Karaite Jews

Karaites (from Hebrew qara, to read: 'people of Scripture') are Jews who accept only the written Hebrew Bible as religious authority and reject the rabbinic Oral Law of the Talmud. The movement took shape in 8th-9th century Babylonia around Anan ben David and spread to Jerusalem, Egypt, Byzantium, Crimea and Lithuania. Two branches developed: the Arabic-speaking Karaites of Egypt, Iraq and Syria, who regard themselves as Jews, and the Turkic-speaking Karaim of Crimea, Lithuania and western Ukraine, who since the 19th century have defined themselves as a separate Turkic people, which spared them in the Holocaust. Cairo's community, some 5,000-7,000 strong in the 1940s, left after 1948, 1956 and 1967, almost all for Israel, which now holds most of the world's 30,000-50,000 Karaites. Smaller communities live in the San Francisco Bay Area, Istanbul, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Russia.

Karaite synagogues are carpeted halls where worshippers remove their shoes, kneel and prostrate in prayer, much like the practice of the Second Temple. Sabbath is kept without any fire or light burning, festivals follow a calendar set by sighting the new moon and the barley harvest in the land of Israel, and Hanukkah is not observed. Egyptian Karaite food and music share in Cairo Jewish and Arab culture; Crimean Karaim culture is Turkic (kibinai pastries, Karaim language, the kenesa prayer house).

Each believer is expected to study Scripture and reach their own understanding, guided by the community's sages (hakhamim). Distinctive rules include patrilineal descent, no tefillin or mezuzah of the rabbinic kind, a different reckoning of Shavuot, strict laws of ritual purity and a prohibition on marriage between closely related relatives that is wider than the rabbinic one. Since the 2000s the Israeli council has accepted converts. Among the Crimean Karaim religious practice declined sharply in the Soviet era.

Karaites' emphasis on Scripture alone, their reading of the Hebrew Bible and their own history as dissenters from rabbinic authority create points of contact with Bible-centred Christian faith, though they reject the New Testament. Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament in Hebrew are available; Karaim has Scripture portions. No outreach specific to Karaites is known.