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Judaism and the possible link between them and Ashkenazi Jews. Some very fine scholars put great effort into the study of the events and some rather creative writers engaged in some wishful thinking. In parallel, a narrative developed that presented the Jews of Poland as being the descendants of refugees from persecution in the German lands. Thus a study of both stories involves analysis of what happened (and didn't happen) in the tenth century as well as the ways these stories could be harnessed to ideological agendas. In this lecture, Dr. Shaul Stampfer will try to explain why in all probability no Khazars converted to Judaism (even though the story is a great story) and that the Jews of Eastern Europe were largely descended from a small group of migrants from the Czech lands (and southeastern Germanic lands) who came for very prosaic reasons – to make a living. https://yivo.org/The-Myth-of-the-Khazar-Conversion https://yivo.org/Membership