True believers

By ESTHER HECHT (November 3) - When Tanya Magram came to live in Kibbutz Hulata with her husband and infant daughter four years ago, she knew just enough Hebrew to ask, "Are there any Karaites in Israel?"


     Click on Picture to Enlarge

As a child in Melitopol, just north of the Crimean peninsula, she had heard her grandmother tell of Anan Ben-David, the eighth-century founder of the Karaite movement who built a synagogue in the holy city of Jerusalem. He and his followers rejected the authority of the Talmud, and called for a return to Jewish law as laid out in the Torah.

But no one in the Upper Galilee kibbutz could answer Magram's question. Caught up in adjusting to her new life, she let the matter ride.

Then her older sister, Valeria, arrived as a tourist and the two traveled to Jerusalem. Turning a corner in the Old City's Jewish Quarter, they suddenly found themselves on the Street of the Karaites. They followed the arrow to the very synagogue their grandmother had spoken of.

"We are Karaites," Magram announced to the man who answered her knock. The synagogue was closed that day, he said apologetically, but they could contact the community's national headquarters in Ramle. It was there that a second, even greater surprise, awaited them.

First they met Yosef Dvir, the community's spokesman, and then Rabbi Yoseph el-Gamil, the national chairman, both of whom, like most of the Karaites in Israel, were born in Egypt. El-Gamil had been in touch with Karaites in Poland, but Magram and her sister were the first he had encountered from Ukraine.

No sooner did the rabbi hear the young women mention the names of their grandparents than he hurried to the center's library to fetch some old volumes. On his return, the sisters could hardly believe their eyes.

"They were written by our great-great-grandfather, Aaron Kefely," Magram says. "He was a hazan and a hacham [the two highest posts in the Karaite community]."

The sisters had come home.

In turn, Dvir and el-Gamil promised: 'We will always be your brothers."

When Valeria returned to Melitopol with the news of her encounter, the response in the Karaite community was mixed. Some believed there was no connection between them and the Karaites who had come from Egypt. But others started talking about coming to live in the Promised Land.

Valeria visited Israel three more times before settling in Netanya . Each time, she brought books and information from one community to the other. On her second visit, she brought Dvir and el-Gamil Karaite books in Russian, including a two-volume encyclopedia and a cookbook. But it was a book of surnames that cemented the link. "I showed them the names ׀ Cohen, Gamal, Yefet, Feruz. They were the same as those of the Karaites from Egypt," she says.

Valeria also brought photos. One shows a facade with a Star of David ׀ all that remains of the Karaite synagogue in Simferopol, the capital of the Crimean peninsula. It is now on display at the Karaite center in Ramle.

Other photos show the Karaite cemetery in Chufut-Kale ("Jew Castle" in Turkish), just southwest of Simferopol, where the tombstones are marked with a Star of David and the names are in Hebrew.

To the community in her home town, Valeria brought back booklets in Russian about the Karaites of Israel. Interest in Israel grew.

Last June, el-Gamil traveled to the former Soviet Union with Rabbi Haim Halevy, chief rabbi of the Israeli community, and Dr. Moshe Haina, head of the Ashdod community. Their trip, under the auspices of the Liaison Bureau of the Prime Minister's Office which oversees particularly sensitive matters of immigration, took them from Simferopol in the south to Vilnius [Vilna] in the north, where they met coreligionists eager to hear about Israel.

The last Soviet census in 1989 counted 2,602 Karaites, more than half of them on the Crimean peninsula, and the Liaison Bureau estimates their number today at 2,800. But el-Gamil sets the number between 30,000 and 35,000, explaining that many hid their identity during the census so as not to endanger their rights as Soviet citizens. Now, he says, many of them want to come "home."

If Magram and her sister are any indication, they have little to fear. Hulata proved to be a true home for Magram and her family. They would have stayed had she not wanted to complete her studies in music at Tel Aviv University's Rubin Academy.

Sitting in Magram's home with Karaite friends from Melitopol who now live in Netanya, family members recall their customs and traditions with nostalgia. Mostly they speak of special foods, like the piroshki piyatnichniye, literally, "borekas for Friday." They are large savory pastry rolls filled with a mixture of lamb, potatoes and onions.

In Ukraine, Magram's mother would also prepare kubiteh, a large pie with the same filling. When it was served, the top layer of dough was removed and the filling dished out; then the bottom layer was cut and distributed.

Karaite weddings had their special foods, too, including white halva, gefilte fish, kaurganet ׀ savory pastries filled with ground lamb ׀ and little cakes filled with honey and nuts.

For funerals there was "black" halva made with black pepper, roasted eggs with pepper, dried cherries, red wine, and a soup made of lamb, beans and potatoes.

"We always knew that our holidays come the day after the Jewish holidays," Magram says, referring to the Karaite calendar, that differs slightly from that of Rabbanite Jews. "But it was more tradition than religion." As Valeria explains, "The only religion in the Soviet Union was Communism."

Indeed, the last member of Magram's family to observe religious ritual was her maternal grandmother, who would recite a variety of blessings including grace after meals, and would pray for the children when they were ill.

Magram's mother, Olga Kiskatchi, remembers being taken as a child to the kinasa, as the Karaites call their synagogue.

"My mother covered her hair, they put a kippa on my brother's head, and we took off our shoes," Olga recalls.

Olga adds that in her mother's generation, a Karaite bride wore a crown of white flowers and a cap decorated with gold coins.

And, most important, Karaites married each other, at least until Olga's parents' generation. Magram's father is a Rabbanite Jew, and in Magram's generation the decision not to marry Karaites was a conscious one. "The communities were small, people were related to each other, and there were genetic defects in children," she explains.

Education was revered. Traditionally, Karaites were doctors, Valeria says. Her grandmother was a pediatrician. A family friend from Miletopol now living in Netanya, Valentin Gamal, is a retired orthopedic surgeon.

Ironically, however, now that they are in Israel, and despite their warm feelings toward its Karaite community, Magram believes the separate identity will end with her generation.

"I don't think our children will have a Karaite identity," she says simply. "They will know their grandmother is a Karaite, that Karaites are a kind of Jew with a few differences in their tradition. But they attend state schools. They identify with the children there."

Meanwhile, however, Israel's veteran Karaite community is striving to maintain its separate identity, while insisting it is an integral part of the Jewish people.

In the early years of the state, a decision was taken to allow the Karaites to immigrate under the Law of Return, despite some opposition. Tom Segev's book 1949 quotes the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Tzvi Pesah Frank, saying about the Karaites: "Heaven forbid that we should bring this deadly plague into Israel's vineyard."

"Karaites may enter the country under the Law of Return and they are considered Jews," says Dr. Nissim Dana of Bar-Ilan University's Land of Israel department. "They refer to themselves as Karaite Jews, as opposed to the Samaritans who themselves say they are not Jews but Israelites, as the result of a split 3,000 years ago."

Although the Interior Ministry listed "Karaite" or "Karaite Jew" under "nationality" on the identity cards of the veteran Karaite community, it writes "Jew" on the identity cards of newly arrived Karaites.

Karaite spokesman Dvir emphasizes his community's full involvement in Israeli life. "We attend the same schools, from nursery school to university, and serve in all the armed forces and security forces, including the secret ones."

To maintain their tradition, Karaite children also attend after-school classes for religious instruction. El-Gamil estimates the number of Karaites in Israel at 40,000, though other community leaders set the number at 25,000. They live mainly in the southern half of the country, in cities and moshavim. Ramle, with a community of 800 families, has two synagogues, as well as the administrative and religious headquarters.

But the heart is in Jerusalem, and it is to the capital that dozens of Karaites from all over the country flock on Succot for a festive service in the Old City synagogue.

A steep flight of stairs leads to the sanctuary, which is entirely below ground and consists of two joined halls. Some liken its shape to the tablets of the law, the Karaite emblem signifying allegiance to the Bible.

Only the ritually pure may enter (barring menstruating women, for example), and to preserve the purity of the synagogue Karaites leave their shoes at the door. The floor is covered with thick carpets, and there are no benches.

Worshipers ׀ men in front, women in back ׀ stand during the service, except when they follow the biblical injunction to bow down to the ground.

Rabbi Moshe Dabbach, 61, spiritual head of the Jerusalem community and deputy chief rabbi for the country, lives in Pisgat Ze'ev in the northern reaches of the city, and teaches vocational subjects ׀ carpentry and machine tooling ׀ in a high school on the south side. But he comes to the synagogue nearly every day to look after the place of worship and the small museum above it, and to minister to his flock of 50 families.

A larger museum ׀ with a clear view of the synagogue through glass partitions ׀ stands half-finished for lack of funds. Promises of help from the city never materialized, Dabbach claims.

Money is not the only problem. Israelis' ignorance and suspicion plague this minority group. On an intermediate day of Succot, a haredi man, touring the Jewish Quarter with his young children, notices the sign on the Karaite synagogue, then starts to read aloud from his guidebook about the Karaites.

Suddenly he spots Dabbach and, without bothering to greet him, calls out rudely: "Say, you folks don't put on tefillin, do you?" all the while staring at Dabbach's forehead. Dabbach turns away, annoyed at the man's presumption, but his wife, Shoshie, explains the matter of the tefillin to me with the patience and calm that have made her a sought-after nursery school teacher.

Karaites read the biblical commandment about phylacteries metaphorically, as meaning that the basic tenets of Judaism must become an integral part of one's thouhts and deeds, she says. "The [physical] tefillin themselves are not the important thing. What is important is that these things sink in," she says, tapping the space between her eyes.

Anan Ben-David's principle ׀ "Search thoroughly in the Torah and do not rely on my opinion" ׀ was meant to uphold the Holy Scriptures as the sole source of the law, but Anan's follower, Benjamin Ben Moses Nahawendi, turned free and independent individual study of the Scriptures into a basic principle of Karaism. This allowed for tolerance of differing interpretations ׀ an approach Shoshie says is conducive to a live-and-let-live attitude.

"If [the Bible] says, 'Do not kill' and I see a dying man and I leave him to die ׀ it is as if I had murdered him," Dabbach explains.

Though Karaite religious leaders have no legal standing, their religious court in Ramle has traditionally handled marriage and divorce within their community. But even this has been problematic. According to el-Gamil, though the 1952 census grouped Karaites with the non-Jewish minorities, the Religious Affairs Ministry has always related to them as Jews.

But recently, the ministry official who dealt with Karaite affairs retired, and the Karaites were lumped for administrative purposes with other non-Jewish communities.

Outraged at this perceived lowering of status, they protested the appointment of the new department head. For three months following their protest, they received no forms for registering marriages or divorces, and couples about to be married (or divorced) were in a quandary. Only the intervention of Likud Knesset member Naomi Blumenthal restored the Karaites' previous status.

Israel's rabbinical courts require a Karaite who wants to marry a Rabbanite Jew to undergo a short process called kabbalat divrei haverut, which translates loosely as "accepting Rabbanite Judaism." After several days' study with a rabbi discussing the differences between the two religious communities, the Karaite must appear before three rabbis and promise to give up Karaite customs.

"It is not conversion," Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Dahan, director-general of the country's rabbinical courts, says emphatically. Nor is there any requirement, for example, that a Karaite man undergo a token circumcision (hatafat dam), as the chief rabbinate initially required of Ethiopian Jews.

Ben-Dahan can offer no statistics, but estimates there are no more than five such cases a year in the country. He cherishes his recording of a prophetic statement by prime minister David Ben-Gurion.

"He predicted that the gates of the Soviet Union would open," Dvir says, "and that Karaite and Rabbanite Jews would come on aliya together."