MARRIAGE WITH SECTARIANS

ESTRANGEMENT OF THE TWO SECTS

Ambivalence between the two groups must have taken a toll among the communities of Rabbanites and Karaites living together, for the historian Alamkarizi reports in the thirteenth century on“the great hatred” growing between the two groups:“[T]hey do not marry each other, they do not speak together, one will not show even a foot in the beit knesset of his neighbor.”** Marriages did still take place in other communities, apparently, for zeshuvot exist that demonstrate the support of the Radbaz as well as other Egyptian rabbis such as Yaakov Birav, Shmuel ha-Levi HaKim, and Yaakov Castro for the general heter allowing such intersectarian marriages. Castro held that“if Karaites wish to accept the Oral Law and live like other faithful Israelites, ” the custom was for them to formally swear on a Torah before a beit din that they would henceforth live by the“requirements of the sages.” He had complete confidence in such an oath, for it was known that“Karaites do not recognize any absolution of oaths and, hence, even against their will they must adhere to the end of their lives to the belief in Oral Law.” But the rabbi Shlomo Gabison is on record at this time as being against such intermarriages(Korman notes that perhaps at his time and in his place the Karaites were different), as was the author of Leker Hakemah, Rabbi Moshe Hagiz, who writes,“their marriages are not Jewishly valid.”® In Damascus and Constantinople , despite friendly relations between the sects, Benjamin of Tudela spoke of a mehitzah between them: there was little or no intermarriage between Rabbanite and Karaite Jews ."

The possibly compromised future status of the offspring of Karaite -Rabbanite intermarriage does not seem to be part of the growing Rabbanite controversy in Egypt vis-a-vis their Karaite

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