"KARAITES" IN EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AMSTERDAM* YOSEF KAPLAN In a series of articles, Richard Popkin has shown how the Karaites pre- sented an intellectual challenge to the Christian Hebraists and millenar- ians of the seventeenth century. Similarly, he has proven that the way in which the Karaites were perceived by some of the Hebraists, particularly Richard Simon, also influenced sceptical Sephardi Jews in Amsterdam from the end of the seventeenth century. These Jews tended to see the Karaites as an expression of pure and rational Judaism. I am very pleased to dedicate this article to my dear friend Richard Popkin, whose work has been a constant source of intellectual stimulation for me, open- ing new paths for understanding historical and intellectual phenomena in early modern Jewish society. I In First Adar 5472 (1712), a year and a half before the outbreak of the controversy surrounding Nehemia Hiyya Hayon, in the aftermath of Sabbateanism in Amsterdam, the Spanish and Portuguese community in that city was shaken by another affair, of which only faint echoes have reached us. This latter affair is not mentioned at all in the historiographi- cal literature of Dutch Jewry. Authors of works ofthat time, such as the documented chronicle written by David Franco Mendes about the his- tory of his community, appear to have attempted to wipe out any trace of it and thus to ignore its implications l . Modern scholarship has also * This paper was written at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew Univer- sity in Jerusalem, where I was a research fellow in 1986-1987. An earlier Hebrew version was published in Zion, Hi (1987), 279-314. 1 See D. Franco Mendes, Memorias do Establecimento e Progresso dos Judeoas Portuguezes e Espanhoes nesta Jamosa cidade de Amsterdam, ed. with an Introduction and Annotations by L. Fuks & R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Studio. Rosenthaliana, ix (1975). See p. 104 there, re- garding 1712; also regarding the controversy with Nehemia Hiyya Hayon: Franco Mendes is careful not to discuss the matter in detail, see p. 106. See also L. Fuks & R. Fuks-Mansfeld, "Jewish Historiography in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th Cen- turies", in S. Baron Jubilee Volume, /(Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 447ff. ; cf. idem, "Joodse geschiedschrijving in de Republiek in de 17e en 18e eeuw", Studia Rosenthaliana, vi (1972), 149ff.