by Daniel J. Lasker

Each of us has reacted to the coronavirus pandemic in our own way. My way of coping with the restrictions on mobility and travel was to produce a book which I had felt for a long time would be useful to both the academic and the general reading public: Karaism: An Introduction to the Oldest Surviving Alternative Judaism (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization). Most people with a cursory knowledge of Jewish history are aware that there was a Jewish movement called Karaism which did not follow rabbinic Judaism, the religious choice of the majority of Jews (known in this context as Rabbanites). Beyond that, the little information about Karaism that is available is often more misinformation than historical truth; the fact that there are still Karaite communities to this day is almost completely unknown. Despite the historical importance of the Karaite movement, in the Middle Ages and beyond, and the many fine academic studies of its various aspects, until now there has been no one comprehensive introduction to Karaism as a distinct, alternative Judaism. My book is intended to fill this gap in Jewish intellectual history.