The Karaites of Galicia: An Ethnoreligious Minority Among the Ashkenazim, the Turks, and the Slavs, 1772-1945

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Mikhail Kizilov
BRILL, 2009 - History - 461 pages
The book focuses on the history, ethnography, and convoluted ethnic identity of the Karaites, an ethnoreligious group in Eastern Galicia (modern Ukraine). The small community of the Karaite Jews, a non-Talmudic Turkic-speaking minority, who had been living in Eastern Europe since the late Middle Ages, developed a unique ethnographic culture and religious tradition. The book offers the first comprehensive study of the Galician Karaite community from its earliest days until today with the main emphasis placed on the period from 1772 until 1945. Especially important is the analysis of the twentieth-century dejudaization (or Turkicization) of the community, which saved the Karaites from the horrors of the Holocaust.
 

Contents

Chapter One Introduction to the Study and the History of Karaism
1
The Community as Seen from Outside
55
The Community as Seen from Within
89
The Community as Seen from an Ethnographic Perspective
133
Relations with the Christian Population and with the Rabbanite Jews
191
Chapter Six Karaites in Polish Galicia between the Two World Wars
235
Interwar Turkicization of the Galician Karaites and Its Outcome during World War II
265
Chapter Eight The Galician Karaites after 1945
303
Conclusion The Historical Fate the Past and the Future of the Karaite Community in Eastern Europe
323
Glossary
343
Bibliography
345
Appendices
377
Index
409
Plates
417
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About the author (2009)

Mikhail Kizilov, D.Phil (2007) in Modern History, University of Oxford, is a Kreitmann Fellow at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Beer Sheva). He has more than 60 publications on Karaite, Crimean, Khazar, and Jewish history in the English, Russian, German, and Hebrew languages including The Karaites Through the Travelers' Eyes (New York, 2003).

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