MARRIAGE WITH SECTARIANS THE CASE OF THE KARAITES
Ariel Stone
o clearly understand the possible range of halakhic
obstacles to marriage let us consider the strange case
of the Karaites . Defined by various halakhic decisors and Jewish historians as a“sect,” they are neither quite Jew nor non-Jew in the eyes of the majority Rabbanite“sect” from which they distinguish themselves. The permitting or prohibiting of marriage between Karaite and Rabbanite Jews occupies a gray area not easily defined. During the last six centuries at least, halakhic reasoning has varied and opinions have diverged. As Rabbi Ben Zion Meir Hai Ouziel, late Rishon le-Zion , stated in a responsum:
Both earlier and later authorities prohibited and permitted; these and those were both to be considered as words of the living God . Who am I that I shall come later and interpret their words!’
The institutionalization of Jewish rejection of the Rabbanite approach to Jewish law and life that came to be called Karaism traces its genesis to its eighth-century founder, Anan ben David , and the ninth- and tenth-century codifiers Benjamin al-Nah’awendi and Daniel al-Kumisi. A review of the history shared by Rabbanite Jews with, as they called them,“our brothers the Karaites ” over the past millennium indicates a mutually ambivalent stance and a complex and changing attitude marked by periods of both amicable coexistence and hostile estrangement. The relationship between the two sects in the tenth century, Hasd Gisah, was marked by the polemical writings of Saadiah Gaon and Jacob al-Kirkisani; but in the thirteenth century, Idakh Gisah, the Rabbanite philosopher Sa’d ibn Kammuna could serve as mufti for both Karaite and Rabbanite communities in Egypt “and write a treatise...in some respects, defending both points of view.”