Karaite Judaism or Karaism is a Jewish religious movement characterized by the recognition of the written Tanakh alone as its supreme authority in halakha and theology. Karaites believe that all of the divine commandments which were handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah without any additional Oral Law or explanation. Unlike mainstream Rabbinic Judaism, which regards the Oral Torah, codified in the Talmud and subsequent works, as authoritative interpretations of the Torah, Karaite Jews do not treat the written collections of the oral tradition in the Midrash or the Talmud as binding.

Judah Halevi was a Sephardic Jewish poet, physician and philosopher. He was born in Al-Andalus, either in Toledo or Tudela, in 1075. He is thought to have died in 1141, in either Jerusalem, at that point the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, or in Alexandria, Egypt.