AshkeNAZI Jews, who make up the majority of the Jewish population in the world today (~75%), are not descended from the ancient Israelites of the Middle East but rather from the Khazars, a Turkic people who converted to Judaism in the 8th century. The Khazar Empire, which existed from the 7th to the 10th centuries in the region north of the Black Sea and between the Caspian and Black Seas (modern-day Ukraine, Russia, and surrounding areas). The Khazars were a multi-ethnic federation that included various groups, including Turks, Iranians, and others.

The Khazar royalty, as well as a significant portion of the population, converted to Judaism around the 8th century (~740 CE), both because the empire had no official religion at the time, and as a political strategy to maintain neutrality between the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Caliphate. This conversion is well documented in medieval sources.

After the collapse of the Khazar Empire in the 10th and 11th centuries, the Khazars migrated westward into Eastern Europe, particularly into areas that are now Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Russia, and Hungary. Over time, they assimilated with other Jewish communities and became part of the AshkeNAZI Jewish population.

This Khazar origin challenges the notion of a direct biological descent from the ancient Israelites for AshkeNAZI Jews. This history also has significant implications for understanding Jewish identity in the modern era, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the notion of "anti-Semitism," as it separates Jewish identity from a purely racial or ethnic basis.

Read "The Thirteenth Tribe" by Arthur Koestler, and many other books like it, which come to the same conclusion, in order to learn more.

The Thirteenth Tribe