In Poetry and Memory in Karaite Prayer Joachim Yeshaya offers an edition of liturgical poems which the Karaite poet Moses Dar'i composed in twelfth-century Egypt as introductory poems for the Torah readings on each Sabbath. The Hebrew text and Judaeo-Arabic heading of each poem are provided in the original order attested in the manuscript NLR Evr. I 802, dated to the fifteenth century. Every poem comes with a commentary section consisting of English commentary essays and bilingual (Hebrew / English) line-by-line annotations. In the conclusion following this edition, Joachim Yeshaya demonstrates how Dar'i's liturgical poems are among the earliest examples of the introduction of poetry, Andalusian Rabbanite poetical norms, and the "memory" of being exiled from Jerusalem into Karaite prayer.

The present study is the first of its kind to deal with Eastern European Karaite historical thought. It focuses on the social functions of Karaite historical narratives concerning the rise of Karaism from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The book also deals with the image of Karaism created by Protestants, and with the perception of Karaism by some leaders of the Haskalah movement, especially the scholars of Hokhmat Israel. In both cases, Karaism was seen as an orientalistic phenomenon whereby the "enlightened" European scholars romanticized the "indigenous" people, while the Karaites (themselves), adopted this romantic images, incorporating it into their own national discourse. Finally, the book sheds new light on several conventional notions that shaped the study of Karaism from the nineteenth century.

This volume presents a critical edition of the Judaeo-Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Esther by Saadia Gaon (882-942). This edition, accompanied by an introduction and extensively annotated English translation, affords access to the first-known personalized, rationalistic Jewish commentary on this biblical book. Saadia innovatively organizes the biblical narrative-and his commentary thereon-according to seven "guidelines" that provide a practical blueprint by which Israel can live as an abased people under Gentile dominion. Saadia's prodigious acumen and sense of communal solicitude find vivid expression throughout his commentary in his carefully-defined structural and linguistic analyses, his elucidative references to a broad range of contemporary socio-religious and vocational realia, his anti-Karaite polemics, and his attention to various issues, both psychological and practical, attending Jewish-Gentile conviviality in a 10th-century Islamicate milieu.

The commentary on the book of Esther by Salmon b. Yeruham represents the oldest extant Karaite commentary on "Esther" and the second-oldest Jewish commentary on the book after that of Saadia Gaon, Salmon's older contemporary. Salmon's exegesis, while grounded in the driving Karaite ethos of intense Scripturalism, reflects at the same time an even-handed openness (often downplayed in previous scholarship) to Rabbanite (including midrashic-talmudic) exegetical tradition where it both conforms to the strictures of rational analysis and serves to promote his homiletical goals. With respect to the book of "Esther", these goals center upon the presentation of "Esther" as a prescriptive model of Jewish life in Exile - particularly as represented in the early Karaite ethos and constitutional triumvirate of confidence in God's covenant-based solicitude, continual introspection (even self-criticism) and mourning over the exile, and the messianically-charged call to return to Zion.)

This volume contains an English translation of the Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Proverbs composed by one of the most acclaimed, innovative, and prolific exegetes of the Karaite "Golden Age" (10th -11th centuries), Yefet ben 'Eli ha-Levi. A critical edition and an extensive introduction was published by Ilana Sasson as vol. 1 (KTS 8) in 2016. Dr. Sasson worked for many years on an English translation of the work and, before her untimely death in 2017, passed her unfinished manuscript to the series editors. The translation was then completed, edited, and prepared for publication by Dr. Wechsler. Yefet's commentary on Proverbs is a masterpiece of literary and rational-contextual analysis of one of the most difficult and important books of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. His work is an invaluable link in the history of interpretation of the book of Proverbs.