Mikhail Kizilov, "The Sons of Scripture: The Karaites in Poland and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century"
English | ISBN: 3110425254 | 2015 | 527 pages | EPUB | 5 MB
English | ISBN: 3110425254 | 2015 | 527 pages | EPUB | 5 MB
Drawing on the variety of archival sources in the host of European and Oriental languages, the book focuses on the history, ethnography, and convoluted ethnic identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaites. The vanishing community of the Karaites, a non-Talmudic Turkic-speaking Jewish minority that 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 dramatic history of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaite community in the twentieth century. Especially important is the analysis of the dejudaization (or Turkicization) of the community that saved the Karaites from horrors of the Holocaust.