Guest, Allen:

A post from GUeST (23 Mar 05 - 05:45 AM ) said in part the following:

Yes, Dave, I am saying that most European Jews are descendants of converts to Judaism, going back to the conversion of a king to Judaism, and through him, his whole nation. That nation was called the Kazars, and they were located in southern Russia. They were not Semites. The nation converted en masse to the Jewish faith because the king did. That's how it worked in those days. The Kazars were later scattered by one of the periodic invasions of Mongols, and they scattered into many European nations, and became the source of the modern European Jew...not a Semite at all.

In your following named post you said in response to a challenge from me to "unnamed GUEST" that it was your post, so that is where I got the impression that you were giving more credence to the Khazar theory then I've ever heard. As far as I know, European Jews are mainly semites. (Whether this matters or not is a separate question).

I thought your last post was much better, giving more background and defending your position (although you still haven't verified your earlier statement: massive progroms in Russia which were then termed the Holocaust).

My information such as it is, (I'm not any kind of expert, i just care to know what is true or not) comes from texts such as Abba Eban's book, The Sachar books, and for modern times such books as Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan, From Beirut To Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman, Thomas Friedman articles in the NYT, and some careful web reading with my bullsh*t filter set on high. In college I took a course in Greek history re: The Pelopennesian War, and another on The English Revolution.

Some television histories I quite liked were "The World At War" series from the 80's which I saw when quite young, and a rather recent very good broadcast on World War I. I believe it was called "The Great War".

And of course, literary references from the likes of Dickens, Thackeray, A Conan Doyle, and Willie the Shake. They tried to be acurate, didn't they? ;-)

Good to hear from ya.