WI: Vladimir the great converts to Judaism instead of Christianity

It would probably end up like the Khazars, with the elites converting but the masses not doing so.

Quite likely. Judaism has the disadvantage of a distinct lack of experience in missionary outreach to populations, the lack of a coherent international network of religious administration/support, and a distinct lack of material benefits to offer in order to sweeten the pot, and I highly doubt Vlad or his successors would be in a very good position to stop outside conversion efforts from penetrating in the Rus domains unless he can whip those things up and fast. To the Rus have any good resources/connections they could leverage in order to pull that off? They're not in a good position to just serve as a destination for Jewish populations elsewhere in Europe (to say nothing for the political tensions that would create inside his own domain by doing so), so he'd probably have to try to find some way to restructure this brand of Judaism to be a "Slavic" religion, but I imagine the syncretism might end up looking more Pagan than Hebrew. At the very least, the dietary restrictions are likely to be tweaked somewhat give the importance of hogs in many areas


That didn't stop the spread of Islam

Conversion to Islam gave the educated class a huge number of advantages in terms of access to scholarly communities, economic connections, ect., not to mention that if your leaders are Islamic you're only allowed to serve in the army (The basis of political power and high class prestige in many of the cultures the early Islamic armies got on top of), so there's some strong earthly incentive to reconsider your previous heavenly position. The Jewish religious establishment don't have those juicy carrots and pointy sticks
 
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