Photograph: In the Great Karaite Synagogue

Karaites

peninsula Crimea, Taurida province, Yevpatoriysky district, city Yevpatoria

1905

Gelatin silver printing with chemical development (DOP)

12 x 16,5

РЭМ 735-3/1

In the center, on a pulpit, is junior “gazzan” (rabbi) Samuel Moiseevich Neiman in full parade attire, with the Torah in his hands. The gazzan is wearing black clothes, his head and shoulders are covered with a talith decored with gold embroidery in its head part. The Karaites had a hierarchic structure, in which the communities were headed by gazzans. A junior and a senior gazzans served in Eupatoria’s kenesas. S. M. Neiman (1844-1916) was a hereditary gazzan and melamed, aide to Gacham S. M. Pampulov, and from 1911 to 1915, the Gacham of the Taurida and Odessa Karaite religious board. The surname Neiman (from Hebrew נאמן , neemàn) means “true, honest.” From 1895 to 1912 he served first as junior, and then as senior gazzan of the Grand Kenesa in Eupatoria.