Old Fashioned Man of Letters

The Other Zions got an excellent review (along with Kevin Brook's Jews of Khazaria) in OUTLOOK: Canada's Progressive Jewish Magazine:

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/outlook/current_issue/Outlook%20website%2010/Sep-Oct%2010/Jews.pdf

Here is a particularly flattering passage:

"Maroney is in fact not an academic historian at all, but an old-fashioned man of letters, the holder of an MA in Philosophy and the author of a book on religious syncretism as well as one of fiction. Nevertheless  (or “therefore”) he writes well, lays out evidence and arguments clearly, and appears to be a reliable guide through the thicket of anecdote, rumour and legend which enshrouds the history of many of these far-off times and places."

OUTLOOK has an interesting mandate; they are a magazine well worth reading:

"Outlook Magazine is an independent, secular Jewish publication with a socialist-humanist perspective. Outlook was founded in 1962. It is published six times per year. The magazine has collectives in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver."

The Hard Burned Bricks of Itil

The Khazars have suffered a cruel fate, both in reality and historical study.


Since the publication of the Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Kosetler in 1976, various anti-Semitic, anti-Israel lunatics have used the supposed Khazar conversion to Judaism sometime during the 8th and 9th centuries to make outrageous claims against Israel and European Jews. Basically, they see all European Jews as descendants of the Turkic Khazar and therefore, not Semites. The logic continues that if this is the case, then the European Jews who established the State of Israel have no real genetic right to that land.


So, a great deal of pseudo-scholarship has developed around the Khazars, all of it false or misleading. The twisted historical logic of their conversion and the founding of the modern State of Israel has been unfortunate,nasty, small. Hardly concealed behind it is a rage against of Jews, Judaism, and Israel.


Well, when I was writing The Other Zions, archaeologists in Russia uncovered what is believed to be the capital of the Khazar kingdom Itil. Located near the Caspian Sea, they found a triangular fortress made of brick and yurt shaped dwellings. According to medieval documents, by Khazar law flamed bricks could only be used in the capital.


So far, no Jewish inscriptions have been found at the location (that I am aware of). Artifacts from places like North African and the Byzantium attest to a great trading center. But what of Jewish stuff? This is the prime interest scholars have in the Khazars. They might well be studied without their legendary connection with Judaism, but they would be simply one amongst a herd of Turkic tribes inhabiting the region.


The lack of Jewish material is just one more mysterious element to be explored and hopefully explained. But this often happens in an area of study where manuscript evidence was once the only evidence there was. When archaeologist start to dig, they find things in the ground quite at odds with the documentary evidence.


Material culture and political-religious culture produced by the elite are often at odds with one another, or even a projection or fantasy of some other, unknown party.


A tricky field, where hard and fast conclusion are difficult to reach.

Review of the Other Zions: the lost histories of Jewish Nations

The Zionist movement viewed the establishment of a Jewish state as a remedy for Jewish “powerlessness.” In the late nineteenth century, Jews seemed condemned to exist as a despised minority within Christian or Islamic cultures. This well-done and revealing study shows that, even after the final, futile revolt against Roman rule in Judea in the first century, A.D., Jews exercised sovereignty in several regions outside the traditional Jewish homeland. Some of these Jewish states have already been well documented by primary sources; others are shrouded in legend, but their existence is credible. Maroney acknowledges the difficulty in separating fact from fiction and avoids unwarranted speculation. The Khazars, a Turkic people, established a state in the Caspian region and made Judaism their state religion in the ninth century. They may even have attempted missionary work in the emerging Russian state. In the Arabian peninsula, Jewish tribes controlled strips of territory but were overwhelmed by the Islamic tide in the seventh century. This is an informative and surprising examination of some obscure aspects of Jewish history.


— Jay Freeman

The Other Zions

I wrote the Other Zions because there was a hole in the historical work about Jewish nationalism.


During over a decade of reading works on Jewish history, I came across scattered references to Jewish states, nations, kingdoms, tribes, and autonomous regions. I was suprised to find that there was not a single work about these unique Jewish communities. So, I set about to formally research this neglected area, and the result was The Other Zions: the Lost Histories of Jewish Nations, which was published by Rowman & Littlefield late last year.


The work details attempts to create Jewish autonomous political life away from the land of Israel. These examples in Jewish self-rule have been as varied as the Jewish experience. I tried to pick examples that satisfied at least three criteria: that the Jewish community be as independent as possible from foreign rule, i.e. that the state be ruled by Jews. Second, a Jewish community had a military and was capable of defending itself. Third, that the Jewish state be historically verifiable and was not some Utopian scheme that never led to any results.


In some instances, these three criteria were relaxed. Some of the examples could not be said to adhere strictly to all three. This is because of the complexities of Jewish diaspora life, and the difficulty of dealing with some of the primary sources.


That said, I believe that the work can be an important companion to any study of Jewish ethncity, nationalism, and the study of ancient and modern Jewish communities.


The Other Zions was written for a popular audience and meant to expose readers to groups of Jews who have only been written about in specialized books and professional journals. As a new pathway in Jewish history, it is my hope people will find the work illuminating.

The Other Zions

Years ago, when I lived in Boston, I came across a Jewish history atlas. One of the maps was called "The Other Zions" and it contained the mostly failed experiments and Utopian fantasies in establishing Jewish states away from the land of Israel.


The idea must have been interesting to me, because it lay dormant in my mind for perhaps ten years. Then, following the publication of my first book, I thought that I had to strike the iron when it was hot. I began to research the book, using some sources I already had and some that I newly discovered. The journey in writing the book was simply amazing; I learned far more about Jewish history, Jewish ethnic identity and nationalism, then from simple reading.


What the researching, writing and publishing of the book confirmed is a kind of truism about Jewish history that is refreshing to come across once again: there is a wide variety of the thing called Judaism and the people called Jews. This includes concepts of nationhood and the land area where that nation can exist.


My book shows, I hope, that old conceptions are not as true as we think. That new thinking is in order on an old subject.