Karaite Judaism

Overview

Karaite Judaism is a branch of Judaism, founded in eighth-century Babylonia by Anan ben David, that rejects the rabbinic Oral Law, the Mishnah and Talmud, holding that the Hebrew Bible alone carries binding authority; its adherents are called Karaites, "people of Scripture." From the tenth century Karaites combined close study of the biblical text with reasoned argument, producing law often stricter than rabbinic law on the Sabbath, diet and the calendar. The movement's centre of scholarship moved over the centuries from Babylonia to Jerusalem, then Byzantium, Cairo and Crimea, where under Russian and later German rule Karaites won legal exemptions by stressing their difference from Rabbanite Jews, a distancing that helped the community survive Nazi persecution relatively unscathed. A few tens of thousands of Karaites remain today, mostly in Israel, around Ashdod and Ramla.^{[1–2, 4–5, 8–9]}

History

From Ananites to Karaites 8th – 10th century

Anan ben David, passed over for the Babylonian exilarchate in favour of his brother, broke with the rabbinic academies around the 760s and compiled his own legal code independent of the Talmud; his followers, the Ananites, were Karaism's first distinct group. Other anti-rabbinic teachers across Babylonia and Persia joined or paralleled his movement over the following century, and by the ninth or tenth century these currents had consolidated under the name Karaites, "people of Scripture." From the tenth century on, Karaites treated reasoned argument, alongside the Bible itself, as a guide to law and belief.^{[1–2, 8]}

Challenge and a golden age 9th – 11th century

Karaite missionary efforts to win over Rabbanite Jews largely failed, but they forced rabbinic scholars to sharpen their own arguments: Saadia Gaon, head of a Babylonian academy, wrote the first systematic rebuttal of Karaism at the age of twenty-three. Karaite scholars produced a large literature of biblical commentary, grammar and law, mostly in Arabic, and Jerusalem became a major centre of this work, developing its own devotional tradition of mourning the ruined Temple, until the First Crusade's capture of the city in 1099 devastated its Karaite community and shifted the centre of Karaite scholarship toward Egypt and Byzantium.^{[6–7, 10]}

East to Crimea and Lithuania 13th – 18th century

Karaites settled in the Crimean peninsula from the late thirteenth century, migrating there with Tatar conquerors, and built a flourishing centre at the fortress town of Chufut-Kale; from the fourteenth century, communities also took root in Lithuania and Poland, chiefly at Troki, which kept close ties to Karaite scholars in Constantinople. Under Crimean Tatar and Polish-Lithuanian rule, Karaites and Rabbanite Jews were generally treated alike in law, paying the same communal taxes and suffering the same persecutions, including the Khmelnytsky massacres of 1648–49.^[11–13]

Legal separation, and survival of the Holocaust 1783 – 1945

After Russia annexed Crimea in 1783 and incorporated Lithuania in 1793, Karaites successfully petitioned to be treated separately from Rabbanite Jews: Catherine II exempted them from the double tax imposed on Jews in 1795, and in 1827 Tsar Nicholas I exempted Crimean Karaites from military conscription, a privilege not extended to Rabbanite Jews. Karaite leaders increasingly stressed their distinctness from other Jews, a strategy that proved decisive after 1933: on 9 January 1939 Germany's Interior Ministry ruled that Karaites did not belong to the Jewish religious community, and the ruling was extended to German-occupied Crimea and Ukraine in October 1942, so that Nazi death squads were ordered to spare Karaites even as they murdered Rabbanite Jews there.^{[4, 9, 14]}

Beliefs

Scripture alone

Karaites hold that the Hebrew Bible is the only directly binding source of Jewish law, rejecting the Mishnah and Talmud as a later, human construction wrongly presented as a second, oral revelation from Sinai. Karaite teachers did develop their own body of interpretation and custom for matters the Bible leaves unclear, but held that it must never contradict the biblical text itself.^{[1, 15]}

Reasoned interpretation

From the tenth century, Karaite scholars combined the literal sense of the biblical text with reasoned argument, adopting methods of rational theology, kalam, current among Muslim theologians of the time. Early Karaism tolerated such a wide range of individual interpretation that, by one contemporary scholar's account, scarcely two Karaites agreed on every point of religious law.^{[8, 16]}

A stricter calendar

Karaites fix the new month by direct observation of the new moon rather than by the fixed arithmetic the rabbinic calendar came to use, so Karaite festival dates can fall a day or more apart from Rabbanite ones. They also count the Feast of Weeks from the Sunday after Passover week, reading Leviticus literally where rabbinic tradition reads it differently.^[3]

Practice

A stricter Sabbath

Early Karaite teachers forbade not only kindling a fire on the Sabbath but using light from a fire lit beforehand, so traditional households spent Friday night in darkness, a stricter reading of the Bible's ban on Sabbath fire than rabbinic law's. Karaites also reject tefillin and mezuzot as the rabbis understand them, reading the relevant biblical verses as figurative rather than as commands to wear or affix physical objects.^[17–18]

Marriage within the community

Karaite religious leaders have traditionally discouraged marriage with Rabbanite Jews, and Israeli Karaites maintain their own religious court for marriage and divorce, with only informal recognition from the state.^[19]

Hanukkah set apart

Hanukkah, which commemorates a post-biblical event not recorded in the Bible, is not kept by Karaites as a religious holiday, though some Israeli Karaites mark it anyway as a national one.^[20]

People

Places

Chufut-Kale, Crimea

UKR

This clifftop fortress near Bakhchysarai became a flourishing Karaite centre by the seventeenth century, a walled quarter under Crimean Tatar rule that sent aid to Karaite communities in Lithuania, Poland, Constantinople, Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem.^[11]

Troki (Trakai), Lithuania

LTU

Karaites settled in this town from the late fourteenth century, and it grew into one of the community's most important spiritual centres outside Crimea, with its scholars maintaining close ties to Karaite teachers in Constantinople.^[12]

Ramla, Israel

ISR

Most of Israel's Karaites arrived after emigrating from Egypt following the Suez crisis of 1956 and again in 1962; Ramla became the seat of the community's central institutions, library and archives.^[19]

Numbers

Karaites in Israel

c. 30,000 (self-estimate)^[5]

Both Britannica and the Encyclopaedia Judaica describe this figure as the Karaite community's own estimate, and both add that the true number is probably lower.

Common misconceptions

Glossary

Ananites

Early followers of Anan ben David, before the name "Karaites" was adopted in the ninth or tenth century.^[2]

Rabbanites

The Karaite term for adherents of Rabbinic Judaism, who accept the Mishnah and Talmud as binding oral law.^[1]

Kalam

Rational theology developed by Muslim scholars and adopted by Karaite, and some Rabbanite, thinkers to defend their beliefs through reasoned argument.^[16]

Hakham · חכם

Title for a Karaite community's chief religious authority.^[21]

Chufut-Kale

A fortified hilltop town in Crimea, a major Karaite centre from the seventeenth century; the name means "Jewish fortress" in Crimean Tatar.^[11]

Mourning for Zion · אבלי ציון

An early Karaite devotional tradition, centred on Jerusalem, of lamenting the destroyed Temple and awaiting its restoration.^[6]

Bet din · בית דין

A Jewish religious court; Israeli Karaites maintain their own, separate from Rabbanite courts, with informal recognition for matters of Karaite marriage and divorce.^[19]