July/August 1994 Volume XVIII No. 4

The WJC Report

World Jewish Congress Publication

Jewish settlement in the Crimea, the peninsula of South European Russia on the Black Sea, dates back at least two thousand years- to the first century of the Common Era, according to the Encyclopedia Judaica; to the first century before the Common Era, states the Standard Jewish Encyclopedia.

Jerome, the Christian scholar and Church Father, who from 386 C.E. until his death in about 420 C.E., lived in a monastery that a follower had built for him in Bethlehem, reportedly heard from the Jews that the Jews of the Crimea were descended from Jews exiled by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E., the Babylonians in the early sixth century B.C.E. and form the deported warriors of Bar Kokhba, leader of a heroic but unsuccessful and costly revolt against Rome in 132-135 C.E., (Encyclopedia Judaica). How much of this is legend and how much is based on fact is a matter of opinion.

Greek association with the Crimea dates back to the seventh century B.C.E. when Ionian and Dorian Greeks began to colonize the area. It remained under the rule of Greeks or Greek-speakers until in the first century B.C.E. it became a Roman protectorate.

Of the first century settlers in the Crimea, historian Cecil Roth wrote: "Pious inscriptions in the Greek language demonstrate that even in that remote spot, obedience to the traditional Jewish law was implicit. As the years passed, the area of settlement extended, not withstanding the competition of Christianity; and by slow degrees the influence of Judaism began to impress itself on some of the semi-barbaric tribes and kingdoms of the region." (Roth: A History of the Jews) The most important of these, adds Roth, were the Khazars. (See hereinafter)

In the fifth and sixth centuries large numbers of Eastern Jews seeking refuge from oppressive Byzantine measures against Jews and Judaism, fled to the Crimea. By the eighth century Jews were the largest single group among the peoples of the Crimea. (Louis Greenberg: The Jews in Russia, Vol. I)

The period of the seventh to ninth centuries was one of upheaval and vast change. It began with Muhammed the Prophet, founder and leader of Islam, who before his death in 632 unified all of Arabia. His death was followed by the appearance of Arab and Muslim forces on the international scene as conquerors and builders of a huge empire. By 642 Persia (Iran), Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt, Jerusalem, the whole of Byzantine-ruled Syria were under Arab/Muslim rule. By 712 the whole of North Africa and much of Spain were in Muslim hands. By that time, about 90% of the Jewish world was under Islamic rule.

It was a time of fermentation, also of disruption, of the emergence of forces of disintegration that threatened to splinter even Judaism into warring sects. Only with supreme effort and at the price of the loss of some of its most advanced and influential sections did official Judaism repel these sects, the most influential of which was Karaism. (See Salo Baron: A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Vol. I)

The Karaites were known first as Ananites, from the name of the founder, Anan ben David, who lived in Babylon in the second half of the eighth century. In the ninth century the sect became known as the "Karaites," because it recognized only the authority of the Bible (Mikra) and rejected the authority of the Talmud and Rabbinic law in general, including the Babylonian gaonate.

The sect grew and in the ninth and tenth centuries it attracted a considerable number of outstanding followers. At one time it seemed that the Karaites might become more important in Jewish life that the Rabbanites, the name given by the Karaites to those Jews who accepted the rabbinical interpretation of Jewish law. The first prominent Rabbanite to attack the Karaites was Saadiah ben Joseph (882-942), generally known as Saadiah Gaon, the title given to the heads of the two great academies of Sura and Pumbeditha in Babylonia.

In Jerusalem, where the Karaites had been very active, that activity was brought to a halt when in 1099 the Crusaders captured the city, threw both Karaites and Rabbanites into a synagogue and burned them alive. In Cairo, where Karaites had met with significant success, the situation changed when the great Maimonides took up residence there and from 1170 was physician to the viceroy of Egypt. He used his influence to have the Karaites excluded from the court.

In Spain, the Karaites "became a force to be reckoned with by the 10^th and 11^th centuries." (Jane S. Gerber: The Jews of Spain, A History of the Sephardic Experience) Such high-ranking Rabbanites as Joseph Ferrizuel, surnamed Cidellus, physician to Alfonso VI, king of Leon and Castile, persuaded the king to expel the Karaites from all the citadel of Castile, except one small citadel, for he did not want to kill them. (Yitzhak Baer: A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Vol. I) "The court dignitaries, Orthodox and rational in their faith, regarded it as their duty to wipe out Karaite sectarianism." (ibid.) Judah ibn Ezra, head of the administration in Alfonso VII’s realm, continued the persecution of the Karaites, but it was R. Todros Halevi and his kinsman Joseph ibn Alfakhar who completed the religious purge when, with the help of the crown, they drove the remnants of the Karaites out of their last refuge in the fortress of Castile. (Baer, supra)

The Karaites flourished, however, in the Byzantine Empire until the conquest of that Empire by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The opening of the gates of the Ottoman Empire to the Sephardic Jews who sought refuge there after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 changed the balance of power.

In the 12^th century Karaism spread to the Crimea, which until about 1000C.E. had been part of the Khazar kingdom. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries there was substantial Karaite immigration to the Crimea, and to Lithuania where the Grand Duke Witold had at the end of the 14^th century settled 330 Karaite families from the Crimea in Troki, a small town near Vilna.

The Khazars were a nomadic and warlike Turkic people who built an empire that included the Black Sea coast and the Crimea and lasted form the eighth to the tenth century- some sources say until the first half of the 11^th. About 740 C.E. the Khazar ruler and a large part of the nobility converted to Judaism. the generally accepted explanation for the conversion is that it was motivated by a desire to resist the efforts of both Byzantium and the Caliphate to draw them into their respective orbits by deciding to convert to Judaism, the third monotheistic religion, thus retaining neutrality between Christianity and Islam. (See Salo Baron: The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets)

A recent book by Norman Golb, professor of Hebrew at the University of Chicago, and Omeljan Pritsak, professor of Altaic (Turkic) Studies at Harvard, The Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century, disputes the long-held assumption that the conversion did not extend beyond the king and a part of the elite. They claim that documentary evidence shows that the conversion extended beyond the king and his court and that Judaism became the religion of a large segment of the urban population in Khazaria.

Due to the syncretic and heterodox elements in the Judaism professed by the Khazars, relations between them and the Rabbinical Diaspora in general were somewhat distant.

A question that remains largely unanswered even in our time is: What happened to the Jewish Khazars after the downfall of the Khazar Empire? The Encyclopedia Judaica states that the Mountain Jews of Azarbaijan (see WJC REPORT, April-May 1994), seem to be connected with the Khazars of the Caucasus region. The Judaica adds further that there seems to be a considerable amount of evidence "attesting to the continued presence in Europe of the Khazars." The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia states it is probable (emphasis added) that descendants of the Khazars survived among the Crimean Karaites, the Krimchaks of Crimea and the Jews of Eastern Europe.

Whether the Jewish Khazars form part of the ancestry of many, if not most, East European Jews is still a subject of debate- a very vehement one at times.

In 1475 the Crimean Tatars captured the Crimea. Three years later they became vassals of the Ottoman Turks, who used them for raiding Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania. To protect these Tatar raids against reprisals, the Turks created a scorched earth belt. This led to a sharp economic decline and massive emigration, including both Krimchaks and Karaites.

Krimchak was the name given to the aboriginal Jews of the Crimea, distinguished from both the Karaites and the Ashkenazic immigrants from the interior of Russia. Their language was a Tatar dialect and their dress and many of their customs also resembled those of the Karaites and the Tatars. Whether they included descendants of the Jews who settled in the Crimea in the first centuries of the first millennium of the Common Era is not known. The Krimchaks were Rabbanite Jews.

In the 18^th century Russia decided that the only way to put an end to the destructive Tatar raids and the obstacle they represented to economic development (Vernadsky: A History of Russia) was to destroy the Crimean Khanate. In 1783 she seized the Crimea, an act which led to war between Russia and Turkey. The Treaty of Jassy (1792), however, confirmed Russia in possession of the Crimea. At the time of the Russian annexation there were in the Crimea 469 Jewish families- Rabbanite and Karaite.

Until the Crimea became part of Russia, there ad been no difference in status between Rabbanite and Karaite. Both considered the other as Jews and even the most violent polemics between them remained an internal Jewish dispute. Wherever the Karaites had taken up residence they were regarded as Jews, but the situation changed after the annexation.

From some quarters, possibly a Karaite one, the Russians learned that the Karaites were unlike the Rabbanites in that they rejected the authority of the Talmud, something which must have commended them to those Christians who regarded it as sinister, a source of the Jewish obduracy that blinded them to the true faith, Christianity.

In 1795, the Karaites were relieved of the double tax imposed on Russian Jews and given permission to acquire land. In contrast to other Jews, Karaites were exempted from the military draft and, finally, in 1863 they were given rights equal to those of the native Russian. In 1932 the number of Karaites in Russia was estimated at 10,000.

In 1939 the Jewish population of the Crimea was 50,000 (40,000 Ashkenazic Jews, 4,000 Karaites and 6,000 Krimchaks). (Standard Jewish encyclopedia) After the German invasion of Russia the number of Ashkenazi Jews increased rapidly as Russian Jews sought refuge in the Crimea, which they believed to be beyond the reach of the invaders.

The Karaites had not neglected to safeguard their position. When Hitler came into power some Karaites, former Russian officers who had served in the White Army and were living in Germany, sought a ruling from the authorities that Karaites did not fall within the reach of the racial laws. In October 1938 they were informed that the authorities did not consider them to be Jews within the purview of the racial law. (Leni Yahil: The Holocaust- The Fate of European Jewry, Oxford 1990)

In October 1941 the Germans captured all of the Crimea except Sebastopol, which held out until July 3, 1942. Close behind the army were the German killing squads. It has been estimated that between 85,000 and 90,000 Jews fell victim to them.

After the war the Karaites found themselves regarded by many Soviet Jews as having vacillated between indifference to the Jewish plight and in some cases actual collaboration with the Germans. This traumatic experience, writes Salo Baron (supra), undermined their morality and their cultural creativity, with the result that they succumbed to the Russian assimilarity presence. the Krimchaks, on the other hand, were almost totally wiped out. In 1959, only 159 persons declared their native language to be the Krimchak dialect. The total Jewish population in 1980 was 25,614.

Estimates of the number of Karaites in Israel vary widely from 12-25,000. The Russian 1970 census put their number for the whole of the U.S.S.R. at 4571. The Karaites in Israel are not recognized as a separate community but they have a separate beth din to administer marriages and divorces. They serve in the Israeli army. According to El-Kodsi (see box), it is estimated that over 100 Karaite officers and men were killed in the Arab-Israeli wars. According to the same source, "Almost each year tens of young Karaite men and women marry Rabbanites after they join the army… The rabbis who perform such marriages simply look the other way."