Reimmann and the transformation of Jewish philosophy, the ground floor of Judaism: scepticism and certainty in Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, and whether
Karaites are sceptics: the Jewish perception of Karaism in 19th-century Italy.
There were opponents to rabbinic authority like the
Karaites; messianic movements such as as Shabbtai Tzvi, which shook up the Jewish world by promising radical change; and rifts among different kinds of rabbinic Judaism, such as the bitter struggle that developed in the 18th century between Hasidism and its more scholarly opponents, the mitnagdim.
Or the possibility that the
Karaites of Turkey were a type of "Jewish Protestant"?
'We are first of all Jews, and only after
Karaites,' one stresses.
Linguists (Joshua Blau), historians (Moshe Gil), talmudists (Mordechai Friedman), scholars of Arab and Jewish philosophy (Joel Kramer, Daniel Lasker) and mysticism (Paul Fenton), as well as those whose studies focus on the
Karaites (Haggai ben-Shammai), have all contributed original, if at times short, essays, each in his own area of expertise.
For the specialist, the racialized world view of the Nazi regime is well known, but I wondered what an undergraduate reader would make of the passing discussion of the willingness of Himmler to allow Jews of the
Karaite sect to serve in the Waffen SS because he had "been persuaded by a Jewish rabbi that the
Karaites were racially Turkish and not Semitic" (71).
In the early tenth century, the
Karaites, who believed in the written law exclusively, had a strong presence.
In answering this question, he explores how European Jews interacted with the foreign cultures they encountered, whether Sunni Muslims, Druze, Ismailis and Levantine Christians, or Near Eastern Jewish communities and Jewish sects such as the
Karaites. What emerges from this study is a nuanced series of 'shifting views' on the part of the Jewish writers, affected either by an authors personal experience, motivations for travel, or the changing historical circumstances of the time.
The
Karaites are a Jewish denomination that emerged in the second half of the eighth century CE in Babylon.
Russians in the Crimea have a larger population than Ukranians, Armenians, Germans and
Karaites and there are also a sizeable number of Ukranian Jews.