Are ashkenazi jews descendants of the khazars?
No, but this allegation is used to refute Israeli claims to territory also sought by Palestinians. “Alleged Khazar ancestry of Ashkenazim The theory that all or most Ashkenazi (“European”) Jews might be descended from Khazars (rather than Semitic groups in the Middle East) dates back to the racialism of late nineteenth century Europe, and was frequently cited to assert that most modern Jews aren’t descended from Israelites and/or to refute Israeli claims to territory also sought by Palestinians. It was first publicly proposed in lecture given by Ernest Renan on January 27, 1883, titled “Judaism as a Race and as Religion.” It was repeated in articles in The Dearborn Independent in 1923 and 1925, and popularized by racial theorist Lothrop Stoddard in a 1926 article in the Forum titled “The Pedigree of Judah”, where he argued that Ashkenazi Jews were a mix of people, of which the Khazars were a primary element. Stoddard’s views were “based on nineteenth and twentieth-century concepts of r
