Perils of internet & social media research:
I'm always on the lookout for stories about #Khazars, regarding either the #medieval #Jewish empire (in what was today's Ukraine & southern Russia) or contemporary #antisemitism
But because the late Bob Lee unwisely chose to hook up with Khazar Elyassnia, the murder case has been flooding my timeline
Fortunately (for my research, at least) the haters & nutjobs are still out there, if one is but patient & knows where to look
Here goes 1/n #Mazeldon
The idea that Eastern European #Jews (Ashkenazim) were descended from remnants of the Turkic #Khazar Khaganate, which adopted Judaism in the course of the 8th and 9th centuries, arose in the later 19th century as a plausible hypothesis to account for (1) the demographic surge of Ashkenazic Jewry, which, by the end of the early modern era, outstripped the once more numerous Sephardic (Mediterranean and Middle Eastern) Jewish population, and (2) the physical differences between them #Mazeldon 2/n
@CitizenWald It was also an argument of some Jews who wanted to defend themselves against the idea that they were responsible for a deicide and tried to argue for rights within the Russian empire, while explaining what happened to the Khazar kingdom and the converts to Judaism.
@MagdaTeter Yes, an unfortunate approach in the long run. Mikhail Kizilov (as you know) has most thoroughly explored this in the context of Karaite history (and of course, the distortions and outright forgeries of Firkovitch have considerably muddied the waters).
BTW You are just about the only person with whom I could have this conversation
@CitizenWald true. It's a niche.
BATW we start your book tomorrow. Hoping I can first-semester students to understand it, but the topic should interest them, and I think I've brought them far enough along in their reading ability
@CitizenWald let me know how it goes! Eager to hear! Thank you for assigning it
@CitizenWald how did it go?
It's a tough slog for them because they are 18 and not used to doing so much reading, including dense descriptions and analyses (e.g. we just finished the chapters on things such as Dred Scott, Plessy v Ferguson etc.)
BUT they are getting the main ideas and understand the arguments (I try to fill in where I can).
E.g. they were appropriately horrified by the Nast image.
I asked: Do you know who he was?
They: no.
I: Yes you do!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/
Ditto for for Dewey
@CitizenWald Dewey always gets people excited