MARRIAGE WITH SECTARIANS

literally meant the Sabath day, and for them, therefore, Shavuot can fall only on a Sunday.

Shabbat itself is a very different kind of day among the Karaites , whose understanding of the Torah led them to avoid kin­dling light at all on Shabbat . Thus, until the fourteenth century, when reforms were instituted, Shabbat was a day on which Karaites would sit in the dark and eat cold food. Sex was prohibited, as was leaving one’s house except to attend synagogue. Differences also included the rejection of tefillin as not dictated mi-d’oraita, and certain variations in the observance of kashrut: the chicken was classified as an impure bird, and one cause of“great animosity between the two factions of Jewry in eleventh-century Palestine” was the Karaite legislation permitting the eating of fowl with milk."

Despite their ritual differences and their sometimes heated arguments, Karaite Jews did not seek to separate themselves from the rest of the Jewish people, and neither they nor the Rabbanites with whom they co-existed considered them non-Jews . Much united the two sects. Ankori cites Mahler ’s description of the early Karaite community’s social structure was basically no different from that of the Rabbanites; there was no a social protest, per se, in the origin of the movement."'' Further, the core beliefs of Karaism , codified by Elijah Bashyazi in 1490 in his book, are very nearly indistinguishable from those of Rabbanism:

1. The physical world was created.

2. It was created by a Creator who did not create

Himself but is eternal.

3. The Creator has no likeness and is unique in all respects. 4. He sent the prophet Moses.

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