haiiidit a
ARIEL STONE
“In every matter in which they do believe in the obligation...we are permitted to join them in it,”
The Rambam did not prohibit Karaite-Rabbanite marriage in his responsa that Tzvi Zohar notes on his study Ben Nekhur L’ahuvah.” In one such teshuvah Maimonides states unequivocally that“[w]hen anyone married a Karaite woman, she was to be considered his wife and for divorce needed a get.” He goes on to specify, however, that the ger must be written,*
For the Rambam a marriage conducted according to Karaite practices is considered binding for the Rabbanite halakhist: a woman married to a man by such a rite is considered married. A woman divorced by Karaite practice, however, is not divorced in the eyes of Rabbanite halakhah. Schochtman notes the curious absence of the issue of Karaite-Rabbanite intermarriage in the Rambam ’s writings; it does not appear in the Mishneh Torah, and it is not addressed in his responsa other than in the specific instance cited above.”
THE QUESTION OF DOUBTFUL BASTARDY
Although the Rambam pronounced a Karaite kiddushin valid and a Karaite ger invalid, he seems not to have carried the opinion forward to the possible conclusion that, in case of a Karaite divorce ending such a Karaite-Rabbanate intermarriage, the status of future offspring of the divorced mother, should she remarry, might be called into question. We might infer from the fact that, writing at the end of the fifteenth century, the Radbaz , Egyptian Rabbi David Ben Zimri, does follow the question to this point, that there were those who did worry about the possibility of such mamzerut. It is
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