Karaite Jews follow the written Bible alone and do not accept the rabbis' oral law.
Judaism8th centurygrew out of Rabbinic Judaism
Karaite Judaism developed among medieval Jewish movements that rejected the rabbinic oral law as binding and gave scriptural interpretation central authority; Anan ben David was an important precursor. Strong from the ninth to the twelfth century, with famous grammarians and Bible commentators, Karaite communities have roots in Egypt, Crimea and Lithuania, as well as an important presence in Israel.
Karaite Jews accept the written Hebrew Bible as binding and do not accept the oral law of the rabbis, the Mishnah and Talmud. The name comes from the Hebrew for Scripture: Karaites are the people of the reading.
Jewish tradition traces the movement to Anan ben David in eighth-century Baghdad, whose followers were called Ananites, and Karaites themselves have long looked back to him 5,3. Historians describe something less tidy: several currents that rejected rabbinic authority came together across Iraq and Persia in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the movement took its lasting shape then, in the work of Benjamin al-Nahawandi, Daniel al-Kumisi and others 7,5,3. Its rule was simple to state and hard to live: search the Scriptures well, and do not rely on my opinion, a saying Karaites attribute to Anan and quote against their own teachers as much as against the rabbis 5,2.
The tenth and eleventh centuries were the movement's best. Karaites settled in Jerusalem as the Mourners of Zion, mourning the Temple and studying the prophets 9,5. Jacob al-Qirqisani wrote a code of law and a survey of the Jewish groups of his day that still repays reading 6,5. And Karaite scholars did some of the most careful work anyone has done on the text of the Hebrew Bible: the family of ben Asher in Tiberias, whose vowel system and notes stand behind every printed Hebrew Bible, are widely thought to have been Karaite, though the question is argued 8,12,5. Saadia Gaon, the greatest rabbinic scholar of the age, spent much of his career answering them, which is a measure of how serious a challenge they were 11,5. From the twelfth century the movement declined under rabbinic pressure and its own losses, surviving in Egypt, Crimea, Lithuania, Istanbul and Iraq 3,5,10.
Karaites hold that God gave Israel the written Torah and that no second, spoken Torah was given with it. Each Jew is responsible for reading Scripture and working out what it asks, so Karaite law rests on the text, on reason and on what the community has kept.
The verse that closes the argument for them is the command not to add to what God commanded, nor to take away from it, which they read as ruling out a body of law that the Bible does not contain 15,5,3. That does not leave them without tradition. Karaites keep sevel ha-yerushah, the burden of inheritance, meaning the customs a community has carried, and they weigh it alongside the plain sense of the text and reasoning from it 5,2.
Because the text is read directly, some practices differ visibly from rabbinic ones. The Sabbath command not to kindle fire in your dwellings was long kept without the rabbinic allowance for a light lit beforehand 14,5. The count to Shavuot is made from the morrow after the sabbath, which Karaites take as a Sunday, so their Shavuot always falls on a Sunday and often on a different date from the rabbinic feast 16,5,3. The new month was fixed by watching for the new moon and the year by whether the barley was ripe, rather than by the calculated calendar the rabbis adopted, and many Karaite communities have returned to that practice 13,2,5. Karaites also prostrate themselves fully in prayer, and most do not wear tefillin, reading the verses about binding the words as figurative 5,2.
Worship and practice
A Karaite service is almost entirely Scripture: psalms, passages from the prophets and the Torah, sung and often recited from memory. Worshippers remove their shoes, and bow and prostrate themselves during the prayers.
The prayer book is built from biblical texts rather than from the rabbinic liturgy, so the words of the service are largely verses 2,5. Shoes are left at the door, following the command at the burning bush, and the congregation kneels and bows in a way that other Jewish communities gave up long ago 2,5. The Torah is read on a cycle and studied without the rabbinic commentaries, though Karaite commentators of their own are read closely 3,5. Festivals follow the biblical calendar as the community reckons it, and the Day of Atonement, Passover and the feast of unleavened bread are kept as Leviticus and Deuteronomy set them out, with differences of date and detail from rabbinic practice 13,16,5.
Scripture and Bible translations
The Hebrew Bible is the scriptural authority for Karaites, who also have their own commentaries and legal traditions 5. It is read in Hebrew, without the Talmud, and Karaite scholars have a long record of studying the text itself with unusual care.
The Karaite emphasis on the plain sense drove them into grammar and lexicography, and their work shaped the study of Hebrew for everyone; the Masoretic scholars of Tiberias, whose vowels and marginal notes fix the text used in every Hebrew Bible today, are widely believed to have belonged to this movement 8,12,5. Karaite manuscripts recovered from the Cairo genizah are a major part of what modern scholarship knows about medieval Hebrew and Arabic Jewish writing 17,5. Read here: the pointed Hebrew of the Leningrad Codex, which carries that Tiberian vowel system, the Modern Hebrew Bible, and the JPS translation of 1917. The versions guide sets out what each Jewish movement reads.
In synagogue
In many synagogues, the Torah is chanted from a handwritten Hebrew scroll and a haftarah is read from the Prophets. Common English-language study and pew editions include the ArtScroll Stone Edition in Orthodox settings, Etz Hayim in Conservative settings and The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Plaut) in Reform settings. Local practice varies.
At home
The Jewish Publication Society describes its 1985 JPS Tanakh, produced with scholars from several Jewish movements, as the most widely read English translation of the Hebrew Bible. Orthodox readers also use Koren and ArtScroll editions.
Hasidic
Hasidic communities read Hebrew first and, in English, the ArtScroll Tanakh and, in Chabad, the Kehot Chumash.
Reconstructionist
Reconstructionist congregations use the JPS translation and the movement's own Kol Haneshamah prayer books.
Karaite
Karaite Judaism gives the Hebrew Bible authority independent of the rabbinic Oral Torah. The Westminster Leningrad Codex provides a digital form of the Masoretic Hebrew text, but it should not be treated as a uniquely Karaite edition.
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the JPS TaNaKH 1917 and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete; even unto the morrow after the seventh week shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall present a new meal-offering unto the LORD.
Count from the morrow after the day of rest. Karaites read that as the Sunday of Passover week, which is why their Shavuot always falls on a Sunday.
'This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.
This month shall be unto you the beginning of months. The calendar begins with a month, and Karaites long fixed it by watching for the new moon rather than by calculation.
(19-9) The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. A movement that reads Scripture without an intermediary reads this verse as a description of what it is doing.
People
Anan ben Davideighth century The Baghdad figure to whom Karaites trace their beginning, remembered for telling his followers to search the Scriptures well and not to rely on his opinion.5
Benjamin al-Nahawandininth century A Persian scholar who gave the movement much of its law and its name, and who pressed the right of each reader to reason from the text.7
Daniel al-Kumisininth to tenth century Left Persia for Jerusalem and called Karaites to settle there as Mourners of Zion, a call that made the city the movement's centre for two centuries.4
Jacob al-Qirqisanitenth century Wrote a code of Karaite law and a survey of Jewish groups that remains one of the best sources on the religious world of his day.6
Aaron ben Moses ben Asherdied about 960 The Tiberian scholar whose vowel points and notes fixed the text of the Hebrew Bible; the Aleppo Codex is his work, and he is widely thought to have been a Karaite.8
Sahl ben Masliahtenth century A Jerusalem Karaite who travelled and wrote to defend the movement against Saadia Gaon and to urge Jews to read Scripture for themselves.5
Today
There are perhaps forty thousand Karaite Jews, most of them in Israel, with a small community in the United States and remnants in Turkey, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. Almost all of Israel's Karaites came from Egypt in the 1950s.
The Egyptian Karaite community, centred on Cairo, left after 1948 and 1956, and its people rebuilt in Ramla, Ashdod, Beersheba and Ofakim, where the Israeli Karaite religious court sits 3,5. The Karaite Jews of America, based in northern California, run the movement's American congregation and have accepted converts since 2007, reversing a centuries-old refusal 2,5. The Crimean and Lithuanian Karaites, who call themselves Karaims, are a separate story: over the last two centuries many came to describe themselves as a Turkic people rather than as Jews, a claim that saved lives under Nazi rule and that other Karaites and most historians treat as a departure from the movement's own account of itself 10,5. Israel's rabbinate has at times questioned Karaite marriages and status, which has practical consequences for Karaites who wish to marry rabbinic Jews 3,5.
Karaites have spent most of their history as a minority inside a minority, and the rabbinic majority did not treat them gently: Saadia Gaon's polemics in the tenth century began centuries of argument, and later rabbinic authorities forbade marriage with Karaites, which walled the community off and shrank it 11,5,3. The Egyptian community, which had lived in Cairo for a thousand years, was pushed out with the rest of Egyptian Jewry after 1948 and 1956 and had to start again in Israel 3,5, where the state's rabbinate has questioned whether Karaites may marry other Jews, so a small community still faces official doubt about its standing 3,5.
Words to know
Torah
The first five books of the Bible, and more broadly the whole of God's teaching. A Torah scroll is read in every synagogue.
Talmud
The Mishnah together with the rabbis' discussions of it over the next three centuries. The Babylonian Talmud, completed about 500 CE, is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism.
Mishnah
The first written collection of the oral Torah, the rabbis' teaching on how to keep the commandments, compiled by Judah the Prince about 200 CE.
halakhah
Jewish law: the way to walk, worked out from the Torah by the rabbis. It covers prayer, food, the Sabbath, business and family life.
synagogue
A house of gathering where Jews meet to pray and hear the Torah read. It grew up during and after the exile, alongside the Temple, and outlived it.
canon
The list of books a community counts as Scripture. Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox canons overlap almost entirely and differ at the edges.
Shabbat
The seventh day, from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall, kept as a day of rest because the Torah commands it in the Ten Commandments; Jews light candles, bless wine and bread, and do no work. Christians who keep a Sabbath on Saturday, such as Seventh-day Adventists, use the same commandment.
Passover, the eight-day festival (seven in Israel) that remembers the Exodus from Egypt, commanded in the Torah and kept with the seder meal and unleavened bread; it begins on 15 Nisan in spring.
The Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Pesach, the Torah's harvest festival that the rabbis identify with the giving of the Torah at Sinai; the Christian Pentecost falls on the same fiftieth day.
Yes. They are a Jewish movement that accepts the Hebrew Bible and rejects the rabbis' oral law. Rabbinic authorities have disagreed for centuries about their standing in Jewish law, particularly over marriage, and Israel's rabbinate has raised the question in modern times, but Karaites understand themselves as Jews and are so counted by scholars of Judaism 3,5,1.
What do Karaites reject, exactly?
The claim that a second Torah was given at Sinai by word of mouth and written down later in the Mishnah and Talmud. They read the command not to add to God's word as ruling that out. They do keep their own inherited customs, weighed against the plain sense of Scripture and reasoning from it 5,15,2.
How is the Karaite Sabbath different?
It is read straight from the verse forbidding the kindling of fire in your dwellings, without the rabbinic arrangement by which a lamp lit before sunset may burn on. Historically that meant a dark Sabbath, and communities differ today about how the command applies to electricity 14,5,2.
Why is the Karaite calendar different?
Because the biblical month begins with a new moon and the year is tied to the ripening of the barley, Karaites long fixed both by observation rather than by the calculation the rabbis adopted in late antiquity. Many communities have returned to watching for the moon, so Karaite festivals can fall a day or a month away from rabbinic ones 13,2,5.
Are Karaites the same as Samaritans?
No. They are separate communities with separate histories. Samaritans keep their own Torah and their own temple site at Mount Gerizim and are not part of Judaism as the other movements are; Karaites read the same Hebrew Bible as other Jews and differ over the oral law 5,3.
Sources
Numbered references link the account above to its sources. These include the tradition's own documents and outside reference works. The review status below distinguishes source checking from completed member and scholarly review.
BibleVerse. “Karaite Judaism: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/karaite/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-07; last changed 2026-09-09. Years before the common era are written BCE, and after it CE, as Jewish readers write them.
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