Middle Western Karaim

This contribution is a book review of: Michał Németh 2020. Middle Western Karaim: A Critical Edition and Linguistic Analysis of the pre-19thCentury Karaim Interpretations of Hebrew piyyutim. Languages of Asia, Volume 22. Karaim – the traditional language variety of the Karaim communities in eastern Europe – is indeed a highly fascinating language from several points of view, one of which is surely that its speakers believe in the Old Testament. Together with the Khazars and Krymchaks, Karaims are one the few Turkic peoples who, at different times in history, embraced Judaism and used the Hebrew writing system for writing their language. With regard to linguistic classification, Karaim belongs to the West Kypchak subbranch of the Turkic languages family - also referred to as Ponto-Caspian in older publications (cf. Pritsak 1959) -together with Karachay and Balkar, Kumyk and Crimean Tatar. There used to exist three different Karaim varieties: Crimean in the Crimea, Halych/Lutsk in western Ukraine, and Trakai (Polish Troki) in Lithuania. Presently, the vast majority of the original Karaim communities in Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Russia have switched to the respective official languages of the territories they inhabit. Whereas Karaims number approximately 2,000 individuals, the actual number of speakers of Karaim is only about 30. The Crimean variety is extinct, the western Ukrainian variety numbers few speakers and the Lithuanian variety is highly endangered (Csató 2017). The work under review is without any doubt a long-term desideratum of Turcology. For the first time we have at disposal a large corpus of transcribed and translated peshatim i.e. interpretations of Hebrew piyyutim ‘liturgical songs’ of the Judaic tradition written in Middle Western Karaim, dating from the 17th till the beginning of the 19th century.