The Promise of Karaism
On Parshas Matos, the ever-evolving Sadducees, and the laws of nedarim
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
When I was in elementary school, the accepted way to ensure your promises were not binding was saying “I fromise” instead of “I promise.” This slight difference in pronunciation was deemed sufficient enough to make any promise no longer enforceable. “I said I fromise,” we would argue—a brilliant legal loophole within elementary school contracts.
If only it were so simple.
Parshas Matos introduces the actual concept of halachic promises—known as nedarim.
It is a strange concept to introduce at this moment in Jewish history. The Jewish People are on the precipice of entering the land of Israel. Moshe gathers all of the Jewish leaders, presumably to discuss the process of conquering the land and how it will be distributed. But first, Moshe introduces the concept of nedarim, Jewish oaths. Why now? Why is this so important before entering Israel that Moshe gathers all of the tribal heads of the Jewish People?
Interestingly, the Torah only explicitly describes how a husband can nullify the oath of a spouse. The nullification of regular nedarim is not expressly described in the Torah. In fact, the mishnah describes the concept of the annulment of nedarim as “hovering in the air without anything to support them” (הֶיתֵּר נְדָרִים — פּוֹרְחִין בָּאֲוִיר וְאֵין לָהֶם עַל מָה שֶׁיִּסָּמֵכוּ). Why, of all of the laws of the Torah, are these the ones that have no allusion in the written Torah? And it is not for lack of trying. The Talmud suggests several approaches to try and find some sort of allusion to the concept of annulling vows in the Torah, but each is ultimately rejected. It seems as if the Talmud doesn’t want to find an allusion to hataras nedarim (the nullification of vows). Why is this the one area of Torah law without a clear allusion in the written Torah?
To better understand the uniqueness of the laws of the nullification of vows, let’s explore the alternative Jewish movement known as Karaism and its curious objections to rabbinic Judaism, most notably the laws of vows.
The first time most people are introduced to Karaites they are not even being introduced to authentic Karaites. The term “Karaite” became a catch-all in rabbinic literature describing any heterodox Jewish movement that does not follow rabbinic law. As Frederick E. Greenspahn writes in his fascinating article, “Sadducees and Karaites: The Rhetoric of Jewish Sectarianism,” the grouping together of all of these anti-rabbinic movements was likely a deliberate rhetorical device of mainstream rabbinic leadership. He writes:
By painting these distinctive movements with the same, broad brush, their opponents turned them into reincarnations of each other. Thus medieval Karaism came to be seen as an outgrowth of the Sadducean heresy, which reemerged a millennium later in the guise of Reform. The repeated use of these terms elevates contemporary struggles to the realm of myth. The conflicts between the Pharisees and Sadducees or the Karaites and Rabbanites cease to be arguments that took place centuries ago, becoming instead a cyclical reiteration of a single, recurring debate. As a result, this process bequeaths a kind of immortality to the Sadducees and Karaites, who may be the ghosts of battles already fought and probably even won.
In 1844 when Reformers gathered for a conference in Brunswick, Rav Moshe Schick, known as the Maharam Schick, described the reformers as Karaites dressed in rabbinic clothes. Some called followers of Sabbateinism Karaites, and Israeli philosopher Nathan Rotenstreich even called Gurion’s Labor Zionist movement “a new type of Karaism.”
So if these are, in fact, all different movements—Sadducees (called tzedukim in rabbinic literature), Karaites, Reform—what exactly is the difference?
Sadducees were a Second Temple sect that we know very little about. Rabbinic literature depicts their primary dispute with the Pharisees, who later became the torchbearers of rabbinic Judaism. Most think the initial heresy was regarding the Oral Torah, but in Avos D’Rebbe Nosson, the initial heresy of the Sadducees was the denial of an afterlife—only afterward did they take issue with the Oral Torah.
(On the connection between the afterlife and the Oral Law, see this fascinating dream of Rav Tzadok.)
Karaism emerged several centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple. Daniel Lasker, in his fantastic overview of Karaism, dates the movement to the ninth century, emerging in the Islamic Middle East. Many refer to Anan ben David as the founder of Karaism—though Lasker and other scholars note that this is not quite historically true. The way the story is told, Anan began the Karaite movement after being passed over to become the next exilarch—a job that was instead given to his younger brother Chananiah. This story, while frequently retold, has scant historical basis. Anan was the founder of a different movement known as Ananism—not to be confused, and I cannot stress this enough, with Onanism.
While Karaism is preserved in our collective historical memory as an avowed foe of rabbinic Judaism, the level of adverserialism is overstated. In fact, as Lasker explains, “Life, however, is often stronger than ideology, and it would appear that even with their disagreement, relations between Karaites and Rabbanites were generally neighborly and the borders between the movements were not impermeable.” There are records of marriages between Karaite and Rabbinic families and even some who switched between Karaite and Rabbinic synagogues.
As opposed to the Sadducees, Karaites did, in fact, believe in the afterlife and the world to come. Their debate with rabbinic Judaism focused much more narrowly on the existence of the Oral Law. Karaites, likely from the Hebrew word קראים, meaning those who read מקרא, the Bible, championed a more plain reading of the Torah without later rabbinic interpretation. They also did not include holidays such as Chanukah, which took place after the canonization of Tanach. Interestingly, the Karaites did celebrate Purim even though it is not mentioned in the Torah. They prayed twice a day from a liturgy that derives primarily from Psalms.
Judah Hadassi, one of the most renowned Karaite scholars of the twelfth century, formalized Karaite belief—instead of 13 Principles as famously articulated by Maimonides, Karaites have 10 Principles. Honestly, they are all more or less the same as those within rabbinic Judaism—the only major difference being Maimonides’ affirming that belief in the divinity of the Oral Law is included as a central principle.
Ironically, it was Rabbinic Judaism’s polemics with Karaism that helped promote the very existence of Karaism. Much of Rav Yehudah Halevi’s Kuzari argues against Karaism, which the Kuzari attributes to Yanai HaMelech’s persecution of rabbinic Judaism. The most famous interlocutor with Karaism is Ibn Ezra, whose own more peshat (plain meaning) oriented approach to Biblical interpretation both complimented and contrasted with the Karaite approach. In Ibn Ezra’s introduction to Torah, he cautions his readers to avoid the Karaite heresy, whom he calls Sadducees, denying the Oral Torah. Despite their major ideological disagreement, Ibn Ezra does still cite Karaite exegesis a few times in his commentary.
Not all anti-Karaite polemics and interactions are so clear. One fascinating case in point is Rambam’s organization of Hilchot Shabbos in his magnum opus Mishneh Torah. As Professor Haym Soloveitchik notes in his article, Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art, “the structure of ‘Hilkhot Shabbat’ is deeply problematic.” You don’t need to be an expert in Rambam or the laws of Shabbos to understand why. After providing a basic definition of the term melacha, prohibited creative acts of work on Shabbos, one would expect Rambam to then detail each of the 39 prohibited acts of melacha on Shabbos. Nope. Rambam instead dedicates the second chapter to the laws of pikuach nefesh, normally prohibited acts that are permitted in order to save a life. The next two chapters in the Laws of Shabbos discuss warming food on Shabbos followed by the laws of lighting candles on Shabbos. Rambam seems to have completely abandoned the sort of careful conceptual categorization that marks most of his other work. Why?
Professor Soloveitchik offers a brilliant explanation:
I now suggest that the reason for this cumbersome and counter-intuitive arrangement is quite simple—the Karaite challenge. The Karaite injunctions against having any fire on the Sabbath, even if it is has been lit before Sabbath, or of having any cooking take place on the Sabbath even if it was begun before the Sabbath are, of course, well known. Indeed, to Rabbanites these restrictions became the popular litmus test of Karaism.
Essentially, Professor Soloveitchik argues that Rambam’s Hilchos Shabbos was deliberately structured in a way that would highlight the differences between Karaite and Rabbinic laws of Shabbos. Some explain that this is why we recite the second chapter of the mishah of Shabbos, Bameh Madlikin, during Friday night davening—because Karaites would not keep candles lit in their homes on Shabbos!
While the differences between Karaite and Rabbinic Judaism as it relates to Shabbos are far more well-known, one area of Jewish Law really raised the ire of Karaite leadership, namely the annulment of vows. As opposed to making vows, the annulment of vows is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah except for a case of a husband annulling the vows of his wife. More specifically, Karaites took great offense at the Kol Nidrei prayer said at the onset of Yom Kippur. Lasker cites Judah Hadassi, the aforementioned Karaite leader, who wrote extensively against Kol Nidrei. Hadassi writes:
They anger the Lord even more, since they come and gather in their synagogues on the eve of the fast of Yom Kippur, because they think it is particularly holy to the Lord. The cantor of the congregation stands before your God ‘like a nation which is doing justice’ [Isa. 58:2], in the presence of all the congregation, and the congregation is standing with him, ‘like the nation which has not abandoned the judgement of its God’ [ibid.]. He begins with a pleasant and loud tune in their ears, and they pay close attention, both students and rabbis, and they join in the recitation and believe that in this manner they are forgiven and have reached atonement from the God who atones for His people.
Is there any greater breach than this for the ignorant? This is a great opportunity for those who wish to take false oaths throughout the entire year, constantly acting in this manner. They are of the opinion that with these words, they will achieve atonement and will be forgiven each and every year forever. If they see that this is the case according to your instruction, they will never repent from violating the commandment that one must observe and act according to the Lord’s directives.
Those who allow the annulment of vows, argues Hadassi, were the shepherds of the Second Temple period who misled the lost sheep, the Jewish People.
Although Karaism is the oldest alternative to Judaism, its future is bleak. Without Talmudic interpretation, their rituals are much more rigid and have a harder time adapting to the changing circumstances brought by modernity. And as secularism and assimilation take hold in the Karaite world, their ability to distinguish themselves has gotten far more difficult. “The longest surviving alternative form of Judaism,” Lasker writes, “may very well be in danger of having finally run its course.”
In our parsha, as the Jewish People stand on the outskirts of Israel, Moshe gathers the leaders of the Jewish People and explains the laws of nedarim. “If someone pledges to God,” Moshe tells them, “they shall not break this pledge—all that is articulated from your mouth must be carried out.” It’s a strange law to emphasize at this moment. Why introduce nedarim on the doorsteps of the conquest of the land of Israel?
Because language, Moshe understands, is how human beings build society.
As I once wrote in an essay on Tractate Nedarim, as part of a larger project for Tablet magazine writing thematic essays on each tractate of Talmud:
Language in Tractate Nedarim is not descriptive: It is transformative. Objects, relationships, even religious obligations, can be reimagined through the linguistic power of the neder. This is an important departure from how we normally understand language. Early scholars of language such as St. Augustine thought language was just about corresponding objects to the words they represent. Point to a bird, say “bird.” Language creates a correspondence between word and object. Later scholars, such as Wittgenstein, thought of language as more of a game—we learn language through playful and creative usage. According to this theory, language may not correspond at all to any actual reality but the meaning of words is a product of how we use them. Tractate Nedarim subverts our notion of language. Instead of words corresponding to reality, words have the power to reshape reality. A loaf of bread becomes a sacrifice.
And this is precisely the power denied by the Karaites. How can the Jewish People create and dissolve, so to speak, their own prohibitions? Only God has such power. But the notion of nullification of vows is actually the reminder that we, the Jewish People, through the power of the Oral Law have the capacity to fashion worlds with our words.
In his magisterial though sometimes cynical book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari places the transformative power of language at the heart of human history. Other animals may communicate, but humanity’s language is different. “All other animals,” he explains, “use their communication system only to describe reality.” Monkeys point to food, gazelles signal an approaching predator, and birds look for a suitable climate. Humans alone transform reality with their language. We tell stories about our reality that reshape reality. Countries, currency, and even religious life do not correspond to physical differences in the realia of the world we inhabit. And this has been the secret of humanity’s survival. As Harari explains:
We can cooperate flexibly with countless numbers of strangers, because we alone, of all the animals on the planet, can create and believe fictions, fictional stories. And as long as everybody believes in the same fiction, everybody obeys and follows the same rules, the same norms, the same values.
A fictional story isn’t necessarily wrong, or even untrue. It is simply a reminder that language has the power to ascribe meaning, to sanctify, and reframe the physical world even when everything tangibly remains the same. This is the power of a neder. To you it’s a loaf of bread, to me, it’s a sacrifice. To you it’s a human being, to me it’s my spouse. To you, it’s 8,500 square miles in the Middle East, to me it’s my ancestral homeland.
Wittgenstein understood that as well. “Can only those hope who can talk?” the philosopher asked, acknowledging that the transformative power of language—reshaping reality, creating the true fictions that bind us together—may also hold the key to our future. “Only those who have mastered the use of a language,” Wittgenstein continued, can see beyond the plan realia of the world—bananas, terrain, mountains, and climates—and instead reshape a world with countries, nationalities, sanctity, and all those unseen invisible concepts that elevate the human experience toward the divine. Language creates hope.
And this is why it was so important for Moshe to introduce the concept of nedarim before the Jewish People entered the land of Israel. The whole notion of creating a nation and a country depends on the idea of nedarim, the concept of using words to create something out of nothing more than the meeting of minds through language.
And perhaps this is the transformative power of Kol Nidrei and why it serves as the introduction to the entire Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.
If Nedarim isn’t so much about vows as it is about the transformative power of language, maybe Kol Nidrei, too, isn’t so much annulling our promises but reflecting on the worlds we’ve constructed with our words. All those words that shape our worlds—I’m a loser, I’m no good, it’s gonna fail, it’ll never change, it’ll never get better. We begin Yom Kippur by annulling those ugly words of our past and hope for a future with new words and worlds. Kol Nidrei—all those words that deplete, self-sabotage, create distance—we ask, we plead: Let’s find new words to reshape our world.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
Karaism: An Introduction to the Oldest Surviving Alternative Judaism, Daniel Lasker
Sadducees and Karaites: The Rhetoric of Jewish Sectarianism, Frederick E. Greenspahn
Mishneh Torah: Polemic and Art, Haym Soloveitchik
Words Apart, David Bashevkin
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
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Fascinating history and article. Loved it!