MARRIAGE WITH SECTARIANS
that of the Rabbanites, but valid. The attitude of Maimonides , who rules that we may join with the Karaites in mitzvot that are authoritative for them as well as us, seems to reach beyond mere tolerance to a kind of acceptance of these coreligionists. It is as if some of the Rabbanites of our own day discovered our brother and sister Jews in Ethiopia , the movement's Beta Israel, and refrained from expecting their leaders to pass exams set by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, as if they had restrained themselves from a show of political power, as if they had not pushed away the Ethiopians ’ own ritual garments in the Rabbanite rush to put a kipah on every male Jewish head.
The Karaites , in their development of a different system of Torah interpretation, defined themselves as a Jewish community that took itself and its relation to Jewish history and Jewish law seriously. The Karaite movement produced scholars and codifiers as well as charismatic leaders; they were never a sect of mere rejecters of the Rabbanite approach to the Torah . Like any selfsufficient religious sect, they defined their own self-contained and internally coherent system of belief and praxis. Their approach asserts the right of the individual to“search well in the Torah ” and not to rely on another’s ruling above one’s own seikhel and yet, for the sake of group identity and preservation, establishes group norms to which they demand conformity.
When is a sectarian not a sectarian? The Karaites were and are, according to some rabbis, heretics. But depending on the time, the place, and the rabbi, alfheinu haKara’im were and are considered acceptable companions with Rabbanites on the Jewish journey and, often enough, cobuilders of that most vital religious unit, the family. A cynic might expect the eternal dominance of a religious
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