denied not knowing him. Without his second witness, (it took two to prove you innocent of the charges), Jesus was condemned. Now the rabbis in this particular paragraph never refer to Jesus, only to an idolator, so the question should be how do I know they’re not talking about another case? Because they refer back in the Toldoth Jeshua to this section of the Talmud as being the trial of Ben Stada. Now I probably have you completely confused. It would have been more correct to refer to what is a Ben Stada in order to understand their play on words. The Rabbis loved to do that back then. They thought they were quite funny. They did it with the next messiah too, Simon Bar Kochba. As soon as he lost the war, they referred to him as Simon Bar Kosiba, or ’the son of lies’. Somehow they forgot that it was one of their own that proclaimed him as the messiah in the first place. So they did the same thing to Jesus as well. He would have been referred to as Jesus Ha Stadlan. The intercessor by his followers. Because that’s what he did. He was the intercessor for people to reach God. Remember that he said everyone seeking God must come through him.
So, now that you have an appreciation for their sense of humor, these rabbis don’t refer to him as an intercessor for God but instead call him Ben Stota or Stada in an alternate dialect; the ‘son of absolute utter nonsense’ or as we would say today, the son of bullshit.”
Also remember that in the Talmud is says that he was taken out and stoned and then hung from a tree on the eve of Passover.”
There are three important things you should notice right there. Firstly, if he was stoned to death, why were they bothering to hang him on a crucifix? Couldn’t kill him twice. And then secondly there’s the matter that the Roman authorities only let the Sanhedrin stone people, they didn’t have the authority to crucify a prisoner. And lastly, notice how it was the eve of the Passover. Just as I described it in Caiaphas Letters. The Gospels all say the crucifixion happened on the Passover. So this passage from the Talmud is in harmony with what I've written.
In another passage of Toldoth Jeshua it is written: ‘On the eve of the Passover they hung Yeshu and the crier went forth for forty days beforehand declaring that Yeshu is to be stoned for practicing witchcraft, for enticing and leading Israel astray. Anyone who knows something to clear him should come forth and exonerate him. But no one came forward in his defense and they hung him on the eve of Passover. Yeshu was different because he was close to government.’ So now you have the Toldoth Jeshua in harmony with that passage from the Talmud and both confirming it was the eve of the Passvoer and that this individual was named Jeshua or Jesus.
Once again the Toldoth Jehsua is providing some interesting aspects that other than in Caiaphas Letters, no one else has ever mentioned. For almost a month and a half there’s this attempt to try and create a case so that he can’t be touched. The emphasis in Toldoth Jeshua was they they tried to prove him innocent asking people to come forward to clear and exonerate him. Very different from the condemning version in the Talmud. But when it came to the night of the trial, those that were supposed to exonerate him never came through. In other words, Peter didn’t do his part of the plan. The writer of the Toldoth Jeshua tries to explain this special treatment of trying to save him was due to the fact that he was close to government. Well, they might as well have said because he was related to the High Priest because the only Jewish government at the time was the High Priest, and to be close was another way of implying a familial relationship. It also says that he was being helped by the High Priest at the time who just happened to be Caiaphas. Again this confirms the High Priest family connection I described in Caiaphas Letters.

The question one has to answer is why, if as in the Toldoth Jeshua there is recorded a definite attempt by the officials in Judea to save Jesus, and this book was based on original documentation from much earlier times, why would a group of supposedly educated men, paragons of virtue write such a stupid and inaccurate thing in the Talmud that actually suggests the Sanhedrin wanted to kill Jesus. The answer is simple; they couldn’t stop themselves. The whole idea behind the Talmud was to write as much down as they could remember because there was no central stores or archives left following the destruction of the Temple. Then they would analyze and embellish what they had written. But in a lot of the cases, this embellishment was merely the addition of hearsay and innuendo. Their memories of events may have been poor, but their imaginations certainly were not. They were in overdrive. They didn’t even try to be accurate. By the time the Talmud was being written, Christianity was already becoming the new power and Jews were already being persecuted by this new religion. So why not tell a very disparaging story and gloat about the death of the Christian messiah. Human nature has remained a constant throughout history. And this was one way of saying, “in your face, buddy! Stupid, yes, but then these supposedly intelligent men never thought the Talmud would be read by anyone that wasn't Jewish.
In their minds they were disproving the claims of Christianity by saying they were responsible for the death of Jesus. After all, how could he be the son of God, or for that matter, even the messiah, if they could kill him? So this invented story of theirs became our own undoing. We suffered because they gloated. But worst of all, they gloated over an entirely false and ludicrous story that they created for their own personal egos.”
Now one might point out that as a Karaite, I have no fondness for the Rabbis of old, I certainly don't give any credence to the Talmud and therefore I view them in a negative light. True, I admit it. We suffered for two thousand years because of their misguided beliefs. Had they only stayed to the facts, I think they would have found that most educated people would have understood what occurred in the framework of the time and circumstances. I'm not naive and saying that the early Church would not have pursued its policy of deicide if they hadn’t written the inaccurate story of Jesus into the Talmud but I don’t believe the persecutions would have been conducted as vehemently as they were. What you have in the Gospels is the story of Caiaphas sending Jesus to Antipas, and then to Pilate. Pilate pronounced sentence and Roman soldiers performed the execution. You actually have evidence of the Jewish authorities abdicating their responsibility and handing it over to these other powers. Therefore the role of the Jewish authorities is minimalized.
When you read about the confrontation between the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew, and the Nasi, Yakov Kahana in Shadows of Trinity, you are seeing the two worlds of Karaism and Judaism clash. The former regarding the Talmud as the work of foolish men and the latter that deemed themselves worthy of interpreting Gods words, convinced that there were hidden meanings, detailed instructions, and numerous restrictions behind every word. But as the above story has pointed out, words can be very dangerous when they used improperly. Less would have definitely been better!

We Were Warriors

Once upon a time there was a people that despite their small numbers would not hesitate to fight for what they believed in; for what they considered right. It doesn't necessarily follow that they won each time because they didn't, but they knew that for every loss there would be a victory some time, some place in the future. For a thousand years that belief was consistent and unfaltering. We fought the Egyptians, though halfheartedly I must admit when Shishank stormed Jerusalem and lost. But Solomon made up with his father-in-law and the Egyptians withdrew. We fought the Assyrians and lost the northern kingdom but more so through the assimilation that followed. We fought the Babylonians and lost but fortunately they in turn lost to the Persians and we were given back our institution to self govern. We fought the Greeks and actually won, but then gave away that freedom immediately afterwards through alliances with Antiochus, the same ruler we fought against so that we could become a self-governing vassal state. No one said it had to make sense. And then we fought the Romans and lost. Sixty years afterwards we fought them again, and lost again. Three hundred years later we tried it again but we didn't fare any better that time. But by the fourth century AD something had drastically changed in our makeup and our mindset. We no longer saw ourselves as warriors, definitely not as victors, and we certainly lost the aptitude to keep challenging the powers that be.
There were singular moments when individuals did rise to the occassion and for the span of a few years there were even hazy reflections of the ancestral warriors and the sweet taste of victory but then that same insidious change that occurred in the fourth century would pervade our thinking and we would sacrifice all that we had gained. The story of Mar Zutra is such an episode where our freedom had been re-established only to have it sold out from under us.

For anyone that knows my belief system and is familiar with my thinking they may already know what I'm alluding to. Where I feel the blame is to be laid and how I see us once again as a people faltering and failing to embrace that warrior heritage that is the core of our existence.
After the wars against Rome, notice I say wars because most are of the beleif that there was only a singular war which is completely incorrect, we abandoned that which was the essential elements of our existence. Not our stalwart belief in God, but the tools that he handed us to ensure our continued survival through the ages. I'm referring to the Rod and the Sceptre. There came amongst us a group of relgious philosphers (hasidim) that felt the two institutions were archaic and irrelevant. They dismissed them as the flotsom of an outlived aristocracy, no longer essential. They presumed that without a Temple, without a base or kingdom to rule, there was no longer a need for either priests or kings. And in their haste to bury both castes they forgot that it was not their decision to make as God had forbade any man to wrest these from between his knees (this is a biblical expression, not mine). Yes, I blame Rabbinical Judaism for our downfall through the ages.

Now before everyone gets in an uproar and starts proclaiming what the Rabbis have always insisted that if not for them we never would have survived as a distinct people amongst all the other nations, let me say this; 'CRAP'. The Talmud, is the work and interpretation of men and if anything, it has caused more confrontational arguments than agreements. Long after it was written you still had the Rashis and Maiomondes, and the hundreds and thousands of Rabbis that followed still trying enforce their interpretation as the correct one. How ridiculous. Because as any knowledgable Karaite can tell you, Anan ben David had summed up everything that had to be known in a singular revision; "If what you read seems good to you, then it is correct." It was a powerful statement. So powerful in fact that by the tenth century, the Rabbinical sage, Saadiah grew very concerned that the rabbinical Judaism he and his colleagues professed would actully become subordiante to the Karaite beliefs that he made it his life's ambition to destroy all that was Karaite. Though you may find it hard to uncover this edict I'm about to reveal, since an effort has been made to erase it from Jewish History, Saadiah, once enshrined as the Gaon, or chief Rabbi, pronounced, "To Kill a Karaite is no Different Than Killing a Dog." What did this actually mean? It meant that you could kill a Karaite without being charged with murder. And they did; literally in the thousands.
It is inconceivable that we who were once warriors would turn upon our own brethren, simply because one group decided that somehow it became their right to rule the hearts and minds of the people. And that same group would preach whenever as a people we would become oppressed by other nations that we should put our trust in God and that he will deliver us. That it is not up to us to deliver ourselves. How many holocausts have we suffered because of such faulty logic? How many more must we endure before it is finally questioned, who are these people that claim the authority to speak for God?

We are at a crossroads now. As Karaite, I'm only one of thirty thousand remaining in the world. Even most of my family following the death of Yakov Kahana (see Shadows of Trinity) abandoned Karism and adopted what was then mainstream rabbinical Judaism. But in case you have not noticed, there is a tide turning in the world. A tide that suddenly looks at today's Israel with its six million people and says, "How dare you exert your beligerance over 500 million Arabs. How dare you declare yourself a Jewish Homeland but WE acknowledge the right for a Palestinian state to exclude any Jews from living within its borders. How dare you pronouce Judaism as your State religion, even though you let millions of Muslims and Christians live freely within your country to practice their religion, while those of non-Muslim faiths are not allowed to publicly practice their religions in a large number of Muslim countries. How dare you claim an entitlement to the land on which you have been a presence on for three thousand years continuously, have fought and died over for an equal length of time as mentioned at the start of this article, and try to use that to refute OUR claim that you are merely the creation of post world war European guilt." You can hear it now. It's whispered in the streets, it's shouted behind closed doors, it's rising in its tenor and rhetoric from the lips of presidents that are willing to deny the truth. As a Karaite I can see the winds of change. We have seen it many times over our existence. We have not abandoned either the Staff nor the Sceptre. And though our numbers are diminished we still recall that once We Were Warriors.

Religious Intolerance

It's old advice not to talk religion or politics unless you're prepared to lose more friends than make them. But what if you combine them both. Does that make you ultimately friendless? I guess we'll have to explore that hurdle when you come to it.
I found it interesting yesterday that a colleague in the writing venue decided to do a rant on her blog spot when she encountered religious intolerance. She was the victim of someone that painted themselves as a 'good' Christian versus her pagan idolatrous beliefs. Of course her beliefs were neither pagan nor idolatrous but merely the common vogue of espousing the sayings of Nostradamus and talking about the Mayan calendar's prediction of 2012 as the year the world ends. I really don't place much faith in the latter since the Mayans couldn't even predict their own eradication at the hands of the Aztecs. If they couldn't see that coming then I doubt they could predict the end of the world.
Anyways, to make a long story short, this 'good' Christian was offended that someone could believe they knew when the end of the world was coming, since she quoted that no man or woman knows the time when Jesus will return. And anyone that says they do is a false prophet. Funny that! I'd hate to think that the only reason Jesus would return would be so that he could witness the end of the world. Seems like a waste to me.
But focusing back on the intolerance part, why can't someone be allowed to believe in something other than the New Testament end of the world without being the target of abuse and derision? I hardly believe that was what Jesus was trying to teach his followers.
So where's this all leading...good question. It's leading to my comment of how little we understand prophecy in general, especially Nostradamus. As is clearly evident in Shadows of
Trinity, so many of Nostradamus's prophecies were intended to help his son survive the persecution of the Church by guiding him through certain episodes he would encounter. Not predictions of events five hundred years in the future but only several decades after his own death. When placed in their proper context, the quatrains become more of an "Oh Yeah, that was pretty obvious!"
As a Karaite, one of 30,000 remaining in the world, I know what intolerance is all about. We've borne it for two thousand years. Ever since my ancestor Ishmael ben Phiabi turned his back on the Tannim of the time and basically told them that their interpretation of the messiah prophecy was full of s**t, we've encountered that religious and political intolerance from both our own civilisation and that of the outside world. The Kahana Chronicles is a record of that intolerance and it is meant to be held up as a mirror of society. Perhaps if enough people can look at the reflection and decide that they don't like what they see, we can make the world a better place!