Are East-Caucasian Jews Descended from the Khazars (or other proselytes)

Are East-Caucasian Jews Descended from the Khazars (or other proselytes)?

Zvi Avraham

	PRO	CONS
Judaism	Had "wrong" form of Judaism	ECJ was pre-Talmudic in some ways
	Had no mikvot
	Polygamy
	Believed in spirits	But this was Mesopotamian beliefs, not local Caucasian
	They believed in talismans and amulets as protection against evil spirits and demons	Same goes in modern Israel
	Absence of Kohanim	This might be explained, by this that ECJ got surnames relatively late, but there are Leviim (or at least people with ancestral name Levi or surname Leviev)
	"Unlike all Jews, who pray towards east [sic!], they prayed toward west." (The ignorant author of this sentence assuming, that “all Jews” living to the west of Jerusalem)	Synagogues face west, while real direction to Jerusalem is south-west - evidence of migration from Babylonia or South Persia
Customs		"hakhnasat orkhim" (hospitality)
	Like Khazars, carried weapons (daggers)	Who said Israelites weren’t good warriors? Saying that ECJ descent from Khazars just because they carried daggers, is the same like saying that modern Israeli soldiers descent from American Indians because they carrying M-16s.
	Blood vengeance (yet we have no evidence of blood vengeance in Khazaria).	Also ancient Israelite tradition: check about "arey miklat" - "Cities of Shelter" in Torah. Blood vengeance is a common attribute of Mediterranean peoples: Italians for example. Bedouins and some Arab groups in modern Israel have blood vengeance traditions until today. The judges in Israeli courts giving lesser punishments in such a cases. The modern Rabbinic Judaism is against blood vengeance, but there are cases, like Shalhevet Pas ( (äùí éð÷åí ãîä1-year girl, killed by Arab terrorists, her father a religious Jew was accused in leading a “Jewish terror” group.
Geography	Close to the Khazaria	But also close to the ancient Israelite Diaspora locations, such as Armenia, Media, Babylon, Persia and Crimea
Geography	Caspian Sea called "Khazar" in Azeri language
Onomastics	ECJ use holidays and blessings as names, example: Pisakh, Khanuka, Purim, Mazaltu, Simandu [2,3]
	ECJ use some names known from Khazarian correspondence, like Nissi, Sinai, Serakh and Savriil [2,3]
	Some ECJ have Turkic surnames	The number of ECJ having Turkic surnames is insignificant. Compare this with the fact that majority of Ashkenazic Jews have Germanic surnames.
		Unlike Jewish Khazars the ECJ not only used names of the brightest biblical characters but also names considerably less bright. To be more precise, ECJ used ALL sorts of very ancient Jewish names! [2]
Linguistics		ECJ speak Juwuri/Juhuri ("Jewish") - South-West Middle Persian dialect, this is the strong evidence, that their ancestors migrated from the areas of South-West Persia or Babylonia in the time of Sassanids
		Juwuri have Semitic (Hebrew/Aramaic/Arabic) elements on all linguistic levels. [5] Juwuri have Hebrew “ayin” sound while no neighboring languages have it.
	Juwuri have many Turkic words, so probably it's Khazarian language relexified into South-West Iranic and Hebrew	The Turkic words in Juwuri are loan words from Oghuz and Pronto-Caspian Turkic language families, not from Bulgarian, to which Khazarian language belong.
	Juwuri is related to language of Caucasian Persians (Farsi or Paran), so probably they are one ethnic group - Tats, divided into different confessions	There is no full intelligibility between speakers of Juwuri and Paran (Tat). And except language there are no other common parameters between these groups.
Anthropology		ECJ anthropologically belongs to the front-asian type of Balkano-Caucasian race, like Armenians and Assyrians. They are different from Azerbaijani Turks and Muslim Tats, which belong to Caspian type. [6]
Genetics		Majority of ECJ genetic paternal (Y chromosomal) haplotypes shared with other Jewish communities and consistent with a Mediterranean origin [4]

REFERENCES:

1. Are Mountain Jews Descended from the Khazars?

An Examination of Jewish Tribes from the Eastern Caucasus, by Kevin Alan Brook

2. О РАННИХ КОНТАКТАХ ВОСТОЧНОКАВКАЗСКИХ ЕВРЕЕВ И ХАЗАР, Игорь Семенов

(About early contacts between East-Caucasian Jews and Khazars, by Igor Semenov)

3. Some parallels between Khazar Hebrew names and ancestral names in contemporary Jewish communities, by Zvi Avraham

4. Y CHROMOSOME HAPLOTYPES AMONG MEMBERS OF THE CAUCASUS JEWISH COMMUNITIES, by Rosengarten, D.

5. ЯЗЫК ГОРСКИХ ЕВРЕЕВ ДАГЕСТАНА, Е. Назарова

(Language of Mountain Jews of Daghestan, by E. Nazarova)

6. THE BASIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL TYPES OF THE POPULATION OF CAUCASUS AND THEIR FORENSIC-MEDICAL CHRONOLOGICAL DIAGNOSTICS

Vugar K.Husseynov, Shakir M. Musaev

Forensic Medicine department, A.Aliyev State Refresher Institute of Physicians