ARIEL STONE
Middle Ages the Karaite movement waned in power and size, and their European communities were shunned by the more powerful Rabbanites of Europe . Thus it is that the Karaites always considered themselves Jews and always shared the fate of the Jewish people (with one notable exception).
Issues of religiocultural loyalty did not apparently trouble Hai Gaon who encouraged tolerance and Rabbanite readiness to accept Karaites into the kahal. Rabbanite Jewish concern with biological purity vis-a-vis the Karaites was evident only in Europe , where the predominant Ashkenazi Rabbanites reject the entire group as safek mamzerut, but in Egypt the Karaites were considered to be just like their Sephardi Rabbanite neighbors in talk, in characteristics, and in communal living habits; and the biological purity issue is one that an authority as prominent as the Radbaz considers an unnecessary complication of the halakhic status of the Karaites .
Is this a coincidence or a legacy of equally powerful communities in relationship and, as well, the mutuality of their relationships? As for a“conscious commitment to group norms, this is an important issue to those mostly European rabbis who deny the Karaites the possibility of“return” to the kahal; but it is not to those other, Egyptian poskim, who point to the gedolim that came before us and that accepted Karaites : who are we to do otherwise?
Many words have been written, but if actions speak louder than words, the Fostat and Jerusalem ketubot of the eleventh and twelfth centuries speak volumes. The mutual respect that characterized these documents indicates a Rabbanite willingness to see Karaites as Jews —Jews living a Jewish life with integrity, with an interpretative tradition regarding Torah-law that is different from
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