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 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.

Karaites were at one time a significant proportion of the Jewish population, In the early 21st century, it was estimated that there were somewhat more than 50, 000 Karaites worldwide, over 40, 000 of whom had made aliyah ( emigrated to Israel ) from Arab countries such as Egypt and Iraq.

For Karaites, the beginning of each month, the Rosh Chodesh, can be calculated, but is confirmed by the observation in Israel of the first sightings of the new moon.

( The Karaites, however, celebrate it in the first month of Adar.

* Ananites, the first Karaites

In the times of the said princes lived Simeon ben Shetach, and Judah ben Tabbai, who flourished A. M. 3621, these two separated, the latter from the former, because he could not embrace his inventions which he formed out of his own brain ; and from him the Karaites sprung, who were first called the society or congregation of Judah ben Tabbai, which was afterwards changed into the name of Karaites.

In response to the position taken by the Karaites in regards to the authority of the Talmud, Orthodox Judaism counters first that the majority of the Oral Law codified in the Mishnah and Talmud are the legal rulings of the last Sanhedrin, a body of 71 elders that made up the highest court of jurisprudence in ancient Israel, and that not all of the Oral Law are literally " Laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai ".

On 1 August 2007, the Karaites reportedly converted their first new members in 500 years.

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

His attitude to Anan ben David and his violent opposition to the Ananites ( i. e., the first Karaites, Anan's followers and immediate successors ) are characteristic of his place in Karaism.

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.

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 ).

:: 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.

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 ).

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.