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The Schechter Letter, also called the Genizah Letter or Cambridge Document, was discovered in the Cairo Geniza by Solomon Schechter in 1912. It is an anonymous Khazars letter discussing several matters including the wars of the early 940s, involving the Byzantine Empire, the Khazar Khaganate, and Kievan Rus'. Scholars have debated its authenticity.
Some recent historiography has noted the names echoing Jewish mystical traditions and lack of any corroborating historical sources to its account may place it in a tradition of fantastical writing about the lost tribes of Israel.
The Letter was included in the Genizah Collection donated by Schechter to Cambridge University in 1898. Most of the folio is unreadable and only two surviving blocs of text exist. This makes identifying the precise nature of the letter, communique or legend unclear.
The account of the Khazar kingdom matches up with no Muslim, Jewish or Byzantine source from the period regarding wars of migration. It also differs radically from every other alleged source on the Khazar conversion to Judaism and in its naming of the ruling class. The names of the figures involved, Sabriel being the name of an angel in the Jewish mystical tradition, Serah being a biblical figure and the claim of descent from the tribe of Simeon whose demise is chronicled in the Bible, strongly indicate the text is an unreliable source and heavily influenced in a rich Jewish tradition of wish fulfilment and mystical writing about the ten lost tribes of Israel.
The letter states that in the early days after Khazars' conversion to Judaism, some Alans already practised Judaism, to a degree that Alania came to save Khazaria from its enemies (lines 52–53). This is the only evidence corroborating the record of Benjamin of Tudela about Judaism in Alania.
In addition, if HLGW in the text refers to Oleg (Helgi), and he participated in these wars, the Genizah Letter would be at odds with the Primary Chronicle, which claims Oleg died in 912, while the Novgorod First Chronicle claims he died in 922. Instead of his successor Igor of Kiev reigning from 912 until his murder in 944, as the Primary Chronicle claims, Constantine Zuckerman (1995) concluded that Igor only reigned from the summer of 941 to the winter of 945. In the years prior, many scholars had disregarded the Schechter Letter account; Zuckerman has suggested that the Schechter Letter's account is in harmony with various other Rus' sources, and it suggests a struggle within the early Rus polity between factions loyal to Oleg and to Igor, a struggle that Oleg ultimately lost. Zuckerman posited that the early chronology of the Rus' had to be re-determined in light of these sources. Among the beliefs of Zuckerman and others who have analyzed these sources are that the Khazars did not lose Kiev until the early 10th century (rather than 882, the traditional date), that Igor was not Rurik's son but rather a more distant descendant, and that Oleg did not immediately follow Rurik, but rather that there is a lost generation between the legendary Varangian lord and his documented successors.
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