Most American and European Jews Are Not Israelites

I read recently that the Jews of Israel are mostly not descended from the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel. For some reason, I was still following 19th and early 20th century views of race. As you know, the Nazis were committed to developing the master race, the Aryans, and were dead set upon eliminating the Jewish race. But most European Jews were Caucasian, not racially different from the Nazis themselves!

My source for this astounding conclusion is Arthur Koestler's book, The Thirteenth Tribe . Koestler explains that Eastern Europe's Jewish population, largely decimated by the Nazi onslaught during the World War II,  were descended from a a tribe known as the Khazars. They were converted to Judaism by their king as a way of balancing their position between the Christian Byzantine Empire on the east and the Muslims on their western and southern borders. When their empire collapsed they immigrated to and settled in Hungary, Poland and Germany, bringing their Jewish faith with them.

This means that the European Jews came from the Caucasus region (southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey). Genetically, they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigar and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These folks are known today as Ashkenazic Jews.

The site Judaism 101 seems to ignore this history, preferring to go no deeper than the fact that there were Jews in France, Germany, and Eastern Europe. That site says, 

"Ashkenazic Jews are the Jews of France, Germany, and Eastern Europe and their descendants . . . The word "Ashkenazic" is derived from the Hebrew word for Germany. The word "Sephardic" is derived from the Hebrew word for Spain. The word "Mizrachi" is derived from the Hebrew word for Eastern."

In later Blogs I'll explore further the views on race promoted in the years leading up to Nazism. 

As Long As There Are Jews There Will Always Be Nazis

"Solange es Juden gibt, wird es immer Nazis geben" 

(As long as there are Jews there will always be Nazis)

"A Jew is a citizen of no country except Israel" 

"Waarom leef ik" (Why am I alive?)

—comments written in the Anne Frank museum guestbook, Amsterdam and quoted by Mark Kurlansky in A Chosen Few: The Resurrection of European Jewry.

Anne Frank

My one and only visit to the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam took place back in 1971. My wife, children and I were touring the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy in a rented VW bus. To stand in that place where this little Jewish family hid from the Nazis filled me with deep sorrow and anguish. It put flesh and blood to the story of Nazi fanatical hatred. It was such a troubling experience for me that I had to cut the visit short. Tears choked my throat and eyes as we walked down the stairs and back to the street.

To this day, now nearly forty years later, I cannot put my mind around how any group of people, any nation, any government could harbor such hatred and fear. It does not make rational sense, but then why should it? The only explanation I can find for the Nazi decade, the years during which I was born and began to grow toward manhood, is to accept the fact of evil, evil so deep as to go far beyond comprehension. The more I study—and write—about that era, the more I am convicted by the insights of Jesus and his apostles. Listen to them:

"...our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12).

"When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness" ( Jesus when captured in the Garden - Luke 22:53).

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13).

Jesus and his apostles teach us that everything about darkness and this dark world is opposed to light. They also teach that this is power, not power in the sense of electricity or steam or hydrogen, etc., but power that reaches into the human psyche to fill it with darkness. We view the power of that darkness in the rise and destruction of Nazism. No war in all human history destroyed so many human lives, both civilian and military. Estimates run to as high as 60 million, an astounding and unbelievable number.

But why? I will not attempt to probe the depths of that question, but instead, in  the days ahead, will focus on antisemitism and share some of what my research suggests about why the Nazis hated Jews so deeply and attempted to exterminate them all from the face of the earth.

Nazi Links to Antisemitism's Long History

In  my novel, Freya's Child, Hulda Schwarz, the devoted Nazi priestess of the Nordic goddess Freya, makes it very clear that she believes the religion of the Jews—and the Christians—must be replaced with the religion of the northern gods. In that she reflects the well-known antisemitism of the Nazi regime and the resulting annihilation of millions in Nazi death camps. As indicated in my previous Blog, what is not known so well is the strong connection between the Nazis and many adherents of the Muslim faith, both in the middle-east and elsewhere.

Anyone interested in a deeper understanding of that connection would do well to read the book I cited, Icon of Evil, as well as some others, for instance

• Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World  - Jeffrey Herf 
• The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini - Chuck Morse
• Mufti of Jerusalem - Moshe Perlman

The books themselves are of varied quality and value. However, what they all make clear is that el Husseini is the 20th century grandfather and progenitor of an ongoing antisemitism among Arab extremists to the present. In that hatred these Muslims and the Nazis found common ground. For further background consult

• The Jewish Agency for Israel and their links. Also
• Palestine Facts

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has its own take on the history of antisemitism during the decade of the 1930s. It also has valuable links outlining the 2,000 year-long history of antisemitism from the beginning of the Christian era to the present. This site suggests that Christian leaders taught that all Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, the destruction of  the Temple by the Romans and their own scattering. This hatred was fostered and continued most especially in Christian Europe up to the Nazi era. Simple To Remember has a time-line of widespread Jewish persecution across the two millennia, especially in Europe.