Hebrew Voices #151 – Royal Attire 1: Lost Tribes and Magical Names

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Gabriel: What happened to those people who were exiled by Jeroboam, and we never heard from them again?

Nehemia: Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices, where I'm here today with Dr. Gabriel Wasserman, who got his PhD from Yeshiva University in New York, and then did a postdoc at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shalom Gabriel!

Gabriel: Hi!

Nehemia: Gabriel, what's a postdoc? Because most people, I think, out there know about a PhD, which is a doctorate. You've actually done a post doctorate. What is that?

Gabriel: So, a postdoc is a job, and it's basically an entry level job in academia. It can involve all sorts of things. What do academics do? So, most famously, academics teach. But not all academics teach, and certainly not all of what academics do is teaching; a postdoc can include teaching, mine didn’t. Academics do research, a postdoc can include research; my postdoc did include research. A postdoc can include presenting your research; I did indeed give one presentation as part of my postdoc. But most of it was just doing work on a project that's a part of a book, that's part of a series that is not out yet.

Nehemia: Alright, so basically it was research, continuing research, after you finished your PhD.

Gabriel: Research and writing. Yeah.

Nehemia: Great. So, we're going to talk today about a book that you translated. And it's really interesting, because this is a book that's put out by the Karaite Press, and it's a book written by a Karaite, but you're not a Karaite.

Gabriel: Correct.

Nehemia: So, that'll be an interesting little explanation when we get to that. The book is called Levush Malchut, and it's a response to a query by a king of Sweden, by a Karaite named Mordecai Ben Nisan.

So, first tell us a little bit about the book. When was it written? And it’s now translated for the first time into English!

Gabriel: So, the book - we don't have a hard date for when it was written. Basically, King Charles of Sweden started reigning in 1697.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: And he conquered Poland, I forget the exact year, it's in the early 18th century, it could be 1702, 1703, something like that. The only one other hard date in this book is that in one place in the first section, which we'll talk about, which is about his understanding of Karaite and Rabbanite history, he says, “As we have explained in our response to the sages of Leiden in our book, Dod Mordechai…” Dod Mordechai was a book enclosed in a letter, an attachment we would call it today, perhaps even then.

Nehemia: I don't know, I get emails all the time that usually start off, “I know you're busy and don't want to take a lot of your time,” and then there literally could be a 10 to 30-page email. I get that all the time.

Gabriel: In the email itself?

Nehemia: The email itself is between 10 and 30 pages if you were to print it out. And it’s their life story.

Gabriel: I have never seen that.

Nehemia: I get that all the time. So, this is a really long email, letter… I mean it’s not an email obviously.

Gabriel: Well, it was an attachment that was presumably a cover letter.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: So presumably it's the attachment to the email.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: And it's a book. And that book, we have the date of that, because while we don't have the cover letter, we have other parts of the correspondence between him and Professor Jacob or Jacobus Trigland. I'm not going to go into my computer and find exactly when it is, it’s something like 1699 or 1700… 1699, I think. The correspondence takes a while, but I think that's when it is.

So those two dates, basically they are… how do we say in English? In Hebrew we would say mashlim, they supplement each other.

Nehemia: So, we have two books by the same author, Mordecai Ben Nisan, Dod Mordechai and Levush Malchut, and they're both really long letters.

Gabriel: Yeah.

Nehemia: One, you said, is written to a Christian in Leiden.

Gabriel: A Christian professor. Professor of theology and Hebrew language and culture, which actually, technically at the time he received the letter, he hadn’t yet received the chair in Hebrew Language and Culture, but clearly, he was interested in those matters.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: I mean, he was writing letters in Hebrew; Mordecai Ben Nisan did not write any language other than Hebrew. Presumably, he spoke a language called Karaim, which is a Turkic language which was spoken by the Karaites in Eastern Europe.

Nehemia: So, let's talk about that. His second book, Levush Malchut, which is the one you translated, he's writing to this king of Sweden. And where does Mordecai Ben Nisan live?

Gabriel: He lives in, I don't know how to pronounce this - Kukeziv or something, which was… during just those 20 years, it had a different name - Krasny Ostrow, I'm probably totally mispronouncing this.

Nehemia: Is that what we call in Hebrew Kokizov?

Gabriel: It is. As I said, during the years when he wrote it, there was something like a 20-year period when the local noble wanted to make this town, which as I understand was a total dump, and he wanted to make it into something. And he named it Krasny Ostrow, which means in some Slavic language, “beautiful island”, or “beautiful forest”, or something like that. He was really pushing it!

Nehemia: Okay. And where would that be today?

Gabriel: He wanted to push this place, there was a building project, and it all didn't work out, and it went back to being called Kukeziv very quickly.

Nehemia: And where would that be today? What country is that in? Although that maybe it depends on when this is broadcast!

Gabriel: Exactly! That's where it is.

Nehemia: Okay, so it’s in what today would be Ukraine?

Gabriel: Yes, in today what would be Ukraine, I believe. Yes, definitely it is, because it is reasonably close to Kiev.

Nehemia: Okay. So, as of this recording it's in Ukraine.

Gabriel: Yes.

Nehemia: By the time this is broadcast, maybe it'll be in some other country, we don't know. Who knows! In any event, it's funny, my great-grandfather, who was born in what today is Latvia, but at the time was the Russian Empire. And then he moved to Lithuania, which at the time was still the Russian Empire, but then became the Republic of Latvia and then became Poland.

Gabriel: And he was there all that time?

Nehemia: Yes, he actually fled because there was the Polish-Lithuanian War, and the Poles had annexed it, and then by the time he died, it was the Soviet Union.

Gabriel: Right.

Nehemia: They used to joke, “What country you from?” He would say, “It depends what week!” Alright, so they're from what today is Ukraine, so that was part of Poland at one time… or sorry, it was part of Sweden, it was conquered you're saying at one time?

Gabriel: It was part of Poland which was ruled by Sweden.

Nehemia: By Sweden, okay.

Gabriel: Hold on, no, no, no! It was not part of Poland. The story is, he was not a subject of the king of Sweden, it begins… I’ll begin from the beginning. The king of Sweden has conquered Poland. So, he has asked his subjects - I'm reading from my own translation.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: He has asked his subjects… I will add in a few Hebrew words for color, but I will read just in English for the audience. He has asked his subjects, the Karaites in the city of Lutsk, which is today in…

Nehemia: Some country in Eastern Europe!

Gabriel: Where is it? Where is Lutsk?

Nehemia: And look… it's interesting that, like I said, my great-grandfather would say, “It depends on what week,” and we're back to that situation shockingly.

Gabriel: Lutsk is also in…

Nehemia: In Ukraine?

Gabriel: Yeah, it's frightening all the wars and everything. It's very scary. It's in Volhynia, Northwestern Ukraine.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: But at the time it was Poland, yes.

Nehemia: Well, Ukraine didn’t exist at the time so… at this time.

Gabriel: Right, hold on, it was… No. Wherever it was, it had been conquered by Sweden.

Nehemia: So, Lutsk was conquered by Sweden, but not Kukeziv?

Gabriel: Yes, correct.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: So, the king of Sweden wants to know about his subjects. The Hebrew is avadav, his servants, the Karaites in the city of Lutsk. He wants to know about them, “Mi’eizu umah hem, u’mah umanatam?” “Of what nation are they, and of what faith?” “U’mah ha’hefresh bin ha’talmudiim u’bineh’hem?” “And what are the differences between them and the Talmudites?”

So, it seems that he tried to find a Karaite scholar in his realms that he had conquered in Poland, and he couldn't find anyone who would answer the question. So, the answer got pushed further, got forwarded within the Karaite community to Mordecai Ben Nisan in Krasny Ostrow, which is under the dominion of Prince Konstanty, son of King Jan III of Poland.

Nehemia: Okay. So, it's a part of Poland that's not ruled by Sweden?

Gabriel: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: It's ruled by the king of Poland.

Nehemia: And so that actually makes a lot of sense now that you're explaining that. So, they said, “Ah, we need to answer this Christian, and we have somebody who knows how to write letters to Christians because he wrote Dod Mordechai to Trigland a few years earlier, to Leiden.”

Gabriel: Right! So, they forward it. But he's not a subject of King Charles.

Nehemia: Yeah, but he's the guy who answered the Christians, who knows how to communicate with them.

Gabriel: Correct! So, they forwarded it on to him.

Nehemia: Okay. Got you. Alright.

Gabriel: And of course, there are the two major questions, he says. There are three. He says, what is their faith? What is their people, what umah? The Hebrew word meaning “people”, it's also famously in Arabic, u’mah.

Nehemia: Right. So, it’s a bit tricky to translate, because u’mah in Arabic doesn’t mean “a nationality”.

Gabriel: But it means “a people.” It’s not necessarily ethnically transmitted from parent to children, but it is a very similar concept.

Nehemia: That's really interesting! I want to dwell on this for a second. So, we have this idea in, let's say in American culture, of how nationalism is evil. Nationalism is conflated with Nazis, right? Ethnic nationalism.

Gabriel: The Nazis were nationalists, they certainly were.

Nehemia: Absolutely. So, what they tend to do is conflate ethnic nationalism with the Nazis because the Nazis were ethnic nationalists. At the same time, we have these other concepts in Hebrew and in Arabic which aren't ethnic nationalities, and those aren't even recognized.

Gabriel: What do you mean they're not recognized? Like people don't know about them? People don’t know what umah is.

Nehemia: No, in other words, they don’t know what an umah is. So, the question many Jews will get is, “Ah, is Judaism a religion, or is it a people? Or is it a nationality?” And the answer is, “Yes, it both! It’s an ethno-nationality.”

Gabriel: Yes, the answer is all, but they’re not really, totally separate.

Nehemia: They’re indistinguishable, but neither of them is really true either, because you could be an atheist Jews and you can be a devout Jew who doesn’t have a drop of Jewish blood from your parents. So umah is a term that’s really difficult to explain.

Gabriel: Correct!

Nehemia: It’s really interesting!

Gabriel: The problem is, of course, that the King of Sweden surely didn’t use the word umah. We’re not sure what language he wrote the letter in.

Nehemia: Ah! That’s a good point! That’s a very good point.

Gabriel: He probably wrote the letter in Swedish, Latin, or German, or something like that, and had someone translate it for him to Hebrew, and sent it to the East for it to get into the Karaite community in his domain, to forward it to a Karaite domain in Krasny Ostrow.

Nehemia: And here’s another interesting question. So, we’re told that in the 19th century, we have the rise of ethnic nationalism. There’s this idea they have in India of civic nationalism, which I think is a really beautiful idea. Civic nationalism is that you’re proud of your country, and it’s not necessarily along ethnic lines, it’s along, “This is the country; I’m loyal to it, I was born in it, and it takes care of me.”

Gabriel: Which is a concept that did not exist at the time, as we see in the country you were asking, “Was this Poland? Was this Ukraine?” There were empires, but there were no countries.

Nehemia: Did ethnic nationalism exist at that time? That's the question.

Gabriel: What do you mean? How are you defining ethnic nationalism?

Nehemia: In other words, there's this narrative that we're told - that I was told in history - that in the 19th century we have the rise of ethnic nationalism, where all of a sudden, the Greeks say, “Hey, we’re Greek; we should have our own country.”

Gabriel: The idea of having your own country.

Nehemia: “We should have our own country.” Did the idea exist in the beginning of the 18th century?

Gabriel: I don’t think so.

Nehemia: Yeah. Or if it did, it certainly didn't, it probably didn't exist in the way it exists today. In any event, he's in the beginning of the 18th century, in the early 1700s, and the question is, “What umah are you? What nationality? And what is your faith?”

Gabriel: And what, does he use the word dat?

Nehemia: No. He says Emunah, you said.

Gabriel: Emunah, yeah. “What is your faith?”

Nehemia: Right.

Gabriel: So, he knows nothing. He’s heard of these groups; does he even call them Karaite Jews? No, he says, “His servants, the Karaites.” But he clearly knows either that they're Jews or that there's some connection to Judaism, because he says, “What is the difference between them and the Talmudites?” Which is not a question you want to ask if you said, “I have this nationality, I have this umah, and they are called Japanese Buddhists. And I want to know, what umah are they? What faith are they? And what's the difference between them and the Talmudites?”

Nehemia: Or, for example he has a northern… what today I think is probably Poland, he has what's called the Ruthenians. He wouldn't say to the Ruthenians, “What's the difference between you and the Talmudists?” Because he knows they’re not Jews.

Gabriel: Unless he would, because we don't know what he knows. We have no idea what he knows. For all he knows, he thinks that Ruthenians is a kind of Jew.

Nehemia: Right. Well, it’s not.

Gabriel: Remember also there's all sorts of weird… it’s probably too early for that, but certainly later on, all sorts of weird conspiracy theories about how the Einu are the real Jews, and the Tutsis… you’ve never heard this nonsense?

Nehemia: I've definitely heard of some of these ideas, but in any event…

Gabriel: And the Native Americans, or maybe only certain Native American tribes are actually certain Jewish tribes. So, we don’t know what he thinks.

Nehemia: But in any event, he knows enough to ask, “What is the difference between you, Karaites, and the Talmudists?”

Gabriel: Right, but he doesn't call them Karaite Jews, he clearly doesn't... he's hedging his bets, I think.

Nehemia: Right, but he also doesn't say Talmudic Jews, he said Talmudim.

Gabriel: Correct! Does he know the word Jew? He must know the word Jew.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: But in any event…

Nehemia: So, the book is basically his answer?

Gabriel: Yes, the book is his answer.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: The first… I'm going to use the number of pages in my edition, just because I have it in front of me.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: So, the first… let’s say, page 2 to page 31, is his understanding of the history. How in antiquity did the Jews split into two sects?

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: And the rest of the book, from page 32… I guess you could divide it into three sections. The lion’s share of the book, from page 32 to page 110, is legal differences, what we call in Hebrew, Halakha, the Jewish Law. And then the rest of the book, page 112 to 156 or something, is matters of philosophical differences.

Nehemia: So, let's say for me, this was a really interesting book, because when I was first starting out and I had read about Karaites in history, but it was all very hypothetical. I'd met like a handful of Karaites, and I couldn't get really clear answers, at least, about, “Okay. This is the hypothetical, theoretical idea and here's what I believe. But how does that compare to Karaites in reality in different centuries?”

And so, when I read Dod Mordechai in particular, and Apiryon Asah Lo is a book we discussed beforehand, we'll talk about it little bit, which is a very similar sort of book to Levush Malchut, it was, “Okay. Here's a snapshot, this is what Karaite Judaism…” at least how it was presented.

Gabriel: Hold on, when you said Dod Mordechai a moment ago, you meant Levush Malchut, right?

Nehemia: No. I read Dod Mordechai, Levush Malchut and Apiryon Asah Lo.

Gabriel: Dod Mordechai is not going to give you a sense of what Karaite Judaism is about.

Nehemia: No, but it gave me the history; it gave me their perception of the history.

Gabriel: Okay.

Nehemia: And then Levush Malchut and Apiryon Asah Lo gave me a perception, or at least a presentation, of their Halakhic understanding. And so, these were important in my formation of my understanding of Karaite Judaism. I would say it made me realize, “Okay, what I thought was Karaite for all these years, may not be what Karaite Jews were in these particular centuries.” And I tended to identify more with what I understood it to be in much earlier centuries.

There have been a lot of changes, and evolution, and maybe even in different areas it would have had a different expression, just like with anything. So, Levush Malchut is really interesting. It was written to this king of Sweden; do we have a Swedish version that survived?

Gabriel: No. We don't know if it ever reached its intended recipients.

Nehemia: Oh, wow. So, we have this preserved in Hebrew by Karaites...

Gabriel: By Karaite Jews in the Russian Empire… what eventually becomes the Russian Empire.

Nehemia: And then, this is the first time it's being translated into a western language?

Gabriel: Any language.

Nehemia: Any language! Wow!

Gabriel: So, you mentioned another book, Apiryon Asah Lo, which is not by Mordecai Ben Nisan, but it’s by his cousin, Aharon ben Shlomo, and it’s also a letter to some western Christian. And that also, I believe, we do not have any version translated into a western language. However, Dod Mordechai, the other book that we mentioned, the one that was sent to Professor Trigland in Leiden, that book definitely reached its recipient, because Trigland then wrote a whole long book in Latin called Diatribe de Secta Karaeorum, A Discourse on the Karaite Sect, which is based very heavily on Dod Mordechai. It never sights it, never mentions Mordecai Ben Nisan, never thanks him. He quotes all sorts of books, but he never quotes this.

Nehemia: Wow.

Gabriel: And then, after Trigland’s death, Johann Christoph Wolf published… he had access to certain parts of Trigland’s library after Trigland died and his library was auctioned off. Incidentally, the auction catalog from that auction is on Google Books and you can find it.

Nehemia: Wow.

Gabriel: Yes. So, we know exactly what was in Trigland’s library at the time he died. And among the books were Hebrew manuscripts, and at least one of them had ended up somehow in the hands of Wolf, and he translated the whole thing into Latin with notes - the Dod Mordechai into Latin with notes - and published it in a bilingual edition, Latin facing Hebrew.

So, of these three books, Dod Mordechai definitely made it to its audience, the Christians. Such that at first it was used as raw material for a book, and then it was published as a book and was reprinted several times in that format with the Hebrew and the Latin over the… I don't know exactly how many times. It was published at least twice in 19th century, before there was ever any all-Hebrew edition.

So only in the 19th century, because meanwhile, while the Christians are copying and reading this book and it's influential - I guess Trigland’s book which is based on it is more influential, but certainly Dod Mordechai with the translation is republished. Meanwhile, clearly Jews in the Karaite Jewish community are copying out the book themselves, obviously just the Hebrew. They’re including some material that Wolf did not print, some of the correspondence, some of the letter. As you would say, the emails rather than the attachments.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: Some of that was preserved only in the copies made back in the East in the Karaite Jewish community. And in 1820, they then go to a printer in Vienna, Anton Schmid, who’s a known Christian printer of Hebrew books, and they publish it. So, Dod Mordechai gets transmitted down two different routes. As far as we know, that did not happen with either Levush Malchut or Apiryon Asah Lo. These books, the books that we're talking about, including the book that I translated, I worked a fair amount on Apiryon Asah Lo as well, I also translated Dod Mordechai, but that's not published yet.

Nehemia: So, people right now can get Levush Malchut.

Gabriel: Here's the book we talked about Levush Malchut, which is about the differences between Karaites and Rabbanites as explained to a non-Jewish king. This is Apiryon Asah Lo, this is by the cousin of the Levush Malchut guy, Solomon Ben Aaron, and it is about practical Halakha. The genre is just explaining really, very simply, “We do this, we do this. This is how we observe the Sabbath. This is how we observe Passover. This is how we observe Purim.” In some cases, he'll say the Rabbanites do it differently, sometimes he won't, sometimes he'll just say this is what we do. This is looking into the life of an 18th century, 17th century European Karaite.

This is The Karaite Creed and Discourse on Slaughter, this is two books in Judeo-Arabic, Arabic written in Hebrew letters, and they're both by this medieval Karaite sage, Israel haDayan haMa’aravi al-Maghribi. One is about the fundamentals of faith, Ikarei Emunah, of which he has ten, and the other is Rules of Ritual Slaughter. The base text was prepared, as we said philologically, going through manuscripts, by my friend Dr. Raphael Dascalu, and the translation was done by James Walker along with Raphael Dascalu, who revised it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: This is a much simpler book on ritual slaughter, it's really just on that topic, and it's very simple. It was meant for schoolchildren in Hebrew school, in religious school and Karaite children in Cairo in the 20th century. You can see in the back notebooks of kids who would copy out this book in handwriting… you can't really see.

Nehemia: That’s really cool.

Gabriel: So, if you want just a simple thing, or you're interested in Karaite slaughter and want to read it really quickly, and without complex intellectual discussions, this is good. It's interesting, again it’s a short read, you can read it in an afternoon.

Rosh Pina, this is a fun book! This is by the last rabbi of the Karaite Jewish community of Cairo, Rabbi Toviyya Babovich. And when he got to Cairo, he found that the community was not particularly learned, and he said, “We got to change this, so I'm going to gather all the books that they have in the library, all the books they have, all the books I brought, everything that we have and I'm going to put some order out of them.” And he wrote a number of things, and here what he wrote about is the three early Karaite sages, Anan ben David… who’s arguably not Karaite, but certainly later Karaites viewed him as an important foundational figure. And he writes about the various books that we don't have because things are lost, and fragments that we do have… and talks about details of his life as reported by tradition.

Then Benjamin Nahawandi, who also arguably wasn't Karaite, but he deals with the various fragments, we have his work about his life. And finally, Daniel Al-Kumisi, who was Karaite, and you said that’s right… I mean you worked on…

Nehemia: Absolutely, I wrote my master’s thesis on him. He definitely was Karaite.

Gabriel: He was Karaite, okay. And he goes through the works that we have. There are a number of more exciting things coming - not more exciting than these - more books, which are also exciting, which are coming out very soon. There are two which I don't even have yet. One is called Asifat Shalom, it’s Karaite mourning practices, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, like lamenting the dead.

Nehemia: Mourning for the dead, yeah.

Gabriel: And it begins with the laws and customs, and it continues with the mourning service, the service of mourning the dead, services for the graveside, services for the home, for the week of mourning, for the month of mourning. That’s out, I don’t have that yet. And the other book that’s out that I don’t have yet is by Golda Akhiezer, and it is a history… it is unlike all these which are editions of traditional texts that exist. It is a new book, a history of the Karaite Jews of Crimea. Finally, there is another book which I wrote, 750 pages, it's the piyyutim, combining now piyyutim with Karaites, Piyyutim of Aaron Ben Joseph, who was an important Karaite sage who wrote biblical commentary. But he also produced what became the Karaite Siddur of today, the Karaite prayer book, and it includes many of his Piyyutim, which are again, like the Rabbanite, for a specific point in the service. They are based on the parashiyot, the Torah portions of the year, and my book is 750 pages for 60 poems, each of which is maybe a page long. Because it really elucidates… piyyut is hard, and it teaches you in each one, what are his biblical references? What are his other references? And what's he talking about?

Those are the ones that should be out… that has been has not yet been printed, but everything else has been done, it's out of my hands entirely, it will be printed soon. And there's a whole bunch of other exciting books. You should buy all these that I mentioned, especially buy my book! There's only about I think 10 or 20 copies left of Apiryon Asah Lo, but if you act quickly and buy them now, then we can print a second edition, and we'd like to do that. So, the first, however it is, 20 people to buy this book, you buy it as soon as you hear this podcast, that'll be great. This is not an advertisement.

Nehemia: Well, let's call it an advertisement. In any event, I recommend these books because they really do give you a snapshot into, “This is what Karaite Judaism looked like in this particular period, in this particular place.” It's not the only expression of Karaite Judaism, but it gives you a lot of really interesting things. And you said the beginning part is the history. Talk to me a little bit about the history, how it's presented in Levush Malchut and how that compares to what you think is reality.

Gabriel: Okay. So, the way he presents it is, he says first of all, “What umah are we?” Jews were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which is actually important because you might say, “Well, that's obvious.” But 160 years later, you get assimilation and de-Judaization of the Karaite community in the Russian Empire.

So Nehemia, you mentioned ethnic nationalism, you really get a rise in that in the 19th century. And you get all sorts of groups saying, “We are the noble descendants of the…” some nonsense.

Nehemia: I have a great story about that!

Gabriel: It’s very often based on complete nonsense. So Karaites in the Russian Empire say, “Well, we'll play the game too. We speak some Turkic language.” Which shouldn't be surprising because Jews, as they've traveled around the world and made communities all around the world, they’ve preserved Hebrew as a language of literature and prayer and study, but they've also picked up the languages of wherever they went. The fact that these Jews spoke a Turkic language means nothing, but part of ethnic nationalism was what language you spoke. So, they decided, “We're the descendants of the ancient Turkic tribe, known as Karaim.” There was no ancient Turkic tribe called Karaim.

Nehemia: So, I have a great story about that, Gabriel. And I won't give any specific details because I can't, but there is this woman who is a native speaker of this Turkic language, Karaim, who…

Gabriel: She must be very old, no?

Nehemia: No, I don't think she's particularly old. There are still native speakers. There aren't a lot, but there still are.

Gabriel: Very few!

Nehemia: So, she was invited to teach classes as part of the series on Jewish languages.

Gabriel: Okay.

Nehemia: And they thought, “We want someone who's a native speaker of that language.”

Gabriel: Great!

Nehemia: “Nobody is more qualified in the world than you,” they said to her. She literally wrote a grammar on this language. And she said, “I would love to do it, but we have nothing to do with the Jews, and I’d be happy to teach the class, but not as part of a series on Jewish languages.”

That would be like if somebody was invited to teach a class on Yiddish, was a native Yiddish speaker, and said “I'd love to, but Yiddish has nothing to do with the Jews.”

Gabriel: They’d have to change the name of the language, because Yiddish literally means “Jewish”. But they could!

Nehemia: Means Jewish. Yeah, I get it, I get it. But Karaim means…

Gabriel: Yiddish has been known by other names. Yiddish has been known historically, one of the names of Yiddish is Teitsch, which is simply a form of the word Deutsch.

Nehemia: German.

Gabriel: So, you could, you could have some total… it’s insane.

Nehemia: Well, and Karaim means “scripturalist”, right? In contrast to Talmudists.

Gabriel: Correct! The scripture, you could say the scripture. It’s the same word as Quran, where actually we were Muslims.

Nehemia: Well, they don't say that, but okay.

Gabriel: No, no. But there's no end to the nonsense you can say.

Nehemia: Right. So, in any event, what you're talking about is there was this process of de-Judaization with the Karaites in Eastern Europe…

Gabriel: Yes, but you see at the time of Mordecai Ben Nisan that had not happened at all. You look at the… “What ethnicity are you?” Not ethnicity, that’s a… ethnos.

Nehemia: What umah are you?

Gabriel: What umah? Because he doesn’t know, and the answer is, it’s a no-brainer… Jewish.

Nehemia: Jewish, right. Whereas the descendants of Mordecai Ben Nisan, today - not all of them maybe, but most of them - are going to say, “No. We have nothing to do with the Jews.”

Gabriel: Well, now they do, because they want to get to Israel. Because now after the Soviet Union failed…

Nehemia: No, but this was last year.

Gabriel: I’m not saying all of them. But actually, this a problem today. Because there are descendants - I know very little about this, I know a little about this - descendants of Karaite Jews who themselves… let's see… first, because of ethnic nationalism, they're saying they're not Jewish, they’re some other people. At first, they're still practicing Judaism, and they said that “at some point our ancestors converted to Judaism.” This was something they were saying in the 19th century. Then, they're not even practicing Judaism, and they have this weird like religion… Seraya Shapshal, how do you pronounce his name?

Nehemia: Do you know why they said that in the 19th century though? That's the great part of the story.

Gabriel: Ethnic nationalism.

Nehemia: No! It's to get out of taxes.

Gabriel: Ah, you didn’t have to pay the Jewish tax… even if you practiced Judaism?

Nehemia: No, no, no! So, what happened is they were conquered by the Russian Empire, and all the sudden they were subjected to these oppressive taxes. And they said, “Why are we being subjected to these taxes?” They said, “Because you killed Jesus.” And they said, “Alright. We're smart Jews, let's figure a way out of this.”

Gabriel: Oh! “We converted to Judaism after Jesus was dead.”

Nehemia: “We have nothing to do with Jesus. We weren’t even Jews at the time. We were Turks!” We were Turks at the time!

Gabriel: Ah! By the way, there's a parallel to that.

Nehemia: Yeah?

Gabriel: The community of Mainz, I believe it is…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: … had a tradition that they had already been - this is in the Middle Ages - they had a tradition; they'd already been living in Mainz before the time of Jesus. And therefore, Jesus was in Jerusalem, we were in Mainz, we had nothing to do with that.

Nehemia: But did the Germans buy that? That's the question. Probably not.

Gabriel: I have no idea.

Nehemia: So, the crazy thing is the Russian Empire actually accepted this and exempted them from the taxes.

Gabriel: Okay.

Nehemia: And then eventually they started to believe their own story, because…

Gabriel: So, you think that really it started purely pragmatic?

Nehemia: One hundred percent, it’s been documented…

Gabriel: And nationalism was only after that?

Nehemia: One hundred percent. People have written about this, it’s been proven.

Gabriel: Okay. Because then you get ethnic nationalism, and then they get really into this idea of the “proud descendants of the glorious Karaim, Turkic race.”

Nehemia: Tribe.

Gabriel: Or whatever word they used.

Nehemia: So, they actually had two theories. One was that they’re descended from the Ten Lost Tribes and therefore they weren't there when Jesus was killed.

Gabriel: That’s like the Jews in Mainz. “… we’re actually very Jewish, we’re so Jewish that we were Jewish before Jesus had left.” And the other is, “We were not Jewish at all; we only got involved with Judaism after Jesus was already dead.”

Nehemia: Exactly. And so, the Russians didn't believe the first story, they believed the story about them being a non-Jewish tribe that had converted. And one of the people who was pushing this was Firkovich.

Gabriel: Firkovich pushed that!

Nehemia: Absolutely!

Gabriel: I didn’t know that.

Nehemia: And one of the major reasons for his forgeries was to push this.

Gabriel: Because he wanted to show that they were in… didn’t he want to show they we in…?

Nehemia: He wanted to show that they were in Crimea, but before Jesus was killed.

Gabriel: Crimea thousands of years ago, right?

Nehemia: Well, no. Or they converted in Crimea… basically it was to show we had nothing to do with killing Jesus, that was the purpose.

Gabriel: Okay.

Nehemia: So, let's not go into the whole history, because we kind of sidetracked, but they were basically forgeries that he introduced into these colophons to try to say either that we are descendants of the Khazars and converted or we’re descended from the Ten Lost Tribes and therefore we came to Crimea before Jesus was killed.

Gabriel: Well, the devil is… that fits with what he was doing with the forgeries. But this idea that they weren't originally Jewish… did they try that one after the Russian didn’t buy the first one?

Nehemia: No, they didn’t buy that they were from the Ten Lost Tribes. But the whole thing about the… there was the forgery about the, I forget his name, but the man who's credited with converting the Khazars to Judaism.

Gabriel: Oh, the Sinjar something…

Nehemia: Yeah. He supposedly found his grave in the Karaite cemetery in Crimea.

Gabriel: Have you seen Daniel Lasker’s video about how the whole story is made-up? There were no Jewish Khazars, the whole thing is based on a fiction.

Nehemia: I haven't seen that, but I can definitely believe that. That sounds very interesting.

Gabriel: Yeah. I’m convinced. It was originally Moshe Gil who wrote an article, and then… Sorry, not Lasker, Shaul Stampfer. There’s a great video of it, it’s on YouTube, if you Google S-T-A-M-P-F-E-R…

Nehemia: We’ll put up a link on the website. We’ll put up a link on the page for this podcast.

Gabriel: Shall I send it to you afterwards?

Nehemia: Yeah. So, guys, go to NehemiasWall.com, and there will be a link to that study.

Alright, so Levush Malchut gives the history of the Karaites, and give us, “standing on one leg”, what is that history? And how does it compare to reality? No, not really!

Gabriel: No?

Nehemia: It’s an expression.

Gabriel: Yeah. So, he says that originally God gives the Torah at Mount Sinai to the Israelite people. And He gives one Torah, not two, when it’s written. The Israelite people… the idea being that this is perhaps the major debate between Karaites and Rabbanite Judaism - is there one Torah, the written Torah? Or is there a written Torah and a second one that’s transmitted orally?

So, he says the Israelite people, they come to the Land of Israel, they get there, and everything's good. David makes Jerusalem the capital, conquers Jerusalem, and Solomon builds the Temple. Then he says, there's the first real schism. I don't think he talks about the Samaritans at all. In his other book, Dod Mordechai he doesn’t, he goes straight to…

Nehemia: This was in the time of Jeroboam.

Gabriel: And he says, as described in the Book of Kings, that those that followed Jeroboam they worshipped the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, and so they're bad. And meanwhile the good, loyal Jews are with Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, they stay in Judea in the south. And then what happens to the northern Kingdom? They are exiled by the Assyrians; those are the Ten Lost Tribes.

So, you would think that because he's leading to the schism between Karaites and Rabbanites, you’d think he’d say that the Jeroboam people, that they became the Rabbanites. He doesn’t say that. They sort of fall out of the story; he just wants to tell you that there are schisms beforehand. But he says they got exiled past the river of Sambatyon, which is an old Jewish legend… let’s just say for now one of the things it’s associated with is the exiling of the Ten Tribes, though this is not mentioned in the biblical story. And he says “They still live there today, and we have heard that they have repented and given up their idolatrous ways. And now they have only the one Torah which was received at Sinai.”

“However, because they had been so emersed in the follies of the Nevi’im Ha’shikri’im, of false prophets at that time,” when they'd been in Jeroboam’s Kingdom, “they had been unable to detach entirely, so even today they have some sorcerers and ba’ali shem, ba’ali shemot, manipulators of magical or mystical names.”

So, he says that those Jews in the time of the Bible, they were idolatrous.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: But now they're good Karaite Jews, except that they've also got some like magical wu.

Nehemia: Wait, wait, wait, where does he say they were Karaite Jews? What you just read is…

Gabriel: He says, “They gave up their idolatrous ways and they have only the one Torah.” In his understanding, that's what Karaite Jews are.

Nehemia: But they have magicians who are using… because ba’ali shem…

Gabriel: Yes! They also have… they’re not perfect. They're not perfect. But he says they’re not doing idolatry.

Nehemia: Could there be any connection…

Gabriel: There are two things. One, in the Bible they’re presented as idolaters, as renegade Jews. He says they gave that up; they're not doing idolatry, they're firmly within Judaism. He also says they have only one Torah, so they are within the Karaite version of Judaism, not the Rabbanite.

Nehemia: Okay. But they’re engaged with magic.

Gabriel: But on the other hand, they're not perfect. They have this problem that they are engaged in magic.

Nehemia: So, ba’alei shem, could that have anything to do with Hasidism? Because ba’alei shem obviously is a Hasidic terminology, like the Ba’al Shem Tov.

Gabriel: No, Hasidism as we know it today did not exist at all in the time of Levush Malchut, it didn't exist until about 90 years later, 80…

Nehemia: Wait a minute, when is the Ba’al Shem Tov? Help me out here.

Gabriel: Ba’al Shem Tov was a small child at the time this book was written, but there were lots of other Ba’als. Ba’al Shem Tov is just one of many Ba’ali Shem.

Nehemia: Okay. So, were there Ba’ali Shem at the time this was written?

Gabriel: Lots! There are Ba’ali Shem everywhere - magic workers.

Nehemia: So, there were Ba’ali Shem at the time…

Gabriel: By the way, he clearly doesn't like them, but I'm not convinced that there were none in the Karaite community. You see all sorts of stuff going on.

Nehemia: This would imply there were.

Gabriel: No, this is a fictitious imaginary Karaite community on the Sambatyon, what he’s talking about.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: I don't know if there are any in real Karaite communities in Eastern Europe. My guess is there were… talk more to Riikka Tuori, who, while she focused mainly on their poetry, she focused on the poetry of the Eastern European Karaites in this period.

Nehemia: So, tell us what a ba’al shem is, because I think some of the audience won't know.

Gabriel: A ba’al shem is someone who manipulates divine names and uses them for magical purposes. I think that's effectively what a ba’al shem is.

Nehemia: So, what it literally means is “a master of name”?

Gabriel: “A master of the name” or “names”, yeah.

Nehemia: And it uses divine names, it may not actually be the Tetragrammaton, it could be different mystical names, Kabbalistic names.

Gabriel: Other names that appear in the Bible, yeah, all of the above.

Nehemia: Okay. And he uses those names in order to supposedly perform magical feats.

Gabriel: To help women conceive, to heal the sick.

Nehemia: So, a ba’al shem wouldn’t see themselves as engaging in magic, he would say, “It's just a berakhah and the beautiful names and it's Kabbalah.” I am right or am I wrong?

Gabriel: I don't know, some of them... What is magic?

Nehemia: Magic is everybody else’s religion.

Gabriel: Magic comes from the word magus.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: So, certainly magi would say they’re doing magic, no?

Nehemia: No. I think they would say they are following the true faith of Zoroaster or something like that, right?

Gabriel: What… would they call themselves magi?

Nehemia: Yeah, but not in the sense of magic.

Gabriel: They wouldn’t even speak English, so they're not using the English word for magic.

Nehemia: No, no, so it has a certain connotation, magic. So, I suspect that the Ba’al Shem Tov and other ba’ali shem thought that they were engaged in Kabbalah, they were engaged in giving out berakhahs. And look, I have an aunt who swears that she went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe after being barren for many, many, years, and he recited a berakhah over her, and she almost immediately conceived. So, maybe he didn't use a shem in that case, a divine name, I don’t know. But the miracle workings of Hasidic rabbis, where you may look at that as magic, is certainly perceived by a lot of their followers as legitimate religion.

Gabriel: Let's put it this way - they don't consider themselves to be violating any of the biblical prohibitions on sorcery.

Nehemia: Exactly, even though they certainly are.

Gabriel: I don't know what the word is, they might use the English word, “magic”. The English word magic often gets used in a positive sense.

Nehemia: Okay. In any event, so there were ba’alei shem in Judaism, in Eastern Europe at this time, even though it predates Hasidism.

Gabriel: Absolutely! All over the place.

Nehemia: Okay, so here's something I don't know a lot about. How far back do we have ba’alei shem before Hasidism existed?

Gabriel: I think there were ba’alei shem in the Middle Ages. Maybe earlier, maybe much earlier.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: So, this is something he knows from real life, and he is imagining, “What happened to those people who were exiled by Jeroboam, that we never heard from again?”

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: These are - I don’t think he uses the term - but these are what we call the Ten Lost Tribes.

Nehemia: This has been wonderful. Thanks so much Gabriel, for joining us, and this has been a wonderful conversation, not the kind of conversation the audience would normally have access to, so I really want to thank you.

Gabriel: Thanks.

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