Judah Hadassi

Judah ben Elijah Hadassi, known as ha-avel (the mourner, as in a mourner for the destruction of Zion), was a Byzantine Karaite scholar and leader. He lived in Constantinople. Little is known about Hadassi’s life. His most important work was The Cluster of Henna (Eshkol ha-kofer), a treatise dedicated to Karaite law and theology. Eshkol ha-kofer follows a unique arrangement, built on multiple acrostics and rhyme schemes. Hadassi polemicizes at length against Christians and Rabbanites and displays deep knowledge of earlier Karaite literature. This work also contains a list of ten cardinal beliefs. Hadassi was influential among later Byzantine Karaites, and his poetry appears in some Karaite prayer books. Among other works, Hadassi wrote Iggeret ha-teshuvah, a digest of an eleventh-century Judeo-Arabic work on the Karaite laws of consanguinity by Yeshu‘a ben Judah.