It was hard to return to Karaism — Abraham Kefeli

Our guest is Abraham Kefeli, a hazzan and teacher of computer music, music theory, piano, arrangement, and composition. He is a Karaite who was born in Simferopol and now lives in Israel.

On 9 August, Ukraine marks the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. In Ukraine, the indigenous peoples are the Crimeans, Krymchaks, and Karaites. The Karaites, who have lived on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula since the 13th century, recognize the Torah. According to the 2001 census, there were 1,196 Karaites in Ukraine. Most members of the indigenous peoples live in the Crimea, while the rest are in the cities of Galicia, Volyn, Sloboda Ukraine, and the Azov region.

Childhood

Abraham Kefeli: I was born into a Karaite family in the Crimea. I was raised by my mother and grandmother. Mostly by my grandma, from whom I learned more. She was a strong Karaite woman. My grandfather went missing in 1944, and she raised their three daughters on her own. Two daughters (Kefeli's aunts. — Ed.) married Karaites, so my cousins are pure-blooded. I also learned a lot from their families. Unfortunately, my mother was not lucky in this sense.

My grandmother followed the Karaite traditions the most. She fasted on Yom Kippur and made special matzah cakes. She was a staunch Karaite. My mother was a representative of a new generation raised on Soviet ideals, so she was less interested in Karaism. I absorbed all this more from my grandmother and my aunts' families.

I was born in Simferopol, and this city will always remain Ukrainian for me. But it was officially in the Ukrainian SSR back then. I studied the Ukrainian language and literature from the fourth grade at school. Lesia Ukrainka, Taras Shevchenko. I do not speak Ukrainian, but I understand it well. Now I listen to all the news about Ukraine in Ukrainian and understand it without problems.

I went to music school at the age of six and finished it when I was in the seventh grade. After completing high-school education in Simferopol, I decided that I would continue the Karaite tradition and that I wanted to become a musician. I entered a music college in Minsk in 1988. I wanted to study in the pop department, but there was none in Simferopol, so I had to go to Minsk. After studying there for a year in the distance format and another year on campus, I completed a transfer to Rostov-on-Don because there was a good jazz school there. It is still very strong. In Rostov-on-Don, I graduated from a music college (four years of study) and enrolled in the conservatory, where I majored both in jazz and composition. So, I am a composer and jazz pianist by profession.

I became interested in Karaite folk music when I was in music college. I traveled to Trakai from Minsk through Vilnius. There, I began to look for someone who still knew Karaite musical folklore and recorded several songs. It was my first "musical baggage," and then I started developing it.

I began looking for more carriers of Karaite musical culture. My next folkloristic trip was to the Crimea, where I found Yeva Barash in Yalta. After that, I went to Yevpatoria and started recording many Karaite songs in the Crimean-Karaite tradition from Raisa Chiltek, a very good Karaite singer. The musical and linguistic tradition of the Karaites is excellent.

On studying the Karaim language

Abraham Kefeli: The three dialects of the Karaim language are those of Crimea, Trakai, and Lutsk-Halych. The Crimean one is closer to Crimean Tatar music. It came under the influence by Turkish, as the Crimea was in the Crimean Khanate, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, until the end of the 18th century. So, its influence was strong. The western Trakai dialect contains some older features since the Karaites moved to Lithuania as early as the 14th century. It is still spoken today. The third dialect is that of Lutsk-Halych in western Ukraine. The Karaites were brought here by Danylo Romanovych in the 13th century. He had an agreement with Batu Khan, under which the first Karaites moved there to expand economic ties.

The Lutsk-Halych and Trakai dialects are considered purer and more ancient. I studied all three on my own and can speak them. I started learning the language using various Karaim grammars, so when I began seriously working on songs and translating them, I already had some knowledge. I had learned the theory, but it was essential to understand what it sounded like. I was collecting and writing down all of this.

I graduated from the conservatory in 1997 and started my postgraduate studies in composition at the Rostov State Conservatory. I married Tetiana, a granddaughter of the woman in Yevpatoria from whom I collected songs. Even before I met Tetiana, she headed the Kyiv Karaite community and was in contact with various other ethnic communities. I lived in Kyiv for two years, teaching at a music school and Glière Music College. I went to Israel with my family in 1999 and completed my graduate studies there three years later.

Motivation to study the Karaite culture

Abraham Kefeli: The impetus for identifying myself as a Karaite probably came with the death of my grandmother. She died in 1986 when I was 14. Before that, I was an ordinary Soviet schoolboy. At school, other kids would punch me for being a Karaite. They would beat me, calling me a Tatar and a Jew. They painted a six-pointed star on my schoolbag that could not be erased. Maybe that pushed me, too. When there is violence, there is counteraction. When Putin attacks Ukraine, there is action against Putin. Ukraine is defending itself. Perhaps this is how I was hardened back then to follow the Karaite path later. These two factors seem to have been the impetus for me.

Yelyzaveta Tsarehradska: How easy or difficult was learning and researching Karaite culture for you?

Abraham Kefeli: It was hard to return to the Karaite religion in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After 70 dark years of Soviet rule, everything had to be started over for Karaite culture. Together with Viktor Teriyaki, who was one of the key members of the Karaite community in Yevpatoria, I began to study Classical Hebrew. It is important for Karaites to know it as it is the first language of the Bible. This is one of the ten dogmas mandatory for each Karaite. Translations into other languages cannot convey all the subtleties of the original and distort it. For example, the Christian translation adapts it to its dogmas.

I also began studying the treatises of our Karaite scholars. I went deeper into the text of the Bible and its commentary by the Karaite teachers.

Before the 1917 revolution, there were about 30 Karaite temples in the Russian Empire. After 1917, almost all of them were destroyed and nationalized, causing the downfall of the Karaite religion. Everything was closed, and Karaite priests were persecuted by the Soviet authorities. Some left, for example, for Egypt. The Karaite religion continued to exist, but not so globally. Families that support the Karaite religion observed holidays and traditions. Circumcision was practiced until the end of the 1930s despite Soviet bans, but I have not been able to identify any circumcised men since the 1940s. This ban must have deeply affected the internal structure of Karaite families. The community, with all its religious institutes and temples, ceased to exist in a religious sense, you might say.

Since 2000, I have worked in the Karaite community as a hazzan and assistant. I have been thoroughly studying the Karaite religion since then. In the late 1990s, I worked with the Kyiv-based editorial office for Ukraine's ethnic minorities. We published a collection of Karaite fairy tales in 2002. The print run (300 copies) was distributed mainly among libraries.

Karaite communities in Israel

Yelyzaveta Tsarehradska: Are there people from Ukraine in your community?

Abraham Kefeli: The Karaite communities of Israel were founded in the 1940s and 1950s by emigrants from Egypt. There was a war with Israel, and the Egyptian authorities viewed Karaites as spies, so the entire Karaite community was expelled from Egypt. The Karaites that now live in Israel have mostly come from Egypt, and the Karaite kenesas (synagogues) here were built in those years. When I came to Israel, there were no Russian-speaking Karaites there. My family was the first to join the Karaite community. The right of repatriation applies to Karaites, and that's why they emigrated. Most of them have come from the Crimea. They emigrated for economic, rather than religious, reasons and have settled across Israel, while Karaite communities exist only in some Israeli cities.

There are approximately 13 Karaite kenesas in Israel today. The largest communities are in Ashdod and Ramla. The oldest Karaite kenesa, founded in the ninth century, is in Jerusalem. It is considered the most ancient and important building for the Karaites worldwide. The Karaites have always supported this kenesa. There was even a special category of donations specifically for the Jerusalem kenesa from various communities in Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland. It is now in good condition, and services are held there on holidays. It also houses a Karaite museum. However, there are very few Karaites in Jerusalem. They live in other regions. And because Karaites cannot use transport on Saturday, this limits their ability to visit the Jerusalem kenesa on this day. But in other cities, religious services are held twice a day, on Saturdays and holidays, depending also on the number of Karaites in the community.

In general, there are about 40,000 Karaites in Israel. Mostly, they have come from Egypt, but there are also approximately 1,000 emigrants from the USSR. Again, there are almost no Karaites who come to the Karaite community centers and kenesas. The majority of Karaites are non-believers or even atheists.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

This program is created with the support of Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE), a Canadian charitable non-profit organization. 

Originally appeared in Ukrainian (Hromadske Radio podcast) here.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Vasyl Starko.