Endangered Species, Endangered Peoples

The recent Second Congress of Karaites of Ukraine, held in the Crimea, represented 740 citizens of Ukraine who are members of a community numbering only about 2000 in the entire world. They are Jews who believe that the Old Testament is the sole source of religious authority and reject the law based on tradition compiled in the Talmud. They also believe they are the descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic people of the Jewish faith that once ruled a vast area that probably included Kyiv. In fact, the city itself may have been founded on the basis of earlier settlements as a fortress to protect the border of the Khazar Empire.

This thesis was put forward decades ago by Harvard Professor emeritus and Academician of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences Omeljan Pritsak, who in 1982 published a letter from the mid-tenth century that is the oldest document to mention Kyiv by name, a letter in Hebrew but also bearing Turkic Runes from the Jewish community of this city to the Jewish community of Alexandria. It described a respected member of the local Jewish community named Jacob ben R., whom the document describes as a good man of good family and who “was of the givers and not of the takers.” Jacob’s brother, a merchant, in order to finance his venture had borrowed money using his brother as collateral. When the merchant was robbed, the creditors took Jacob into slavery, and the letter, later found in Egypt, appeals to the Jewish community of Alexandria to buy the poor man out of bondage. Perhaps the nameless Jew who carried this letter should be remembered as the very first ambassador of Ukraine.

In any case, the tradition that Karaites, Jews who speak a Turkic language of the Kipchak family, are descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic people that converted to Judaism and once ruled much of Ukraine only to vanish from the stage of history, cannot be disproved. There is no better explanation of where they came from. But in any case, the Karaites, with their unique language, history, and culture have passed below the population level where their survival can be taken for granted. Yet, their traditions of learning and artistry , their energy and level of organization, of the things that make people civilized and society civil, can only inspire admiration among their compatriots in a country where the population as a whole is also declining. The Ukrainian people, with its 1992 law that grants all ethnic groups the right to national cultural autonomy, is doing what it can to help. Yet, the survival of this small nation cannot be the internal affair of any one country, especially not one as cash-strapped as today’s Ukraine. Humanity long since compiled its lists of endangered species protected the world over. Is it not time to think about a world list of endangered peoples and coordinate the efforts of the whole human family to protect its members that are truly endangered?