Abstract:

In 1712 the ma'amad of the Spanish-Portuguese community of Amsterdam excommunicated three of its members. David Mendes Henriquez (also known as David Almanza) and the brothers Aaron and Isaac Dias da Fonseca. All three were accused of belonging to the Karaite sect. During the 17th century the Sephardic communities of Western Europe frequently applied the appellation 'Karaite' in a metaphoric sense, designating thereby those of heterodoxic tendencies who denied the Oral Tradition and rabbinic authority. Actual contacts between Sephardic Jewry and Karaite communities were in fact most uncommon. The case before us, however, represents an explicit link with Karaites. It appears that in Amsterdam as well as elsewhere in Western Europe Sephardic Jews were impressed by the ideal image of Karaism as it was projected in the Christian Hebraist literature beginning in the mid—seventeenth century. This literature frequently evinced a preference for 'Karaites' over 'Rabbinic Jews', by depicting th

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