Books about Karaite from Amazon.com

In a book with a bold new view of medieval Jewish history, written in a style accessible to nonspecialists and students as well as to scholars in the field, Marina Rustow changes our understanding of the origins and nature of heresy itself. Scholars have long believed that the Rabbanites and Qaraites, the two major Jewish groups under Islamic rule, split decisively in the tenth century and from that time forward the minority Qaraites were deemed a heretical sect. Qaraites affirmed a right to decide matters of Jewish law free from centuries of rabbinic interpretation; the Rabbanites, in turn, claimed an unbroken chain of scholarly tradition.

Rustow draws heavily on the Cairo Geniza, a repository of papers found in a Rabbanite synagogue, to show that despite the often fierce arguments between the groups, they depended on each other for political and financial support and cooperated in both public and private life. This evidence of remarkable interchange leads Rustow to the conclusion that the accusation of heresy appeared sporadically, in specific contexts, and that the history of permanent schism was the invention of polemicists on both sides. Power shifted back and forth fluidly across what later commentators, particularly those invested in the rabbinic claim to exclusive authority, deemed to have been sharply drawn boundaries. Heresy and the Politics of Community paints a portrait of a more flexible medieval Eastern Mediterranean world than has previously been imagined and demonstrates a new understanding of the historical meanings of charges of heresy against communities of faith. Historians of premodern societies will find that, in her fresh approach to medieval Jewish and Islamic culture, Rustow illuminates a major issue in the history of religions..
Price: $40.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The first introduction to Karaite history, practice, thought, and custom in the English language. An ideal book for anyone interested in Karaite Judaism as a living religion, from the perspective of an insider..
Price: $24.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A minority within Judaism, the Karaites are known as "reading community" - one that looks to the Bible as the authority in all areas of life, including intimate relations and hygiene Here Ruth Tsoffar considers how Egyptian Kariates of the San Francisco Bay Area define themselves, within both California culture and Judaism, in terms of the Bible and its bearing on their bodies. Women's perspectives play a large role in this ethnography; it is their bodies that are especially regulated by rules of cleanliness and purity to the point where their biological functions - menstruation, procreation, childbirth, lactation - determine their place in the community. As Tsoffar notes, the female body itself becomes a richly encoded text that reveals much about the Karaites' attitudes toward the interrelated issues of gender, sex, food, procreation, sacred traditions, time and space, as well as identity. The author illuminates the cultural strategies used by Karaite women to sustain their religious ideologies yet find personally meaningful ways of reading. The Karaites have survived since at least the eighth century by continually contemporizing their culture. Through a study of the rich, animated ritual experience of niddah (menstruation and purity codes in Leviticus), we see how the Karaite women seek to imagine and narrate a new history of purity through their bodies. "The Stains of Culture" presents issues of meaning and interpretation in a way valuable to students of women's studies, anthropology, minority cultural production, and scholars of religion and Judaism - especially to those interested in exploring Judaism's diversity..
Price: $18.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This work examines the changing relationship of this Jewish sect to rabbinic Judaism and the influence of Muslim and Christian environments..
Price: $32.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In The Karaite Jews of Egypt, Mourad el-Kodsi offers for the first time a comprehensive and scholarly study of the little-known history of the Karaite Jews. Dealing primarily with the period from 1882-1986, el-Kodsi's text reveals the many dimensions of the Karaites' rich cultural heritage, and is supplemented by numerous photographs and reproductions of authentic Karaite documents of historical import. In a style that is at once uncompromising and sensitive, the author examines the folk traditions, societal patterns, and artistic contributions of this once-flourishing society..
Price: $42.71 [Notify me when price goes down.]