SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA

clearly evident that the rabbis on both sides of the question are eager to find some way in which the Karaites might not be rejected. Those rabbis who say that Karaite marriage is not valid conclude from that statement that therefore their wives are not actually wives, that therefore there is no bastardy among them(since in Jewish law a bastard is the offspring of a married woman and a man not her husband), and that therefore we may marry with them. But those rabbis who say that we may not marry with them base it on the interesting ground that there is the suspicion of bastardy since their mothers are married women, in as much as Karaite marriages are valid marriages, if not by rabbinic law and custom, at least by Biblical law. In other words, both sides in dealing with this ancient enemy want in some way to continue the bond with them. either by permitting us to marry them or by declaring their marriages Biblically valid.

This reluctance to exclude Jews from the family fellowship of Israel is basic to the halakhah It can be seen still more clearly from the relationship of the law to an apostate(mumar). A mumar(which would include a public violator of the Sabbath ) is ineligible as a witness, cannot be counted to a minyan, and so forth. He loses all his Jewish rights except one basic one, namely, his marital status."His marriage is marriage and his divorce is divorce." This inalienable marital and family status of the apostate(whatever else he has lost) has in clearest expression in the resonsum of Saadia(Otzar Hageonim, Yevamot, pp. 1-7), in which he says that a man's status with regard to his trustworthiness as witness, and so on, depends upon his observance of the commandments, but his marriage rights and status depend upon his birth. Saadia ends his statement by saying