Khazars

[Jesse Wick]

"There's this controversial story about the wholesale conversion to 
Judaism of the Khazars, a tribe in the Caucasus.  It shows up in some 
rather old rabbinical writings, I believe, but isn't very widely 
believed.  The claim is that after conversion, the Khazars spread through 
Europe and were the ancestors of many Ashkenazic Jews."

Judaism did in fact become the nominal religion of a few of the many marauding 
Central Asian tribes during the dark ages, including the Uigur Turks and 
possibly the Khazars. A lot of these tribes were monotheistic sky-god 
worshippers in their pagan mythologies anyway, so it may not have been too 
much of a leap. (Some of them also used to communicate with the deity on 
mountaintops, a la Sinai.)

The Central Asians usually ended up converting to either Islam or Buddhism. 
Some, like the Mongols, remained pagan for a long time, a few embraced 
Judaism, and a few even became Orthodox Christians. During the middle ages, 
Central Asia must have been quite a mishmash of religious practices.

What any of this has to do with the Khirgiz Light I don't know. Probably 
nothing. 

JW