Halacha and Reality: The Fate of Isaac b. Solomon’s Calendar Reform in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The radical calendar reform initiated by rabbi Isaac b. Solomon at the end of eighteenth century became a focal point of the calendar controversy among intellectual elite of the Karaite community of the Crimea. Due to administrative support from the local Karaite leader Benjamin Aga a new method of the calculation of the new moon had been utilized in the early nineteenth century. Yet, after the death of Isaac b. Solomon (1826) the calendar controversy resumed once again as a part and parcel of the intellectual environment. Utilizing new archival material, the article focuses on the circumstances of the new stage of the calendar controversy in the opening decades of the nineteenth centuries. Most of the Karaite sages of the time tended to adopt an intermediate option by using the contradictory methods of Elijah Bashyachi and Isaac b. Solomon at the same time. Unfortunately, this approach to the calendar problem was not successful and led to a fierce public polemic and even disobedience from the side of the ardent adherences of the calendar reform. The stalemate was resolved only in 1840 through the personal intervention of Simhah Babovich, secular leader of the Crimean Karaite of the time.