In his theological masterwork the Kuzari, the great medieval philosopher and poet Rabbi Judah Halevi imagines a dialogue between a rabbi and the ruler of an exotic pagan emperor about religion, which concludes with the latter’s decision to convert to Judaism. Halevi’s framing device was based on what he thought to be a true story of the king of the Khazaria, an empire located in what is now the southern part of European Russia—perhaps spilling over into Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Georgia—whose ruling class converted to Judaism around the 8th century CE. From time to time—most recently in 2013—spurious theories have popped up that the Khazars are the real ancestors of the majority of Ashkenazi Jews. The eminent scholar Shaul Stampfer, meanwhile, has concluded that not only are these claims unfounded, but that the Khazar conversion is itself a myth.

Dan Shapira puts together what we do know about this people, and what evidence there is of their Judaism:

Al-Masudi [ca. 896–956, a historian and geographer], one of the best Arabic sources, said that the Khazars converted to Judaism in the times of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (766-809) and promised to tell the circumstances; the promise was never fulfilled and we have no such description. Al-Dimashqi [1256–1327, also an Arab geographer], said that the Jews, persecuted in Byzantium in the times of Harun al-Rashid, fled to Khazaria. He adds that these Jews found there a skillful but unsophisticated bunch of folks to whom they proposed their own religion; allegedly, the Khazars found this religion better than the one they had and accepted it.

In the 830s, coins were minted in Khazaria bearing the Arabic text “There is no God but Allah, and Musa (Moses) is His messenger.” These coins can be seen as evidence that the Khazars—or some of them—had converted to Judaism. [After all, allah is but the Arabic word for God, but Muslims believe Mohammad to be his chief messenger.] However . . . all we know is that the coins were minted by Jews for their purposes.

The first modern historian of Russia, Nikolai Karamzin [1766-1826] argued that the Russian state has been born from Khazaria and the Khazar “yoke” was good for the eastern Slavs; he needed the good Khazar yoke in order to oppose it to the bad Mongol yoke—because of which, Karamzin argued, Russia needed autocracy. Joseph Stalin . . . wrote in a Pravda article in 1952 that Khazaria was a parasitical cancerous growth of Judeo-plutocracy on the body of the peoples of the USSR.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.