ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Why Karaism: The Essential Talmud

Updated on September 28, 2009

Bet you never thought you’d hear myself as a Karaite use the adjective essential in describing the Talmud. But I don’t do so in praise of the Talmud but only in recognition that even for Karaites it was an essential literary document. Without the Talmud we would not be differentiating ourselves from our Rabbanite brethren. Without the Talmud we would not have had our wakeup call that something had gone seriously wrong with our religion and it was up to us to restore it to the word of God. Without the Talmud we would not have recognized that we had failed to safeguard the sacred duty that YHWH had entrusted to us to bring his instructions and laws to the world. So as you can see, even for a Karaite, the Talmud was essential.

It was only after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD that Talmudic law came into being. Even the fact that the Rabbanites refer to it as Law is contrary to the fact that there already was an existing written Law and that was the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. Without the priesthood and without a Temple as a centralized focus of the Jewish court system both Judea and Babylonia, wrestled with Jewish law in its interpretation and administration as the rabbis of each locality vied for supremacy. In other words, each community tried to outdo, or out law the other in order to show they were more observant.

 

Karaism Versus Rabbanism

There is a tale in the Talmud found in the tractate Baba Meziah which for all intents and purposes sums up the religious battle between Karaism and Rabbinic Judaism. . In this story Rav Eliezer, who can be considered a champion of upholding the old traditions much in the manner of the Karaites that followed much later, said, "a well-lined cistern that doesn't lose a drop," in reference to himself.  In other words he was stating that one well learned in the Torah will not let it be changed or altered even one iota.  Engaged in a legal disputation with his colleagues he defended that the Torah was complete and didn’t require any addition and certainly didn’t require a hypothetical Oral Tradition that the others claimed rivalled the Torah in scope and breadth. Rav Eliezer exclaimed, "He brought all the reasons in the world!" indicating that God’s word was complete and irrefutable.  What he found was the majority of rabbis would not accept his view, determined to write the Talmud. Rav Eliezer then shouted, "If the law is as I hold it to be, let this tree prove it," and suddenly the tree uprooted itself a walked a considerable distance before replanting itself in the ground.  The rabbis refused to except the sign from God claiming, "Proof cannot be brought from a tree." Rav Eliezer was not about to have the word and signs of God ignored and he commanded, "Let these waters determine it," and suddenly the waters began to flow backwards.  His colleagues shook their heads and laughed that waters cannot determine the law. Growing irate, Rav Eliezer asked the walls of the study house to show their disapproval of his colleagues. The walls began to tremble threatening to collapse on the assembly of rabbis, at which point the spokesman for the majority, Rabbi Joshua, admonished the walls saying, "when rabbis are engaged in legal discussion what right have you to interfere!" In respect for Rabbi Joshua the walls did not collapse upon the assembly but they didn’t  return to their upright position either clearly demonstrating that Rav Eliezer was the true spokesperson for God.  Rav Eliezer could not believe that the other rabbis still refused to accept the word of the Lord as complete and immutable so he cried out: "Let Heaven decide."  Above the assembly a voice was heard descending from Heaven saying: "Why do you dispute with Rav Eliezer; the law is always as he says it to be."  At that point Rabbi Joshua rose from his chair and proclaimed, "It is not in Heaven! The Law was given to us at Sinai and we no longer give heed to heavenly voices, for in that Law it is stated:  One follows the majority."  Then turning to Rav Eliezer he pronounced, “God's truth, divine law, is not determined by miracles or heavenly voices, but by the collegium of rabbis, men learned in the law, committed to the law and expert in its application to the life of the pious community.”  At that point Rav Eliezer knew that the rabbis had turned away from God’s holy word, thinking that they were a law unto themselves and not even heaven could turn them from their desire to write their own laws.  And hence the accusation by Karaites that the Rabbanites no longer follow the precepts and word of God.  By their own admission they considered themselves superior and therefore entitled to interpret the Law as they saw fit.

Talmud Meant Isolationism

 

The first thing they did was forget that God had instructed us to bring the Torah to the world and in so doing be a light unto the world (Or Haoylum).  Instead they commanded, "Build a fence to the Torah."  Because paganism was widespread throughout the Roman Empire with visible symbols and images of gods, everywhere one looked in the city and country, the rabbis adopted a policy of seclusion rather than take up the challenge of ‘Or Haoylum’.   Surrounded by these manifestations of paganism, the rabbis felt Judaism was in danger of contamination and by developing Talmudic law they felt they had forged a mighty fence to protect the religious purity of Jewish life.  In so doing, Talmudic law declared all idolatry, its symbols, and their sites where they were located and all activities associated with it, out of bounds for a Jew. Even the broken wood or metal that had ever been part of an idol was forbidden. A grove where an idol was situated was not to be entered.  The wine employed in idolatrous offerings was not to be used. Even a drop of it falling into another liquid would render it unfit for normal consumption.  This led to the discouragement of painting and sculpture in classic Judaism as the Rabbis felt this would avoid any possibility of a Jew painting something pagan even by accident.  In their efforts to isolate the Jewish community they instead suppressed and practically destroyed any artistic development in the Jewish culture.  What the Rabbis considered a great victory through Talmudic law was in reality the policy isolationism which led to rampant anti-Semitism.  As they celebrated their victory over being absorbed into the foreign cultures, made only possible as they will tell you through the Talmud they fail to give recognition to the facts.  It was not the Talmud that preserved the Jewish people, because if that was true then there would be no Felashim in Ethiopia, or Samaritans in Samaria, or Karaites throughout the Black Sea regions and Egypt, or the Bene Israel in India, or for that fact the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng.  All of us communities that had no Talmud but survived solely on strength of will and our belief in God’s word alone as expressed in the Torah.   What did this fence built by the Talmud achieve in accomplishing?  It achieved a reaction on those that could not understand its reasoning and in response the world decided that if these Jews wished to be isolated then they would help them with their desire by locking them away in ghettos and treating them like pariahs.  That which is unknown to the majority population is feared and detested.  Historically that has always been the case and these rabbis lacked the foresight to understand human nature, blaming the persecutions on the evil of other societies but failing to appreciate that it would not have happened had they had enough confidence that the people could still preserve their faith while intermingling with outside populations.  Unlike the Karaite populations which had enough confidence in their religious beliefs to freely move through Turkish, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian and Egyptian societies without the fear of abandoning the Torah, the Rabbanites did not consider their own followers to be strong enough to resist the attraction of the outside world. 

Thank God For Women

Perhaps their fear was based on what they considered the allure of Gentile woman. They certainly spend a lot of time discussing women in the Talmud and not necessarily in a positive manner. Many of the rabbis in the Talmud were concerned with the power of the sexual attractions of men and women. As they commented, "No one is immune to the ravages of an illicit attraction." And in reference to why woman have this undesirable effect on men they stated, "There is only one real cause of jealousy among women—sex appeal." They vie with each other for the title of supreme temptress luring men to their downfall. The Talmud also is condescending in regards to womankind's love for finery and personal adornment. "A woman is concerned principally with her appearance," it is written. In describing what motivates a woman it recorded, "And the greatest pleasure a man can give his wife is to clothe her in fine garments." How sad that a group of supposedly learned men would sit around discussing all things negative about women. But considering that the woman of foreign nations always had an appeal much like Delilah over Samson, they thought the only way to combat this sexual attraction was to ingrain it into the minds of the young boys they taught from the time they could read the Talmud. The lesson was women were evil and that is summed up in the following Talmudic quote, "God endowed a woman with keener judgment than man"; "women are compassionate"; women are "querulous and garrulous"; women have an affinity for the occult and they go in "for witchcraft." Teach young boys that women are nothing but witches and you can exert some control over their wandering eyes. None of this is from the Torah. God gave us examples of great women that he wanted us to remember and cherish. Miriam who was a leader of the Hebrew slaves during the exodus from Egypt in her own right. And Deborah who proved herself to be both a great and wise judge over the Israelite nation in the early days of its entering into Canaan. Even non-Jewish women like the woman that aided the Israelite spies that entered her city during the conquest, receiving both tribute and honour for her assistance. Ruth, the Moabite woman that eventually had a descendant named David who became king of Israel. The Queen of Sheba that won over Solomon’s heart and bore him a son Menelik who took the Jewish religion back to Ethiopia where it has remained even until this day. The Torah praised and impressed upon us how women, even those not of the Jewish people were to be respected and appreciated whereas the Talmud is filled with nothing but disparaging comments for them. Witches? Fortunately in Karaism we can appreciate the magic that women possess and recognize it for the good it has brought mankind.

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)