Free Republic

WHEN is a Jew not a Jew? When he’s a Karaite. Or so says Israel’s chief rabbinate, which, after 65 years of relative harmony with an ancient Jewish sect, is reopening an old and bitter schism. In recent months, rabbis working for Israel’s ministry of religion have deemed Karaite marriages invalid, fined their butchers for claiming to be kosher, and demanded that Karaites marrying Orthodox Jewish women should convert, sometimes having to undergo tavila, or baptism. “We are already Jews,” protests Moshe Firrouz, a computer engineer who heads the Karaites’ Council of Sages. “The rabbinate is denying us our religious...

Residents of this small Black Sea resort town like to call their city "the Jerusalem of the Crimea." They have good reason: Evpatoria, population 120,000, is home to about 800 Karaites, members of a sect that broke off from mainstream Judaism in eighth-century Iraq. Karaites accept the Torah and celebrate most Jewish holidays, but they reject the Talmud and rabbinical Judaism, and have clashed with mainstream Jewish leaders over the centuries. "Our religion doesn't recognize the Talmud or the New Testament, nor does it consider Jesus or Mohammed to be prophets," said Viktor Tiriyaki at a recent Shabbat morning service...