Karaism

A movement holding that the written Tanakh alone is binding, rejecting the Talmud and the rabbinic claim that an Oral Law was revealed at Sinai. Karaites read scripture directly, which produced a stricter and visibly different practice: no Hanukkah, no tefillin as rabbinically shaped, Shabbat without kindled light, their own calendar based on observed moon and ripened barley, and their own marriage law. Rabbanite tradition traces the movement to Anan ben David, but it took form a century later with Benjamin al-Nahawandi and Daniel al-Qumisi. At its height between the 9th and 11th centuries it may have claimed a substantial share of world Jewry and forced the Geonim — Saadia above all — to defend rabbinic authority in writing for the first time. Karaite communities survive today in Israel, the United States, and the former Soviet Union.