Karaite Judaism: A Path That Can Unite Am Yisrael
Posted by challahbackgirl on June 19, 2007
In America we have Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Humanistic Judaism. If you go onto Frumster (a Jewish singles site dedicated to marriage oriented dating) and choose Orthodox, you get seven Orthodox subgroups to choose from. And I’m not even going into the partitions in the rest of the world. Religiously it seems like we have never been more divided. I propose that Karaite Judaism can bring us all back together.
The Karaite approach to Judaism is that the Tanak (the Hebrew Bible) is the word of God. Now you’re probably asking how is that any different than Orthodox Judaism? The difference is that in Orthodox Judaism the oral tradition of Judaism (i.e. the Mishna and the Talmud) is considered to be the Oral Law, passed down orally from Mount Sinai when God gave us the Torah through Moses. In the Orthodox approach, the Torah consists of two parts: the written Torah and the Oral Torah. The Written Torah can only be correctly interpreted by using the Oral Torah.
The Karaites believe that only the Tanak is the word of God. It is complete on its own. The oral tradition is considered to be a collection of human wisdom, not a binding component of Jewish Law. I plan on going into the reasons why in a future post. There’s a lot that I want to say about Karaite Judaism, but the nature of blogging is to keep things short and sweet. So I won’t cover everything here.
One important observation is that it is a lot easier to be Torah observant without all of the additional rules of the oral tradition. It’s a shame that people often associate being Torah observant with being Orthodox. They assume it’s too much for them; or those additional rules don’t mesh with their own intrinsic feeling of how to connect to God. But either way, I think the mistaken assumption that one has to follow the oral tradition to observe the Torah, often causes people to not even try.
Now please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying easier is better or easier is right. The real appeal is that Karaite interpretation of Torah depends on the plain meaning of the text, the context of a particular passage within the Tanak as a whole, and the historical context in which the Torah was given. In other words, common sense plays a large role. Rabbinic interpretation of Torah is a more complicated endeavor that is often inconsistent with the plain meaning of the text.
The Karaite community has a new booklet out, “As It is Written” that makes the case for Karaism in more detail. It’s a great read and even includes a section of responses to often cited arguments in favor of an Oral Torah (for example kosher slaughter and tefillin).
You can also learn more about Karaite Judaism at the following websites: