Download or read book Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding written by Fred Astren and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notions of history and the past contained in literature of the Karaite Jewish sect offer insight into the relationship of Karaism to mainstream rabbinic Judaism and to Islam and Christianity. Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding describes how a minority sectarian religious community constructs and uses historical ideology. It investigates the proportioning of historical ideology to law and doctrine and the influence of historical setting on religious writings about the past. Fred Astren discusses modes of representing the past, especially in Jewish culture, and then poses questions about the past in sectarian--particularly Judaic sectarian--contexts. He contrasts early Karaite scripturalism with the literature of rabbinic Judaism, which, embodying historical views that carry a moralistic burden, draws upon the chain of tradition to suppose a generation-to-generation transmission of divine knowledge and authority. The center of Karaism shifted to the Byzantine-Turkish world during the twelfth through sixteenth centuries, when a new historical outlook unoblivious of the past accommodated legal developments influenced by rabbinic thought. Reconstructing Karaite historical expression from both published works and previously unexamined manuscripts, Astren shows that Karaites relied on rabbinic literature to extract and compile historical data for their own readings of Jewish history. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Karaite scholars in Poland and Lithuania collated and harmonized historical materials inherited from their Middle Eastern predecessors. Astren portrays the way that Karaites, with some influence from Jewish Renaissance historiography and impelled by features of Protestant-Catholic discourse, prepared complete literary historical works that maintained their Jewishness while offering a Karaite reading of Jewish history.
Download or read book Karaite Judaism written by Meira Polliack and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-07-18 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karaism is a Jewish religious movement of a scripturalist and messianic nature, which emerged in the Middle Ages in the areas of Persia-Iraq and Palestine and has maintained its unique and varied forms of identity and existence until the present day, undergoing resurgent cycles of creativity, within its major geographical centres of the Middle-East, Byzantium-Turkey, the Crimea and Eastern Europe. This Guide to Karaite Studies contains thirty-seven chapters which cover all the main areas of medieval and modern Karaite history and literature, including geographical and chronological subdivisions, and special sections devoted to the history of research, manuscripts and printing, as well as detailed bibliographies, index and illustrations. The substantial volume reflects the current state of scholarship in this rapidly growing sub-field of Jewish Studies, as analysed by an international team of experts and taught in various universities throughout Europe, Israel and the United States.
Download or read book An Introduction to Karaite Judaism written by Yoseif Yaron and published by Qirqisani Center. This book was released on 2003 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first introduction to Karaite history, practice, thought, and custom in the English language. An ideal book for anyone interested in Karaite Judaism as a living religion, from the perspective of an insider.
Download or read book Karaism written by Daniel J. Lasker and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship 2022. Karaite Judaism emerged in the ninth century in the Islamic Middle East as an alternative to the rabbinic Judaism of the Jewish majority. Karaites reject the underlying assumption of rabbinic Judaism, namely, that Jewish practice is to be based on two divinely revealed Torahs, a written one, embodied in the Five Books of Moses, and an oral one, eventually written down in rabbinic literature. Karaites accept as authoritative only the Written Torah, as they understand it, and their form of Judaism therefore differs greatly from that of most Jews. Despite its permanent minority status, Karaism has been an integral part of the Jewish people continuously for twelve centuries. It has contributed greatly to Jewish cultural achievements, while providing a powerful intellectual challenge to the majority form of Judaism. This book is the first to present a comprehensive overview of the entire story of Karaite Judaism: its unclear origins; a Golden Age of Karaism in the Land of Israel; migrations through the centuries; Karaites in the Holocaust; unique Jewish religious practices, beliefs, and philosophy; biblical exegesis and literary accomplishments; polemics and historiography; and the present-day revival of the Karaite community in the State of Israel.
Download or read book Karaism written by Daniel J. Lasker and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship 2022. Karaite Judaism emerged in the ninth century in the Islamic Middle East as an alternative to the rabbinic Judaism of the Jewish majority. Karaites reject the underlying assumption of rabbinic Judaism, namely, that Jewish practice is to be based on two divinely revealed Torahs, a written one, embodied in the Five Books of Moses, and an oral one, eventually written down in rabbinic literature. Karaites accept as authoritative only the Written Torah, as they understand it, and their form of Judaism therefore differs greatly from that of most Jews. Despite its permanent minority status, Karaism has been an integral part of the Jewish people continuously for twelve centuries. It has contributed greatly to Jewish cultural achievements, while providing a powerful intellectual challenge to the majority form of Judaism. This book is the first to present a comprehensive overview of the entire story of Karaite Judaism: its unclear origins; a Golden Age of Karaism in the Land of Israel; migrations through the centuries; Karaites in the Holocaust; unique Jewish religious practices, beliefs, and philosophy; biblical exegesis and literary accomplishments; polemics and historiography; and the present-day revival of the Karaite community in the State of Israel.
Download or read book Historical Consciousness Haskalah and Nationalism among the Karaites of Eastern Europe written by Golda Akhiezer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Historical Consciousness, Haskalah, and Nationalism among the Karaites of Eastern Europe Golda Akhiezer presents the spiritual life and historical thought of Eastern European Karaites, shedding new light on several conventional notions prevalent in Karaite studies from the nineteenth century.
Download or read book History of the Karaites written by Nathan Schur and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 1992 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tries to answer, in a chronological framework, such questions as: Who are the Karaites? Where were their roots? What is the position of Anan in their early history? Was there any connection between them and the Dead Sea Scrolls? What was the nature of their special relationship with Jerusalem? What is their importance in medieval Jewish cultural history? Did they hold out in Jerusalem between 1250 and 1948? Did they regard themselves throughout history as Jews? Did any Karaites cooperate with the Nazis in World War II?
Download or read book Karaite Separatism in Nineteenth Century Russia written by Philip E Miller and published by Hebrew Union College Press. This book was released on 1993-05-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Karaites successfully dissociated themselves from the Rabbanite Russian Jews with the creation of the Karaite Religious Consistory in 1837, the result was a schism within Judaism unprecedented since the rise of Christianity. Philip E. Miller sets this event in the context of the history of the Russian Karaites from their origins to the present, focusing on economic and political concerns that led to the schism. The Karaites' separatism shielded them from the horrific fates suffered by the Rabbanites under the tsars, under Hitler, and under Stalin, but it ultimately led to their nearly complete assimilation and disappearance as a people. The central character in Miller's study is Simchah Babovich, a Crimean Karaite whose wealth and prominence enabled him to curry favor with the imperial Russian government. In 1827, Babovich traveled to St. Petersburg on behalf of the Karaite community and petitioned the tsar for exemption from military conscription legislation that applied to all Jews in the realm. Accompanying him on the journey was Joseph Solomon ben Moses Lutski, the leading Karaite religious scholar of Evpatoriia. Lutski's chronicle of the mission, the Iggeret teshu'at Yisrael (Epistle of Israel's Deliverance), is reprinted here as an annotated Hebrew text with English translation. In colorful detail, the Iggeret records the delegation's travel adventures, their activities as guests and tourists in the imperial capital, the swift granting of Babovich's request, and the Karaites' euphoric reaction when the successful petitioners arrived back home in Evpatoriia.
Download or read book Karaites and Dejudaization written by Roman Freund and published by Coronet Books. This book was released on 1991 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the position of the Karaites in Judaism; what began as a purely religious feud turned into an intratribal split. Ch. 14 (pp. 84-96), "Karaites and the Brown Tide", deals with the Nazi period. States that the "January decree" (1939), in which the Reich Office for Racial Research recognized the Karaites as a religious community separate from the Jews (although not tantamount to an official recognition of racial distinction), saved the lives of most of the Eastern European Karaites. One notable exception is the murder of a group of Karaites at Babi Yar in September 1941 by Einsatzgruppe C. During the war, the Karaites denied their affiliation with Jewry, and Crimean Karaites participated in the German war machine. In France, discrimination against Karaites ended only in 1943.
Download or read book The Stains of Culture written by Ruth Tsoffar and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A minority within Judaism, the Karaites are known as a 'reading community'-one that looks to the Bible as the authority in all areas of life, including intimate relations and hygiene. Here Ruth Tsoffar considers how Egyptian Kariates of the San Francisco Bay Area define themselves, within both California culture and Judaism, in terms of the Bible and its bearing on their bodies. Women's perspectives play a large role in this ethnography; it is their bodies that are especially regulated by rules of cleanliness and purity to the point where their biological cycles-menstruation, procreation, childbirth, lactation-determine their place in the community. As Tsoffar notes, the female body itself becomes a richly encoded text that reveals much about the Karaites' attitudes toward the interrelated issues of gender, sex, food, procreation, sacred traditions, time and space, as well as identity. The author illuminates the cultural strategies used by Karaite women to sustain their religious ideologies yet find personally meaningful ways of reading. The Karaites have survived since at least the 8th century by continually contemporizing their culture. Through a study of the rich, animated ritual experience of niddah (menstruation and purity codes in Leviticus), we see how the Karaite women seek to imagine and narrate a new history of purity through their bodies. The Stains of Culture presents issues of meaning and interpretation in a way valuable to students of women's studies, anthropology, minority cultural production, scholars of religion and Judaism, especially to those interested in exploring Judaism's diversity.
Download or read book The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet ben Eli the Karaite on the Book of Joshua written by James T. Robinson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yefet ben ‘Eli (fl. 960-1005) was the most prolific and influential biblical exegete in the Karaite tradition. He was possibly the earliest Jew to write a commentary on the entire Hebrew Bible, and his writings were cited and borrowed from by Karaites and Rabbanites alike, from his own time to the early modern period. Despite his importance, however, only a small percentage of his works have been published. The present volume makes available for the first time his commentary on Joshua, which includes an Arabic translation of this difficult book with full Arabic commentary. The story of Rachab, the “second circumcision,” the covenant with the Gibonites, and the Sun standing still are among the things that captured Yefet’s interest, who surveyed different views on these crux passages before presenting his own, very original exposition.
Download or read book Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza written by Judith Olszowy-Schlanger and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1998 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The edition and linguistic, palaeographic and legal analysis of 65 marriage documents preserved in the Cairo Geniza shed a unique light on the socio-economic and intellectual history of the mediaeval Karaite Jews who wrote them.
Download or read book Heresy and the Politics of Community written by Marina Rustow and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book with a bold new view of medieval Jewish history, written in a style accessible to nonspecialists and students as well as to scholars in the field, Marina Rustow changes our understanding of the origins and nature of heresy itself. Scholars have long believed that the Rabbanites and Qaraites, the two major Jewish groups under Islamic rule, split decisively in the tenth century and from that time forward the minority Qaraites were deemed a heretical sect. Qaraites affirmed a right to decide matters of Jewish law free from centuries of rabbinic interpretation; the Rabbanites, in turn, claimed an unbroken chain of scholarly tradition. Rustow draws heavily on the Cairo Geniza, a repository of papers found in a Rabbanite synagogue, to show that despite the often fierce arguments between the groups, they depended on each other for political and financial support and cooperated in both public and private life. This evidence of remarkable interchange leads Rustow to the conclusion that the accusation of heresy appeared sporadically, in specific contexts, and that the history of permanent schism was the invention of polemicists on both sides. Power shifted back and forth fluidly across what later commentators, particularly those invested in the rabbinic claim to exclusive authority, deemed to have been sharply drawn boundaries. Heresy and the Politics of Community paints a portrait of a more flexible medieval Eastern Mediterranean world than has previously been imagined and demonstrates a new understanding of the historical meanings of charges of heresy against communities of faith. Historians of premodern societies will find that, in her fresh approach to medieval Jewish and Islamic culture, Rustow illuminates a major issue in the history of religions.
Download or read book The Karaite Mourners of Zion and the Qumran Scrolls written by Yoram Erder and published by Brepols Pub. This book was released on 2017-12-22 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is dedicated to studying the Karaite Mourners of Zion-the leading faction within the Karaite movement during its formative period (9th - 11th century). Like all Karaites, the Mourners claimed that the Rabbinic Oral Law was not given by God but is rather the 'commandment of man' (Isaiah 29.13). Therefore they called for a return to the Hebrew Bible. According to the Karaite Mourners, neglecting the Bible caused also the neglect of the Land of Israel. For them the Oral Law was a tool of the Jewish people to strike roots in the exile. Therefore they developed a Messianic doctrine which encouraged the Jewish people not only to return to the Bible, but also to immigrate to the Land of Israel in order to accelerate the redemption. The Karaite Mourners' leadership practiced what they preached. From their cradle in the exile of Babylonia and Persia they came to Jerusalem, where they created a community that was called Shoshanim (lilies). This community became the most important community that ever flourished in the history of Karaism. They left behind prolific work, most of it written in Judaeo-Arabic. Coming to Palestine, and maybe before that, the Karaite Mourners were exposed to some of the Qumran scrolls that were discovered at their time. They did not hesitate to adopt some of the Qumran doctrine and halakha, despite the fact that main Qumran beliefs were not acceptable to the Karaites. Studying the Qumranic influence on the Karaite Mourners sheds light simultaneously on early Karaism and the Jewish sects of the Second Temple period.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Judaism Volume 2 The Hellenistic Age written by William David Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.
Download or read book Karaites Through the Travelers Eyes written by Mikhail Kizilov and published by Qirqisani Center. This book was released on 2003 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Setting: The Crimean peninsula, the borderland between Europe and Asia, where East meets West. Become a guest of one of the Crimea's most enigmatic inhabitants: the Crimean Karaites. The Karaites are Jews who rely solely on the Hebrew Bible. Their enigmatic past still engenders debate and discussion: their supposed descendancy from the ancient Judeans, their association with the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and the nomadic Khazars, and the heated controversy surrounding their legal separation from the larger Jewish population in Russia fill the pages of this volume with the drama of intrigue, excitement, mystery, and redemption. Karaites Through the Travellers' Eyes makes you an eyewitness to the riveting story of the Karaites in the Crimea, through the words of those who witnessed this mystifying people first hand.
Download or read book A Short History of Judaism written by Jacob Neusner and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's experts on classical Jewish history and literature offers an authoritative interpretation of the three major periods of Jewish history from the time of the Bible up to the present. What emerges is a captivating account of the life-forming nature of a dynamic religion in vastly differing historical contexts. Glossary, maps, illustrations, photographs.
