Now, here is a question, which can always spark an intriguing conversation around the dinner table. Really, there are many controversial points of view related to the Jewish identity, religion, ethnicity, nationality and many other issues, which can be sorted out only with a bottle of vintage Manischewitz.
But to make things even more interesting, why not discuss this subject in the most unusual location, far removed from the traditional centers of Jewish food, thought and culture. I’m talking about the mountains of Crimea – a large peninsula protruding from the underbelly of Ukraine into the Black Sea.
I must admit that I am not pondering the issues of Jewish identity as we drive from the port city of Sevastopol to the Tatar town of Bakhchisaray. The name is a mouthful, I know, but it means a “Garden Palace” in Persian and it welcomes a weary traveler with its beautiful palace, mosques and gardens. Back in 1532 all of this used to belong to the Tatar ruler of Crimea, Khan Giray, and was considered to be the de-facto capital of the peninsula until May of 1944, when Stalin’s secret police had exiled all Crimean Tatars deep into the steppes of Kazakhstan.
Bakhchisaray is surrounded by the impressive cliffs, which prompt my childhood friend, a Ukrainian mountain climber, to invite us hiking into the mountains. Considering that this man scales Mt. McKinley and Aconcagua for fun, his proposition doesn’t sound very enticing to us, the sea-level dwellers. Then he sweetens the deal with a promise to visit a place called Çufut Qale, also known as Sela’ ha-Yehudim, The Rock of the Jews.
Personally, I am not aware of any decent elevation of the earth’s surface named after the Jews, other than Masada, and agree to subject myself to a two-hour hike into the steep wilderness without encountering a single hot pastrami sandwich on the way!
Actually, along the way we pass quite a few vendors selling the yarmulke, embroidered with the golden maze of Middle Eastern patterns, along with many vicious-looking daggers. I just can’t imagine what these people have to go through in order to bring their merchandize to these heights, then take them back down on the daily basis! Unless, they store the goodies in a nearby cave, of course…
Finally we approach the gates of Çufut Qale, a ruined fortress of Crimean Karaites or Karaims. The origin of these of people, which spoke a Turkic language and practiced an ancient form of Judaism, is a subject of great controversy. One theory identifies them as Jewish migrants, who had made their way into Crimea from Persia via Turkey. Another theory, favored by many Karaims, calls them the descendants of Khazars, the semi-nomadic people who had adopted Judaism in the 8th century AD. Even the timing of Karaims’ appearance in Çufut Qale is also not certain and there is a rumor that someone was tempering with the headstones on the Karaim cemetery in order to date them a few centuries older than they really are.
What’s clear, however, is that the fortress is situated in the most spectacular place. More than one hundred thousand visitors climb up the long trail each year in order to see the ancient town and its deep canyon below the fortified walls.
The main street leading through the town has two Karaim synagogues, called kenasas, and a small museum dedicated to the life and work of Abraham ben Samuel Firkovich (1786 – 1874), the famous historian and leader of the Karaim people. This distinguished gentlemen had spent considerable amount of his work trying to distance Karaims from the other Jews. He had positioned his people as uniquely Crimean and their religion as something between Christianity and Judaism.
Indeed, thanks to Firkovich’s efforts the Russian Czars, the eventual conquerers of the Crimea, had awarded Karaims with the same rights as the other subjects of the Russian Empire, while imposing various restrictions on the run-of-the-mill Rabbinical Jews. The Karaims were allowed to build their kenasas in large cities, including a beautiful temple in the center of Kiev, which was unveiled to the great fanfare in 1903. About 500 Karaims were promoted to the officer rank during World War I and had emigrated to France and Germany after the Bolshevik revolution and the bloody civil war following it.
In 1934 the Karaim leaders had petition Hitler to exempt them from the Jewish status in the eyes of the Reich Citizenship Law, based on their Turkic origin and the Russian Imperial precedence. The Nazis granted their request and, by and large, the Karaim community had escaped the fate of 6 million European Jews during the Holocaust.
I contemplate all this historical data while resting in the cozy courtyard of the Çufut Qale kenasa and reading a thin book, which I just bought in the nearby Firkovich house / museum. All 52 pages of the book make a huge effort to stress the uniqueness of Karaims and their religion. There is not a single mentioning of the words “Jewish” or “Judaism”, just stern warnings about not believing the misinformation about the Karaims’ “fictitious foreign roots”.
”Which foreign roots are they talking about?”, asks my Ukrainian friend while staring at the Hebrew tablet affixed to the kenasa wall.
“It has got to be mine”, I tell him, “The Jewish roots”.
The Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine – 2009