While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were claimed to be based on the written text of the Torah alone ( e. g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites ), most Jews believed in what they call the oral law.

Many believe that the ben Asher family were Karaites.

Evidently the regulations preferring male descendants came to be disregarded in some respects, as the Book of Job, which textual scholars date to the fourth century, states in its epilogue that Job's daughters were given equal inheritance rights to his sons, and the Karaites always gave daughters the same rights as sons.

Karaites were said to have attended his lectures, among them being Aaron ben Joseph the Elder, who later became one of the greatest Karaite authorities ( although Graetz writes that there is no veracity to that ).

The readiness with which vows were made and the facility with which they were annulled by the scribes gave the Karaites an opportunity to attack rabbinic Jews.

Karaites were the first Jewish Sect to subject Judaism to Mu ' tazilah.

Karaites absorbed certain aspects of Jewish sects such as Isawites ( Shi ' ism ), Malikites ( Sunnis ) and Yudghanites ( Sufis ), who were influenced by East-Islamic scholarship yet deferred to Ash ' ari when contemplating the sciences.

He argued that throughout this history the Masorites did not invent the vowel points and accents, but that they were delivered to Moses by God at Sinai, citing Karaite authorities Mordechai ben Nisan Kukizov ( 1699 ) and his associates, who stated that " all our wise men with one mouth affirm and profess that the whole law was pointed and accented, as it came out of the hands of Moses, the man of God ," The argument of the Karaites shows that some copies have always been pointed and some copies were not pointed with the vowels, especially those copies in Synagogues which Gill talks about.

In 1835 there were 1, 363 Jews with 113 Karaites living in the town of Kutais ( Kutaisi ) and its surroundings: 1, 040 in Gori, 623 in Akhaltsikhe, and 61 in Tiflis ( Tbilisi ).

) His descendants were regarded by the Karaites as the true exilarchs.

That the personage of the exilarch was familiar to Muslim circles is also shown by the fact that the Rabbinite Jews were called Jaluti, that is, those belonging to the exilarch, in contradistinction to the Karaites.

His followers were called Ananites and, like modern Karaites, do not believe the Rabbinic Jewish oral law ( such as the Mishnah ) to be divinely inspired.

In the 10th century, the Karaites were believed to have comprised about 10 % of the world's Jewish population.

At the time of the traveler Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century, Karaites were widely dispersed around the eastern Mediterranean, both in Islamic areas and the Byzantine Empire.

Karaites maintain that all of the divine commandments handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah, without additional Oral Law or explanation.

When interpreting the Tanakh, Karaites strive to adhere to the plain or most obvious meaning (" peshat ") of the text ; this is not necessarily the literal meaning, but rather the meaning that would have been naturally understood by the ancient Israelites when the books of the Tanakh were first written.

However, the claim has been made that Karaites were already living in Egypt in the first half of the 7th century, the evidence consisting of a legal document that the Karaite community in Egypt had in its possession until the end of the 19th century, which document was said to be stamped by the palm of ˁAmr Ibn al-ˁAṣ, the first Islamic governor of Egypt, in which he ordered the leaders of the Rabbanite community not to interfere in the way of life of the Karaites nor with the way they celebrate their holidays.

Karaites have always maintained that, while there are some similarities to the Sadducees, there are also differences, and that the ancestors of the Karaites were another group called Benei Ṣedeq during the Second Temple Period.

Some European Karaites do not see themselves as part of the Jewish community at all, although most do.

Some Jews did not accept the written codification of the oral law at all ; known as Karaites, they comprised a significant portion of the world Jewish population in the 10th and 11th Centuries CE, and remain extant, though they currently number in the thousands.

One group that has been particularly at odds with the Pharisees and their successors throughout history is the Karaites.

Putting the Karaites and Pharisees at further odds are the apparent Pharisee falsehoods regarding tzitzit and tefillin:

Other estimates of the size of the modern Karaite movement put the number at 4, 000 Karaites in the United States, about 100 families in Istanbul, and over 40, 000 in Israel, the largest communities being in Ramlah, Ashdod and Beer-Sheva.

However, at the same time Maimonides holds ( Hilkhot Mamrim 3: 3 ) that most of the Karaites and others who claim to deny the " oral teachings " are not to be held accountable for their errors in the law because they are led into error by their parents and are similar to a tinoq shenishbah ( a captive baby ), or to one who was forced.

Karaites rejected the rabbinic tenet that an Oral Torah ( oral law ) was transmitted to Moses at Mount Sinai along with the written scriptures.

Karaites had a wide following between the 9th and 12th centuries ( they claim that at one time they numbered perhaps 10 percent of Jewry ), but over the centuries their numbers have dwindled drastically.

Most scholars and some Karaites maintain that it was founded at least in part by Anan ben David, whereas other Karaites believe that they are not the historical disciples of Anan ben David at all, and point out that many of their later sages ( such as Ya ' acov Al-Kirkisani ) argued that most of Anan's teachings were " derived from Rabbanite Lore ".

Occasionally this results in Karaites being one month ahead of other Jews using the calculated Rabbinic calendar.

Because of that, the 22nd day of the 7th month is not necessarily celebrated on the same date as 22 Tishrei in the ( conventional, Rabbinic ) Jewish calendar ( in 2010, Shemini Atzeret fell out on October 1 for Karaites, one day later than in the conventional Jewish calendar ).

Karaims ( or Karaites ) are a small Turkic-speaking religious and ethnic group resettled to Trakai by Grand Duke Vytautas in 1397 and 1398 from Crimea, after one of his successful military campaigns against the Golden Horde.

No one reads a special haftarah for a bridegroom any longer, except the Karaites.

For Karaites, in sum, the rabbinic interpretations above, as codified in oral law, are only one form of interpretation.

In one particular incidence, migration of Karaites from Istanbul to Crimea is documented following a fire in the Jewish quarter of Constantinople ( modern Istanbul ) in 1203 ( Tsoffar 2006 ).

They are dark-skinned ... and one could not tell whether they keep the teaching of the Karaites, or of the Rabbis, for some of their practices resemble the Karaite teaching ... but in other things they appear to follow the instruction of the Rabbis ; and they say they are related to the tribe of Dan.

The Karaites in the same neighborhood adopted Tatar names, one of them being known as Toktamish ; but elsewhere Karaite names are mostly Arabic and Persian.

Only one thing can be said that the Turkic blood in them is less than Karaites, although certain kinship with the peoples of both the Khazars can hardly be denied.

The name " Crimean Karaites " or " Krymkaraylar " pertains only to several hundred members of the clerical families currently living in the Crimea and is a misnomer in reference to all other branches of the Karaims and Karaylar who have long been established in other parts of Europe, Crimea being only one such location.

The Karaites were needed in order to serve as a middle class, between the aristocracy on one hand and the serfs working the land on the other, and therefore were granted privileges in order to induce them to settle and stay.

The third hypothesis says that Karaites are the descendents of Israelite tribes from the time of the first Exile by an Assyrian King.

:: Contains responsa on Abortion, bar / Bat Mitzvah ; Brit Milah ; Conversion ; Death, mourning and funeral practices ; Divorce and gittin ; Gambling ; Intermarriage, keruv and raising children ; Jewish identity ; Kashrut ; Marriage and the ketubah ; Pesach and kashrut ; Shabbat ; Yom Tov Shnei ; printing the 4 letter name of God ; Accepting Egyptian Karaites as Jews ; Women and Jewish law.

Within the Jewish community, particularly in Egypt and Palestine, there existed a minority of Karaites.

( So says the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906 ; the origin of the Karaites is not uncontroversial.

Traditionally, Rabbinic Judaism has regarded the Karaites as Jewish, but with an incorrect philosophical understanding of the Torah.

His main field of research was the Jewish communities and sects of Asia and Africa, including the Samaritans and Karaites.

Abraham Geiger posited a connection between the Karaites as a remnant of the Sadducees, the 1st-century Jewish sect that followed the Hebrew Bible literally and rejected the Pharisees ' notion of an Oral Torah even before it was written.

The result was an eradication of the control of the Polish szlachta and their Jewish intermediaries, and the end of ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the Latin Rite Catholics ( as well as Karaites, and other arendators ) over the country.

The reasoning beyond such austerity is that the Karaites interpreted the Torah verse, " You shall not ( Heb: bi ‘ er the pi ‘ el form of ba ‘ ar ) a fire in any of your dwellings on the day of Shabbat " to indicate that fire should not be left burning in a Jewish home on Shabbat, regardless of whether it was lit prior to, or during the Sabbath.

Gordon is considered a Hakham, a religious leader of the Karaite Jewish communities, and until recently served on Universal Karaite Judaism's " Religious Council " ( which represents Israeli Karaites ), and on the Board of Directors of the ancient Karaite synagogue in Jerusalem.

" Nazi Racial Policy Towards the Karaites ”, Soviet Jewish Affairs 8, 2 ( 1978 ) pp. 36 – 44

Karaites think that such an understanding fits perfectly into the context of both Deuteronomy 23 and Zechariah 9, and several Medieval Rabbinical Jewish sages felt it necessary to debate this topic with Medieval Karaite Jewish sages.