[Avodah] Karaites Mesora

[Akiva Miller]

.
R' Joel Rich quoted an unnamed source, and then commented:

> This makes a lot more sense than what I was taught (that the
> Karaites had no mesorah):
> ...
> What were you taught about this?

I too was taught that the Karaites had no mesorah, but that never made
sense to me. Even when I was young and there was no internet, I saw some
articles speaking about Karaite traditions. They seemed to have some sort
of mesorah, even if it wasn't ours.

Any group who has possessed a given text for several generations *must*
have some sort of tradition about the meaning of that text. R' Jay Shachter
recently used Shakespeare's "bodkin" as an example of this. I often use the
Bill of Rights as an example. (Does it include a right to privacy? Can I
scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater? Exactly why does the 2nd Amendment
refer to a militia? And so on.)

It is simply not possible that the Karaites wouldn't have their own
traditions about the meaning of various things. If they didn't have such
traditions, they would have splintered away long ago. (They *are* still
around even today.)

Furthermore, RJR's quote is accurate (from their own perspective!) when
they wrote:

> (Karaite) tradition, however, is not like the tradition in
> which the Rabbanites believe, since they add to and subtract
> from Scripture and say that tradition overcomes (the biblical
> text). . . .(Karaite) tradition, on the other hand, is what is
> acknowledged by all Israel, and it does not go against that
> which is recorded in the Writ of divine truth; ...

>From our perspective, of course, there are many many places where our Torah
Sheb'al Peh DOES seem to "go against that which is recorded in the Writ of
divine truth."

The critical word, though, is "seems". We accept the idea that whenever
there's a difference between what the Torah Sheb'al Peh (seems to) say and
when the Torah Sheb'ksav (seems to) say, authority rests with the Torah
Sheb'al Peh. No contest.  (Yes, there are cases where we are unsure of
exactly what the Torah Sheb'al Peh is saying, but Torah Sheb'ksav doesn't
enter into that decision.)

Someone once asked me which of the two is the "real" Torah. I answered that
there aren't two, there's only one. They are the same. They are the same in
kedusha, and they are the same in meaning. There are cases where they do
*seem* to say different things, but that's merely a failure of
comprehension on our part. In every single case, the Torah Sheb'al Peh
explains the true meaning of the Torah Sheb'ksav.

Unfortunately for the Karaites, who rejected the mesorah that Hashem gave
to Moshe Rabenu, they had no recourse but to invent their own.

Akiva Miller
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20210525/6edba6a2/attachment-0003.htm>