For those still asking how could the Khazarian myth still be untrue, there appears to be two key reasons why they were chosen as the scapegoat by Levinsohn and others – first off, the fact that many Jewish refugees fleeing persecution elsewhere, or being expelled from other regions, migrated into Khazaria and did a swell job at assimilation with their Turkic co-nationals; and secondly, that a prominent Khazarian king named Būlān married an ethnic Jewess named Serakh that later helped to convince him to adopt Judaism and make it the state religion, evident by the Khazar Correspondence.
In spite of this, they and their indigenous religion of Tengrism and similar forms of Turkic Paganism were of Gentile nature, and some Khazars later adopted both Christianity and Islam since there was considerable religious freedom tolerated under the Khaganate. However, the rate of miscegenation between the Turkic Khazar natives and Jewish settlers remained very limited, and there is simply no genetic evidence that those who did produce mixed-ethnic offspring became the ancestors of the modern Ashkenazim.
