The Great Karaite Debate Part 1

In the old days it was not unusual for a Karaite scholar to sit across from a Rabbanite clergy and debate the essential differences between our two sects. Those days are sadly gone becuase with our dwinding population, there is no longer a concern that as Karaites we will persuade the mass of Jews to switch their theological allegiance to our view. As Yakov Kahana and Judah Loew continue the ancient debate in Shadows of Trinity (http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html) it is obvious that the Rabbanites have dismissed any concerns regarding Karaites. That being the case, the Rabbis are no longer worried that we represent a threat to their coveted authority and therefore they no longer believe there's a need for direct debate. Essentially its a form of contempt but that is nothing knew from those that have always held us in low regard. But that's fine since there are enough recent literary discussions regarding their views of Karaism that I can take my proper place in my third great grandfather's shoes and challenge them through the utilisation of their own media releases. Dan Ross's Acts of Faith which is subtitled "A Journey To the Fringes of Jewish Identity" provides you with the author's attitude before opening the book cover. Already labelled as a fringe of Jewish identity, the implication is already implanted in the reader's mind. What else do we associate with 'the Fringe?' There's lunatic fringe, societal fringe, the paranormal Fringe television series, outsider's fringe, religious fringe, being on the fringe, in fact almost all have negative connotations except for one which is fringe benefits. But even then it is an implication that the benefits are outside the so-called norm.


The True Heretics
Ross begins his chapter with the comment that Karaites benefitted in World War II from the Nazi obsession of who was a Jew and who wasn't. The implication is that somehow all Karaites escaped the death camp because the Nazis were confused by our origins. Yes, there were many that survived the persecution because the Nazi Home Office was persuaded that Karaites were all of Tartar origins and therefore did not meet their definition of who was a Jew. But at the same time, many of the death squads never bothered to try and sift through the Jews in the communities they were assigned to cleanse. It was too much of a bureaucratic nightmare and when it became time to round the people up and shift them out it was done with big nets that didn't descriminate. Those in my family taken from their homes in Vienna and sent to die at Thereisenstadt certainly didn't have an identity card that said "we are Karaite." It didn't matter. And when Dr. Rikhail Iosefova Goldenthal refused to leave off her medical administrations to the Jews in Odesssa being abused by the Nazi occupiers, it was far more expedient to kill her than keep sending her warnings to stop. So yes, there were some stories of leniency in Romania, the Ukraine, etc. that meant that even the Final Solution would never have been final since there would have been survival of some Karaites but to suggest that somehow in general we were left completely untouched by the Nazi oppression and death camps is a complete falsehood.

Ross makes it clear that he sees the Karaites as something outside Judaism, not part of it. He says we practice a truncated form of Judaism, rejecting the Talmud and other rabbinical writings. That we all claimed to be from Tartar tribes who adopted a Jewish like religion and we all spoke a Tartar dialect. Yes, the genes for blonde hair and blue eyes run in my family. Three of my four children have blonde hair and blue eyes, but that does not make myself or them any less descendants of Semitic stock than any other Jew. Tartar dialect, no, but Arabic spoken in the family, yes but not since the passing of Jakob Goldenthal in 1867. What would have been more accurate was to suggest that Karaites were probably more likely to adopt the dialect of the land in which they lived and use it more commonly than Yiddush or Hebrew in every day life. And not only did we adopt the local language but often the local dress code as well, appearing more like the general population than the Ashkenazi Jews that surrounded us. Did that make us Tartar? No, that made us in many ways more progressive even though the accusation was that our practices were archaic and that we as a people were trapped in a time warp. To infer that our Judaism was truncated also suggests that in some way it is incomplete. And rejected the Talmud and rabbinical writings implies that somehow we turned away from something that is right or unquestionable. How about expressing it more correctly in that we only follow what was given to us by God and we are unwilling to accept the writings of men that have often twisted or corrupted the original words. What we have been accused of rejecting is nothing more than a commentary and implying that by doing so we have rejected part of the religion is not only false and misleading but displays an arrogance that is the hallmark of Rabbanite Judaism.

Ross qualifies his non-Jew statement by saying that this was the claim made by the Karaites themselves but most non-Karaite scholars knew they were Jews but just happened to be heretics. Once again we are being labelled with the term 'heretic'. How is it that disagreeing with Rabbanite interpretations makes us heretics? Logic would say that those that have insisted there is a need to interpret and twist the words of the Torah to suit their own end would be the heretics. A heretic is one that rejects the original word and sees a need to interpret it in a different way. That being the case, then the Rabbanites are actually the heretics. Rather than having endured this accusation for a thousand years, my Karaite brethren and ancestors failed to reverse the accusation and call a spade a spade. We were the orthodoxy, they were the heretics and we permitted them to brand us incorrectly.

The Census
At the time Ross wrote his Chapter he siad there were about ten thousand Karaites living in Israel. He could not give exact numbers because Karaite Law forbids their being counted in a census. Funny that, I thought that was Tanach Law. That God instructed his prophets to condemn any King in Israel that tried to take a census. That he forbade Jews from doing so as no man was to know the actual count of the Children of Israel. They were to be like the stars in the heavens; innumerable. Thus, an ordination from God is now being accused of being a Karaite Law as if we were in the wrong. Very peculiar.

Ross then states that Karaite status under Israeli law is ambiguous. That they are considered Jews but have their own rabbis, chief rabbinate, national council, kosher slaughterers, mohels, and religious courts. And then makes the statement that they are not legally permitted to marry other Jews. I fail to see the ambiguous part. Having our own religious structures and religious services should not implay in any way that our status as Jews is doubtful. The Rabbanite orthodoxy, conservative and reform movements all have their own councils, teachers and practices and no one is accusing any of them of being of an ambiguous status. And as far as I understand it, the illegality of Karaites marrying a Rabbanite Jew is imposed by the Rabbanite orthodox courts insisting that a Karaite must abandon his/her centuries old faith and become a Rabbanite in order to marry. Ambiguous? Sounds prejudicial and smacking of religious intolerance. There is nothing ambiguous about it. In fact it is all very obvious.

The ground work is now laid for this debate. Over the next few articles I will challenge statements made by Dan Ross in his book. Hopefully it wil invite comments from both sides. The hiatus is over. It is time for Karaites to rechallenge the old accusations and let the world know that we are a presence and we do not intend to fade away.

Saying No to the Talmud

The essential and fundamental concept within Karaism is that there was never any Oral Law or Tradition that was given to Moses on Sinai at the same time he was receiving the Written Law. This debate could go on for an eternity with my Rabbinic adversaries which it has done already for over two millennia without any end in sight. In previous arguments I have taken the more traditional course of argument and used many of the standard quotations derived from the Torah, as one can read in my hub, http://hubpages.com/hub/And-Joshua-Said but this has been a debating tool that we Karaites have used for centuries without any progress in having the correctness of our stance acknowledged by Rabbanites. And the few Rabbinical scholars that have admitted that we are possibly correct in stating, “that is what the Torah stipulated” have always qualified their acknowledgement with a ‘but’ insisting that the Torah can’t be accepted literally in every particular instance. If that were true then their argument would suggest as an extension of logic that no part of the Old Testament should be taken literally; that in its entirety it is merely an incomplete guideline that has always required human intervention and interpretation. Therein is the first fallacy Rabbanites have concocted since the actual Talmud was only compiled between the second and fourth centuries AD and even then it was always under constant debate and modification, indicating that it was still conjectural. This completely ignores the fact that the Jewish people had already survived for fifteen hundred years without the Talmud. Since most of that period had been under the jurisdiction and jurisprudence of the priesthood or Sadducees, then it was only the literal Torah with its written laws that governed the people thereby proving that the written laws that were already in existence were sufficient without the human application of ‘oral laws’ the rabbis insisted upon.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Torah or written law was insufficient and not intended to be taken literally or at face value. That being the case, then the extension of that Rabbinical argument would be that the Ten Commandments weren’t actually written in stone, pardon the pun, but merely suggestions that required Rabbinic interpretation as well. By casting doubt on one part of the Torah, in effect doubt is cast on all parts. By their own willingness to include a fudge factor, being the Oral Law that constitutes the Talmud, the Rabbis in fact have opened a virtual Pandora’s Box which in turn led to the eventual schisms that birthed Christianity and Islam as I will explain.

Creating a Historical Claim of Hearing it From Moses

Whereas my predecessors within Karaism have always taken the more confrontational stance against Rabbinical Judaism, instead I will take this opportunity to approach the argument from the Rabbinical viewpoint and in doing so, hopefully demonstrate the folly of the Oral Law. As highlighted in the previous paragraph, all dictums and laws in the Torah become susceptible to rabbinical debate and interpretation, even the aforementioned Ten Commandments. Way back when the Talmud was first being documented, the rabbinical sage, Rabbi Joshua said that he had received the laws he was expounding as a tradition from Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, who heard it from his teacher, who heard it from his teacher and so on, all the way back to the laws given to them by Moses at Sinai. In fact you will find a lot of quotes to that effect in the Talmud. The old, “Heard it from Moses at Sinai,” thereby elevating their opinion to a level beyond dispute because they claimed Moses said it. By creating an ‘authentication history’ these Rabbis were able to enforce their dictums on people that would not go against anything Moses said. The problem with this argument was that there was no historical connection between the Rabbis and Moses. In fact prior to the development of the Pharasaic sect in the second century BC, there weren’t any rabbis at all. Any laws were passed down through the Beth Din (courts) which were institutes under the control of the priesthood. So if Moses had actually passed down traditions orally, it certainly would not have been through a chain of Rabbis that never existed. Once again this is just another fallacy being foisted upon the adherents of Rabbinical Judaism.
As an extension of the Rabbinical argument that the Torah was merely a bulletin point document that required the Talmud to explain its actual intellectual intent, I’ll return to the subject of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20:3 God commands that the people will have no other gods before him. In fact he confirms this in 20:5 that He is a jealous god. If this commandment was open to interpretation as the Rabbis have suggested in their justification of the Talmud, then it could be argued that God was suggesting that there were other gods in existence just that none of them were to be worshipped ahead of Him otherwise He would become jealous. After all, as I pointed out, if you argue that the Torah is incomplete and required Oral Traditions in order to provide its exact meaning, then I could equally claim that there was a rabbinical scholar that had a teacher, who had a teacher and so on that heard from Moses directly at Sinai that God did say that there were lesser gods in existence that weren’t to be worshipped. You either have to apply the concept of Oral Law to everything, or nothing at all. You can’t have it both ways. As soon as the Rabbis opened this non-negotiable issue to debate they unleashed the inevitable, which manifested itself in the concept that there could be secondary gods within Judaism and this in turn resulted in ‘the Son of God’ sect which began as a Jewish subgroup.

Even Rabbinic Legends Admit The Oral Tradition is a Fabrication

It is not as if the Rabbis themselves do not acknowledge that the claim of the Talmud being sacrosanct and passed down by Moses is a fabrication. Their own legends basically admit to this. In one of their many stories regarding the Talmudic scholars, they talk about King Manasseh who brought back idol worship into Israel. As the Rabbis discussed why he had done so, they acknowledged that it was due to his intense study of the law in which he had arrived at fifty-two different interpretations of the book of Leviticus; that in so doing he had become confused and this weakened his moral strength thus turning to idolatry. As if that is not admission enough that their own endeavors to interpret the written law of the Torah via multiple oral traditions and laws would lead to dysfunction and immorality within Judaism, they tell another story about Rab Ashi, their famous compiler of the Talmud that one day he announced to his students, “Tomorrow I shall speak about our colleague, Manasseh.” To refer to King Manasseh as their colleague by the Rabbis is definitely Freudian when analyzed. That night when Rab Ashi slept, King Manasseh came to him in a dream. The Rabbi put a question to the king regarding the interpretation of a ritual that he himself could not find the answer for. The king was able to answer without hesitation, amazing the rabbi with his fount of knowledge. Stunned by the King’s intellectual abilities, he asked how one so intelligent could have worshipped idols. To which Manasseh answered, “If you had been around at the time I lived, you would have caught hold of the hem of my garment and run after me!” Simply put, the Rabbis with this story were admitting that their great sage, Rab Ashi, compiler of the Talmud, teacher and expounder of what became rabbinical Judaism was in fact no different from the man referred to in historical legend as ‘evil King Manasseh.’ By creating and compiling the Talmud he had set Judaism on the same course that Manasseh did with his idolatry. By their own words they condemn themselves. So why Karaism if I was to put it simply? Because even the Rabbanites recognize the error of their ways. In the famous discussion between Rabbi Judah ben Loew and Yakov Kahana, as they sat on a bench together in the island park of Prague, (see Shadows of Trinity from Eloquent Books: http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html)it became clearly evident that the Rabbis would say and do whatever they deemed necessary to lead the people. It is not to say that there intention was evil nor necessarily for the purpose of attaining atuhority and power, but as Yakov recognized from his meeting, merely the misguided and deluded notions of men blinded by the magnificence of their own self-agrandizement.

The Trial of Jesus: Toldoth Jeshua

You're probably wondering what am I talking about this time. Well, it's pretty simple. I'm going to talk about another book I happen to have in my collection. You guessed it, it's called “Toldoth Jeshua". But what's it mean. Translated, it means the Generations of Jesus. Odd title you'd think since according to the New Testament, Jesus didn't have any generations to speak of. But this book that was written in about the 14th century and based on material from the second century had a lot of interesting things to say. I came into possession of this document after I wrote and published Caiaphas Letters, so its quite amazing that it confirms many of the statements I make as fact in my book.
One of the most serious libels made against the Jews was the blame for killing Jesus. Pope John Paul II fortunately condemned this libel and expunged it from the Roman Catholic teachings, and this should be appreciated, but it was long in coming and over the last two thousand years the number of Jews that died because of this libel was astronomical, especially when one considers it as a premise to the Nazi holocaust.
Now this may sound a little controversial coming from me but what if I was to say that it wasn’t really all the Church’s fault for fostering this belief in the first place? What if I was to say that the great sages of Judaism in the second century,the Tannim or these Rabbis of reverence that put together the Talmud were responsible for the libel themselves! That in an effort to show the world how strict they were as enforcers of God’s will, they were willing to spread a lie that either because their brains were too addled with age, or as a Karaite I beleive they were only interested in hearing the sounds of their own voices and were more than too happy to tell everyone a lie.”
What most people don't realize is that these so called paragons of virtue and Judaism actually wrote a section into the Talmud concerning their role in Jesus’ death! Let me tell you quickly what it said:
“It is taught that for all others liable for the death penalty, except for the enticer to idolatry, we do not hide witnesses. They light a lamp for him in the inner chamber and place a witness in the outer chamber so that they can see and hear him while he cannot see or hear them. One says to him,” Tell me again what you said to me in private.” If the prisoner repents, then good, but if he says, ‘This is our obligation and what we must do,’ then he is to be brought into the courtroom and stoned. And then they hung him on the eve of Passover.”
If you're trying to follow the connection let me explain that these Rabbis were trying to recall a very special meeting of the Sanhedrin that happened a couple of hundred years earlier. I'll point out some of their controversial comments. It was a night meeting, hence the need for the lamp. The courts of the Sanhedrin were held in buildings that relied on natural light, therefore it was prohibited to meet at night unless it was an emergency. In this case it obviously was one. But they got it wrong. The witnesses placed outside were there to come in and defend the accused. They already had their numbers to make up the tribunal inside. They were the judges, not the witnesses. As we know from the stories about that night, Jesus's witness refused to enter into the chamber and three times Peter denied not knowing him. Without his second witness, (it took two to prove you innocent of the charges), Jesus was condemned. Now the rabbis in this particular paragraph never refer to Jesus, only to an idolator, so the question should be how do I know they’re not talking about another case? Because they refer back in the Toldoth Jeshua to this section of the Talmud as being the trial of Ben Stada. Now I probably have you completely confused. It would have been more correct to refer to what is a Ben Stada in order to understand their play on words. The Rabbis loved to do that back then. They thought they were quite funny. They did it with the next messiah too, Simon Bar Kochba. As soon as he lost the war, they referred to him as Simon Bar Kosiba, or ’the son of lies’. Somehow they forgot that it was one of their own that proclaimed him as the messiah in the first place. So they did the same thing to Jesus as well. He would have been referred to as Jesus Ha Stadlan. The intercessor by his followers. Because that’s what he did. He was the intercessor for people to reach God. Remember that he said everyone seeking God must come through him.
So, now that you have an appreciation for their sense of humor, these rabbis don’t refer to him as an intercessor for God but instead call him Ben Stota or Stada in an alternate dialect; the ‘son of absolute utter nonsense’ or as we would say today, the son of bullshit.”
Also remember that in the Talmud is says that he was taken out and stoned and then hung from a tree on the eve of Passover.”
There are three important things you should notice right there. Firstly, if he was stoned to death, why were they bothering to hang him on a crucifix? Couldn’t kill him twice. And then secondly there’s the matter that the Roman authorities only let the Sanhedrin stone people, they didn’t have the authority to crucify a prisoner. And lastly, notice how it was the eve of the Passover. Just as I described it in Caiaphas Letters. The Gospels all say the crucifixion happened on the Passover. So this passage from the Talmud is in harmony with what I've written.
In another passage of Toldoth Jeshua it is written: ‘On the eve of the Passover they hung Yeshu and the crier went forth for forty days beforehand declaring that Yeshu is to be stoned for practicing witchcraft, for enticing and leading Israel astray. Anyone who knows something to clear him should come forth and exonerate him. But no one came forward in his defense and they hung him on the eve of Passover. Yeshu was different because he was close to government.’ So now you have the Toldoth Jeshua in harmony with that passage from the Talmud and both confirming it was the eve of the Passvoer and that this individual was named Jeshua or Jesus.
Once again the Toldoth Jehsua is providing some interesting aspects that other than in Caiaphas Letters, no one else has ever mentioned. For almost a month and a half there’s this attempt to try and create a case so that he can’t be touched. The emphasis in Toldoth Jeshua was they they tried to prove him innocent asking people to come forward to clear and exonerate him. Very different from the condemning version in the Talmud. But when it came to the night of the trial, those that were supposed to exonerate him never came through. In other words, Peter didn’t do his part of the plan. The writer of the Toldoth Jeshua tries to explain this special treatment of trying to save him was due to the fact that he was close to government. Well, they might as well have said because he was related to the High Priest because the only Jewish government at the time was the High Priest, and to be close was another way of implying a familial relationship. It also says that he was being helped by the High Priest at the time who just happened to be Caiaphas. Again this confirms the High Priest family connection I described in Caiaphas Letters.

The question one has to answer is why, if as in the Toldoth Jeshua there is recorded a definite attempt by the officials in Judea to save Jesus, and this book was based on original documentation from much earlier times, why would a group of supposedly educated men, paragons of virtue write such a stupid and inaccurate thing in the Talmud that actually suggests the Sanhedrin wanted to kill Jesus. The answer is simple; they couldn’t stop themselves. The whole idea behind the Talmud was to write as much down as they could remember because there was no central stores or archives left following the destruction of the Temple. Then they would analyze and embellish what they had written. But in a lot of the cases, this embellishment was merely the addition of hearsay and innuendo. Their memories of events may have been poor, but their imaginations certainly were not. They were in overdrive. They didn’t even try to be accurate. By the time the Talmud was being written, Christianity was already becoming the new power and Jews were already being persecuted by this new religion. So why not tell a very disparaging story and gloat about the death of the Christian messiah. Human nature has remained a constant throughout history. And this was one way of saying, “in your face, buddy! Stupid, yes, but then these supposedly intelligent men never thought the Talmud would be read by anyone that wasn't Jewish.
In their minds they were disproving the claims of Christianity by saying they were responsible for the death of Jesus. After all, how could he be the son of God, or for that matter, even the messiah, if they could kill him? So this invented story of theirs became our own undoing. We suffered because they gloated. But worst of all, they gloated over an entirely false and ludicrous story that they created for their own personal egos.”
Now one might point out that as a Karaite, I have no fondness for the Rabbis of old, I certainly don't give any credence to the Talmud and therefore I view them in a negative light. True, I admit it. We suffered for two thousand years because of their misguided beliefs. Had they only stayed to the facts, I think they would have found that most educated people would have understood what occurred in the framework of the time and circumstances. I'm not naive and saying that the early Church would not have pursued its policy of deicide if they hadn’t written the inaccurate story of Jesus into the Talmud but I don’t believe the persecutions would have been conducted as vehemently as they were. What you have in the Gospels is the story of Caiaphas sending Jesus to Antipas, and then to Pilate. Pilate pronounced sentence and Roman soldiers performed the execution. You actually have evidence of the Jewish authorities abdicating their responsibility and handing it over to these other powers. Therefore the role of the Jewish authorities is minimalized.
When you read about the confrontation between the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew, and the Nasi, Yakov Kahana in Shadows of Trinity, you are seeing the two worlds of Karaism and Judaism clash. The former regarding the Talmud as the work of foolish men and the latter that deemed themselves worthy of interpreting Gods words, convinced that there were hidden meanings, detailed instructions, and numerous restrictions behind every word. But as the above story has pointed out, words can be very dangerous when they used improperly. Less would have definitely been better!

THE WELL OF JACOB

So now begins the search for clues to solve the mystery of Jacob's well. As suggested in my last blog, my ancestor Jakob was sending down a messages through the ages. He knew exactly what he was doing; of that I have no doubt. Placing a not so discrete inscritption on his cover page referring to the Karaites on a book that was supposedly a Talmudic commentary would be like placing a red flag in front of a bull. You only do it if you know you're going to get an anticipated response. But a response from whom is the question. The fact that Jakob was able to get away with this sort of thing was a further indication that he was considered a secular writer and the rabbinical colleges wouldn't have been using his books in their teaching programs. So if not intended for Rabbinical studies, then who else did Jakob think would be reading a book on Talmudic law? You have a choice of two other possible groups;religious scholars that examine the discourses much in the same way a biologist examines cells under a microscope, or else the Karaites themselves who studied the Talmud so they could point out the inconsistencies and its failings. In truth, Jakob Goldenthal was probably writing for both these groups, since he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was sending a message which was obvious from this single coverplate. But this was only from only one of his books and he authored many. At some point I will have to review his work on Aristotle. My copy of the book is becoming quite frayed and aged, and I've been reluctant to do much with it but I think it deserves a thorough search for cryptic messages as well.
And nothing could be more cryptic than his reference to the Well of Jacob. I have been searching through a tonne of information regarding this well. It has quite a history and was far more significant than merely a place to water your sheep. Knowing which avenue to venture in trying to decode his reference will be the hard part. Not impossible though. I'm certain that it will shout out to me when I stumble across it. And I have begun the deliberate search to find the answer in earnest so as far as I'm concerned, it's only a matter of time. To all you cryptohistorians out there, I ask your help on this quest for understanding. Your suggestions and analyses are most welcome. Your input is essential.

The Old Testement never talks directly about the well dug by Jacob. It does talk about the land he purchased outside the village of Shechem and one must assume that the well was required to water his livestock. The bible does tell us that he was quite wealthy in that regard, having herds and flocks that were envied by the people of Shechem. And at the time of Jesus there was a specific site referred to as Jacob's well as recorded in the New Testament.

Reports vary on the depth of the well from 240 feet in 670 AD to 67 feet in 1881 AD. They even vary on whether or not the well is fed from an underground stream so that the water is constantly moving making it cool and refreshing at all times or if it is dependant on percolation and rainfall, suggesting that the water could be stale. Jesus referred to it as "living water" when the Samaritan woman gave him a drink from it as gleand from the reference in John 4:6 and subsequently. It is identified as Jacob's well then and has been referred to as being such by Samaritans, Jews, Muslims and Christians ever since which is a good indication that it was call this long before Jesus drank from it. The well is located at the entrance to the valley between Ebal and Gerizim, approximately 2 miles south-east of Shechem. If its current diameter of about 8 feet reflects its original size and though 75 feet in depth now, but much deeper in ancient times as previously mentioned, then the digging of this well would have been a major accomplishment and expense. Trying to imagine workers in a confined space penetrating that deep into the ground in order to reach water when the valley of Shechem is not in short supply of streams and other water sources leaves one asking one question; Why?
Not even one question but many. Why dig three times the depth of what would be considered the water table at 75 feet? Why at Shechem, a place the bible describes as the town where Jacob's sons decimate the male population and take their wives and children to be their slaves? Why was this well so special to be identified with Jacob even though there's no mention of it in the Old Testament? And of course how did he do it? Not only the depth but how did diggers manage to go below the water level? And if the answer to that was proof that it was an underground stream that took 240 feet to reach and the high level is only the result of positive pressure then that only leads to another question. Who in their right mind would dig 240 feet to reach an underground stream and how would they even know it was there?

As for the mention of Karite holy days being celebrated at the well, this may have been Jacob's way of saying he saw little difference between the Karaites and the Samaritans. Two sects of Jews that practiced a form of Judaism without the requirement of the Talmud followed so closely by Rabbinic Jews. And if this was only a symbolic reference, Karaites being like the Samaritans, then was it possible that the Well of Jacob was also only a symbolic reference. Could my ancestor had been using it as a metaphor but if so, a metaphor for what?

If Jacob Goldenthal was well aware of the events recorded in Shadows of Trinity (http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html) could it be that the Jacob of the Well was in fact a veiled reference to his own ancestor Yakov Kahana, one of the heroes of the book? It was obvious that the Church feared Yakov was in some way an incarnation of "the Living Water." Was Jacob's use of the inscription on the coverplate merely his way of saying remember the story of Yakov Kahana? Or is there far more afoot and we are merely scratching at the surface?