not call them Jews. Even if they pray in Hebrew, read the Torah, do not eat pork, they cover their heads to pray, to circumcise their sons, celebrate Yom Kippur, Purim and Hanukka, do not give in to appearances are not Jewish. These are the Karaites. Indigenous people from Mesopotamia, who emigrated to Central Asia Asia and Eastern Europe, with a community that for seven centuries resists Evpatoria. Evpatoria, the 'Ibiza of the Crimea. " In winter, the beaches are covered with a thin layer of ice in July, the promenade becomes a single disco music and bars spill volumes impossible. In the old city stand alongside a large brick synagogue, an Orthodox church and the blue dome of the Karaites kenessa "Evpatoria is a small Jerusalem," says Viktor Zaharevic Terijaki, the hazzan (religious leader) of the Karaite community. A Evpatoria religious coexistence is not just a cliche: transpires from every alley centennial coexistence of different peoples: the testimony of kimchaki and Tatars, the ancient inhabitants of this area, traces of Russian domination and the memories of the visit of the last Tsar Nicholas II, the gravestones in memory of the Nazi occupation, the monuments to Lenin, all identities that blend the past twenty those of the Ukrainian national revival. The cornerstone of daily life
If almost unknown in the rest of the world, Evpatoria the Karaites are important entity. The way they called the Karaimskaja ulitsa, is the axis of the old town and central to daily life of the population. The entrance to the Karaite center is located in the middle of his frantic course. It's a canary-yellow mansion is distinctly different from the shacks along its side, through the entrance one can see the tombstones of neoclassical internal gallery with Hebrew graffiti. There is a restaurant, two kenessa - houses of prayer - and a museum with artifacts, documents and clothing typical. The restaurant bakes
specialties: puff pastry filled with vegetables, meatballs in brown fat, apple pie, and the kubete jantyki. The kitchen is the first indicator of the influences that have shaped this nation, Turkish traditions, ways of Middle Eastern and Judaic precepts. As for clothing: the clothes of the Karaites are similar to those of the peoples of Central Asia, kaftan a long and heavy winds from head to foot, a tight Astrakhan fur hat fur, veils and shawls decorated with garlands for women.
Language, "Karaite" is a Turkic language, understandable by the Turks, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, but without a defined alphabet. Depending on where you live, the Karaites use the local alphabet: Cyrillic in the Crimea, Lithuania (where there another small-knit community) and the Latin, elsewhere in the Arab. But the ancient sacred language is Hebrew. The first commandment of the Karaites is to read the scriptures without intermediaries: why the priests, but also virtually all the "good Karaites", can read the ancient Hebrew and recite the prayers in the sacred language. The most popular theory on the origin of the name is in fact the Hebrew word for light, qara'im, where Karaites, "those who read."
On the origins of the Karaites are confusing and conflicting theories. There are those who want them already present in the Crimea before the birth of Christ, who defines it's unique, original, Jewish Bible, and who paints them instead as an offspring of the Turkish Khazars, the converts to Caraism, a branch of Orthodox Judaism in the eighth century. Source "European" does not explain their knowledge of Hebrew. It is therefore recognized as the most reliable derivation Middle East: the Karaites were born as a community in Babylon, around the eighth century. It was then that Anan Ben David, contrary to the fact that Orthodox Judaism interpret the word of God preserved in the Torah through the comments of the rabbis collected in the Talmud, he decided to found his own sect to respect that a literal reading of Scripture, without any intermediary - "antitalmudica. Even today, the Karaites pray and do not recognize the Talmud Torah, book, however, considered sacred by Orthodox Judaism.
historian Mikhail Kizilov of Merton College, Oxford, Caraism expert, says that until the end of the century the main center of Jerusalem Karaites remained. After the First Crusade in 1099 destroyed the city, the Karaites fled to Constantinople and Egypt. The exact reasons that led them to the Crimea are still not clear, but following the path traced through the centuries by many other peoples, the Karaites in 1300 settled in this fertile peninsula, an important commercial crossroads. They went to live in the interior mountains, to Bakchisaray around the former Tatar fortress Chufut-Kale. The oldest cemetery
Here is still today the most ancient Karaite cemetery full of tombstones engraved with Hebrew graffiti long. At the same time, some Karaites moved to Lithuania, invited by the Lithuanian prince Alexander Vitold, here and formed what is now the second most important center of Karaite: Trakai, a village a few miles from Vilnius, where existed a large Jewish community.
In mid-nineteenth century there was a significant migration to Moscow, capital of Trakai which is Evpatoria that had been incorporated. Until that time, the Karaites were subject to, shared with Jews, to live only in the 'Territory of Residence ", an area roughly corresponding to the lands of modern Ukraine, Belarus, Part of the Baltic States and Poland. In the same way all their treatment by the authorities was practically identical to that given to the Jewish population. But with half of the nineteenth century the status of Karaites differed considerably. In fact, in 1852, Tsar Nicholas I decreed that the Karaites were not considered Jews and allowed them to trade and even to settle in the two imperial capitals. Several hundreds of families moved, especially in Moscow, where they opened printing and manufacturing industries, in particular by a quasi-monopoly in the tobacco industry.
Before the Revolution, in 1897, it is estimated that there were 12,000 Karaites in the Russian Empire. In the following decades, between war and applications of "national policies" very conciliatory, that number dropped dramatically. In Moscow today were few Karaites in Evpatoria 250, Trokai just over 200. Professor Valentin Kefeli, National Institute of Crimean Karaites (http://turkolog.narod.ru/karaim), says that in total are not left in the world more than 30 thousand Karaites. The tradition prohibiting mixed marriages, on the one hand and preserving cultural "purity", the other is likely to condemn to death the small nation.
The majority of Karaites emigrated to other places - even in Italy, where Venice still exists a small community - especially to America and to Israel. Today the biggest community is the one that survives in Israel, a paradox, as defined by the Karaites shun Jews. But throughout their history is marked by ongoing confusion with the Jews, and ordinances that defines them as such and requested them the same obligations and the same prohibitions. So even if the legislature since 1852 Tsarist avevariservato their different treatment by the Jews after 1990 the Karaites emigrated to Israel by the thousands: it fell under the terms of the "law of return" recognizes that all Jews the right to have the Israeli citizenship.
"Of course, when it suits us as Jews, the Jews, when it suits us not deign to no treatment," Viktor says ironic Zaharevic Terijaki, hazzan of Evpatoria. Put aside the ethnic pride, they were so many to move to Israel, almost exclusively for economic reasons. "The husband of my niece was killed in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem is what he gained from moving to Israel," says Tamara Sergeevna Babajian, from Moscow. The lady is Babajian un'arzilla nonagenarian, universal repository of historical memory Karaite. From his closet full of papers appear ancient documents, leases, letters, articles, umbrella-handled manufactured in the horn of his father, and offers a pastry left over from the Purim festivities. It is a Karaite extremist refuses each traverse with the Jews, and complains that too many people confuse the two peoples. Saved by the persecutors
not confused them, paradoxically (and fortunately for them) the greatest enemies of the Jews of the twentieth century, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Nazi occupation of the Crimean Karaites were spared, and in that period was even elected mayor of Evpatoria a member of their community. The Berlin authorities that dealt with racial affairs, the infamous "the Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families," decreed that the Karaites were not considered Jews because they had Turkish roots. Italians took part in the verdict, and in 1934 a shipment of anthropologists and demographers nostrani went up to Trokai to conduct tests on blood samples of the Karaites and define the origin and membership of, or the 'Jewish race'. The verdict, published in the journal Scientia, was without delay: the Karaites had nothing in common with the Jews, and this theory were saved from the Holocaust.
who escaped Hitler, the mystery deepens because when the Crimea was captured by Soviet forces, Stalin exiled forced several local people with accusations, often completely unfounded, of collaborating with the Germans. But while at least 200,000 Tatars (in addition to small communities Hungarian, Greek and Italian) were sent to the steppes of Kazakhstan, the Karaites were left in place. Doubly lucky: because miraculously survived the Nazi and Stalinist persecution and later because the people did not commit the Karaite Revenge of the neighbors who often went home, perpetuated his own personal revenge against the people who had escaped.
The Karaites, by contrast, have always been regarded as ideal neighbors. Even today, find a husband for his daughter Karaite is the dream of many Russian mothers: the Karaites are known to get along, be companions to each other, drinking, wife-beating and work hard.
from "Il Manifesto" on May 15.
article MARGHERITABELGIOJOSO
