Turkism, Polish Sarmatism and ‘Jewish szlachta’: Some Reflections on a Cultural Context of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaites
Turkism, Polish Sarmatism and ‘Jewish szlachta’: Some Reflections on a Cultural Context of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaites

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to clarify one factual context in which the widespread – but erroneous - notion of the Turkic origins of the Eastern European Karaites might have arisen. I am not targeting here the senseless theories of such a politically-motivated falsifier as Seraja Szapszal, for I have done this elsewhere,1 but I will rather try to demonstrate that the initial stages of toying of the Eastern European Karaites with “Turkicness” should not be seen as some kind of conscious de-Judaization dirty tricks, but rather as a legitimate part of a specific Jewish-Polish discourse of the 18th century.

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