(Sw LH

ARIEL STONE

It is obvious that the Gaon wished to permit them to enter the community through this decision. If that was his intention, then it was to permit them to repent. For that is the decision which must be made to deal with this matter. It is absolutely clear that we do not stand in the way of anyone who wishes to repent.

Radbaz drives his point home by writing that, since we are all aware of the ruling of the sages that“a doubtful bastard shall not enter the community,” obviously the Rambam therefore, in his silence on the issue and his upholding of Hai Gaon ’s ruling on seeking to bring the Karaites back to the true Torah , has to have totally dismissed the question of safek mamzerut concerning the Karaites .

The Rabbanite ascension to power in Egypt , represented by the Rambam and the bolstering strength his leadership and writings accorded to the Rabbanite Jewish community, no doubt contributed to the decline in the once-predominant Karaite community and its concomitant intellectual activity in Egypt and the East. In the twelfth century and after, the center of Karaite creativity and growth is traced to Europe .” The Egyptian Karaite community, however, apparently continued to enjoy a positive and productive relationship with its Rabbanite cousins. The Nagid Avraham, Mai­ monides ’ son, continued the official tolerance shown to the Karaites by declaring that one may believe a pious Karaite ’s oath“that he had not employed a Gentile in the preparation or the transportation of wine.” At the beginning of the fourteenth century, a contemporary source relates that in the days of the Nagid Avraham the Second(mentioned in the Karaite ketubah documented by Mann, above)“a large group of Egyptian Karaites accepted the Rabbanite way of life, and many of them married. later, into the elite Rabbanite families.”*’

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