Karaite Judaism or Karaism ( /ˈkærə.aɪt/ or /ˈkærə.ɪzəm/; Hebrew: יהדות קראית , Modern Yahadut Qara'it Tiberian Qārāʾîm ; meaning "Readers of the Hebrew Scriptures") is a Jewish movement characterized by the recognition of the Tanakh alone as its supreme legal authority in Halakhah, as well as in theology. It is distinct from Rabbinic Judaism, which considers the Oral law, the legal decisions of the Sanhedrin as codified in the Talmud, and subsequent works to be authoritative interpretations of the Torah. It is thought to have arisen in the 7th-9th centuries CE in Baghdad and possibly in Egypt.

Karaites maintain that all of the divine commandments handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah, without additional Oral Law or explanation. As a result, Karaite Jews do not accept as binding the written collections of the oral tradition in the Mishnah or Talmud. When interpreting the Tanakh, Karaites strive to adhere to the plain or most obvious meaning ("peshat") of the text; this is not necessarily the literal meaning, but rather the meaning that would have been naturally understood by the ancient Israelites when the books of the Tanakh were first written. Due to the tremendous changes in Jewish culture and religious practice over the past 4,000 years, the peshat may not be as easily understood as it once was in Biblical Israel, and must now be derived from textual clues such as language, and context. In contrast, Rabbinic Judaism relies on the legal rulings of the Sanhedrin, the highest court in ancient Israel, as they are codified in the Mishnah, Talmud, and other sources, to indicate the authentic meaning of the Torah.