Troki, Lutsk, Halicz, and Kiev:
the Eastern European Communities

Orah Zaddikim (The Way of the Righteous)
Simhah Isaac Luzki
Crimea, ca. 1800
ms. 3359

Karaite tradition traces the settlements in Eastern Europe to 1398, when the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas (1392-1430), defeated the Tatars of the Crimea and deported Crimean prisoners of war, among them Karaites, to Troki (now in southeastern Lithuania). From there they migrated to Lutsk (Volhynia) and Halicz (Galicia). But recent scholarship has shown that the Karaites in fact came north of their own volition more than a century earlier, in 1246, and settled in Halicz before moving farther north to Lutsk and Troki. Unlike their Rabbanite counterparts, who spoke Yiddish, Karaites in eastern Europe spoke Judeo-Tatar, the language of the Crimean Jews. Under Polish rule the Karaites in these towns enjoyed greater economic privileges than their Rabbanite brethren. They also maintained close contact with the Karaite communities of the Crimea.

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