MARRIAGE WITH SECTARIANS
possible, the Radbaz writes, that in some cases a woman might have been divorced according to Karaite law; but, he points out, it is also quite possible that she never remarried. If she did remarry, he argues, the possibility has to be considered that she had no children. If she did have children, there is a chance that they never married. In other words, he considers the number of such questionable offspring so small that he did not judge the question of possible bastardy among the Karaites to be a concern.” In another of his teshuvot he muses:
Still, there are reasons to generalize about the Karaites . They are Israelites and their marriages are valid; however, their divorces are not according to the rabbinic rules, and all, according to the Torah , are not reliable witnesses; and if we investigate this, there is great danger if many of their families enter into the general community. I do not see any way out of this and it is better to let them sin inadvertently.”
The idea is never to rule the Karaites out as Jews ; the question was always that of the fine art of delineation between two Jewish sects: just how Jewish are they? Elsewhere, the Radbaz refers to the writings of Hai Gaon , quoted by the Rambam , in which the Gaon rules that Rabbanites should never refrain from involving themselves supportively with the Karaite community(for example, fulfilling the mitzvah of brit milah on Shabbat with them), because the aim was always to exploit every opportunity to bring the Kara ites back into the Rabbanite fold. Even though the Karaites are, demonstrably, deniers of the Oral Law, and he regards them not as anusim but as consciously denying Rabbanite truth, ibn Zimra does not rule out the possibility of their return, although he may occasionally despair of it. As he wrote: