From heresy to fascism: the sad story of the Karaites

"Karaites and Dejudaization" is a scholarly overview of the history of the Karaites, written by a writer based in Sweden. Unfortunately, all quotations from German, French and Latin sources are untranslated, making the book somewhat hard to read for people who lack a traditional scholarly education (the few Swedish quotes are translated, though). As behoves an "Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis", the work is also preoccupied with intramural polemics. But then, almost anything pertaining to the Karaites is bound to be controversial!

The Karaites or Karaite Jews are a dissident movement within Judaism, with obscure origins. It seems to have emerged in the Middle East at some point before the 8th century. Apparently, some of the Massoretes were Karaites. The Karaites rejected the Oral Law and the Talmud, upholding the Tanakh ("Old Testament") as the sole authority. For this reason, their movement was branded heretical by the Rabbinical Jews. Since Judaism has a dual character (both religion and ethnicity), this rejection of Karaism effectively isolated them from the rest of the Jewish community.

Freund describes how the Karaites became progressively more "dejudaized". The dejudaization was most pronounced among the Crimean Karaites and their brethren in other parts of Eastern Europe. In order to escape both Rabbinic discrimination and Gentile anti-Semitism, the branch of Karaism residing in Europe began to deny its Jewish roots. Since Christian anti-Semites loathed the Talmud, the Karaites often emphasized that they, too, rejected it. Their emphasis on the Hebrew Bible could be squared with Lutheran ideas about "sola scriptura", thus painting the Karaites as some kind of Jewish Protestants. Freund points out that Karaites in Eastern Europe didn't practice usury, although it's not clear whether this was a clever tactic or an effect of the leniency shown to the dissidents by the Christian rulers.

The Karaites also claimed to have different ethnic origins than the Rabbinical Jews. Since the Crimean Karaites spoke a language similar to Tatar, it was easy to claim that they *were* Tatars. Indeed, the relations between the Muslim Tatars and the Karaites in the Crimea have always been amicable. Armenians or Khazars were two other choices for an alternative ethnic origin. The most original proposal was that the Karaites were one of the lost tribes of Israel, had emigrated to the Crimea already in Biblical times, and hence weren't present in the Holy Land when the Rabbinical Jews killed Jesus! The East European Karaite dejudaization wasn't simply a ruse to fool the Gentiles. Freund mentions that this branch of Karaism was partially dejudaized even internally, for instance by adapting Catholic psalms for use in their synagogue liturgy. However, since Freund's book isn't a cultural study, he says very little about these developments. Instead, the author spends considerable time polemicizing against East European Karaite or pro-Karaite scholars. Freund believes that the East European Karaites were of Hebrew origins, and adopted a Turkic language due to their cultural environment. As evidence, he points out that the Rabbinical Jews in the Crimea (the Krimchaks) spoke the same Turkic language as their Karaite neighbours - yet, nobody denies *their* Hebrew roots. (Of course, the argument works both ways. One could equally well argue that both Crimean Karaites and Krimchaks were Tatars who had adopted the Jewish religion.)

The conflict between Rabbinical Jews and "heretical" Karaites turned into tragedy during World War II, when the Nazis (for various tactical reasons) decided to uphold the Karaite-Jewish distinction. One ideological argument "in favour" of the Karaites was precisely their non-Hebrew origins. They weren't "racially" Jewish or even Semites. A more pragmatic argument was the need for a Nazi-Turkish alliance in the East, which prompted some Nazis to favour a quasi-independent "Turkish" (Tatar) state in the Crimea. There was also a pragmatic need to recruit collaborators in the occupied territories. Tatars and other Muslim peoples were a natural choice for such recruitment efforts, since they were anti-Russian and anti-Communist. The Crimean Karaites, with their good relations to the Muslim Tatars, were caught up in this vortex. They started collaborating with the Nazis, some even serving in the Waffen-SS! Thus, the Karaites - rejected by the Rabbinical authorities - ended up as the only Jewish group embraced by the Third Reich...

Meanwhile, another branch of the Karaite community had firmly established itself in the Muslim Arab world. This group is known as Oriental Karaites. Most of them lived in Egypt. Their political sympathies are unclear, but they came under suspicion after the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. The Oriental Karaites were gradually expelled from Egypt, the expulsions culminating after the Suez crisis in 1956. Most of them did go to Israel, where the secular authorities granted them asylum under the Law of Return. However, the Rabbinical authorities (of course) refused to recognize the Karaites as Jews in good standing. The Oriental Karaites thus found themselves in a curious legal grey zone, somewhat similar to that of Reform Jews, with the usual problems in cases of divorce, purported illegitimacy, etc.

I'm not sure how to rate "Karaites and Dejudaization". It's probably not a very good introduction to the Karaite problem, due to its super-scholarly character. On the other hand, I got the impression from Freund's book that virtually everything concerning this dissident group is controversial, so anyone reading a seemingly less controversialist book on the matter might do well to complement it with this study! Another problem with Freund's study is that the author has a tendency to talk about pretty much everything, from the Khazars to the Ultra-Orthodox in modern Israel. Finally, I have to commend the author for his sense of humour. At one point, he exclaims: "Except for examiners, who are paid for it, no one needs to read Ph.D. dissertations"!

In the end, I give "Karaites and Dejudaization" three stars.