LUTZKI, JOSEPH SOLOMON BEN MOSES. Igereth Teshu’ath Yisrael [Epistle of Israel’s Salvation: History of the Karaites under Tsar Nicholas I]

In 1827, Tsar Nicholas I systematically began conscripting Jewish males into the military to serve twenty-five year terms of service ( “Cantonists”). Immediately, the Crimean leaders of the Karaites, Simcha Babovich (1790-1855) and Joseph Solomon Lutzki (d. 1844) travelled to St. Petersburg to seek a military exemption for their Community. The present work by Lutzki and his brother-in-law the renowned Karaite scholar Abraham Firkovich, is a detailed account of their ultimately successful mission . The draft exemption was procured by having Karaism classified by the Tsar as a religion apart from Judaism. Indeed a century later, when the German invaded the Crimea in World War II, the Karaites were once again spared draconian treatment due to the ruling that they constituted a separate religion from mainstream Jewry. See P.E. Miller, Karaite Separatism in Nineteenth-Century Russia (1993) - a full-length transcription of Lutzki’s Igereth. See also Scripture and Schism: Samaritan and Karaite Treasures from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary (2000) pp. 112-4 (no. 57)