I shall take up my parable

In “I shall take up my parable” (Esa’ meshali), a polemical text written in Hebrew verse, Se‘adya directs his diatribe both toward the Karaite community as a whole and toward an individual thought to have been named Ben Asher. Parts of the poem employ language similar to that used in the liturgical poetry of the time, and it incorporates numerous biblical and rabbinic quotations, although its content is not religious per se. In the excerpt translated here, Se‘adya attacks Karaite views on Hebrew grammar, Rabbanite traditions about tzitzit and mezuzahs, the laws of forbidden relationships, and their rejection of levirate marriage. He concludes by asking how one would know the details of building, say, a sukkah, without the rabbinic tradition. Gomer and Geter presumably stand in for sages from other nations. The tenth-century Karaite Salmon ben Yerūḥīm wrote a poetic response to “I shall take up my parable,” which he included in his polemical Book of the Wars of the Lord (Sefer milḥamot ha-shem); it relies on biblical language without rabbinic citations.