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LIVING LIMINALITY: KARAITE JEWS NEGOTIATE IDENTITY and COMMUNITY in ISRAEL and the UNITED STATES Sumi Elaine Colligan the Main F

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LIVING LIMINALITY: KARAITE JEWS NEGOTIATE IDENTITY and COMMUNITY in ISRAEL and the UNITED STATES Sumi Elaine Colligan the Main F CHAPTER NINETEEN LIVING LIMINALITY: KARAITE JEWS NEGOTIATE IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY IN ISRAEL AND THE UNITED STATES Sumi Elaine Colligan The main focus of this chapter is an examination of the dilemmas Karaite Jews have faced on a communal, familial, and personal level as they negotiate their sometimes ambiguous status within Israel. As a point of comparison and interconnection, a very abbreviated dis­ cussion of similar Karaite struggles in the United States to accom­ modate to their surroundings while retaining or reinvigorating some modicum of group identity is considered. The bulk of the research from which this essay draws is based on ethnographic fieldwork con­ ducted in Israel between 1977-791 and on five much shorter, sub­ sequent field visits that took place in 1981, 1992, 1993, 1995, and 1999. Descriptions of communal and identity issues that Karaites encounter in the United States are based on contacts initiated in 1992 and rekindled in 1999. All of the Karaites with whom I became familiar are of Egyptian origin. 2 I first became interested in the Karaites when, as a graduate stu­ dent, I came across an article by Mordecai Roshwald entitled "Marginal Jewish sects in Israel." I thought that being a Jewish minority in a Jewish state constituted a curious paradox and through my doctoral research, I sought to gain greater understanding of this paradox. I asked: How was anomaly constructed in this context? What did the designators of anomaly think was at stake? How did prevalent cul­ tural representations of Karaites structure Israeli civil and religious policies and practices toward Karaites and shape quotidian encoun­ ters between Karaites and non-Karaites? And how and under what conditions did the Karaites respond to these representations and counter them with alternatives? 1 Colligan, Religion, Nationalism, and Ethnicity. 2 On further aspects of the Karaite community in Egypt and Israel --+ Beinin, Karaites in Modern Egypt --+ Trevisan Semi, From Egypt to Israel. 452 SUMI ELAINE COLLIGAN The concepts of anomaly and liminality have been central to anthropological analysis. For Mary Douglas, anomaly is "matter out of place ... the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate ele­ ments."3 Anomaly, then, is a means of reducing ambiguity in social categories and arrangements that generates concepts and practices of taboo and contagion, clarifYing social boundaries and crystalliz­ ing cultural beliefs. Influenced by Douglas, Victor Turner coined the term, liminality, to describe the "betwixt and between"4 stage of rit­ ual participants, who, occupying a state of anti-structure, are faced with ambiguity and danger. According to Turner, these liminal figures signify "a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise."5 In more recent anthropological writ­ ing, Turner's analysis, despite its recognition of the generative poten­ tial of liminal subjects to challenge and transform culturally entrenched beliefs and practices, is still characterized as expressing concern for anti-structure in order to reaffirm the centrality of structure. As with Douglas, this emphasis problematizes the status of anomalous or lim­ inal subjects by calling attention to the role they inhabit as threats to systems of classification and social order without fully interrogat­ ing the significance of anomaly or liminality as an embodied status that must be worked out in everyday social situations. Thus, what is called for is for greater attention to be paid to the "experiential reality of the liminal subject" accompanied by a critique of the "debil­ itating contradictions" that liminality as an "on-going life condition" imposes.6 This approach is consonant with contemporary anthropo­ logical angst over the "problem of representation,"7 an angst that gives greater credence to the reports and interpretations that ethno­ graphic subjects have to offer of their own circumstances and delim­ its the authorial knowledge of the ethnographer. To summarize, then, within Israel, Karaites occupy a liminal posi­ tion because, although they serve in the military, and participate in the same educational institutions and workforce, doubt is still some­ times cast on their legitimacy as Jews by civil and religious author- 3 Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 40. 4 Turner, Ritual Process, p. 95. 5 Turner, Forest qf Symbols, p. 97. 6 Carnegie, "Dundas and Nation", pp. 483-484. 7 Marcus and Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique, p. 86. .
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