by Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo

In early 1984, the Usenet group net.religion.jewish hosted a small but serious community of Jewish scholars, rabbis, and lay thinkers. Among the most prolific was Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo, a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs in Naperville, Illinois, who regularly contributed substantive theological and historical posts. This essay on the Karaite Jews is one of his finest — a concise but authoritative survey of a Jewish sectarian tradition that most Western readers know nothing about.

Karaite Judaism, which rejects the Oral Torah (the Talmud and subsequent rabbinic law) in favor of independent interpretation of the Written Torah alone, has existed since the eighth century CE. Martillo traces the movement from its intellectual precursors in Second Temple Judaism through its founding by Anan ben David, its golden age of scholarship, and its eventual marginalization. He then arrives at one of the most devastating ironies in modern Jewish history: the Nazi regime's decision to spare the Karaites on the grounds that their rejection of the Talmud "proved" their non-Jewish blood — a ruling solicited from, and quietly affirmed by, Rabbinic scholars trying to save Karaite lives.

The essay is valuable as both history and theology. It reminds us that Jewish religious identity has never been monolithic, that the boundaries between sects were once fiercely contested, and that the very act of defining authenticity can have life-or-death consequences.

While most Jews today are Rabbinical Jews (even if they are not religious), several minor schismatic groups still exist. The Karaite Jews are such a minor schismatic group. The intellectual precursors of the Karaite Jews existed in second temple times (the ceduqim — cadiqim according to the Karaites) and probably even earlier. I have seen scholars claim that the masoretes (the sages who pointed the th"anak) were members of some pre-Karaitic group. Anan ben Dawid (sometimes ben Yosep) crystalized the schism when he wrote Seper hathorah.

The Rabbinical Jews claim that he had been a candidate for the position of exilarch in Iraq. The community had rejected him because of his sarcastic nature. The Karaite Jews claim that he actually had been the exilarch. They claim he was a great scholar and had inspiration from God to reject the oral tradition of the Talmud. He proposed that the individual Jew had the right to ignore talmudic and geonic decisions and that the individual Jew should act solely on his interpretation of scripture. (Unlike modern reform Jews, Anan accepted the full obligation of the micwoth including maintenance of the national status of the Jews and the obligation to settle the land of Israel.)

The Rabbinical Jews scorned Anan's opinions. Eventually, he had to flee Iraq. He gathered a large following in Egypt. For the next two hundred years some of the most competent Jewish grammarians and writers belonged to this sect. The leading philologist of the 10th century common era, Cahal ben Mazliax, belonged to this sect. Eventually, the Karaites spread from Egypt and Iraq to Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily, the Caucasus, and Lithuania. Yicxaq Troqi, a Lithuanian Karaite, wrote an unsurpassed refutation of Christianity, Xizuq 'Emunah.

For around three centuries, the Karaitic-Rabbinic debate was hot. But within recent times, only Lithuanian Karaites were hostile to Rabbinic Jews. Elsewhere, the Karaites were just considered idiosyncratic members of the Jewish community.

The Karaites would be just an historical curiosity except for an accident of history. To Muslims, the Karaite rejection of the Talmud was of no interest. Although the Muslims hated Jews, they had no especial hatred of the Talmud, which is somewhat similar to some Muslim works of religious scholarship. Christians, however, established their faith on a particular interpretation of the Written Torah. The Talmud offered alternate and sometimes more attractive interpretations of the written scripture. The Christians began (around 1239 CE) to view the Talmud as a threat to their faith and also as the reason that Jews refused to convert to Christianity.

The Christian antisemitic anti-Talmud polemic became totally insane in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Works like Das entdeckte Thalmud appeared. Many groveling and gutless Ashkenazim adopted the non-Jewish view of the Talmud and the oral tradition, and reform Judaism as well as other assimilationist movements including Labor Zionism were born.

In the twentieth century the Nazis (among whom were many competent orientalists and Judaicists) accepted the Christian antisemitic anti-Talmud polemic. Because there were Egyptian and Lithuanian Karaite Jews who lived in Germany at the time the Nazis seized power, the acceptance of the anti-Talmud polemic had immediate ramifications. The Nazis were unsure how to treat the Karaite Jews. They spent 9 years researching the issue. The Nazi scholars concluded that being descended from a community that had accepted the Talmud was prima facie evidence of corrupt Jewish blood, while the Karaites had shown their non-Semitic Aryan origin by never accepting the corrupt rabbinical Talmud. The Nazis also consulted several Rabbinical Jewish scholars. These scholars concurred in the Nazi opinion because they did not wish to be responsible for the murder of half the world's Karaite Jewish community at that time in German hands. For the Nazis, Rabbinical Jewish opinion could only be corroborative and not decisive.

The Nazis exterminated the Jews partially as the culmination of Christian hostility toward the Talmud. They wanted to destroy all vestiges of Talmudic Jewish thought. They assumed incorrectly that the Talmud would continue to influence the spirit of even assimilated Jews and through them corrupt pure Aryan spirituality. By forgetting the Talmud assimilated Jews give the Nazis a posthumous victory. By upholding the Talmud, the descendants of survivors gain at least a small victory.

Colophon

Written by Yehoyaqim Shemtob Martillo, AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Illinois. Posted to net.religion.jewish on March 14, 1984. Martillo was a prolific contributor to the early Usenet Jewish community, consistently offering substantive scholarship on Jewish history, halacha, and theology. This post corrects a factual error in an earlier article (thorah shebe'al peh vs. thorah shebiktab) before presenting its main argument.

The essay stands as a rare early-internet treatment of Karaite Jewish history, and the final section — the Nazi classification of Karaites — remains one of the most pointed illustrations of how theological controversy can become a matter of life and death.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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