People of Torah and Tobacco

Alla Astakhova, Alexander Sorin (photo)

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The Crimean Karaites - a small people with a relatively prosperous fate - still remain a mystery to ethnologists and historians

Karaite cemetery in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, so named because of its striking resemblance to the famous valley near Jerusalem. (Photo: Alexander Sorin )

The climb from the valley to the ancient city takes a little over an hour if you walk quickly. Below are the ancient streets and minarets of Bakhchisarai, blooming tamarisk bushes along the highway. Here, at a height of six hundred meters, there are roads carved into the rocks, watchtowers hanging above them, houses that look like caves, and the caves themselves, in which people once lived. Right outside the city walls there are rocky slopes, dizzying cliffs, spaces full of air and light.

The “Aerial City” is almost one and a half thousand years old. Founded by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian the First as a military fortress in the 6th century, the city managed to change at least a dozen names during its existence. Who has not visited these places - the Byzantines, Alans (ancestors of modern Ossetians), Goths, Khazars, Cumans, Tatars." The conquerors often faced the same fate as the vanquished - they settled peacefully on the earth and dissolved among the surrounding population. According to archaeologists, the last to come to the mountain fortress in the 14th century were the Karaites - “Kara Yagudi”, “black Jews”, as local Tatars once called them. The city, which became their ancestral nest and numbered more than 200 houses by the beginning of the 19th century, received the name which it still bears today: “Chufut-Kale” - “Jewish fortress.” The Karaites lived here for more than six centuries and finally descended into the valley only half a century ago.

The last inhabitants of Chufut-Kale, the Dubinsky family, still live in Bakhchisarai. “My father Semyon and his brother Yakov were caretakers of the fortress until 1942, when they were forced to leave there by the Germans who captured Crimea,” says Alexandra Semenovna Dubinskaya. “And the first of our family to start working as a caretaker was my grandfather, Abraham Simovich, in 1906 ". When I was a girl, there were still five Karaite families left in Chufut-Kale, but gradually they all went down. The conditions there, of course, were harsh. We used water very sparingly, because we had to carry it from below. We had such a specially trained horse , it was loaded with oak barrels, and it itself descended along the familiar road to the source. The people above somehow managed to keep livestock and even grow wheat in undeveloped areas. They baked bread themselves. Our hearth, by the way, is still preserved. We recently climbed to fortress, we saw it. It’s a strange feeling to wander among the ruins that have become a museum and remember your childhood.”

The caretakers of the fortress not only guarded it and kept order. They also held services in kenas - a Karaite temple, the name of which is derived from a Hebrew root meaning “to gather.” In the deserted city, usually no more than a dozen people gathered for prayer. “We almost always had guests. Many Karaites considered it their duty to visit Chufut-Kale at least once a year,” recalls Alexandra Semyonovna. To this day, two kenasa standing side by side have been preserved in Chufut-Kale: a large one, from the 14th century, and a small one, built in the 18th century by residents of another Karaite mountain town, Mangup-Kale, who moved here. The threshold of the stone courtyard kenas is a luxurious slab of imported white marble, traces of Byzantine construction. Several steps lead down: Karaite kenas were often built slightly below ground level - believed to correspond to David's psalm "Out of the depths I cry to Thee, O Lord."

“Everything here is the same as it was under my father and uncle,” says Alexandra Semyonovna. “True, the rich decoration is no longer there: after the war, the museum took it, and it disappeared somewhere in the storerooms. Previously, there were carpets everywhere - people prayed on their knees , and only the old people were sitting on low benches. The chandelier was crystal, very beautiful. In the cabinet, in the altar - in our country it is called "gekhal" - sacred books and a special scroll of the Sefer Torah were kept. And so everything was as before. We saw a container for water at the threshold? Nearby there was a hollowed-out stone tray - they washed their feet there before entering the kenasa. It was customary among us, sort of like among Muslims. And they always took off their shoes at the entrance, there are special stone cells there. For us Karaites, There are many things in the temple that are different from those of the Jews."

Karaites in Crimea were never really confused with Orthodox Jews. And the point is not only that they spoke their own language, close to Tatar. The Crimean Karaites considered themselves to be a special branch of religion - Karaimism, which appeared in the Jewish diaspora on the territory of the former state of Babylon in the 8th century AD. “Like any religious reformation, Karaimism appealed to its roots: its followers did not recognize any authorities other than the written Torah. First of all, they did not recognize the Talmud. And in accordance with this they built their rituals. The word “Karaite” itself comes from the Hebrew “kara” - read. Karaites mean people who read the Pentateuch,” says MGIMO professor Vladimir Sergeevich Glagolev, author of the book “The Religion of the Karaites.”

A Karaite house could be distinguished from a Jewish one at first glance: at the entrance there was no traditional “mezuzah” - a small case with several verses from the Torah. The Karaites had their own dates of holidays, and celebrated only those that were mentioned in Scripture. An exception was made only for Purim: on this day, “Purim pies” were baked in the form of small semicircles filled with pumpkin, raisins and nuts; their recipe has been preserved to this day. The cuisine and life of the Karaites was reminiscent of the Tatars: the house was divided into male and female halves, just like among Muslims, among rich Karaites there were often harems, and Crimean chebureks are still considered their national dish by both Tatars and Karaites.


The ruts of the stone road leading to the Chufut-Kale fortress were carved out by cart wheels over the centuries. (Photo: Alexander Sorin )

Their business is tobacco
One of the serious trials that befell the Karaites was the annexation of Crimea to Russia. At this time, the fate of entire nations was being decided - over the course of just a dozen years, from 1772 to 1783, vast territories inhabited by people of other faiths were ceded to the Russian Empire: part of the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where one and a half million Jews then lived, and the vast sparsely populated lands of New Russia . Relations between Polish Jews and the Russian authorities did not work out almost from the very beginning.

It soon became clear that the position of the Karaites, who also professed the religion of the Mosaic Covenant, was incomparably more advantageous in this sense: they did not recognize the Talmud, a strange and incomprehensible book for the Christian rulers, while at the same time their adherence to Scripture was close to Christians. “There was also an important economic factor,” says Maxim Zaveryaev, a graduate student at the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University. “After the annexation of Crimea to Russia, many empty lands appeared on the peninsula - some of the Tatars went to Turkey. The Karaite community was the most active and bought up a significant part of the land. Apparently, the Karaites, in the view of the Russian authorities, were that part of society with which it was possible to conduct a dialogue." The Russian tsars repeatedly confirmed their readiness for dialogue with the Karaites - Catherine the Second granted their request in 1794, freeing them from double taxes, then the Karaites received a number of benefits. True, they were given a condition - not to accept Orthodox Jews into their communities. In 1852, the Pale of Settlement was abolished for the Karaites. They received full equality in 1863, three years after the publication of the book of the Karaite scholar Abraham Firkovich, where the author argued that the Karaites are the descendants of ten Jewish tribes that scattered throughout the world after the Assyrian captivity, that they settled in Crimea long before the birth of Christ, which means , have nothing to do with the crucifixion of the Savior. Later, this theory was refuted more than once (for more details, see the chapter “Unanswered Questions”).

The Karaites were not slow to take advantage of the rights granted to them - their exodus from Crimea to the internal provinces of Russia began. This was not an escape from poverty - they walked with firm steps towards success and prosperity. The main business on which they built their wealth was the tobacco industry.

It is known that the Karaites controlled more than two-thirds of the tobacco industry in Russia. It was they who founded the Yavou and Dukat tobacco factories in Moscow. "Java", which has existed since 1856, was previously called by the name of its founder - the "Samuil Gabai Partnership", and only in 1922, after it became part of the Mosselprom trust, it received the name of the most famous and one of the most expensive varieties of its cigarettes . In the office of the director of the factory there is still the owner’s chair, made in the workshop of the St. Petersburg master V.P. Shutov, with a back in the form of a collar and the inscription: “The slower you go, the further you will go.” “I’ve been at Java for more than 30 years,” says Leonid Yakovlevich Sinelnikov, director of the Java factory. “I know that after the revolution many Karaites worked here. But I didn’t find them anymore.”

The Karaites stayed longer at Dukat, founded in 1891. “My father, Semyon Isaakovich Firkovich (namesake of the historian Abraham Firkovich - “Itogi”), started at the factory as a boy even before the revolution, and then worked there as the chief tobacco master until 1955,” says Leonid Semenovich Firkovich. “He checked the quality of raw materials and prepared tobacco: mixed different varieties - skeletal, giving strength, and aromatic, making up the shades of the bouquet. His owner, Pigit, was an original person. Once in Yekaterinburg he arranged an unusual advertisement for a batch of his goods - he hired 20 young men at the labor exchange who went shopping cities and everywhere they asked for Pigit’s cigarettes!”

There were also many Karaites among the owners of tobacco shops. “If you look at the address and reference book “All Moscow” for 1897, it turns out that in the “Tobacco” section at least a quarter of all surnames are Karaite,” says Sergei Mikhailov, an employee of the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of Population of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “It’s hard to believe that in just a generation, these people will dissolve in Moscow in mixed marriages and the Karaite community here will practically cease to exist.”

Tobacco shops, whose directors were Karaites, existed in Moscow until the 60s of our century. “My father died in 1941, and my mother, who was a Karaite, got a job in one of these places,” says Irina Aleksandrovna Sharapova. “These were very beautiful shops on Arbat, on Sretenka - with halls painted in Khokhloma. My grandfather , Yufud Levi, once ran a Nicotine shop on Ostozhenka, and my mother stood there behind the counter as a girl. She never thought that, as an adult, she would return to this occupation."

Yufud Levi, who came to Moscow from Yevpatoria, was a Turkish subject - Crimean Karaites often married their co-religionists from Constantinople. Descendants believe that Yufud’s son, Ilya Levi, became the prototype of the “son of a Turkish subject” from the famous novel (one of the authors of “The Twelve Chairs,” Ilya Ilf, lived next door to the owners of “Nicotine”). The lively and adventurous character of Ilya Levi was indeed somewhat akin to the character of the “great schemer”. Ilya did not spend a single day in public service - he dealt with antiques, was hired as a movie theater performer, and earned money by signing Karaite marriage certificates (without the signature of a person named Kogan or Levi, they were considered invalid). At the end of the 20s, foreigners living in the USSR were offered to receive Soviet passports. Ilya refused to do this. Soon he left for Turkey, from there he moved to Germany. In Berlin, he immediately opened an antique shop. It is known that he survived Hitler's regime and was not even in a concentration camp.


In the courtyard of the Evpatoria kenasa there is an ancient gazebo built for the holiday of Sukkot. As expected, you can see the sky through the roof of the gazebo. (Photo: Alexander Sorin )

Khazar variant
Immigrants from Crimea were lucky for the second time - shortly before the war they managed to prove that they were not Jews by blood and had Turkic roots.

The idea to look for such evidence belonged to the last spiritual head of the Karaites of the Russian Empire, elected to this post in 1915, Seraya Markovich Shapshal. A graduate of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, he was listed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for several years and served in Persia, where he was a mentor to the heir to the throne of the ruling Qajar dynasty, then in St. Petersburg he worked as a translator and taught at the university. “Shapshal first proposed considering the Karaites a separate Turkic people,” says Maxim Zaveryaev. “In the 20th century, among the Karaites there were already quite a lot of people who were not committed to traditional spiritual values. In order to unite, they needed a new ideological foundation - the national theory became such a foundation , which experts often call the Turkic-Khazar theory." In 1919, Shapshal fled to Turkey - according to legend, hiding in a coal miner's cart. And in 1928 he left for Lithuania after the Lithuanian and Polish Karaites chose him as their spiritual leader - gaham. On his initiative, Italian anthropologists came to Lithuania in 1934 and conducted demographic, anthropological and medical-biological surveys of the Karaites. As a result, an article was published in the Italian magazine Scientia, which stated that the Karaites really have nothing in common with the Jews. “Whether this theory was good or bad, it saved the lives of the Karaites in World War II,” says Rashid Muradovich Kaplanov, author of scientific works on the history of the Karaites, senior researcher at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Most Karaites indeed survived the occupation relatively calmly, but this does not mean that they always felt safe. “There were constantly rumors in Yevpatoria that we were about to be shot,” recalls Biche Ilyinichna Balakai. “One day, when such a rumor spread, we collected our things and took them to a neighbor: if they shot us, yours would be there. Then everything calmed down, they came to take us away.” , and she says: wait, maybe they’ll shoot them again." Several dozen Karaites died during the punitive action that the Germans carried out after the Evpatoria landing. They say that then a tenth of all the men living in Evpatoria were shot. "They also came to the house my mother-in-law, Semita Isaakovna Kushul,” says Valentina Ivanovna Komissarova. - They took the owner of the house. And the boy, who was 17 years old at the time, hid behind this closet. They were about to leave, but the German tenant shouted after him: “He’s still a boy!” The women stood neither alive nor dead. Everyone knew that if the boy didn’t come out now, the whole family would be taken away. And he came out."

In bloom under the shadow of the courtyards
Yevpatoria is a city built by the Karaites. After Chufut-Kale, it became their second center. At one time, Karaite philanthropists founded several schools here, built a theater and a library, a special building for public lectures, laid out a public garden, drilled an artesian well for free use of water, set up several sanatoriums and a mud bath. For many years, the position of city mayor in Yevpatoria was occupied by Karaites.

There are still many of them here - the post-war deportation of peoples, fortunately, did not affect them. Some continue to live on Karaimskaya Street, which leads to two kenas - large and small, standing side by side, as in Chufut-Kale. Although the Karaites themselves have long considered their nationality to be disappearing - old people are leaving, middle-aged people are leaving for Israel, which has begun to accept them in recent years, young people are dissolving into mixed marriages - a visitor can see that the city will be connected with this people and their people for a long time. history. Where, if not in Yevpatoria, can you accidentally meet on the street the descendants of the first gaham of the Karaites, Hadzhi-Bobovich? According to legend, Emperor Alexander the First visited his harem and found his wives very sweet, although he did not see their faces. Esther Abramovna, who invited us to see her yard, is from this family. Her son has settled in Costa Rica and calls her to join him. “But I won’t leave and I won’t sell the house,” says Esther Abramovna. “Then she will come here and thank me.” The house of her ancestor Hadzhi-Bobovich has also been preserved - it is now a “crow’s settlement” with many residents. “Look at this terrace!” they invite you to look at the traditional carved internal balcony. “Boned oak. It’s impossible to drive a nail.” Here, in the old town, lives Tolya Hadji, a master of refrigeration units. In his yard there is a mulberry tree - a traditional tree of the Karaites, which they always planted next to the house. On the gate is the monogram of his ancestor, a famous Evpatoria doctor named Turshu. His other great-grandfather, Samuel Neiman, was the senior gazzan - a clergyman of the Evpatoria kenasa, the second clergyman after the gaham.

“We once lived interestingly,” sighs Biche Ilyinichna Balakai. “We had our own Karaite club. I still remember what a delicious stupech we once won at some competition. Do you know what a stupech is? This is our Karaite delicacy - sugar the syrup is stretched many times to thin threads."

Recently, something has changed in the life of the Evpatoria Karaites. The small kenasa, which had been empty since 1959, began to operate, when it was closed, barbarously cutting the altar into pieces. The restoration of the large kenasa and the courtyard is underway - French compatriots helped. True, all this is more reminiscent of the reconstruction of a tourist complex. In the side courtyard of the kenasy there is a museum and a cafe (“Karaite cuisine”), a summer terrace with a barbecue. Through this courtyard, worshipers go to services on Saturdays, where the reader, acting as a gazzan, reads the psalms and the Pentateuch in Russian, every now and then inserting his own lengthy comments. Next to the kenasa there is a strange resemblance to a graveyard: the most beautiful tombstones were brought here from the Karaite cemetery to protect them from destruction. In the front courtyard, memorial plaques of white marble are covered with shields - here the names of Karaite benefactors, the names of emperors who visited Evpatoria and met with the Gahams were written in Hebrew. “Why were these boards closed?” the sister of the last Evpatoria gazzan, Boris Yelyashevich, Tamara Saadievna Babajan, is indignant. “Is it really because they are written in the language of the Bible? You might think that we are afraid that tourists will confuse us with Jews. But what can you do, such was our writing!

It seems that in impoverished Crimea, living from one holiday season to another, the Karaites have another chance - to become a nationality that makes business on tourists. But will they all want to use it? “Of course, the Karaites are disappearing,” says Maria Iosifovna Cheltek. “Probably nothing can be done about it. But maybe it’s worth leaving with dignity? I, for example, don’t want to be a souvenir Karaite for tourists.”


In a Karaite temple, men pray separately from women. (Photo: Alexander Sorin )