Rabbi is the term in Judaism for a religious teacher. The word rabbi derives from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ in many senses, including "revered." The word comes from the Semitic root R-B-B, and is cognate to Arabic ربّ rabb, meaning "lord" Rabbi ' onMouseout='HidePop("3749")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Sima_Babovich">Sima Babovich
Sima ben Salomon Babovich was a Hakham of the Crimean Karaites, one of the early figures in the Karaim movement....
as a means of escaping
anti-SemitismAntisemitism is prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, often rooted in hatred of their ethnic background, culture, or religion....
. In addition, Karaite works written before that time strongly suggest that Crimean Karaites previously considered themselves Jews (See Yitzhak of Troki's "Hizzuk Emunah" or
a Crimean Karaite poem from 1936).
Kevin Alan, in his book "The Jews of Khazaria" concludes based on genetic testing that Crimean Karaites are indeed of Middle Eastern origin and hence related to other Jews.
Whatever their origin, from the time of the
Golden HordeThe Ulus of Jochi or the Golden Horde is an East Slavic designation for the Mongol—later Turkicized—Muslim khanate established in the western part of the Mongol Empire after the Mongol invasion of Rus' in the 1240s: present-day Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and the Caucasus...
onward, they were present in many towns and villages throughout Crimea and around the
Black Seaur a loser!The Black Sea is an inland sea bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and various straits. The Bosporus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects it to...
. During the period of the
Crimean KhanateThe Crimean Khanate or the Khanate of Crimea was a Crimean Tatar state from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was Crimean Yurt The Crimean Khanate or the Khanate of Crimea was a Crimean Tatar state from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was Crimean Yurt...
some of the major communities could be found in the towns of
Çufut QaleÇufut Qale sometimes spelled as Chufut Kale is a historic fortress in Crimea, near Bakhchisaray. Its name is Crimean Tatar and Turkish for "Jewish Fortress" . Çufut Qale was historically a center for the Crimean Karaite community...
,
SudakSudak or Sudaq is a small historic town located in Crimea, Ukraine situated to the west of Feodosiya and to the east of Simferopol, the capital of Crimea...
, Kefe, and
BakhchisarayBakhchisaray is a town in Central Crimea, centre of the Bakhchisaray raion , best known as the former capital of the Crimean Khanate...
.
Many Karaims were farmers. Members of the community served in the military forces of the
Crimean KhanateThe Crimean Khanate or the Khanate of Crimea was a Crimean Tatar state from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was Crimean Yurt The Crimean Khanate or the Khanate of Crimea was a Crimean Tatar state from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was Crimean Yurt...
and of
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
.
Lithuania
In 1392 Grand Duke Vytautas of the
Grand Duchy of LithuaniaThe Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an Eastern and Central European state from the 12th /13th century until 1795. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the pagan Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija...
relocated one branch the Crimean Karaites to Lithuania where they continued to speak their own language. The Lithuanian Karaites settled primarily in
VilniusVilnius Vilnius Vilnius as of 2008. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the...
(Vilna) and
TrakaiTrakai is a historic city and lake resort in Lithuania. It lies 28 km west of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. Because of its proximity to Vilnius, Trakai is a popular tourist destination. Trakai is the administrative centre of Trakai district municipality. The town covers...
(Troki), as well as in
BiržaiBiržai is a city in northern Lithuania. Biržai is famous for its reconstructed Biržai Castle manor, and the whole region is renowned for its many traditional-recipe beer breweries.-Name:...
,
PasvalysPasvalys is a city in Panevėžys County, Lithuania located near the bank of the Svalia River.-References:**...
, Naujamiestis and
UpytėUpytė is a small village in Panevėžys district municipality in northern Lithuania. It is situated some 12 km southwest of Panevėžys on the banks of Vešeta Creek. It is now the capital of an elderate. In 1987 it had 580 residents...
- smaller settlements throughout
Lithuania properLithuania proper refers to a region which existed within Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The primary meaning is identical to the Duchy of Lithuania, a land around which Grand Duchy of Lithuania evolved...
- and lands of modern
BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
and
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
, that were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Karaims in Lithuanian territory were granted a measure of autonomy.
Some famous Karaim scholars in Lithuania included
Isaac b. Abraham of TrokiIsaac ben Abraham of Troki, Karaite polemical writer Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, Karaite polemical writer Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, Karaite polemical writer (b. Trakai, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1533; d. Trakai, 1594 [or eight years earlier, in both cases, according to Jacob Mann’s hypothesis...
(1543 - 1598), Joseph ben Mordecai Malinovski, Zera ben Nathan of Trakai, Salomon ben Aharon of Trakai, Ezra ben Nissan (died in 1666) and Josiah ben Judah (died after 1658). Some of the Karaim became quite wealthy.
During the times of the
Polish-Lithuanian CommonwealthThe Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed by the union of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569. The new Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th-century Europe....
, the Karaims suffered severely during the Chmielnicki Uprising of 1648 and the wars between Russia and Poland in the years 1654-1667, when many towns were plundered and burnt, including Trakai, where in 1680 only 30 families were left. Catholic missionaries made serious attempts to convert the local Karaims to Christianity, but ultimately were largely unsuccessful. The local Karaim communities still exist in Lithuania (where they live mostly in
PanevėžysPanevėžys see also other names, is the fifth largest city in Lithuania. As of 2008, it occupied 50 square kilometers with 113,653 inhabitants.-History:...
and Trakai regions) and Poland. The 1979 census in the USSR showed 3,300 Karaims.
Lithuanian Karaim Culture Community was founded in 1988.
According to the
Lithuanian Karaims website the
Statistics Department of Lithuania carried out an ethno-statistic research "Karaim in Lithuania" in 1997. It was decided to question all adult Karaims and mixed families, where one of the members is a Karaim. During the survey, for the beginning of 1997, there were 257 Karaim nationality people, 32 of which were children under 16.
Russian Empire
Nineteenth-century leaders of the Karaims, such as
Sima BabovichSima ben Salomon Babovich was a Hakham of the Crimean Karaites, one of the early figures in the Karaim movement....
and Avraham Firkovich, were driving forces behind a concerted effort to alter the status of the Karaite community in eyes of the
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n legal system. Firkovich in particular was adamant in his attempts to connect the Karaims with the
KhazarsThe Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who dominated the Pontic steppe and the North Caucasus from the 7th to the 10th century CE. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic verb form meaning "wandering"....
, and has been accused of forging documents and inscriptions to back up his claims.
Ultimately, the Tsarist government officially recognized the Karaims as being of
TurkicThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken by some...
, not Jewish, origin. Because the Karaims were judged to be innocent of the death of
JesusJesus of Nazareth —also known as Jesus Christ or occasionally Jesus the Christ—is the central figure of Christianity. Within most Christian denominations...
, they were exempt from many of the harsh restrictions placed on other Jews. They were, in essence, placed on equal legal footing with
Crimean TatarsCrimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group originally residing in Crimea. They speak the Crimean Tatar language...
. The related Krymchak community, which was of similar ethnolinguistic background but which practiced rabbinical Judaism, continued to suffer under Tsarist anti-Jewish laws.
Since the incorporation of Crimea into the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
the main center of the Qarays is the city of
EupatoriaYevpatoria or Eupatoria is a city in Crimea, Ukraine.-History:The first recorded settlement in the area, called Kerkinitis , was built by Greek colonists around 500 BC...
.
During the Holocaust
Their status under Russian imperial rule bore beneficial fruits for the Karaims decades later. In 1934, the heads of the Karaite community in Berlin asked the
NaziNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
authorities to exempt them from the regulations; on the basis of their legal status in Russia. The Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families determined that from the standpoint of German law, the Karaites were not to be considered Jews. The letter from the Reichsstelle fur Sippenforschung gave the official ruling in a letter which stated:
This ruling set the tone for how the Nazis dealt with the Karaite community in Eastern Europe.
At the same time, the Nazis had serious reservations towards the Karaites. SS Obergruppenfuhrer
Gottlob BergerGottlob Berger was a German general who held the rank of Obergruppenführer during World War II.In 1939, he was Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's main recruiting officer. From 1940, he was Chief of Staff for the Waffen-SS and head of SS-Hauptamt .-Earlier career:He was born at Gerstetten,...
wrote on November 24, 1944:
Their Mosaic religion is unwelcome. However, on grounds of race, language and religious dogma... Discrimination against the Karaites is unacceptable, in consideration of their racial kinsmen [Berger was here referring to the Crimean Tatars]. However, so as not to infringe the unified anti-Jewish orientation of the nations led by Germany, it is suggested that this small group be given the opportunity of a separate existence (for example, as a closed construction or labor battalion)...
Despite their exempt status, confusion led to initial massacres. German soldiers who came across Karaims in Russia during the initial phase of
Operation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km front...
, not aware of their legal status under German law, attacked them; 200 were killed at
Babi YarBabi Yar is a ravine outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of the most notorious massacre of Jews in the Soviet Union, where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on September 29–30, 1941...
alone. German allies such as the Vichy Republic began to require the Karaites to register as Jews, but eventually granted them non-Jewish status upon being instructed by
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
On interrogation, Ashkenazi rabbis in Crimea told the Germans that the Karaims were not Jews, in an effort to spare the Karaite community the fate of their Rabbanite neighbors. Many Karaims risked their lives to hide Jews, and in some cases claimed that Jews were members of their community. Many of the Karaims were recruited for labor battalions.
In Vilna and Troki, the Nazis forced Karaite
HakhamHakham is a term from Judaism, meaning a wise or skillful man; it often refers to someone who is a great Torah scholar. The word is generally used to designate a cultured and learned person: "He who says a wise thing is called a wise man ["hakham"], even if he be not a Jew"...
Seraya ShapshalSeraya Shapshal or Haji Seraya Han Shapshal was a hakham and leader of the Crimean and then Lithuanian Karaim community....
to produce a list of the members of the community. Though he did his best, not every Karaylar Jew was saved by Shapshal's list.
Post-War
After the Soviet recapture of Crimea from Nazi forces in 1944, the Soviet authorities counted 6,357 remaining Karaims. Karaims were not subject to mass deportation, unlike the Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Armenians and others the Soviet authorities alleged had collaborated during the Nazi German occupation. Some individual Karaims were deported.
Assimilation and emigration greatly reduced the ranks of the Karaim community. A few thousand Karaims remain in
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of...
,
BelarusBelarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the north. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel , Mahilyow and Vitebsk...
,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
,
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, and
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Other communities exist in
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
,
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
, the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
.
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