Dec. 5, 2006 Omeljan Pritsak Armağani (A Tribute to Omeljan Priysak), Sakarya, Sakarya Universitesi Yayin, No. 51, 2007, pp. 283-301
Judeo-Turkic encounters in Hebrew epitaphs from Ukraine: naming patterns Michael Nosonovsky, PhD 427 West Side Dr. Gaithersburg, MD 20878, U.S.A. nosonovsky@yahoo.com Phone: 1-917-971-7716 Fax: 1-301-975-5334
1. Introduction The Khazarian and Jewish topics played a prominent role in the scholarly work of the late professor Omeljan Pritsak, whose research was devoted mostly to the Ukrainian and Turkic studies 1 . Historically, Ukraine was a crossroad region, where various oriental and western cultures met and often formed a remarkable amalgam of languages, traditions, linguistic and ethnic elements. The Jews, who populated the region for more than two thousand years, played a significant role in this process of mutual enrichment of various cultures. First Jewish communities emerged at the northern shore of the Black Sea at least in the first century BC. These were the communities of the “God-fearers”, which existed in the Hellenistic colonies of Panticapaeum (Παντικάπαιον, modern Kerch), Tanais (Τάναϊς, near modern Azov), Phanagoria and Germonassa (near modern Taman), and other parts of the Bosporan kingdom 2 . They left numerous monuments (mostly manumissions and burial inscriptions) with Jewish images and inscriptions. In the consequent centuries, most of the territory of modern Ukraine was, to some extent, under the political control of the Khazars, who, at least
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O. Pritsak and N. Golb, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Harvard University, 1984), O. Pritsak, “The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism,” Harvard Ukrainian studies (1978). 2 I. A. Levinskaya and S.R.Tokhtas’ev, “Jews and Jewish Names in the Bosporan Kingdom,” Te‘uda, 12, Studies on the Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (1996), 69
partially, adhered to the Jewish religion3. During that period, Jewish communities were found in Kiev (Kyiv), Chernihov (Chernihiv), Belaya Vieža (Sarkel / Şarkil), and several other places 4 . Starting the 13th century, Karaite Jews, who spoke a Turkic language, formed their communities in the Crimea (Çhufut-Qal‘eh and later MangoupQal‘eh), in Wolhynia, Galicia and Lithuania, while the Krymchak Jewish communities emerged in the Crimea 5 . The Ashkenazi Jews, who migrated to Ukraine from the Central Europe, appeared in the western regions of Ukraine (Galicia, Wolhynia and, later, Podolia) starting, at
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Pritsak, 1978; M.I. Artamonov, Istoria Khazar (2nd edition, St. Petersburg, 2002), pp. 272-291 4 Artamonov 2002:295-327 5 G. Akhiezer and D. Shapira, “Qaraim be-Lita ube-Wohlin-Galiciyah ‘ad ha-meah ha-18”, Pe‘amim, 89 (2001), p. 44 (Hebrew); M. Kizilov, “The arrival of the Karaites (Karaims) to Poland and Lithuania”, Archivum Eurasiae Mediiaevi, 12 (2002-2003). Karaite communities existed in Łuck, Derażne (Wolhynia), Halicz/Halych, and Kokizow (Galicia) in Ukraine, as well as in Troki (Lithuania). There are three dialects of the Turkic Karaim language: the Troki dialect, the Halicz dialect (spoken also in Łuck, Derażne, and Kokizow), and the Crimean dialect. The later, however, is considered by many scholars a dialect of the Crimean Tartar language, rather than the Karaim, and its proximity to the two other dialects is disputed (K.M.Musaev, Grammatika Karaimskogo Yazyka, Moscow, 1964). The Krymchak rabbinical Jews were speakers of the Krymchak Turkic language, which is considered by many scholars a dialect of the Crimean Tartar, and lived in several cities the Crimea.
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