Editing Khazars (section)

=== Crimean Karaites and Krymchaks ===
{{Main|Crimean Karaites|Krymchaks}}

In 1839, the [[Crimean Karaites|Karaim]] scholar [[Abraham Firkovich]] was appointed by the Russian government as a researcher into the origins of the Jewish sect known as the [[Karaite Judaism|Karaites]].{{sfn|Goldstein|2011|p=9}} In 1846, one of his acquaintances, the Russian orientalist Vasilii Vasil'evich Grigor'ev (1816–1881), theorised that the Crimean Karaites were of Khazar stock. Firkovich vehemently rejected the idea,{{sfn|Shapira|2006|p=166}} a position seconded by Firkovich,{{clarify inline|reason=He seconded his own position?|date=October 2024}} who hoped that by "proving" his people were of Turkic origin, he would secure them exception from Russian anti-Jewish laws, since they bore no responsibility for Christ's crucifixion.{{sfnp|Blady|2000|p=125}} This idea has a notable impact in Crimean Karaite circles.{{efn|group=note|"At a time when Russia masked imperialist goals by pretending to be the protector of Slavic peoples and the Orthodox faith, Crimean Karism was exercising its own version of cultural imperialism. It is clear that the Crimean Karaites intended to expand their dominion to include Cairo, Jerusalem, and Damascus, basing their pre-eminence on the claim that Karaism, an ancient, pre-Talmudic form of Judaism, had been brought to the Middle East by the Khazars. Such an allegation would, however, have been much more difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.{{pb}}To summarize the Khazar-Karaite nexus commonly accepted in the Russian Empire during the last century: the Khazars, who were of pagan Turkic origin, were supposedly brought to Judaism by Karaites, descendants of Jews who had lived in the Black Sea areas since biblical times and whose Judaism was, therefore, pre-Talmudic and nonrabbinic. As a result, the Khazars' Judaism was Karaite, and later Karaites, who spoken a Turkic language, must have descended from the Khazars, with whom the ancient Jews had assimilated. The circularity of the argument aside, modern historians have concluded that the Khazars were converted by Rabbanite Jews and that they and their descendants observed rabbinic law and traditions. Indeed, recent scholarship has demonstrated that Khazaria was altogether unrepresented in the Karaite literature of the ninth and early tenth centuries, as well as that written during its Golden Age – when Karaism had a militant and missionary influence."{{sfn|Miller|1993|pp=7–9}}}} It is now believed that he forged much of this material on Khazars and Karaites.{{sfn|Weinryb|1973a|pp=21–22}} Specialists in Khazar history also question the connection.{{sfn|Golden|2007a|p=9}}{{efn|group=note|name=Rabinnic}} A genetic study of European Karaites by [[Kevin Alan Brook]] found no evidence of a Khazar or Turkic origin for any uniparental lineage but did reveal the European Karaites' links to Egyptian Karaites and to Rabbinical Jewish communities.{{sfn|Brook|2018|pp=213–215}}{{sfn|Brook|2014|pp=69–84}}

Another Turkic Crimean group, the [[Krymchaks]] had retained very simple Jewish traditions, mostly devoid of [[halakha|halakhic content]], and very much taken with magical superstitions which, in the wake of the enduring educational efforts of the great Sephardi scholar [[Chaim Hezekiah Medini]], came to conform with traditional Judaism.{{sfnp|Blady|2000|p=122}}

Though the assertion they were not of Jewish stock enabled many Crimean Karaites to survive the Holocaust, which led to the murder of 6,000 Krymchaks, after the war, many of the latter, somewhat indifferent to their Jewish heritage, took a cue from the Crimean Karaites, and denied this connection in order to avoid the antisemitic effects of the stigma attached to Jews.{{sfnp|Blady|2000|p=126}}