Jdi na obsah Jdi na menu
 


Anan ben David ha-nasi III

The adherents of Anan ben David ha-nasi were freed from the unbearable taxes and tyranny.
In addition, in the event of an emergency, they had the opportunity to receive material support from their spiritual and community leaders.
The lives of the adherents of Anan ben David ha-nasi were much better than the lives of their poor brothers, the Talmudists.
The Talmudists in Jerusalem fled to the side of Anan, on a mass scale, for this reason.
Later we will see that inside the community of the adherents of Anan ben David ha-nasi, very capable missionaries appeared.
They travelled throughout the towns, fearlessly spreading Anan's teachings in amongst the center of the Talmudic world.
Though Anan ben David ha-nasi renounced the high post of the Exilarch, and all the tributes and privileges associated with this office, the authorities of the Caliphate did not stop treating him as an Exilarch and accorded to him the appropriate respect.
 

It is obvious that Anan ben David ha-nasi, like Martin Luther, was not a lawmaker.
Rather, Anan and his co-religionists' intent was to teach and interpret the Law, to bring their people to morality and piety.
 

It should be noted that Anan's interpretation of the Law was not always correct, in some details, but he always remained devoted to the principle that the Law is only one and one alone.
That is why I think that those are wrong who believe that Anan ben David ha-nasi, with his denial of Talmud, spurned history and destroyed the bridge between the present and the biblical past. 10
 
From the nature of the teachings of our teacher, it is obvious that he did not regard the Talmud as the Law of God.
The same was also proclaimed by our Divine Teacher - the God of Israel, long before Anan.
Therefore, if Almighty God did not spurn the history and destroy the bridge between the present and the biblical past, then also Anan ben David ha-nasi could not spurn and destroy it.
On the contrary, Anan ben David ha-nasi, as well as our commentators who followed after him, repeatedly referred to the Talmud in their comments, if it's words were in accordance with the truth and common sense.
Our faith does not prohibit the use of intellectual work, even if it has been written by devotees of other religions.
In a similar way, the ideas of Greek philosophers and Arabic authors were, and are, utilized by European scholars also. 11
 
10  See Grätz and his History of Jews, Volume 11, p. 186
 
11 One of our scholars, Nissim ben Noah, even ordered the study of the Talmud, because, according to his opinion, the Talmud also contains a lot of texts written by our ancestors.
 
However, the opinions, interpretations and analogous deductions of Anan ben David ha-nasi were based only on the Five Books of the Moses. 
He used the books of the Prophets only to give him clues. 
From the Torah Anan ben David ha-nasi deduced, for example, that the beginning of the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, must fall on the day after Shabbat, on Sunday. 
Anan ben David ha-nasi did not, in any way, imitate the Sadducees, as Grätz strives to claim. 
Anan ben David ha-nasi considered blood as the source of life; 12 and there is no reason to question this fact, as Grätz does.
One of Anan's greatest merits is that he was able to deprive religious authorities of their power and influence. 
Thus everyone could freely study and interpret the words of the Law. 
Anan ben David ha-nasi also abolished the system of rabbinic decrees and the rule - the Rabbi said it, so it must be
Additionally, Anan's power was quite limited by his pupils since they used the same weights for him, as for the other religious leaders.
As has been said, Anan ben David ha-nasi was born and raised in the world of the Talmud and therefore he, and his coreligionists, occasionally sought answers to their questions in the texts of the Talmud. 
This was necessarily mirrored in their beliefs, which did not always comply with pure Mosaism. 
That is why Anan ben David ha-nasi's adherents were not called Karaites, but Ananites. 
The teachings of the Ananites were situated somewhere between the teachings of the Talmudists and the teachings of the Karaites.
A new generation arose. 
A generation that was being brought up in other conditions and in a different milieu. 
This generation began, very soon, to perceive the mistakes of their teachers and they began to alert and correct these errors. 
This conformed with the rule that Anan ben David ha-nasi himself had established.
It can be assumed that the Ananites emerged mostly from Talmudists who deserted into Anan's camp. 
Soon after this the Ananites merged with the Benei Mikra
בני מקרא, who professed pure Mosaism, which is the Law of Moses only.
 
12 See the Five Books of Moses;  The First Book of Moses, or B'resheet/Gen. 9:4, and the Third Book of Moses, or Wayiqra/Lev. 17:10-12
 
In the East, the rest of the Sadducees and Boethusians then joined them, even if they had refused to before this unification.
After the joining, these began to believe in the afterlife and in the resurrection of the dead. 13

13 The beginnings of the Sadducees and Boethusians may be found at the time of the Second Temple. The schism within Judaism happened as a result of this event: Antigonus of Sokho, אנטיגנוס איש סוכו , was the disciple of Simon the Righteous, and later he became a teacher of his own disciples and he once said to them; My children! Do not be like servants who serve their lord for salary, be like servants who serve their lord without wages. Let the fear of God lead you! Two of his disciples, Tsadoq (Zadok) צדוק , and Boethus (Baitos, Bitus) בייתוס , grasped and interpreted these beautiful words allegorically. They changed the sense of these words, because they deduced from them that we should not expect a reward, after death, because it does not exist. Therefore if a reward does not exist, then a punishment does not exist. It also meant that there was not an afterlife, nor the resurrection of the dead. Tsadoq and Boethus set out, on their own way, and they began to proclaim the three main principles of their faith, which caused the schism within Judaism.
These were: 1. To interpret the Law of Moses in a literal sense, without any analogous conclusion. 2. Not to believe in God's rule over the world, despite the fact that the world was created by God. 3. Not to believe in the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead.
This schism reached huge proportions at the time of the second Temple. Many of the priests and members of the Sanhedrin joined them, including the eighty year old Exilarch, Yehoyaqim
יהויקים . The Pharisees waged a war against them for a long time. The Sadducees almost always were on the winning side and only at the end of the Second Temple era did the Pharisees begin to win.

The merging of the Sadducees, with the co-religionists of Anan ben David ha-nasi, caused some Talmudistic authors to label all Karaites, as Sadducees.
This distortion of the truth was motivated by the desire of the Rabbis to harm their religious opponents.

The main and dominant stream of Karaism constituted the ancient Bene Israel.
These Israelites were taken captive in year 674, before the Christian era, by Assyrian King Shalmaneser (Akkadian; Shulmanu-asharid).
This was at the time of the first Temple.
King Shalmaneser attacked the Israelites during the reign of King Hosea
הושע and besieged Samaria for three years.
Samaria was not able to endure a continuing siege and surrendered.
The king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Ḥalaḥ, in Ḥabor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. (2Kings 17:3)
These expatriates gradually migrated through Asia and the Caucasus.
Part of them settled on the Black Sea coast, while part of them settled in the inland of the Tavrid (Crimean) peninsula, and they settled in the Stary Krym (Solkhad, Eski Qırım, al-Qirim), Chufut Kale (formerly Kirk-er) etc.14

14 According to Grätz, the Israelites did not migrate from Asia to the Crimea, but in the time of the persecution they migrated from Spain and the surrounding countries.
However this hypothesis does not correspond to historical events.
In addition Grätz does not answer the crucial questions: When did this Spanish refugee wave take place? Were these refugees Talmudists or Karaites? And how did they get to the Crimea?
The expulsion of the Karaites from Spain occurred in the twelfth century, long before the Talmudists were expelled from there.
Exiled Karaites did not settle in the Crimea but in other countries.*
Our ancestors, Bene Israel, lived in the Crimea a long time before the expulsion of the Karaites from Spain.
This is confirmed by many historical evidences, some of which are as follows:

1. It is generally known that the Talmudists celebrate the feast of Hanukkah, which their Rabbis established as a commemoration of the reconsecration of the altar in the Second Temple.
Since our ancestors did not live in Palestine, or it's capital Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple, they never celebrated this holiday, nor did they know much about the existence of this feast of the Talmudists for a long time.

2. The Karaites, like the Talmudists, observe the fasts in the time of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months.
However the Talmudists associate these fasts with the destruction of the second Temple, while we Karaites associate these fasts only with the destruction of the first Temple.
Although our fasts fall in the same months as the fasts of the Talmudists, we observe them on different days of these months.

3. Persian personal names, such as Gulaf; derived from Persian گل آب  Gol-ab (Rose water), Gochar; derived from Persian گوهر Gouhar (jewel, gem) that were adopted by our ancestors, are another obvious link with Persia.
This topic is described in detail in the work of Professor Daniel Abramovich Chwolson (also Chwolsohn or Khvolson; Даниил Авраамович (Абрамович) Хвольсон), The Collection of the Jewish inscriptions, issued by the Archaeological Society in year 1884.

* This topic will be described in the following chapters

4. Also the Tatar or Turkic names that appeared on the graves of our ancestors, a long time before the first Tatars came to the Crimea, clearly prove that our ancestors came to the Crimea, through the Caucasus and Persia.
These so called Tatar or Turkic names were adopted from this area and can be also found among Persian names.

5. Unlike many nations, Karaites are able to easily and successfully integrate.
After Karaites came under the hegemony of the Muslims, they began to use the Arabic language, and Arabic names in the East, and the Tatar, or Turkic language and the Tatar or Turkic names in the Crimea.
Under the rule of the Poles, Karaites began to use the Polish language and Polish names and while under the rule of the Greeks or Byzantines, Karaites began to use the Greek language and Greek names.
The Karaites, who moved to the Crimea from Constantinople, speak Spanish, Greek, Turkish and Russian.
So we have to ask the crucial question: Why did the Karaites and Talmudists, who according to Grätz, came to the Crimea from Spain, not keep at least one Spanish word in their own language and why they did not keep at least one Spanish name?!
All this proves that our ancestors came to the Crimea in ancient times through Persia and the Caucasus and that they never were in Spain.