This theory has been debunked so many times already. This guy's findings are disputed by multiple previous studies. Multiple "gene bloggers" have already pointed out that even if the actual science here is valid, the results could mean many different things. The khazarian theory is only still being bushed by hardcore antisemites, and deluded arabs (less antisemitic, more just angry and ill informed).

The legend of "Jewish Khazaria" is one of the major arguments used by rabid anti-semits in the Muslim world and in Russia (they are small but noisy) in order to demonize Israel and to call for its destruction

""Yiddish, the language of Central and Eastern European Jews, began as a Slavic language" before being reclassified as High German, he notes." Yeah, like a language can change its complete conjugation style just like that. Sorry, but Ockham's razor slices on the side of German origin rather than Slavic. Plus, the Latin/Romance influences cannot be ignored (bentsch from benidicare, leyen from legere, Anshel from Angel/Angelo). Most likely, Slavic words crept in via synonyms. That can't happen if the base language isn't German.

AND "The Idea that 50,000 Est. Euro Jews in the 15th century grew to around 8mil million at the start of the 20th century" (ie at the time of Auschwitz) is another fallacy. "The birth rate would have had to be 10x greater than that of the local non-Jewish population".

Wonder if all those Ashkenazim were converted by Orthodox rabbis....

Yiddish was a High Germanic language that later had Slavic input as Jews moved eastward. This so called study has it backwards.

It ressembles more , and even almost completely to German . secondly , were the Khazars such a big people that they are the origin of the Ashkenazi Jews ? Jews suffered less from diseases because of their hygienic laws . And not to forget , Polish Jews also came from Turkey as did my ancestors some twenty generations ago , maybe after they fled from Spain .

"Jews of European descent, often called Ashkenazim, account for some 90% of the more than 13 million Jews in the world today." This single point is not scientific and the rest is the same. It was true before the Shoah. AFP (Agence France Palestine or French Palestine agency in english) is anti-israeli and it's goal it's to delligitamate Israel and the Jews. Shame on anti-Netanyahu news to relay this propaganda

Nu az ma ? I do not come in straight line from the High Priest of the 2nd Temple ? Oy va voy ! My grand-grand mother was raped by a cosack in Kichinev and my great uncles are all blond blue eyed and redhaed ! Gewalt ! Stop it . I am not 1000% authentic caanananite ?? I will renouce on the spot to my jewish mixed bag ancestry.I want only blue-blood ; so I eat my steak blue.

Mixing is natural and even the "purest" Germans are mixed, everybody is mixed today, even those Palestinian Arabs are mix of Turks, Crusader descents, Jews, Arabs, Mongolians, Persians, Greeks and so on... even Iceland is mixed of Germanic tribes and Celtic tribes...even the English people are mixed, so that means they have no right for England?

And previous studies showed that we are closer related to the Kurds than to the Arabs. The Khazar myth was written off genetically long ago.

the study is relevant only for those like the Nazis who predominantlydefine Jews racially and ethnically rather than socially and spiritually

How are they "returning" to Israel if their ancestors never lived there in the first place?

Come on people! Stop talking about races and ethnies ! We're all a mix of genes... Purity doesn't exist anymore and thank god for that

not ONE Slavic word other than Wodka...oh well... That proposition = TOTAL GARBAGE !

Other than two letters, where is the evidence of some great Jewish community in the Khazar Empire? Why don't we have any text product of this civilization survive? Why don't we know any great rabbis from that community? Why don't we even know what their Judaism was like? We can't even say if they were rabbinites or karaites! And this is in the same year that some Jewish records from even some marginal community in Afghanistan-Pakistan area survive and are shown to the world. But somehow there's nothing by Khazars except for a couple of letters supposedly from and to this allegedly great community? Sorry, but I'm not buying it.

It is great to know where you come from, its your 'identity' (in more way than one, just ask the Moroccan Jews, having their 'cultural identity highjacked by the, then, majority group) that helps define your present and future relationship. Which brings me to the ultimate question: right for the Land of Israel...The Maroccan Jewery has no problem, thus more stress has to be on the narrative, and the great history of that section of Jewery: North Africa-Spain and Turkie. Leave you with that proposition, as the times are relevant for such introspection...political and futristic.

Everybody here is so quick to jump "anti semitism" ... come on. Do you really know what Semite means? Anyhow, we have all mixed through generations, Homosapiens have existed for 200,000 years, there is no such thing as a pure race. Anyone who is scientifically literate knows what Race is a social constuct and has no biological basis there. Why is is so hard to accept? Maybe we did come from the Khazars.But so what. Judaism accepts conversion, so you are STILL Jewish. Get over it.

Since my other replies weren't published, I'll try a shorter one. This study has been a proven fraud, since all he did was compare Jews to Armenians, and say that because Jews are genetically closer to Armenians than to Palestinians, they are Khazars. What he forgets is that Armenians genetically are a Middle Eastern/Anatolian people, not a European/Caucasian people, and can't be related to the Khazars. He just proved once again the Levantine origins of Ashkenazi Jews, but fumbled the results.

First, from 50,000 to 8 million in 500 years is not a leap and does NOT need a 10 times higher birth rate! It would have sufficed that every family had, on average, 2.5-2.6 surviving children. So the Rhineland Hypothesis is fully plausible and needs no miracle. Also, in his paper, Elhaik quotes Sand and Koester, both ideological supporters of the Khazarian Hypothesis, but no scientists themselves.

A lot of Babylonian Jews ran from the Mongols to the West and I'd bet Jews and Arabs have shared genes also. Also there is not an explanation for love of Torah and Talmudic study in this Hypothesis.From Babylon to the West . Now the Mongol Massacres Happen When and When did the Jews go to Poland then Russia.

This is an other raison to stop making conversions to Judaism so difficult Remove 13 millions of Ashkenazim from am israel remove the sepharadics that are of Muslim origine Remove all the recent converts And none of us are from the original tribe We should think about this

Jews have always lived in in what is now Israel,the West bank, Gaza and Jordan. Populations of most countries have always moved about from one country to another ,voluntarily or not. And they have returned to their ancient homeland.

Did the 10 tribes settle in Denmark (Dan) Holland (Zebulon) etc? Are the Brits Ephraim and the US Manasseh? We will all know in the last days, right? The lost tribes come home from the four corners of the Earth. With today's genetics, it wouldn't be hard to track. The Lemba (South Africa) also share one of the Jewish Haplotypes as well. Very interesting, maybe people will chill knowing that their ancestors are actually Israelite now.

A jew is a jew. Noninteresting if he`s born a jew or is a convert. What´s important is that we all share the same religion, culture, traditions and as a people the same history and connection to the jewish state Israel.

To be from this origin means not decended from Pigs and monkees Very good news

Our claim to Israel is not, and never was, based on race. We are a religion, people, and nation, not a race. A free people in our own land. Myself, I find studies like the one in the article interesting, sometimes believable, sometimes medically useful, hardly philosophically or existentially challenging.

How did he get this figure. Most Halachically Jewish Israelis are not Ashkenazim, according to other sources, and there is no scarcity of Sephardim everywhere else such as France. Is he counting Israelis from the former Soviet Union who never claimed to be Jewish and Reform converts in the USA who are not Halachically Jewish? THe article leaves out quite a lot.

Under the muslim & christian rule, the spanish Jews grew up to a population of 300.000 before the 1492 expulsion. The french Jews were 100.000 at the time of Rashi, before they were expelled eastwards in 1309. As the discrimination started with theodosian codex in 438, and enforced after the 1215 Latran Concile that created ghettoes, the jewish national identity was forged by persecutions, a common fate and culture rather than on the basis of racialist pedantry.