Karaite Judaism or Karaism is a Jewish religious movement characterized by the recognition of the written Tanakh alone as its supreme authority in halakha and theology. Karaites believe that all of the divine commandments which were handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah without any additional Oral Law or explanation. Unlike mainstream Rabbinic Judaism, which regards the Oral Torah, codified in the Talmud and subsequent works, as authoritative interpretations of the Torah, Karaite Jews do not treat the written collections of the oral tradition in the Midrash or the Talmud as binding.
The Karaim language, also known by its Hebrew name Lashon Kedar is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak group, with Hebrew influences, similarly to Yiddish or Judaeo-Spanish. It is spoken by only a few dozen Crimean Karaites in Lithuania, Poland, Crimea, and Galicia in Ukraine. The three main dialects are those of Crimea, Trakai-Vilnius and Lutsk-Halych, all of which are critically endangered. The Lithuanian dialect of Karaim is spoken mainly in the town of Trakai by a small community living there since the 14th century.
The Krymchaks are Jewish ethno-religious communities of Crimea derived from Turkic-speaking adherents of Rabbinic Judaism. They have historically lived in close proximity to the Crimean Karaites, who follow Karaite Judaism.
Avrom Ber Gotlober, also known by the pen names Abag and Mahalalel, was a Russian Maskilic writer, poet, playwright, historian, journalist and educator. His first collection was published in 1835.
Yitzhak ha-Sangari was the rabbi who purportedly converted the Khazar royalty to Judaism, according to medieval Jewish sources. According to D. M. Dunlop, "the name Isaac Sangari is perhaps not attested before the 13th century, when he is mentioned by Nahmanides."
The Crimean Karaites or Krymkaraylar, also known as Karaims and Qarays, are an ethnicity of Turkic-speaking adherents of Karaite Judaism in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in the territory of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Crimea. "Karaim" is a Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish and Lithuanian name for the community.
Chufut-Kale is a medieval city-fortress in the Crimean Mountains that now lies in ruins. It is a national monument of Crimean Karaites culture just 3 km (1.9 mi) east of Bakhchysarai.
Seraya Shapshal or His Excellency Hajji Seraya Khan Shapshal (1873–1961) was a hakham and leader of the Crimean and then the Polish and Lithuanian Crimean Karaites (Karaim) community.
Abraham (Albert) Harkavy was a Russian historian and orientalist.
A kenesa is an Eastern European or Persian Karaite synagogue.
Jacob ben Reuben was a Karaite scholar and Bible exegete of the eleventh century. He wrote a brief Hebrew language commentary on the entire Bible, which he entitled Sefer ha-'Osher, because, as he says in the introduction, the reader will find therein sufficient information, and will not need to have recourse to the many voluminous commentaries which the author himself had consulted. The book is, in fact, merely a compilation; the author's explanation of any given passage is frequently introduced by the abbreviations or ; and divergent explanations of other commentators are added one after the other and preceded by the vague phrase. It is, in fact, chiefly an extract of Yefet ben Ali's work, from whom Jacob borrowed most of his explanations as well as the quotations from various authors, chiefly on the Pentateuch. But Jacob also drew upon later Karaite authors, the last of whom is Jeshua ben Judah, who, so far as is known, flourished about 1054. This date points to the second half of the eleventh century as the date of composition of the Sefer ha-'Osher.
Jeshua ben Judah was a Karaite scholar, exegete and philosopher, who lived in eleventh-century Iraq or at Jerusalem.
Aaron ben Joseph of Constantinople, was an eminent teacher, philosopher, physician, and liturgical poet in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
Jacob Qirqisani was a Karaite dogmatist and exegete who flourished in the first half of the tenth century. His origins are unknown. His patronym "Isaac" and teknonym "Joseph" reflect no more than the genealogy of the biblical patriarchs, while his surname has been taken as referring to either ancient Circesium in eastern Syria, or Karkasān, near Baghdad, though no Karaite community is known in either place. He seems to have traveled throughout the Middle East, visiting the centers of Islamic learning, in which he was well-versed.
Mordecai Sultansky was a Crimean Karaite hakham of the nineteenth century.
Levi ben Japheth, born Abu Said al-Lawi ibn Hasan al-Basri was a prominent Jewish Karaite scholar who flourished in the first half of the 11th-century CE probably at Jerusalem or Ramleh. He is the author of Kitab an-Ni'ma, which is the earliest known Karaite compendium of Mu'tazilite thought.
Jonah Hayyim Gurland was a Russian and Hebrew writer born at Kleck, government of Minsk. At the age of 10, Gurland entered the rabbinical school of Wilna, from which he graduated as rabbi in 1860. He then went to St. Petersburg, and was admitted to attend the lectures of the philological faculty, devoting himself to the study of Semitic languages under the direction of Daniel Chwolson.
Simhah Pinsker was a Polish-Jewish scholar and archeologist born in Tarnopol, Habsburg West Galicia. He received his early Hebrew education in a cheder and from his father, Shebaḥ ha-Levi, a noted preacher, who instructed him in mathematics and German language also. He was the father of Leon Pinsker.
Joel Baer Falkovich was an early Yiddish Theatre dramatist, literary figure, and supporter of the Haskalah from the Russian Empire.
