Just for the record in the history of the Karaite Jews of Egypt in modern times [Unknown Binding]

Mourad El-Kodsi (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 231 pages
• Publisher: Wilprint, Inc (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962005223
• ISBN-13: 978-0962005220
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,282,048 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent historical work, October 11, 2007

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Just for the record in the history of the Karaite Jews of Egypt in modern times

I was extremely fortunate to obtain a copy of Murad al-Qudsi's rare 2002 book (Wilprint, Inc, Lyons, N.Y.) while researching a piece on former Stanford professor Joel Beinin.

Beginning on page 202, the book includes 2 pages of al-Qudsi's comments on Beinin's discredited 1998 book, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, followed by some 26 pages of documents, articles and letters, elucidating Beinin's determination to misrepresent the factual history concerning the Karaite Jewish community of Egypt.

Al-Qudsi, for those who know no Arabic, means "from Jerusalem," indicating the al-Qudsi family's ties, dating back thousands of years, to the capital of Israel and the Jewish people. In fact, contrary to Beinin's contention, as the documents and record in this book show, the Karaite Jewish community are fervent Zionists, as they have been since the Babylonian conquest of Judea in 568 BCE--and the movement's origin, as a movement, following the second conquest of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Al-Qudsi includes information about Beinin's false representations of Karaite history, and more specifically, the contents of interchanges he had with Beinin following the latter's initial misrepresentations in a 1997 online article, as well as Beinin's written replies, in which he dared to deny facts as experienced and documented by the Karaite Jewish community, which was isolated in ghettos for its duration in Egypt, and then forced to leave Egypt in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, along with other Sephardic Jewish people whose rights, possessions, jobs and wealth were stripped.

A genuine scholar would have, in addition to interviewing the subjects of his work, documented their statements with written Karaite and Egyptian historical publications and records such as are included in this book. But Beinin denied their veracity without even so much as citing any of these valuable sources in his work.

Al-Qudsi here exposes as an American-born, Communist anti-Zionist whose stated political agenda--rather than thorough and genuine research--governs his entire body of work. This material clearly demonstrates why the Karaite community is so deeply offended by Beinin's polemical work, which his Stanford affiliation allowed him (for a time anyway) to falsely parade as scholarship.

In addition to this extremely valuable chapter, the book also contains exact photocopies of many Karaite historical photographs, journals, newspapers, manuscripts and so on, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, and the important truths about this intellectually rich, Jewish religious community.

At the time I received this book, al-Qudsi was about 91 and remained as lucid as the day is long. His book is likewise lucid and scholarly, a source of enlightenment, in short, a real treasure.

--Alyssa A. Lappen