Sephardim versus Ashkenazim in Byzantine-Ottoman and Eastern European Karaite Sources: An Interconfessional Perspective

Abstract: Whereas Rabbanite Jews tended to portray the Karaites as a homogeneous group of heretics, Karaite authors from the late Byzantine and the early Ottoman period distinguished between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. These distinctions appear in Karaite exegetical, legal, and kabbalistic texts. Karaite scholars presented a positive image of the Sephardim as representatives of a nontalmudic Judaism, preferring to borrow Sephardic intellectual patterns and cultural legacy while largely rejecting Ashkenazic ones. This article traces the distinct images of Sephardim and Ashkenazim in the texts of Karaite authors in Byzantium and eastern Europe, as well as their attitudes toward the scholarship of these two Rabbanite groups. It further explores the extent to which the distinction between these groups stemmed from certain historical developments in Karaite and Spanish scholarship, from theological polemics between Karaites and Rabbanites, or possibly from cultural and social factors.