The Town as a Source of Conflict: The Social Behavior of Karaite and Rabbanite Communities in Taking Over Troki

Jewish community in the GDL spread in to tiny group of Karaites, and the dominating one of Rabbanites. Small in number and power, Karaites kept struggling with economic competition of Rabbanites and tried to make use of the might and authority of the dominating society and its political elite. As early as in 1646 the Troki Karaite community gained a privilege of the king Wladislaw IV Waza prohibiting Rabbanite Jews to settle in the town (re-confirmed several times in 19th c.). First being only a mean to regulate economic relations between two groups, later in the 19th century it became an ideological tool for virtual territorialization of Karaites in the town of Troki. Imperial government (including local and state authorities) by repeatedly issuing this prohibition let the Karaites to exploit Troki as virtual homeland of their community and strengthened formation of their national identity.

The presentation will examine the development of prohibition for Rabbanite Jews to settle in the town of Troki; it will show the process how the purely economic issue was transformed into ideological fight for a territory, which did not belong to these communities but through virtual territorialization became an imagined Homeland for Lithuanian Karaites. It will argue that through the mediation of particular town, Karaite community managed to draw identity boundaries between them and the others – the Rabbanite Jews.