Schechter Letter
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The Schechter Letter,[citation needed] also called the Genizah Letter[1] or Cambridge Document,[citation needed] was discovered in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Schechter in 1912.[1] It is an anonymous Khazar letter discussing several matters including the wars of the early 940s, involving the Byzantine Empire, the Khazar Khaganate, and Kievan Rus'.[1] Scholars have debated its authenticity.[1]
The Letter
The Schechter Letter has been interpreted as a communique from an unnamed
The Letter was included in the Genizah Collection donated by Schechter to Cambridge University in 1898. Most of the folio is unreadable and only two surviving blocs of text exist. This makes identifying the precise nature of the letter, communique or legend unclear.
The conversion text
The Schechter Letter contains an account of the Khazar conversion that differs from that of the
The account of the Khazar kingdom matches up with no Muslim, Jewish or Byzantine source from the period regarding wars of migration. It also differs radically from every other alleged source on the Khazar conversion to Judaism and in its naming of the ruling class. The names of the figures involved, Sabriel being the name of an angel in the Jewish mystical tradition, Serah being a biblical figure and the claim of descent from the tribe of Simeon whose demise is chronicled in the bible, strongly indicate the text is an unreliable source and heavily influenced in a rich Jewish tradition of wish fulfilment and mystical writing about the ten lost tribes of Israel.[2]
HLGW and Romanus
The next substantial section of the Letter to survive tells of a recent (to the author) event - an invasion of Khazaria by HLGW (most probably
Implications of the text
If taken literally and not as a legend of lost tribes, the letter challenges the conventional narrative of the Khazars. First, its version of the conversion posits a partially Judean descent for Khazar contemporaries of the author. Whether or not this is an accurate account, it indicates that the Khazars saw themselves as fully integrated members of world Jewry.
The letter states that in the early days after Khazars' conversion to Judaism, some Alanians already practised Judaism, to a degree that Alania came to save Khazaria from its enemies (lines 52–53). This is the only evidence corroborating the record of Benjamin of Tudela about Judaism in Alania.
In addition, if HLGW in the text refers to
Further reading
- ISBN 0-7425-4981-X.
- Dunlop, Douglas M.(1954). The History of the Jewish Khazars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Golb, Norman; Pritsak, Omeljan (1982). Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. ISBN 0-8014-1221-8.
- Zuckerman, Constantine (1995). "On the Date of the Khazar's Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor". .
- Ostrowski, Donald (2018). "Was There a Riurikid Dynasty in Early Rus'?". Canadian-American Slavic Studies. 52 (1): 30–49. .
- Stampfer, Shaul (2013). "Did the Khazars Convert to Judaism?". Jewish Social Studies. 19 (3): 1–72. S2CID 161320785.
References
- ^ a b c d e Ostrowski 2018, p. 42.
- ^ S2CID 161320785.
- ^ a b Ostrowski 2018, p. 42–43.
- ^ Ostrowski 2018, p. 43.