HaKuzari


 * HaKuzari
 * by Jonathan I. Edelstein
 * 15 October 2001


 * We are scattered, and the scatterings are scattered;
 * There is no power in our hands, our sword-arm is empty;
 * They say to us, "every nation has a kingdom,
 * But you alone have not even a memory."
 * Where is there a king, an army, a country
 * That will follow our law and elevate our spirit?


 * - al-Mu'alima, Lamentation for a Lost Land, SE 147 [919 CE] FN1

Khazars ... The second Khazar conversion was more complete than the first. The Khazar kingdom had become an officially Jewish state almost a century before the B'nei Mikra arrived in SE 58 [830 CE], but its adoption of rabbinic Judaism was largely confined to the upper class. The Khazar rulers were also the first to adopt Ananism, but the faith quickly spread to the general population. This was due both to the more aggressive missionary activity of the B'nei Mikra and the use of Ananism as a method of social control...

... The decision of the Khazar king Obadiah I to adopt the Ananite faith was, even according to contemporary accounts, more political than spiritual. In the early years of the Submissive Era, the academies of Sura and Pumbaditha were still regarded by most rabbinic Jews as authoritative interpreters of Jewish law and practice, and the Khazar monarch chafed under what he regarded as Babylonian overlordship in legal matters. The Ananites, who recognized no supreme theological authority, provided the means for the Khazars to declare their religious independence.

It soon became clear, however, that theological autonomy was to be reserved for the rulers. Although the Khazar monarchy paid lip service to the right of every Ananite to interpret the Torah in his own fashion and did not attempt to re-establish a religious hierarchy, it took control of the B'nei Mikra within its borders by more subtle means. Teachers whose doctrines coincided with royal belief were subsidized and given civil rank, while those who dissented were found guilty of sedition and fined or exiled. By the early second century, the B'nei Mikra faith in Khazaria had been subordinated to the secular authorities, and teachers who preached obedience to the temporal throne were not surprisingly favored. Once a bastion of religious tolerance, the Khazars had become like other nations in treating religion as an arm of the state...

... From the earliest days, the Khazar monarchy encouraged the purging of all "foreign" influences from the Ananite faith. These included the concept of the God of the Jews as a tribal deity and the special status of the land of Israel. By the second century, the ninth of Av -- the date of the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of the Temple -- had been removed from the religious calendar, and the "Promised Land" was no longer regarded as a reference to Israel. These changes were greeted with indifference by most B'nei Mikra in Khazaria, who were not descended from the Jews of Israel and had no personal reason to mourn the loss of the Temple. A significant minority, however, rejected the attempt to create a purely Khazar Judaism and continued to celebrate Tisha b'Av, laying the seeds for one of the great religious disputes of the third century.

Even more worshipers rejected the attempt of the Khazar kings to mold Ananism into a nationalist faith in which Khazaria was the home of the Jews. This was one of the few respects in which the Khazar monarchy failed to mold the B'nei Mikra faith to its liking; the teachings of Anan ben David were too clearly universalist to allow the Jewish God to be remade into a tribal deity. Although the land of Israel was no longer central to Ananite theology in Khazaria by the second century, only a minority followed the king in regarding Khazars as the chosen people. Instead, the strongest thread to emerge from the Khazar religious debates of the second and third centuries was one in which Israel was considered a metaphor for spiritual perfection which any righteous person could attain. The Khazar monarchs' attempt to create a tribal religion had resulted in the accidental creation of a universal faith...

... The adoption of Ananism also resulted in other profound changes to Khazar society. The B'nei Mikra teachers were as insistent as any rabbinic Jew that all male children learn to read. They justified this requirement, despite its rabbinic origin, as necessary to allow each worshiper to understand and interpret the Torah. The monarchy, for its part, saw an opportunity to indoctrinate the youth of the country in its favored beliefs.

For whatever reason, a network of primary schools existed throughout the Khazar kingdom by the early second century in which boys between the ages of five and thirteen learned to read and studied the Torah. In the countryside, these were ramshackle affairs where a teacher, paid through a community tithe, presided over a one-room schoolhouse for the six months between harvest and planting. In the cities, however, the schools operated year-round and included such secular topics as mathematics and geography. At least some of these schools also admitted girls; the point at which they began to do this is unknown, but the late second-century philosopher Chichek bat Bulan often stated that she would not even have learned to read but for the free schools of Itil. Attendance at these schools was never universal, but reliable estimates indicate that forty percent of the Khazar population during the middle second century was literate...

... Few of the nomads of the Central Asian steppe converted to Ananism, despite the best efforts of the Khazar missionaries. Unlike the Khazars, they were not settled folk, and they were not yet ready for a faith as literate and demanding as that of the B'nei Mikra. By the beginning of the third century, however, Khazar merchants traveling the Silk Road had begun to carry Ananite doctrines to China...

Russia ... Ananism and Submission arrived in the emerging Russian state at about the same time. The first records of Ananite teachers in Kiev -- members of the large expatriate community of Khazar traders in the city -- date from approximately SE 95 [867 CE], and the same documents also mention Norse preachers of the Submissive faith.

The two religions found themselves in a closely fought contest for the allegiance of the Russian people. The Russians were fascinated by the idea of monotheism and the marriage of religion and morality, and both the Ananite and Submissive faiths were new and vital. They also had many points in common -- the rejection of original sin, the emphasis on good works and personal spirituality -- that appealed to Russian sensibilities.

Weighing against Ananism were its ascetic tendencies, especially the dietary laws and the alcohol prohibition. The ritual of circumcision was likewise unattractive to many Russians. The Ananite depiction of life as a struggle between good and evil, however, supplied a simple and compelling narrative that many felt was missing from the more abstract Submissive theology...