rich Jewish tradition of wish fulfilment and mystical writing about the ten lost tribes of Israel. HLGW and Romanus The next substantial section of the Letter to survive tells of a recent (to the author) event - an invasion of Khazaria by HLGW (most probably Oleg), prince (knyaz) of Rus, instigated by the Byzantine Emperor Romanus I Lecapenus. Romanus, a persecutor of the Jews, may have been seeking to counter Khazar retaliation for his policies. According to the Letter, HLGW was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh in the Taman region. Faced with execution by the Khazars, HLGW agreed to attack Constantinople (indeed, such an attack took place in 941), where he was defeated and fled to Persia, where he died. If Oleg is indeed Helgi (HLGW) and participated in these wars, the Geninah Letter is at odds with the Primary Chronicle, claims Oleg died in 912, while the Novgorod First Chronicle claims he died in 922. Implications of the text If taken literally and not as a legend of lost tribes, the letter challenges the conventional narrative of the Khazars. First, its version of the conversion posits a partially Judean descent for Khazar contemporaries of the author. Whether or not this is an accurate account, it indicates that the Khazars saw themselves as fully integrated members of world Jewry. The letter states that in the early days after Khazars' conversion to Judaism, some Alanians 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