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89-575: Abraham Firkovich was born in 1787 into a Crimean Karaite farming family in Lutsk , then part of Poland , now Ukraine. In 1818 he was serving the local Crimean Karaite communities as a junior hazzan , or religious leader, and he went in 1822 to the city of Yevpatoria in Crimea . The Karaite community there appointed him hazzan in 1825. Together with the Karaite noble Simha Babovich , he sent memoranda to

178-705: A "Scholars’ Forum" ( בימת חוקרים ) on "The Jewish Languages – the Common, the Unique and the Problematic" ( הלשונות היהודיות – המשותף, המיוחד והבעייתי ) with articles from Chaim Menachem Rabin " מה מייחד את הלשונות היהודיות " ('What Distinguishes the Jewish Languages') and Yehoshua Blau " הערבית-היהודית הקלאסית " ('Classical Judeo-Arabic'). This project explicitly sought to describe the Arabic of Jews as

267-623: A common dialect. Baghdad Jewish Arabic is reminiscent of the dialect of Mosul . For example, "I said" is qeltu in the speech of Baghdadi Jews and Christians, as well as in Mosul and Syria, as against Muslim Baghdadi gilit . Some Judeo-Arabic writers, such as Maimonides, were able to switch between varieties of Judeo-Arabic and the Standard Arabic dialect. Like other Jewish languages and dialects, Judeo-Arabic languages contain borrowings from Hebrew and Aramaic . This feature

356-515: A decline of around 55 percent in a single decade. In 2011, 346 people in Poland identified as Karaites. Outside Russian-occupied Crimea (see Ukraine , below), there are 205 self-identifying Karaites as of 2021, nearly all of whom speak Russian as a first language. There are no significant concentrations; the largest community numbers over 60 people in Moscow. Crimea was traditionally the centre of

445-680: A distinct, Jewish language, equating it with Yiddish . According to Esther-Miriam Wagner, the case of Judeo-Arabic reified a Zionist 'Arab vs. Jew' dichotomy. The Arabic spoken by Jewish communities in the Arab world differed from the Arabic of their non-Jewish neighbors. Particularly in its later forms, Judeo-Arabic contains distinctive features and elements of Hebrew and Aramaic, such as grammar, vocabulary, orthography, and style. For example, most Jews in Egypt lived in Cairo and Alexandria and they shared

534-715: A few kharjas with a combination of Hebrew and Arabic. During the 15th century, as Jews, especially in North Africa, gradually began to identify less with Arabs, Judeo-Arabic would undergo significant changes and become Later Judeo-Arabic. This coincided with increased isolation of Jewish communities and involved greater influence of Hebrew and Aramaic features. Some of the most important books of medieval Jewish thought were originally written in medieval Judeo-Arabic, as were certain halakhic works and biblical commentaries. Later they were translated into medieval Hebrew so that they could be read by contemporaries elsewhere in

623-693: A house of worship. Within living memory, the community was many times larger than it is today. The 1979 census in the USSR showed 3,300 Karaim. Lithuanian Karaim Culture Community was founded in 1988. According to the Lithuanian Karaim website the Statistics Department of Lithuania carried out an ethno-statistic research entitled "Karaim in Lithuania" in 1997. It was decided to question all adult Karaim and mixed families, where one of

712-571: A leading anti-Normanist, and Bezalel Stern, an influential Russian Maskil , would study and partly describe the discovery. Briefly stated, the discoveries include the major part of the manuscripts described in Pinner's "Prospectus der Odessaer Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Alterthum Gehörenden Aeltesten Hebräischen und Rabbinischen Manuscripte" (Odessa, 1845), a rather rare work which is briefly described in "Literaturblatt des Orients" for 1847, No. 2. These manuscripts consist of: Contains material from

801-662: A number of religious writings by Saadia Gaon , Maimonides and Judah Halevi , were originally written in Judeo-Arabic, as this was the primary vernacular language of their authors. Jewish use of Arabic in Arabia predates Islam . There is evidence of a Jewish Arabic dialect, similar to general Arabic but including some Hebrew and Aramaic lexemes, called al-Yahūdiyya , predating Islam. Some of these Hebrew and Aramaic words may have passed into general usage, particularly in religion and culture, though this pre-Islamic Judeo-Arabic

890-645: A résumé of his belief, after considering all controversies, that Firkovich succeeded in demonstrating that some of the Jewish tombstones from Chufut-Kale date back to the seventh century, and that seemingly modern forms of eulogy and the method of counting after the era of creation were in vogue among Jews much earlier than had been hitherto suspected. Chwolson alone defended him, but he also was forced to admit that in some cases Firkovich had resorted to forgery. In his Corpus Inscriptionum Hebraicarum (St. Petersburg, 1882; Russian ed., ib. 1884) Chwolson attempts to prove that

979-575: A stuffing of chopped beef or mutton, baked in dutch oven or baking sheet. Other meals common for Crimean Karaites and Tatars are Chiburekki , Pelmeni , Shishlik (These are most often made from mutton). Ceremony dishes, cooked for religious holidays and weddings are: Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Arabic ( Judeo-Arabic : ערביה יהודיה , romanized: ‘Arabiya Yahūdiya ; Arabic : عربية يهودية , romanized :  ʿArabiya Yahūdiya (listen) ; Hebrew : ערבית יהודית , romanized :  ‘Aravít Yehudít (listen) )

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1068-671: A theory describing the Altai - Turkic origin of the Karaim and the pagan roots of Karaite religious teaching (worship of sacred oaks, polytheism, led by the god Tengri , the Sacrifice). Shapshal's doctrine is still a topic of critical research and public debate. He made a number of other changes aimed at the Karaim's Turkification and at erasing the Karaite Jewish elements of their culture and language. He issued an order canceling

1157-472: A traditionally Turkic-speaking Judaic ethnoreligious group indigenous to Crimea . Nowadays, most Karaim in Eastern Europe speak the dominant local language of their respective regions. The Karaite religion, known in Eastern Europe as Karaism, split from mainstream Karaite Judaism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most Karaites in the region do not consider themselves to be Jews, associating

1246-707: A vast number of Hebrew, Arabic and Samaritan manuscripts during his many travels in his search for evidence on the traditions of his people. These included thousands of Jewish documents from throughout the Russian Empire in what became known as the First Firkovich Collection. His Second Collection contains material collected from the Near East. His visit took place about thirty years before Solomon Schechter 's more famous trip to Egypt. This "Second Firkovich Collection" contains 13,700 items and

1335-514: Is Arabic , in its formal and vernacular varieties, as it has been used by Jews , and refers to both written forms and spoken dialects. Although Jewish use of Arabic, which predates Islam , has been in some ways distinct from its use by other religious communities, it is not a uniform linguistic entity. Varieties of Arabic formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arab world have been, in modern times, classified as distinct ethnolects . Under

1424-613: Is also Judeo-Arabic videos on YouTube . A collection of over 400,000 of Judeo-Arabic documents from the 6th-19th centuries was found in the Cairo Geniza . The movie Farewell Baghdad would be released in 2013 entirely in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic Judeo-Arabic orthography uses a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet called the Judeo-Arabic script. It is written from right to left horizontally like

1513-445: Is closely related to Crimean Tatar , Armeno-Kipchak etc. Among the many different influences exerted on Karaim, those of Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian were the first to change the outlook of the Karaim lexicon. Later, due to considerable Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian influence, many Slavic and Baltic words entered the language of Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Russian Karaim. Hebrew remained in use for liturgical purposes. Following

1602-470: Is described in a poem (both in Hebrew and Karaim) by a leader of the congregation, Hazzan Joseph ben Yeshuah HaMashbir. Catholic missionaries worked to convert the local Karaim to Christianity, but were largely unsuccessful. 19th century leaders of the Karaim, such as Sima Babovich and Avraham Firkovich , were driving forces behind a concerted effort to alter the status of the Karaite community in eyes of

1691-521: Is in Kyiv; smaller ones exist in other cities, including Kharkiv, which has a functioning kenesa, although the community numbers only about two dozen. In the 2010 census, 481 Ukrainians identified as Karaites outside of Crimea. In 2021, the Ukrainian government unveiled a bill planned to grant Crimean Karaites and other minority groups official 'Indigenous' status. Until the 20th century, Karaite Judaism

1780-497: Is less marked in translations of the Bible , as the authors clearly took the view that the business of a translator is to translate. Most literature in Judeo-Arabic is of a Jewish nature and is intended for readership by Jewish audiences. There was also widespread translation of Jewish texts from languages like Yiddish and Ladino into Judeo-Arabic, and translation of liturgical texts from Aramaic and Hebrew into Judeo-Arabic. There

1869-651: Is of incredible value. As a result of his research he became focused on the origin of the ancestors of the Crimean Karaites who he claimed had arrived in Crimea before the common era. The Karaites, therefore, could not be seen as culpable for the crucifixion of Jesus because they had settled in Crimea at such an early date. His theories persuaded the Russian imperial court that Crimean Karaites could not be accused of Jesus' crucifixion and they were excluded from

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1958-880: Is still being determined. Firkovich's materials require careful examination on a case-by-case basis. His collection remains of great value to scholars of Jewish studies. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Joseph Jacobs; Peter Wiernik (1901–1906). "FIRKOVICH, ABRAHAM B. SAMUEL (Aben ReSheF)" . In Singer, Isidore ; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia . New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Crimean Karaites The Crimean Karaites or simply Karaites (Crimean Karaim : Кърымкъарайлар, Qrımqaraylar , singular къарай, qaray ; Trakai dialect: karajlar , singular karaj ; Hebrew : קראי מזרח אירופה ; Crimean Tatar : Qaraylar ; Yiddish : קרימישע קאַראַיִמער , romanized :  krimishe karaimer ), also known more broadly as Eastern European Karaites , are

2047-563: The Caucasus , where he ransacked the genizots of old Jewish communities and collected many valuable manuscripts. He travelled as far as Derbent , and returned in 1842. In later years he made other journeys of the same nature, visiting Egypt and other countries. In Odessa he became the friend of Bezalel Stern and of Simchah Pinsker . While in Wilna he made the acquaintance of Samuel Joseph Fuenn and other Hebrew scholars.In 1871 he visited

2136-655: The Crimea , but some modern historians doubt the Crimean origin of Lithuanian Karaites. Nevertheless, this name, "Crimean Karaites" is used for the Turkic-speaking Karaites community supposed to have originated in Crimea, distinguishing it from the historically Aramaic , Hebrew , and Arabic -speaking Karaites of the Middle East . In 2009, 231 people in Kazakhstan identified as Karaites. This

2225-461: The Crimean Tatar language , Qaraylar ) have lived in Crimea for centuries. Most modern scientists regard them as descendants of Karaite Jews who settled in Crimea and adopted a Kypchak language . Others view them as descendants of Khazar or Cuman , Kipchak converts to Karaite Judaism. Today, many Crimean Karaites reject ethnic Semitic origins theories and identify as descendants of

2314-688: The Crimean Tatars , Greeks, Armenians and others the Soviet authorities alleged had collaborated during the Nazi German occupation. Some individual Karaites were deported. Assimilation and emigration greatly reduced the ranks of the Karaite community. A few thousand Karaites remain in Lithuania , Belarus , Ukraine , Poland and Russia . Nowadays, the largest communities exist in Israel and

2403-723: The Garden of Metaphors , an aesthetic appreciation of Biblical literature written in Judeo-Arabic by one of the greatest of the Sephardi poets, Moses ibn Ezra . Firkovich's life and works are of great importance to Karaite history and literature. His collections at the Russian National Library are important to biblical scholars and to historians, especially those of the Karaite and Samaritan communities. Controversy continues regarding his alleged discoveries and

2492-1005: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania relocated one branch of the Crimean Karaites to Lithuania ordering to build them a town, called today Trakai . There they continued to speak their own language. This legend originally referring to 1218 as the date of relocation contradicts the fact that the Lithuanian dialect of the Karaim language differs significantly from the Crimean one. The Lithuanian Karaites settled primarily in Vilnius and Trakai , as well as in Biržai , Pasvalys , Naujamiestis and Upytė – smaller settlements throughout Lithuania proper . The Lithuanian Karaites also settled in lands of modern Belarus and Ukraine , which were part of

2581-496: The ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Egyptian Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud). Judeo-Arabic, particularly in its later forms, contains distinctive features and elements of Hebrew and Aramaic. Many significant Jewish works, including

2670-703: The National Library of Russia in St Petersburg , while microfilm reproductions of all the manuscripts are held in the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew manuscripts at the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem . This collection contains material from the Crimea and the Caucasus. It was largely collected between 1839 and 1840, but with additions from Firkovich as late as 1852. It

2759-689: The Ottoman occupation of Crimea, Turkish was used for business and government purposes among Karaim living on the Crimean peninsula. Three different dialects developed: the Trakai dialect, used in Trakai and Vilnius ( Lithuania ), the Lutsk or Halych dialect spoken in Lutsk (until World War II ), and Halych , and the Crimean dialect. The last forms the Eastern group, while Trakai and Halych Karaim belong to

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2848-674: The Russian legal system. Firkovich in particular was adamant in his attempts to connect the Karaim with the Khazars , and has been accused of forging documents and inscriptions to back up his claims. Ultimately, the Tsarist government officially recognized the Karaim as being innocent of the death of Jesus . So they were exempt from many of the harsh restrictions placed on other Jews. They were, in essence, placed on equal legal footing with Crimean Tatars . The related Krymchak community, which

2937-682: The United States ; however, these communities are almost entirely Egyptian in origin and ethnically and liturgically distinct from Crimean Karaites. There is also a community of fewer than 100 Karaites in Turkey . In the 1990s, about 500 Crimean Karaites, mainly from Ukraine, emigrated to Israel under the Law of Return . The Israeli Chief Rabbinate has ruled that Karaites are Jews under Jewish law. Traditionally, Crimean Karaites had three major subdivisions, each of which maintained their own dialect of

3026-465: The czar , with proposals to relieve Karaites from the heavy taxes imposed on the Jewish community. In 1828 he moved to Berdichev , where he met many Hasids and learned more about their interpretations of Jewish scriptures based on the Talmud and rabbinic tradition. The encounter with Rabbinical Jews brought Firkovich into conflict with them. He published a book, "Massah and Meribah" which argued against

3115-481: The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain such as Judah Halevi , composed poetry with Arabic. The muwaššaḥ , an Andalusi genre of strophic poetry, typically included kharjas , or closing lines often in a different language. About half of the corpus of the more than 250 known muwaššaḥāt in Hebrew have kharjas in Arabic, compared to roughly 50 with Hebrew kharjas , and about 25 with Romance. There are also

3204-678: The 19th century, and that such leaders as Avraham Firkovich and Sima Babovich encouraged this position to avoid the strong antisemitism of the period. From the time of the Golden Horde onward, Karaites were present in many towns and villages throughout Crimea and around the Black Sea . During the period of the Crimean Khanate , they had major communities in the towns of Çufut Qale , Sudak , Kefe , and Bakhchysarai . According to Karaite tradition, Grand Duke Vytautas of

3293-644: The Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza . Shohat identifies linguist Yehoshua Blau as a key figure in the development of the notion of Judeo-Arabic, within what she describes as a Zionist linguistic project invested in prioritizing the uniqueness and separateness of isolatable ' Jewish languages '. Shohat cites the first issue of the Israeli journal Pe'amim , which featured

3382-616: The Byzantine Principality of Theodoro . A closely related group, the Slavic Karaites, were formally accepted into the Karaite ethnoreligious community of Crimea after the deposition of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917. They are descendants of ethnic Russian Subbotniks . However, most Slavs claiming to be Karaites in Eastern Europe are not members of the Karaite ethnoreligious community, and are not accepted as legitimate Karaites. Turkic -speaking Karaite Jews (in

3471-594: The Crimea and the Caucasus largely collected between 1839 and 1841. It was purchased by the Imperial Public Library in 1862. Another collection of 317 Samaritan manuscripts, acquired in Nablus, arrived in the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy in 1867 (see Fürst, "Geschichte des Karäerthums", iii. pp. 176, Leipsic, 1869) In 1864 Firkovich acquired a large collection of Samaritan documents in Nablus. He sold

3560-493: The Crimean Karaite population. In the Ukrainian census of 2010, just under 60 percent of Ukraine's Karaite population, 715 individuals, lived in Crimea, representing around 30 percent of the global population at the time. However, between the Russian invasion of 2014 and the Russian census of 2021, the population dropped to 295, a fall of almost 60 percent. The war of 2022 may have caused further disruption. This means that

3649-514: The Crimean Karaites possess a lower affinity to non-Jewish Turkic-speaking peoples of the region. The Karaites are characterized by the absence of a 'major' Y-chromosomal haplogroup. Haplogroups G2a-P15, J1-M267, J2-M172 together make up more than half of the Karaites’ gene pool. Next come haplogroups R1a-M198, C3, E1b, T and L. Karaim belongs to Kypchak sub-branch of the Turkic family and

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3738-564: The Crimean Tatar language and their own distinct form of Judaism. In Vilnius and Trakai , the Nazis forced Karaite Hakham Seraya Shapshal to produce a list of the members of the community. Though he did his best, not every Karaite was saved by Shapshal's list. After the Soviet recapture of Crimea from Nazi forces in 1944, the Soviet authorities counted 6,357 remaining Karaites. Karaites were not subject to mass deportation , unlike

3827-460: The Crimean population is no longer the largest, and is almost certainly smaller than the populations of mainland Ukraine, Poland, and Israel. Outside Crimea, Karaites historically settled in Galicia , particularly in Halych and Lutsk . However, there is only one Karaite left in Halych today, and the kenesa was shut down in 1959 and eventually demolished. The Galician community had its own dialect of Karaim. The largest contemporary Karaite community

3916-436: The Firkovich collection, especially the epitaphs from tombstones, contains much which is genuine. In 1980, V. V. Lebedev investigated the Firkovich collection and came to the conclusion that forgery cannot be attributed to Firkovich, but rather to the previous owners, in an attempt to increase the price of the manuscripts. For many years the manuscripts were not available to Western scholars. The extent of Firkovich's forgeries

4005-446: The German army. Since the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Empire the main center of the Qarays is the city of Yevpatoria . Their status under Russian imperial rule bore beneficial fruits for the Karaites decades later. In 1934, the heads of the Karaite community in Berlin asked the Nazi authorities to exempt Karaites from the anti-Semitic regulations based on their legal status as Russians in Russia. The Reich Agency for

4094-431: The Germans that Karaites were not Jews, in an effort to spare the Karaite community the fate of their Rabbanite neighbors. Many Karaites risked their lives to hide Jews, and in some cases claimed that Jews were members of their community. The Nazis impressed many Karaites into labor battalions . According to some sources, Nazi racial theory asserted that the Karaites of Crimea were actually Crimean Goths who'd adopted

4183-426: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Karaite communities emerged in Halych and Kukeziv (near Lviv ) in Galicia , as well as in Lutsk and Derazhne in Volhynia . Jews (Rabbinites and Karaites) in Lithuanian territory were granted a measure of autonomy under Michel Ezofovich Senior's management. The Trakai Karaim refused to comply, citing differences in faith. Later all Jews, including Karaites, were placed under

4272-540: The Hebrew alphabet. By around 800 CE, most Jews within the Islamic Empire (90% of the world's Jews at the time) were native speakers of Arabic like the populations around them. This led to the development of early Judeo-Arabic. The language quickly became the central language of Jewish scholarship and communication, enabling Jews to participate in the greater epicenter of learning at the time, which meant that they could be active participants in secular scholarship and civilization. The widespread usage of Arabic not only unified

4361-437: The Imperial Public Library in 1873. Firkovich has come to be regarded as a forger, acting in support of Karaite causes. He wished to repudiate any connection between Rabbinic Judaism and the Karaites, declaring that the Karaites were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes . Firkovich successfully petitioned the Russian government to exempt the Karaites from anti-Jewish laws on the grounds that Karaites had immigrated to Europe before

4450-479: The Investigation of Families determined that, from the standpoint of German law, the Karaites were not to be considered Jews. The letter from the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung ( de ) officially ruled: The Karaite sect should not be considered a Jewish religious community within the meaning of paragraph 2, point 2 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law . However, it cannot be established that Karaites in their entirety are of blood-related stock, for

4539-405: The Jewish community located throughout the Islamic Empire but also facilitated greater communication with other ethnic and religious groups, which led to important manuscripts of polemic, like the Toledot Yeshu , being written or published in Arabic or Judeo-Arabic. By the 10th century Judeo-Arabic would transition from Early to Classical Judeo-Arabic. In al-Andalus , Jewish poets associated with

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4628-462: The Jewish world, and by others who were literate in Hebrew. These include: Sharch ( šarḥ , pl. šurūḥ , šarḥanim ) is a literary genre consisting of the translation of sacred texts, such as Bible translations into Arabic , the Talmud or siddurim , which were composed in Hebrew and Aramaic, into Judeo-Arabic, prevalent starting in the 15th century, and exhibiting a number of mixed elements. The term sharḥ sometimes came to mean "Judeo-Arabic" in

4717-407: The Karaim became quite wealthy. During the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , the Karaim suffered severely during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 and the wars between Russia and Commonwealth in the years 1654–1667 . The many towns plundered and burnt included Derazhne and Trakai, where only 30 families were left in 1680. The destruction of the Karaite community in Derazhne in 1649

4806-413: The Karaim dialect: the Crimean Karaites, the Galician Karaites, and the Lithuanian Karaites. Today, the distribution is different. The largest number is probably now in Israel; some other Crimean Karaites have left to America or elsewhere. These Karaites are mostly joining non-Crimean-Karaite communities. According to Karaite tradition, all the Eastern European Karaite communities were derived from those in

4895-439: The Karaites is unacceptable, in consideration of their racial kinsmen [Berger was here referring to the Crimean Tatars]. However, so as not to infringe the unified anti-Jewish orientation of the nations led by Germany, it is suggested that this small group be given the opportunity of a separate existence (for example, as a closed construction or labor battalion )..." Despite having exempt status, groups of Karaites were massacred in

4984-415: The Karaites of Shaty near Trakai against an accusation of blood libel . Representatives of both groups signed an agreement in 1714 to respect the mutual privileges and resolve disputes without involving the Gentile administration. According to Crimean Karaite tradition, which developed in the 20th century interwar Poland their forefathers were mainly farmers and members of the community who served in

5073-425: The Khazars. Some specialists in Khazar history question the Khazar theory of Karaim origins, noting the following: In 19th century Crimea, Karaites began to distinguish themselves from other Jewish groups, sending envoys to the czars to plead for exemptions from harsh anti-Jewish legislation. These entreaties were successful, in large part due to the tsars' wariness of the Talmud , and in 1863 Karaites were granted

5162-492: The Pentateuch. This period includes a wide array of literary works. Scholars assume that Jewish communities in Arabia spoke Arabic as their vernacular language, and some write that there is evidence of the presence of Hebrew and Aramaic words in their speech, as such words appear in the Quran and might have come from contact with these Arabic-speaking Jewish communities. Before the spread of Islam, Jewish communities in Mesopotamia and Syria spoke Aramaic, while those to

5251-400: The Post-Soviet period, Shapshal's theory was further developed in modern Karaylar publications (e.g. " Crimean Karaite legends ") and was officially adopted by the Crimean Karaim Association "Krymkaraylar" (Ассоциация крымских караимов “Крымкарайлар”) as the only correct view of the Karaim's past in 2000. The ideology of de-Judaization, pan-Turkism and the revival of Tengrism is imbued with

5340-451: The Russian Crimean Karaites, who a year later recommended him to Count Vorontzov and to the Historical Society of Odessa as a suitable man to send to collect material on the history of Crimean Karaites. In 1839, Firkovich began excavations in the ancient cemetery of Çufut Qale , and unearthed many old tombstones, claiming that some of them dated from the first centuries of the common era. The following two years were spent in travels through

5429-409: The USSR when most of the kenesas were closed. In 1928 secular Karaim philologist Seraya Shapshal was elected as Hacham of Polish and Lithuanian Karaim. Being a strong adopter of Russian orientalist V. Grigorjev's theory about the Khazarian origin of the Crimean Karaites, Shapshal developed the Karaim's religion and "historical dejudaization" doctrine. In the mid 1930s, he began to create

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5518-539: The West spoke Romance and Berber . With the Early Muslim conquests , areas including Mesopotamia and the eastern and southern Mediterranean underwent Arabization , most rapidly in urban centers. Some isolated Jewish communities continued to speak Aramaic until the 10th century, and some communities never adopted Arabic as a vernacular language at all. Although urban Jewish communities were using Arabic as their spoken language, Jews kept Hebrew and Aramaic, traditional rabbinic languages, as their languages of writing during

5607-399: The Western group. Currently only small minority of Karaim can speak the Karaim language (72 Crimean dialect speakers, 118 Trakai dialect speakers, and about 20 Halych dialect speakers). The most famous Crimean Karaite food is Kybyn ( Russian : Кибина pl. Кибины , Karaim: kybyn pl. kybynlar , Lithuanian : Kibinai ). Kybynlar are half moon shaped pies of leavened dough with

5696-458: The authority of the Rabbinite " Council of Four Lands " (Vaad) and "Council of the Land of Lithuania" taxation (1580–1646). The Yiddish -speaking Rabbinites considered the Turkic-speaking Karaites to be apostates , and kept them in a subordinate and depressed position. The Karaites resented this treatment. In 1646, the Karaites obtained the expulsion of the Rabbinites from Trakai. Despite such tensions, in 1680, Rabbinite community leaders defended

5785-787: The correctness of the facts and the theories based upon them which Jost, Julius Fürst , and Heinrich Grätz , in their writings on the Karaites, took from Pinsker's Liḳḳuṭe Ḳadmoniyyot, in which the data furnished by Firkovich were unhesitatingly accepted. Further exposures were made by Strack and Harkavy (St. Petersburg, 1875) in the Catalog der Hebr. Bibelhandschriften der Kaiserlichen Oeffentlichen Bibliothek in St. Petersburg ; in Harkavy's Altjüdische Denkmäler aus der Krim (ib. 1876); in Strack's A. Firkowitsch und Seine Entdeckungen (Leipsic, 1876); in Fränkel's Aḥare Reshet le-Baḳḳer ( Ha-Shaḥar , vii.646 et seq.); in Deinard 's Massa' Ḳrim (Warsaw, 1878); and in other places. In contradiction, Firkovich's most sympathetic critic, Chwolson, gives as

5874-402: The crucifixion of Jesus and thus could not be held responsible for his death. S. L. Rapoport pointed out some impossibilities in the inscriptions ( Ha-Meliẓ , 1861, Nos. 13–15, 37); A. Geiger in his Jüdische Zeitschrift (1865, p. 166), Schorr in He-Ḥaluẓ , and A. Neubauer in the Journal Asiatique (1862–63) and in his Aus der Petersburger Bibliothek (Leipzig, 1866) challenged

5963-431: The death of his wife and of his son Jacob (Odessa, 1866); and "Bene Reshef", essays and poems, published by Peretz Smolenskin (Vienna, 1871). Abraham Firkovich collected several distinct collections of documents. In sum the Firkovich collection contains approximately 15,000 items, of which many are fragmentary. His collections represent 'by far the greatest repository of all Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts' and are today held in

6052-445: The documents to the Imperial Public Library in 1870. In sum the collection contains 1,350 items. Contains material collected from the Near East. The material was collected between 1863 and 1865. Firkovich collected in Jerusalem, Aleppo and also in Cairo. Firkovich concealed where he obtained the documents. He possibly collected from the Cairo Geniza thirty years before Solomon Schechter discovered it. Firkovich sold this collection to

6141-462: The early phases of the war. German soldiers who came across Karaites in the Soviet Union during the invasion of Operation Barbarossa , unaware of their legal status under German law, attacked them; 200 were killed at Babi Yar alone. German allies such as Vichy France began to require the Karaites to register as Jews, but eventually granted them non-Jewish status after getting orders by Berlin . When interrogated, Ashkenazi rabbis in Crimea told

6230-399: The entire group of Judeo-Arabic dialects being considered endangered languages . There remain small populations of speakers in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, the United States, and Israel. Cultural critic Ella Shohat notes that Jewish speakers of Arabic did not refer to their language as 'Judeo-Arabic' but simply as 'Arabic'. In the period of ' massive dislocation ' from

6319-405: The ethnonym with Rabbinical Jews alone, but rather consider themselves to be descendants of the Khazars , non-Rabbinical Judeans , or other Turkic peoples . Research into the origins of the Karaites indicates they are of ethnic Jewish origin and are genetically closely related to other Jewish diaspora groups. Some researchers believe they originated in Constantinople and later settled in

6408-550: The first three centuries of Muslim rule, perhaps due to the presence of the Sura and Pumbedita yeshivas in rural areas where people spoke Aramaic. Jews in Arabic, Muslim majority countries wrote—sometimes in their dialects, sometimes in a more classical style—in a mildly adapted Hebrew alphabet rather than using the Arabic script , often including consonant dots from the Arabic alphabet to accommodate phonemes that did not exist in

6497-529: The late 1940s through the 1960s, Jewish speakers of Arabic in diaspora and their descendants gradually adopted the term 'Judeo-Arabic' and its equivalents in French and Hebrew. The 19th century rediscovery of the Cairo Geniza gave the study of Judeo-Arabic prominence within Judaic Studies , leading to publications such as Shelomo Dov Goitein's series A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of

6586-409: The members is a Karaim. During the survey, for the beginning of 1997, there were 257 people of Karaim ethnicity, 32 of whom were children under 16. A similar survey was done in 2021, in honour of the 625th anniversary of Karaite settlement in Lithuania. This coincided with the 2021 national census. In 2011, 423 individuals identified as Karaims in the Lithuanian census. By 2021, this had dropped to 192,

6675-1010: The military forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , as well as in the Crimean Khanate. But according to the historical documents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the chief occupation of the Crimean Karaites was money lending . They were granted special privileges, including exemption from the military service. In the Crimean Khanate, the Karaites were repressed like other Jews, with prohibitions on behavior extended to riding horses. Some famous Karaim scholars in Lithuania included Isaac b. Abraham of Troki (1543–1598), Joseph ben Mordecai Malinovski , Zera ben Nathan of Trakai , Salomon ben Aharon of Trakai , Ezra ben Nissan (died in 1666) and Josiah ben Judah (died after 1658). Some of

6764-615: The predominant Jewish halakha of the Rabbinites. In 1830 he visited Jerusalem, where he collected many Jewish manuscripts. On his return he remained for two years in Constantinople as a teacher in the Karaite community. He then went to [ Crimea and organized a society to publish old Karaite works, of which several appeared in Yevpatoria (Koslov) with his commentary. In 1838 he tutored the children of Sima Babovich , head of

6853-493: The racial categorization of an individual cannot be determined without … his personal ancestry and racial biological characteristics This ruling set the tone for how the Nazis dealt with the Karaite community in Eastern Europe. At the same time, the Nazis had serious reservations about the Karaites. SS Obergruppenfuhrer Gottlob Berger wrote on November 24, 1944: "Their Mosaic religion is unwelcome. However, on grounds of race, language and religious dogma... Discrimination against

6942-436: The reliability of his works. Firkovich's chief work is his "Abne Zikkaron," containing the texts of inscriptions discovered by him (Wilna, 1872). It is preceded by a lengthy account of his travels to Daghestan , characterized by Strack as a mixture of truth and fiction. His other works are "Ḥotam Toknit," antirabbinical polemics, appended to his edition of the "Mibḥar Yesharim" by Aaron the elder (Koslov, 1835); "Ebel Kabod," on

7031-546: The restrictive measures against Jews . Many of his findings were disputed immediately after his death, and despite their important value there is still controversy over many of the documents he collected. The Russian National Library purchased the Second Firkovich Collection in 1876, a little more than a year after Firkovich's death. Among the treasures in the Firkovich collection is a manuscript of

7120-568: The same rights as their Christian and Tatar neighbors. Exempted from the Pale of Settlement , later they were considered non-Jews by Nazis. This left the community untouched by the Holocaust , unlike other Turkic-speaking Jews, like the Krymchak Jews that were almost wiped out. Miller says that Crimean Karaites did not start claiming a distinct identity apart from the Jewish people before

7209-687: The same way that "Targum" was sometimes used to mean the Aramaic language . The texts of the sharh are based on and dependent on Hebrew. The significant emigration of Judeo-Arabic speakers in the 1940s and 1950s to Israel, France, and North America has led to endangerment or near-extinction of the ethnolects. Judeo-Arabic was viewed negatively in Israel as all Arabic was viewed as an "enemy language". Their distinct Arabic dialects in turn did not thrive, and most of their descendants now speak French or Modern Hebrew almost exclusively; thus resulting in

7298-452: The small Karaite community in Halych , Galicia , where he introduced several reforms. From there he went to Vienna, where he was introduced to Count Beust and also made the acquaintance of Adolph Jellinek . He returned to spend his last days in Çufut Qale, of which only a few buildings and many ruins now remain. However, Firkovich's house is still preserved at the site. Firkovich collected

7387-401: The teaching of Hebrew in Karaite schools and replaced the names of the Jewish holidays and months with Turkic equivalents ( see the table below ). According to Shapshal, Crimean Karaites were pagans who adopted the law of Moses , but continued to adhere to their ancient Turkic beliefs. In addition, he claimed that the Karaites had revered Jesus and Mohammed as prophets for centuries. In

7476-630: The works of the contemporary leaders of the Karaites in Crimea. At the same time, some part of the people retained Jewish customs, several Karaite congregations have registered. Leon Kull and Kevin Alan Brook led the first scientific study of Crimean Karaites using genetic testing of both Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA and their results showed that the Crimean Karaites are indeed partially of Middle Eastern origin and closely related to other Jewish communities ( Ashkenazi , Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews and Egyptian Karaite Jews), while finding that

7565-569: Was an unusual jump from the 28 Karaites recorded in 1999. Karaite communities still exist in Lithuania, but have experienced a steep decline in numbers in recent decades. Historically, they lived mostly in Panevėžys and Trakai , but now most live in Vilnius, where they have a kenesa. There is also a kenesa in Trakai; the Panevėžys community has declined to only a handful of people and does not maintain

7654-671: Was not the basis of a literature. There were Jewish Pre-Islamic Arabic poets , such as al-Samawʾal ibn ʿĀdiyā , though surviving written records of such Jewish poets do not indicate anything that distinguishes their use of Arabic from non-Jewish use of it, and their work according to Geoffrey Khan is generally not referred to as Judeo-Arabic. This work is similar to and tends to follow Classical Arabic, and Benjamin Hary, who calls it Classical Judeo-Arabic, notes it still includes some dialectal features, such as in Saadia Gaon 's translation of

7743-566: Was of similar ethnolinguistic background but which practiced rabbinical Judaism, continued to suffer under Tsarist anti-Jewish laws. Solomon Krym (1864–1936), a Crimean Karaite agronomist, was elected in 1906 to the First Duma (1906–1907) as a Kadet ( National Democratic Party ). On November 16, 1918 he became the Prime Minister of a short-lived Crimean Russian liberal, anti-separatist and anti-Soviet government also supported by

7832-544: Was originally owned by the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities and was stored in the Odessa museum. Some of these documents deteriorated due to chemical treatment performed by Firkovich. Other documents which were suspected forgeries disappeared; Firkovich claimed they had been stolen. The collection was moved to the Imperial Public Library in 1863. In 1844 the Russian historian Arist Kunik  [ de ] ,

7921-544: Was the only religion of the Karaim, During the Russian Civil War a significant number of Karaim emigrated to Yugoslavia , Czechoslovakia , Poland and Hungary and then France and Germany . Most of them converted to Christianity . The Karaim's modern national movement philanthropist M.S. Sarach was one of them. The Crimean Karaites' emancipation in the Russian Empire caused cultural assimilation followed by secularization . This process continued in

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