In the Schechter Letter account, Jews from Persia and Armenia migrated to Khazaria to flee persecution, where they mingled with the nomadic Khazars, eventually assimilating almost totally.

Sabriel happened to be remotely descended from the early Jewish settlers, and his wife Serakh convinced him to adopt Judaism, in which his people followed him.

The account of the Khazar kingdom matches up with no Muslim, Jewish or Byzantine source from the period regarding wars of migration.

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.

[4] 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.

[7] In the years prior, many scholars had disregarded the Schechter Letter account;[2] 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.