According to the Association of Crimean Karaims, there are about 2,000 Karaims throughout the world, including 1,100 in Ukraine and 240 in Yevpatoriya. Since this Crimean city used to be the global hub of the Karaim community until 1920, Yevpatoriya was the natural choice to host the 1st World Festival of Crimean Karaim Culture, which featured the ceremonial opening of a restored kenesa built exactly 200 years ago. The kenesa is part of a Crimean Karaim synagogue, an 18th-century architectural monument erected on the site of an older Karaim temple. After the revolution of 1917, kenesas were nationalized and in different periods housed a kindergarten and warehouses. After 1990 the temple was returned to the city’s Karaim community, which began to restore the Lesser Kenesa. The first service at the revived Lesser Kenesa was held in 1999. Today, this is the CIS’s only Karaim temple that offers prayers on a regular basis. The reconstruction of the Greater Kenesa began in early 2004, for which the state earmarked 1.6 million hryvnias. Volodymyr Omerli, head of the Association of Crimean Karaims, told journalists that the entire restoration effort was being funded by the Theological Directorate of Crimean Karaims and through believers’ donations.
Featuring prominently on the festival program were a workshop, roundtable debates, meetings, concerts, literary discussions, and the sale of literature. Among those who attended the Greater Kenesa opening ceremony was the speaker of the Crimean Parliament, Borys Deich. Greeting the audience, he pointed out that the Karaim community can serve as a model for other — larger, richer but loosely- knit — ethnic communities, a model of peace-loving, tolerance, intelligence, and harmony.
The festival’s main attraction was a tour of the Juft-Kale fortress near Bakhchisarai, the Karaims’ ancestral home. Today this structure is desolate. The ancient settlement’s hereditary curator Mykhailo Dubytsky, who turned 80 this year, recalls that a few families were still living here before WWII. Karaims used to come here from Sevastopol, Simferopol, and other Crimean cities. It was great fun indeed, with children playing and laughing. During the war the fortress’s guest- house was destroyed. This is an irreparable loss for the museum because the guest-house once welcomed such distinguished visitors as Adam Mickiewicz, Aleksandr Griboedov, Vasily Zhukovsky, Aleksei Tolstoy, Lesia Ukrainka, Mykola Bazhan, Ismail Gasprinsky, Aleksandr Kuprin, and many luminaries.
The Krymkarailar Association, founded in 1994, bitterly admits that the monument is neglected: houses and fortress walls are falling apart in Juft-Kale; commemorative lime, granite, and marble gravestones are vanishing from Balta- Tiymez Cemetery. The state has long been promising to provide funds to restore this ancestral home. The matter is at a standstill because the government is in no hurry to implement its own program aimed at reviving the Krymchak and Karaim cultures.
