Karaite Judaism emerged in the ninth cen­tu­ry in the Islam­ic Mid­dle East as an alter­na­tive to the rab­binic Judaism of the Jew­ish major­i­ty. Karaites reject the under­ly­ing assump­tion of rab­binic Judaism, name­ly, that Jew­ish prac­tice is to be based on two divine­ly revealed Torahs, a writ­ten one, embod­ied in the Five Books of Moses, and an oral one, even­tu­al­ly writ­ten down in rab­binic lit­er­a­ture. Karaites accept as author­i­ta­tive only the Writ­ten Torah, as they under­stand it, and their form of Judaism there­fore dif­fers great­ly from that of most Jews. Despite its per­ma­nent minor­i­ty sta­tus, Karaism has been an inte­gral part of the Jew­ish peo­ple con­tin­u­ous­ly for twelve cen­turies. It has con­tributed great­ly to Jew­ish cul­tur­al achieve­ments, while pro­vid­ing a pow­er­ful intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge to the major­i­ty form of Judaism.

This book is the first to present a com­pre­hen­sive overview of the entire sto­ry of Karaite Judaism: its unclear ori­gins; a Gold­en Age of Karaism in the Land of Israel; migra­tions through the cen­turies; Karaites in the Holo­caust; unique Jew­ish reli­gious prac­tices, beliefs, and phi­los­o­phy; bib­li­cal exe­ge­sis and lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments; polemics and his­to­ri­og­ra­phy; and the present-day revival of the Karaite com­mu­ni­ty in the State of Israel.