MARRIAGE WITH SECTARIANS

be banished, not allowed to pray with Jews in the synagogue and be segregated until they mend their ways and pledge themselves to observe the customs of the two academies."

Lasker described a tenth-century conversation between the Karaite Jacob al-Kirkisani and the Rabbanite Jacob ben Ephraim al-Shami that reveals the ironic underpinnings of the issue dividing the two sects. Kirkisani asks why the Rabbanites allowed intermarriage with the heretical Isunian Jewish sect, which differs markedly from the Rabbanites in theological beliefs but not from the Karaites . Ben Ephraim tells him it is because the Isunians do not disagree with the Rabbanite fixing of the ritual calendar. Because his own Karaites , who do differ in calendrical matters but not in theological ones, were unacceptable marriage partners at the time. Kirkisani deduces from ben Ephraim’s answer that, for the Rabbanites, theological heresy is pardonable, but observance of Passover on a different day was not."

Early in the energetically and enthusiastically waged intellectual battle between Karaite and Rabbanite, propagandists of the two sects missionized each other even in each other’s places of prayer, despite the bans each placed on contact with the other. The Karaite leader Sahl ibn Mazliah ha-Kohen,“even complained that the Rabbanites introduced the Sabbath illumination of their houses of worship for no other reason than to keep out Karaite speakers to whom Sabbath lights were an abomination.”

Polemics, bans, and other antisocial behaviors among the leadership apparently did not bother the average Jew of either sect or abrogate the essential unity of the two groups, either in their own eyes or in the eyes of others. According to a contemporary source in the tenth century many“half-converts”“celebrated two holidays,

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