Meir Rekhavi
Meir Yosef Rekhavi is a British Karaite Hakham and author.Biography
Hakham Meir Yosef Rekhavi was born in Leeds, England, to an Orthodox Jewish family, which migrated to northern England from Tukums in Latvia via Germany in the early 1900s. Rekhavi was raised as a Rabbanite Jew, receiving his formative religious education at an Ultra-Orthodox Ḥeder. He studied at various yeshivoth in Jerusalem before embracing Karaite Judaism. In 1981 Rekhavi began to question the authority of the Rabbanite Oral Law. From 1984 Rekhavi was mentored by the Karaite Hakham Mordechai Alfandari in Jerusalem.
Rekhavi is the Chancellor of the Karaite Jewish University in California and a founding member of the University, which was created in November 2005. In July 2007 Rekhavi served on the Beth Din of the Karaite Jews of America that performed the first conversions of Gentiles to Karaite Judaism since 1465. He is also the Hakham of the Karaite Jews of Europe, sits on the Karaite Religious Council in Israel, and acts as an advisor to the Karaite Council of Sages. Rekhavi currently lives in Beer Sheva, Israel.Books
Rekhavi is the co-author of As It Is Written: A Brief Case for Karaism. He also produced and self-published a Karaite translation from Biblical Hebrew to English of the scriptural text read at Passover, the Haggadah.
