Joshua and the "Oral" Law

It is a central tenet of Orthodox Judaism that Moses transmitted the "oral law" to Joshua.   However, the Karaites reject this claim.  There is a very simple way to determine the validity or falsity of this claim. It can be done by reading the Book of Joshua. In the very first chapter we see:

7 Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law, which Moses My servant commanded thee; turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest have good success whithersoever thou goest.

8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy ways prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. 



V. 7 speaks of "all the Law", and that we (Israel) should not turn to the right (Orthodoxy) or the left (Reform) of it.    V. 8  speaks of the same law, and clarifies it is talking of the Book of Law, and that we should do according to what is Written in it!   Had there been the fictional oral law of the rabbis, then the instruction would be quite different.   Rabbis make a song and dance of the use of the word "mouth" to  suggest that it refers to an oral law. But the only "Oral" law is the written Law when we read it! 

Thus, Joshua held by Written law only.

Out for a Penny, in for a Pound – The Issur of “Lo Tosiphu” (Do Not Add)

One of the central criticisms of Rabbinic Judaism, is their violation of the Torah prohibition against adding.  This is repeated in several forms, especially in Deut 4:

2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

And Deut 13:

1 All this word which I command you, that shall ye observe to do; thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

For some further sources to the prohibition, see http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/im-sorry-but-its-called-adding.html

The purpose of this post is to look at how the rabbinical commentators on the Torah reacted specifically to the above verses in Deuteronomy.

Most famous of all rabbis is Rashi. He repeats his own claim for both verses, saying that the Torah speaks of adding modules to individual mitzvoth, eg adding a 5^th species to the Sukkot species. In doing so, he tries to avoid culpability of the rabbis for violating this Law in all of their Mishnaic and Talmudic prohibitions, fences etc. However, his claim if fallacious, and is not even adhered to by the rabbis he tries to defend (including himself). Thus, for example, adding an extra day to a Festival, such as Sukkot or Yom HaTeruah, is what he himself defines as a violation of the Law. Yet the rabbis do this in their practice, and he did himself. Since he has incriminated himself as a violator of the Torah, we cannot respect him as being an observant Jew.

It is interesting to note that none of the major commentators on the Torah actually agreed with Rashi.  First off, is Ibn Ezra. He comments only on the Deut 4:2 statement.  He explains this as saying “do not think that your own ideas or inventions will be on a par with those of the Torah, which does not command us to add to the Law” [my summary].  This is quite a clear rationale for not adding,  but it is uncomfortable for even the great Abraham Ibn Ezra, after all he was a strictly observant orthodox rabbi, and followed the laws of the Talmud in totality.

Next is Nachmanides, or RambaN. He takes issue with Rashi, and rightly so. His position is so extremely rational, that it would put even many Karaites to shame, let alone rabbis.  He quotes from, of all places, the Talmud, both the Babylonian and Jerusalem versions of the tractate Megillah.  These sources state that many sages (rabbis) and Prophets opposed the institution of the reading of the Megillat Esther, since it would be adding to the Torah.  This logic would also exclude the holiday of Purim, and all later practices, whether rabbinical blessings, especially those on things like lighting of candles, washing of hands etc, where the formula states “and commanded us to ..”. However, regardless of making such a blasphemous blessing, the very acts themselves of all rabbinic laws, as found in the Mishnah, Talmud, Shulchan Aruch etc are in blatant violation of the Torah.

Nachmanides has created a problem for himself, which he apparently is unable to exit from. And the problem exists for all rabbis, even Rashi. And this is the problem of “in for a penny , in for a pound”.  If adding is forbidden in a specific case, then it is also forbidden in other contexts as well.  The Torah does not say “do not add Purim”, it says “do not add.”

The same pattern emerges in the comments of another great and enlightened Rabbi, Obadiah  Sforno.  He writes that in some cases, adding may be “annoying” to God, and cause great anger, as in the cases of the strange fire of the sons of Aharon.  This may be the understatement of the millennium, since it is not only in some cases, but in all! Nevertheless, we must be grateful to Sforno for bringing to the readership an awareness of the danger of adding to the Torah.

Reading these various comments, we see that there is a serious degree of cognitive dissonance amongst the greatest rabbinical minds. On the one had, they are fully aware of the serious prohibition of adding, and subtracting to the Torah. And they even give a lucid explanation for it. On the other hand, they are still caught in the grip of their own rabbinic ideology and indoctrination, and continue to violate the very Law that they have just explained, in precisely the same manner as they have understood the Torah as forbidding.  So, the adage becomes “out for a penny, but in for a pound”.  When it comes to their commentary on the Torah,  the act of adding is strictly forbidden, but when it comes to generalised rabbinic practice, then they are all in for the violation of the Torah, despite their own protestations  to the contrary.

How to Dismantle a Propaganda Bomb

This article is a polemic from the Sadducean perspective.  Of course the Pharisee oppinents may must counter-arguments (and they did) against the Sadducees.  It is not an attack on Orthodox rabbis, but  a defence against the Pharisees of 2200 years ago who oppsoed the Kohanim.

A series of claims are made by the Pharisees to justify their authority, and their power to add new laws to the Torah.  To the untutored, it is sometimes difficult to effectively counter these arguments.  So here is a guide to dismantle the bomb.

1) The first claim that they make is that the Torah tells us to follow the Pharisees,  or Sanhedrin.  This is based on their false reading of verses in Deut 17.   see http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/that-which-they-shall-tell-you-claim.html

The Torah actually says that in case of a legal dispute, to “come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days” (Deut 17:9)

However, historical sources, including the rabbinical Talmud clearly state that the Priesthood were opponents to rabbinic laws.  Thus fulfillment of Deut 17 requires us to reject rabbinic law, the Talmud etc.  Furthermore, the founding fathers of Perushim were not Jews, but in fact descendants of Sennacherib. It was Shemaya and Avtalyon who opposed the Kohanim, and created a culture of rebellion against the Torah and elimination of the priesthood. The rabbis claim that they were converts to Judaism, but our claim is that they converted Judaism to something  which violates the Torah. See http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/talmudic-whistleblower-akavya-ben.html

2) The next claim that is  made is that they are in fact not violating the Torah’s injunction (Deut 4, and 13) to not add to the Torah.

http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/im-sorry-but-its-called-adding.html

They try to argue their way out of this, with sophistry, eg that adding is not adding if you call it something else; or adding is only prohibited when it applies to the details of specific mitzvah,  but not when creating an entirely new one.  This is so irrational, that it  only further disproves rabbanism.

3) Another series of arguments are that without the Oral Law, the Torah cannot be understood or practiced.  Much of this blog is dedicated to destroying those claims. But the general disproof to these arguments is that the Priesthood, ie the Sadducees, were able to practice the Written Torah without resort to an oral law, e.g. they were obviously able to sacrifice animals – and did not need a Talmud to tell them how to do so.

With these 3 general steps, and the many specific posts on this blog, the bomb of rabbinical warfare can be dismantled.

Naftali Zeligman’s Illogic

The Talk Reason website has a number of interesting articles, and challenges all aspects of Judaism, including the Written Torah. Most of the articles are aimed at orthodox “outreach” type rabbis, as well as the Intelligent Design movement.

One of the writers, a Mr Naphtali Zeligman, is an ex – Orthodox  yeshiva student, who raises many allegedly problematic issues for the Torah. I do not have a definitive set of answers to all of his points, but here is one where he seems to err in his zeal  to criticise the Torah.

The verse from Exodus 16 states:

35 And the children of Israel did eat the manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat the manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.

Zeligman claims that Moses could not have written this, and he cites a Talmudic statement that suggests the manna stopped falling on the day Moses died, but they had reserves for another month or so.   However, Joshua 5 suggests that the Manna stopped falling the day after the Pesah –

“12 And the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the produce of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.”

Even if the Talmud is contradicted by Joshua, which it most likely is, Zeligman’s question has not yet been resolved.  But, upon closer scrutiny of the verse in Exodus, we see that there is not really a problem at all.

Zeligman claims that since Moses writes in the past tense, this verse could only have been written after the Israelites entered Israel.  And he claims, that this is proof of Moses’ non-authorship, of at least the verse in question. This claim is flawed logically and textually.

Moses is only stating that up to the point where they reached the border of Israel/Canaan, the Israelites had eaten manna. He is not saying that it stopped at that point. Moses had time to view the Land of Israel, from the border, before his death, thus he had the opportunity to write this verse, before his death, and make a statement of what they had been eating.  Hence, Zeligman has misunderstood the text itself.  But his argument is also illogical. The claim that the verse is in the past tense and hence was doctored later on, is logically false.  It is in the past tense and is correct up to the point in time when it was written. It makes no statement about the future, i.e. what occurs in the period immediately after Moses’ death. He does not state whether they will continue to eat manna beyond the border, or if it will be Canaanite pizza. In fact, had the verse been written later on, it may well have concurred with the verse in Joshua 5. Hence, the evidence from Exodus 16:35 gives stronger support for its Mosaic authorship than of a later authorship.

And this kind of logical fallacy does occur often in such diatribes.  They are very frequently copies of previous such essays, and the authors rely on arguments that they have not thought through very carefully.

 

Erdogan's Islamo-Centrism

 


In today's news we read  the outrageous claim by Turkey's Islamist President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that it was Muslims who in fact discovered America, prior to Columbus. This Islamo- centrism is an ugly feature of fundamentalism, and the rejection of fact or reason.  Another example is the Palestinian claim that there was never an Israelite Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, where the current occupier happens to be a mosque.

However, this post is not intended to take on Islam or even the Palestinians. It is only using them as an example to compare with the Talmudist rabbis.  The problem being, that the rabbis have a very similar pathology, and it is Talmudo-centrism. Any contradiction between facts and the Talmud, and the talmud must be right. Any contradiction between the Torah /Neviim and the Talmud, and of course their position is with the Talmud.  Thus, just like the Palestinian Islamists are unable to grasp the fact that a Temple pre-existed their religion and mosque, so the rabbis cannot grasp the fact that Hebrew was a spoken language before the invention of the niqqud vowels,  or that the Kohanim knew how to slaughter animals before the invention of the Oral Law.

An awareness of this kind of bias, before engaging the rabbis in debate, will be very useful, and effecive.

New Source for Joshua Myth?

Previously, I mentioned the rabbinic claim that Joshua married the harlot, Rahab:

http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/midrash-fact-fiction-or-projection.html

There are many myths that find their way into Talmud and Midrash from a variety of sources. It is possible that this myth may have a connection to a claim made about another Yeshua - Jesus.
According to a new book, Jesus married Mary Magdalene, who was also a prostitute.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2827310/Jesus-married-prostitute-Mary-Magdalene-two-children-lost-gospel-reveals.html

It is very easy for such myths to crossover into Jewish Midrash, since the common market of new religions 2000 years ago shared many ideas and stories. Thus several myths which have no basis in the TNK but were in external works such as the Dead Sea scrolls or the Alphabet of ben Sira, find their way into rabbinic midrash.

Mikveh Scandal

The latest in an unending series of rabbinic scandals, involves a prominent American Orthodox rabbi, Barry Freundel, who set up voyeuristic cameras in the Mikveh of his synagogue, and filmed women - both married Jewish members,  and converting to Judaism - as they immersed naked into this mikveh.
http://forward.com/articles/207652/rabbis-barry-freundel-and-leib-tropper-ensnared-in/?p=all

This is a scandal about rabbinic power, perversion and complacency. About how power corrupts , and absolute (religious power) corrupts absolutely.

However, there is a bigger picture scandal in all of this. this is the scandal of the "mikveh".  In Lev 15, it gives the laws relating to menstruant women.  There is no explicit requirement for a woman to "immerse"  in a mikveh. In fact, it does not explicitly state that she even needs to bath in water. We may  infer, from the fact that a man who has come into contact with her needs to bathe in water, that she can do the same. But this is not specifically a rabbinically constructed mikveh.  The scandal is that rabbis have legislated to control and dehumanize the population with their additions.  The ongoing violations of human dignity are part and parcel of this rabbinic offensive on human dignity.

The Primacy of Torah Law

Actually, the title may be a bit misleading, since it is the name of a chapter written by someone I have previously featured in my “Great Rabbis” series – Rabbi Emanuel Rackman. http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/great-rabbis-series-prof-emanuel-rackman.html

However, this article makes a common rabbinic claim about various groups who have rejected Orthodox Judaism. He bunches together Christianity, Reform Judaism, Sadducees and Karaites. This is despite the fact that the sadducees rejected Christianity, and the Karaites reject Reform Judaism. Furthermore, the Pharisees rejected the Torah centred Sadduceees.

Alas, Rackman, who for many years was my mentor, writes that there is a simple reason why all these groups rejected Rabbinic Judaism, and that is because the Torah is a “yoke” i.e. a burden, and it is easier to reject than to accept a burden.

This argument is false for several reasons. As already mentioned, each of the different groups took on a different view to religion. It might be the case that Reform considered many rites outdated or too difficult, but they actually gave up believing altogether. Christianity, which I am not defending, did reject many laws, but they also adopted new ones. Whether or not the argument applies to these deviant groups, the charge made against the Sadducees and the Karaites are nonsensical.

The Sadducees, ie the priesthood from Zadok, rejected the Oral Testament of the rabbis, because they considered it alien and false. The Pharisees rejected the clear meaning of the Torah on many counts, as a way to create a new religion, and expel the Priesthood from the Temple. This is illustrated in Mishnah Sotah, where terrorist rabbis such as ben Zakkai abolish wholesale the Torah Law. This is in fact verified by the rabbi Akavya ben Mehalelel, who accused the alien convert rabbis, Shemaya and Avtalyon of falsifying Torah practice to suit their own personal needs. http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/talmudic-whistleblower-akavya-ben.html

It is rather ironic, since Emanuel Rackman was the Akavya of orthodoxy in his own time, and I once told him that he had revived the roll of his historic predecessor.

The actual claim that Torah is a burden, and rejection of the Torah is because of the burden is also a fallacious claim. The Torah puts limitations on the scope of religious restrictions, by clearly forbidding adding and subtracting. This was the self-justified practice of the Rabbis. The reason behind the rabbinical rejection of Torah law is complex, but part of it is their arrogance and competition with the Priesthood, whom they wished to destroy. Just as Korach tried to rebel against Moses and Aaron of the tribe of Levi, so the Pharisees did against the Zadokite descendants of Aaron.

It is interesting to note that Shemaya and Avtalyon, were students of Shimon ben Shetach, he was the brother in law of Alexander Janneus, the High priest and sadducee king. Thus, it appears that ben Shetach had begun his program of destroying the priesthood (and the temple) by appointing gentile converts to the head of the Pharisees Sanhedrin. It is also a true and telling irony, that by the Rabbis' own admission (Gittin 57b), Shemaya and Avtalyon were both descendants of Sennacherib, the Assyrian King who besieged Jerusalem, and exiled the Northern tribes of Israel.

We now see an alternative narrative of history. Sennacherib attempted to destroy Jerusalem, but was stopped by an angel. He did succeed, however, in destroying the Northern parts of Israel, and causing exile. His descendants, Shemaya and Avtalyon, as is explicitly stated by Akavya ben Mehalelel (who cited a tradition he had heard from his teachers) falsified Torah law to suit their Sennacheribean heritage. It should be noted that Shemaya and Avtalyon were major founders and creators of the oral law. Their project was completed by ben Zakkai, who abolished the priestly functions such as the Bitter water ceremony, and the breaking of the neck of Eglah Arufah ceremony.This spiritual destruction of the Temple by the line of Shemaya + Avtalyon through to ben Zakkai led to its physical destruction. Where Shemaya and Avtalyon's ancestor, Sennacherib, failed, they and their followers succeeded in destroying the Temple.

Before Rabbis start accusing Sadducees and Karaites, they should try to study the Torah itself, and to make it their primal focus. In this way, they may see how their ancestors have led to destruction of Judaism, and perhaps if they are bold enough, can rebuild it. The Torah does not impose a yoke that is as oppressive as the Talmud, so rejecting the Talmud is not about convenience, but about honour for the Torah.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin - Jewish Illiteracy

The author, Joseph Telushkin has written a book on  “Jewish Literacy”, and an extract is used in Jewish Virtual Library’s page on the oral Law.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/talmud_&_mishna.html

In that piece, Telushkin begs the question, trying to use common sense to show the need for some sort of oral law.  He raises some common points, but they are worth refuting here:

1) “Yet when one looks for the specific biblical laws regulating how to observe the day, one finds only injunctions against lighting a fire, going away from one's dwelling, cutting down a tree, plowing and harvesting. Would merely refraining from these few activities fulfill the biblical command to make the Sabbath holy?”

The above statement is fallacious, but it is also false. The fallacy is that it is begging the question, i.e. since he claims (mistakenly) that these are the only forbidden things in the Torah, it is means other things must also be forbidden!   It is factually false, because there are other general prohibitions. Thus, in Deut 5, the restatement of the 10 commandments, we see:

12 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work

13 but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou.

Verse 12 already sets the scene by saying what is permitted, i.e. all our regular work.  The Torah is not a Dept of Employment Handbook, to classify every single type of work or occupation.  Cement mixing, carpet weaving, computer programming, etc are all types of work that would be permitted for 6 days and forbidden on the 7^th.

2) “the Sabbath rituals that are most commonly associated with holiness-lighting of candles, reciting the kiddush, and the reading of the weekly Torah portion are found not in the Torah, but in the Oral Law.”

Another circular argument. These rituals are all rabbinically created, so why would one expect them to be found in the Torah?

3) Without an oral tradition, some of the Torah's laws would be incomprehensible. In the Shema's first paragraph, the Bible instructs: "And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart.…. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes." "Bind them for a sign upon your hand," the last verse instructs. Bind what? The Torah doesn't say. "And they shall be for frontlets between your eyes." What are frontlets? The Hebrew word for frontlets, totafot is used three times in the Torah — always in this context (Exodus 13:16; Deuteronomy 6:8, 11:18) — and is as obscure as is the English. Only in the Oral Law do we learn that what a Jewish male should bind upon his hand and between his eyes are tefillin (phylacteries).”

Here is a classic argument of rabbinic polemicists. The solution to the alleged problem raised by Telushkin, and his predecessors, is already found within the texts he cites.  He focuses on the word טוֹטָפֹת , which he claims means “teffilin”. He also claims that this word has no uncoding without the Oral law.  However, one only has to go back a few verses from Ex 13:16 to unravel the problem.

In v 9 it says the following:

ט  וְהָיָה לְךָ לְאוֹת עַל-יָדְךָ, וּלְזִכָּרוֹן בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ, לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה תּוֹרַת יְהוָה, בְּפִיךָ:  כִּי בְּיָד חֲזָקָה, הוֹצִאֲךָ יְהוָה מִמִּצְרָיִם.

9 And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thy hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in thy mouth; for with a strong hand hath the LORD brought thee out of Egypt.

The word used in Hebrew is “zikaron”, a memorial or reminder.

In v16 it says:

טז  וְהָיָה לְאוֹת עַל-יָדְכָה, וּלְטוֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ:  כִּי בְּחֹזֶק יָד, הוֹצִיאָנוּ יְהוָה מִמִּצְרָיִם.

16 And it shall be for a sign upon thy hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes; for by strength of hand the LORD brought us forth out of Egypt.'

The word in 16 is “totafot”. Since the meaning, form, context and structure of these verses are equivalent, we can confidently say that the 2 words,  zikaron and totafot are synonyms – they mean the same thing. Hence, we need look no further than the Torah itself to interpret the word totafot.   Now, what exactly are the memorials in the 13^th Chapter of Exodus, that remind us of the exodus from Egypt?

The first one is in v7. Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee, in all thy borders.

The second is in v 13 And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck; and all the first-born of man among thy sons shalt thou redeem.

The Matzah, and the redemption of the firstborn are the reminders/totafot.

There is no requirement to bind matzah or a firstborn ass on our foreheads.  And the same is true of the Shema, in Deut 6. It is referring to the 10 commandments of the previous chapter, which shall be reminders of our daily lives. The irony is that Rabbinic tefillin do not even contain the 10 commandments.  Indeed, the rabbis made sure we forget the 10 commandments, by abolishing them from the traditional daily prayer.  The reason was, allegedly, that Christians made them a central tenet of their religion, hence the rabbis wished to differentiate their religion form Christianity.

If rabbis encouraged people to study the Torah objectively, there would be more Jewish literacy. However, the insistence on learning Talmud, which distorts the Torah’s meaning as often as it amplifies it, renders the torah to a secondary and less important source of Jewish literacy.

Reading Without Vowels

Hebrew is a written language that appears in books without the vowels/ niqqud - or diacritics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_diacritics

It is a classical rabbinical claim that the Torah is illegible without these diacritics.  However, these  rabbis are unaware of Biblical Hebrew,  Phonecian, or related semitic languages such as Arabic of Persian, the latter 2  having similar diacritics, but can be read without them.

The fact remains that even in modern hebrew, books, journals etc are written without the diacritics. And reading something in the Hebrew news today I am reminded of a typical rabbinic type fallacy.

The word בגין   can mean "for"  and can also be read as the name Begin,  i.e. the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin. How then, can a modern Israeli, reading or writing legal documents , official papers or only reading a newspaper know whether the word is referring to the late PM  or to  its other meaning, "for"?

The answer, is that it depends very much on context. 

The polemicists choose examples where both meanings are possible.  In that case, it would presumably be the more likely option.  Thus the famous example of חלב  in 14:21 - is it referring to milk or fat?  The most reasonable answer is milk, since mother's milk is a well known term. 

When adult Israelis require diacritical vowels to understand Hebrew, then we might be open to this rabbinic argument.  However, since millions of books, journals and newspapers are published in Hebrew without them, it seems that the whole argument is rather weak.

Mockery of Talmidei Hachamim

One of the threats used by the Talmud, is the loss of the world to come for those who mock the hachamim.  In fact, they also claim that the 2^nd temple was destroyed because of disrespect for the rabbis.

It is a useful tool to prevent causeless hatred, and mockery is not a good approach. Honest debate is a better approach, from both sides.

There is also a fallacy that the rabbis use, which prevents reading the Torah in its actual intent. A very clear case study was given here http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/strange-spices-pt-3-cinnamon-250.html

And there are plenty more. It is also hypocritical, since the rabbis spend a lot of their time mocking their opponents, including the Priesthood, and assassinating those who do not agree with them (see http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/unholy-cow-or-how-to-destroy-your-own.html)

The Torah gives protection from the false threats of the Perushim (Deut. 18:22).  The attacks on the talmudic rabbis are only done for a) their violation of the Torah, and b) their false statements, either logically or scientifically. It should also be noted that the rabbinic movement was never a united, movement. 

Although good deeds and lovingkindness was preached and practiced, and is until today, there were occasions when there was rivalry and violence.
 Long before Islam and its internecine wars, the houses of Shammai and Hillel schools were already killing each other: http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/golden-calf-of-talmud.html

This was a great tragedy, which the Talmud itself acknowledges. It is not something that should be revived. Using sarcasm or showing illogic of an argument is not the same as mocking the person, although that is sometimes hard to resist. 

Incidentally, it might also be helpful if the opponents of Karaism made their arguments more respectful too.  The Talmud states  "all mockery is forbidden, except for mockery of Idolatry". 
Since neither side of the debate are idolaters, then that is a good basis for debate.