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In more than a century of geniza scholarship, certain themes have continually taken center stage in our progressive understanding of medieval Mediterranean society. The nature of the Jewish community counts among those themes, if nothing else, because the Genizah's documents frequently discuss communal offices and workings, without necessarily explicating them. In Heresy and the Politics of Community, Marina Rustow addresses this topic through the lens of Karaite-Rabbanite relations. Rustow propounds not only the integration of the Karaites and Rabbanites but also the Karaites' conspicuous--sometimes decisive--power in shaping the Jewish politics of the Fatimid Empire. With engaging prose, vigorous argumentation, and topical focus, Rustow succeeds in taking the conversation to the next level, if not a radically new direction.
Heresy and the Politics of Community falls into four parts that illustrate Karaite-Rabbanite complicity and even intimacy. In Part 1, Rustow describes the westward migration of both Iraqi Rabbanites and eastern Karaites, from Mesopotamia to Palestine and Egypt, the traditional stronghold of the Rabbanites of the Palestinian school. She highlights their shared biblical commitments and the diffuse nature of their power, which encouraged dynamic coalition building. Part 2 applies this theory to, among others, the Cairene Rabbanite leader Elhanan b. Shemarya, who attempted to secede from the Jerusalem and Iraqi academies. His move made surprisingly easy bedfellows of the Rabbanites and Karaites, since the latter, according to Rustow, were ready "to use their political power in the service of the ga'on of Jerusalem, including stamping out the embers of a Rabbanite rebellion in Fustat if needed" (164). Part 3 builds on the works of Judith Olszowy-Schlanger and others, in discussing Rabbanite-Karaite marriage, as well as other points of intersection and overlap in family and civil law. This part establishes the underlying terms by which Karaites and Rabbanites interacted, and as such, it might have been better placed directly after (or in) Part 1, for the sake of leaving the chronologically ordered argument of Parts 2 and 4 in...