Taylor-Schechter Genizah - A Priceless Collection
- The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection
- A new era of Jewish learning
- The sacred, the heretical and the mundane
- The first Dead Sea Scroll
- The ordinary literature of life
- Overall contribution to scholarship
- A brilliant company
- Recent names
- The Taylor-Schechter Collection today
- Priorities
- Other activities
- The collection tomorrow
- A testament to the story of Jewish survival
- Maintenance and needs
The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection is
a priceless accumulation of centuries-old Hebrew manuscript
material and Judaica, recovered from the Cairo Genizah in
1896-97. It has occupied a place of honour among the
literary treasures of the University of Cambridge for more
than a century and is housed at Cambridge University
Library.
The Collection was the gift in 1898 of the noted scholar Dr Solomon Schechter - who later became President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America - and his friend and patron, Dr Charles Taylor, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge.
In 1896 Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson showed some leaves of a Hebrew manuscript which they had purchased in the Middle East to Schechter, then Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic literature at Cambridge. He then conceived the idea of bringing to the University the precious manuscript material he suspected could be found in the Genizah (depository for worn-out copies of sacred Jewish writings) of the thousand-year-old Ben Ezra Synagogue of Fostat (Old Cairo). Taylor, an enthusiastic student of Hebrew, joined him in his effort to add to the knowledge of Jews and Judaism, and made it financially possible out of his own means.
In a now famous expedition, Schechter journeyed to Cairo and secured the approval of the Synagogue authorities to 'empty' the Genizah. He chose what seemed to be its most promising material and sent it on to England for scholarly study. Although some fragments had already found their way elsewhere his haul was destined to become by far the most important.
A new era of Jewish learning
The 140,000 fragments of documents and texts now at Cambridge are mainly in manuscript, many of them on vellum. They include a wide variety of secular as well as religious material and are written in several languages. Although they were gathered in less than two months it has taken over a century to preserve, classify and house the greater part of them in a way that makes them easily available for study - and much still remains to be done.
Yet in these hundred years the Taylor-Schechter Collection has already served to usher in a whole new era of Jewish learning. There is hardly an area of Hebrew and Jewish studies that has not been revolutionized by findings that originated in the Genizah Collection.
The sacred, the heretical and the mundane
Taken together, the Collection's fragments
make up a literature of the sacred, the heretical and the
mundane which reaches back to Biblical times and extends
forward to the 19th century
The sacred is represented in splendid quantity and variety by thousands of fragments of Bible, Talmud, Midrash, Law and Liturgy, reflecting many periods of Jewish thought and custom.
Among the many lost Hebrew books recovered from among the fragments is the original version of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, a work dating from the second century BCE. Jewish doubt about just how sacred this book was had led to its exclusion from the Hebrew Bible and eventually to the loss of its Hebrew text. But the Genizah ensured that it was not lost for ever by preserving a 10th century copy.
The first Dead Sea Scroll
The heretical is present in the writings of various dissident Jewish sects, compositions probably banished to the Genizah whenever they appeared in Old Cairo. Nearly forty years before the momentous discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, Schechter called attention to just such a group, the unknown religious brotherhood we now know produced the Scrolls, when he published their story in his 'Fragments of a Zadokite Work', the first volume of his Documents of Jewish Sectaries. His research was based on the analysis of certain unique pieces he had found in the Collection, and created a sensation in its own time. The 'Zadokite' fragments have since been referred to as 'The First Dead Sea Scroll'.
The ordinary literature of life
But the Collection's considerable quantity of the ordinary literature of life - mundane legal papers, business correspondence, medical prescriptions, musical notations, illuminated pages, marriage contracts, children's school books and everyday letters - has also proved to be of remarkable value for research purposes. Individual pieces of a secular nature have given us eye-witness accounts of the Crusader conquest of the Holy Land, have confirmed the 8th century conversion of the Khazars to Judaism and have presented us with some of the oldest known texts of Yiddish (Judaeo-German).
Overall contribution to scholarship
Overall, the results of work on the Genizah
Collection can be summed up as follows:
- It has provided us with detailed accounts of the social, economic and religious activity of the vibrant Near Eastern Jewish communities of the 11th-13th centuries.
- It has shown us how Jewish law developed during the Geonic period (7th-11th centuries) when the heads of the Babylonian academies were called upon to make rulings for Jews throughout the Islamic Empire.
- It has deepened our knowledge of famous scholars, including Saadia (882-942), Maimonides (1135-1204) and Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141), sometimes bringing to light texts in the handwriting of such great men.
- It has made possible the restoration and collation of important early texts of the Midrash and the Talmud, especially the Jerusalem Talmud, otherwise known only in later corrupt versions.
- It has given us new insights into the way that Hebrew was pronounced and its grammar understood by the leading Jewish linguists of Eretz Yisrael and Babylonia more than a thousand years ago.
- It has led to the recovery of Greek and Syriac texts - one of them a 6th century version of the translation of the Bible into Greek by Aquila, contemporary of Rabbi Akiva. This has been achieved through a close examination of 'palimpsests' - manuscripts on vellum in which the original writing was scraped away and inscribed with a fresh text, often Hebrew.
- It has made possible the reconstruction of synagogue customs and rites in ancient Palestine and Babylonia.
- It has led to the rediscovery of a large proportion of the important Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain and Provence.
- It has ushered in a new era of language studies through the publication of its important Judaeo-Arabic material (Arabic written in Hebrew characters and once the lingua franca of Jews under Islamic rule).
- It has produced rare examples of Jewish artistic, musical and scientific efforts in the 11th and 12th centuries.
A brilliant company
The many scholars who have done major work in the Collection since Schechter's day make up a brilliant company.
A list of just a few of these famous names would have to include:
- Ernest Worman of Cambridge University Library who did so much groundwork on the Collection before his untimely death in 1909.
- Hartwig Hirschfeld of Jews' College, London, who inaugurated the Judaeo-Arabic studies.
- Jacob Mann of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, who uncovered the history of the Jews of Egypt and Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs (10th-12th centuries).
- Louis Ginzberg of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, collector and editor of Talmud and Midrash texts and Geonic Responsa.
- Israel Davidson of the same Seminary, who began the systematic recovery of much of Jewish liturgical poetry.
- Simcha Assaf of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, who, with his colleague, David Baneth, built up a picture of Jewish activity in the Mediterranean in the days of Islamic rule on the basis of Rabbinic Responsa.
- Menahem Zulay of the Schocken Institute, Jerusalem, who recovered and edited several hundred compositions of the legendary 6th century liturgical poet Yannai.
- Paul Kahle of Bonn and Oxford, who enlarged our understanding of the development of Hebrew through his investigations into the Babylonian and Palestinian systems of pointing Hebrew.
Recent names
More recent scholars have also, in the course of their important research, lent a hand with the sorting of unclassified parts of the Collection. They have sought no more reward for their efforts than the privilege of spending fascinating hours puzzling over the secrets of each tantalizing fragment. In this way each of them has added to our knowledge of the field in which he is expert.
Shelomo Dov Goitein and a whole school of scholars, beginning with Norman Golb, most of whom had had the benefit of his training and advice, rewrote the history of Jews in Arab lands in the Middle Ages. Alexander Scheiber and Shalom Spiegel illuminated the dark corners of medieval Hebrew literature, while Naphtali Wieder brought to light the earliest versions of the Jewish prayer-book and Jacob Teicher, then Lecturer in Rabbinics at Cambridge, did similar groundwork for the first printed Hebraica. Michael Klein carefully described many of the fragments of Targum.
Missing links in the history of talmudic study were located by Shraga Abramson and similar lacunae in Hebrew grammar and lexicography were made good by Nehemiah Allony and in Bible commentary by Moshe Zucker. Schirmann and other students of liturgical poetry continued the work they had earlier commenced, and Shelomo Morag and Alejandro Diez-Macho updated and expanded Kahle's pioneering efforts in masoretic studies.
Among more contemporary scholars it is no longer possible even to attempt to list the hundreds outside Cambridge University Library whose research is heavily dependent on the material that Schechter brought from Cairo.
Ezra Fleischer and Joseph Yahalom in liturgy and poetry; Israel Yeivin, Ilan Eldar, E. J. Revell and Geoffrey Khan in Masorah; Jacob Sussmann, Menahem Kahana, Robert Brody, and Neil Danzig in Talmud; Joshua Blau, Haggai Ben-Shammai and Simon Hopkins in Judaeo-Arabic; Malachi Beit-Arié and Colette Sirat in palaeography; Moshe Gil, Menahem Ben-Sasson and Mark R. Cohen in medieval Jewish history; Mordechai Friedman on Palestinian marriage documents and Joel Kraemer on women's correspondence; Shaul Shaked and Peter Schäfer on material relating to magic; Paul Fenton on Jewish mysticism; Abraham David on sixteenth-century Palestinian Jewry and Eleazar Gutwirth on Judaeo-Spanish - these scholars have been among the most active and industrious, but the list could be greatly multiplied.
The Taylor-Schechter Collection today
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
related scholarly developments in Israel and the Bible
lands have helped to bring about a renewed interest in
Jewish studies and study resources. The Taylor-Schechter
Genizah Research Unit, established in 1974, is helping to
serve this interest through a new, comprehensive programme
designed to meet all the Collection's various needs.
Priorities
As one of its first priorities, the Unit set out to rehabilitate the physical condition of the Collection and improve scholarly access to it.
In 1982 it completed the conservation and classification of those 68,000 Collection fragments which were still unprocessed as late as 1974. All of the fragments are now housed in special, newly developed binders which permit easy inspection at Cambridge. At the same time the Unit has made their study possible in other Jewish research centres, including the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University, by making microfilms of all the manuscripts widely available and by helping the Library's photography department to meet the precise requirements of Genizah scholars all over the world.
As a second, but equally important priority, the Unit has a programme to provide a number of sorely needed catalogues for the Collection. These important pieces of research are all being included in the Library's 'Genizah Series' which is being published by Cambridge University Press. Thirteen volumes are currently available.
A four-volume catalogue listing and describing each of the 25,000 Hebrew Bible fragments in the Collection is now complete. A Miscellany of Literary Pieces and monographs describing pointed texts of the Talmud, Karaite Bible manuscripts, Targum fragments, Arabic Chancery documents, Judeo-Arabic items, liturgical poetry, rabbinic material, and medical items have also recently appeared.
At the same time the Unit has produced a bibliography that attempts to list all published references to individual fragments in it. These have appeared over a period of over nine decades in dozens of publications in numerous countries and languages. Publication of the first volume, covering 1896-1980, took place in 1988 and a second volume covering 1980-1997 is now being prepared for the press.
Other activities
In addition, the Unit is vigorously encouraging new investigations into the Collection's holdings, both by its staff specialists and by Visiting Research Associates invited from other centres of Jewish studies.
Among current projects, descriptions are being prepared of Judeo-Arabic texts, of Jewish liturgical pieces, of biblical fragments, and of published material in the Collection.
The Unit has also placed fresh emphasis on establishing cooperative programmes with other leading institutions designed to facilitate scholarly investigation. A particularly close relationship is enjoyed with Jerusalem through the Hebrew University, the lsrael National Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Jewish National and University Library, and there are cooperative research projects with Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev - Beersheba, and with the Friedberg Genizah Project at New York University.
Most recently, the Unit has begun a pilot study, the GOLD Project, aimed at providing remote electronic access to the treasures of the Collection and at facilitating the production of further printed catalogues. Methods are being developed to enhance the efficiency of digital image production, and to bring dispersed manuscripts back together through analysis of the descriptions of the manuscripts already produced by the Genizah Unit and by other cooperating projects.
An attempt is also made to bring the results of Genizah research to the layman. Members of the Unit often give public lectures on aspects of the Collection, and special arrangements are made for parties to visit the Library to see some of the Genizah treasures. There are also plans for the creation of an Exhibition Centre at the Library for viewing such items. A bi-annual newsletter, Genizah Fragments, is widely distributed.
The Collection tomorrow
The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit
hopes to complete its present projects within five years.
But even before it does, it is faced with the need to go
ahead with other urgent undertakings, some of them
long-range, and must find the means to do so.
There is a continuing need to ensure the physical survival of fragments which were first conserved and classified almost a century ago. To this end any damage must be swiftly repaired and deterioration noticed and rectified. Special storage units are being built to house the fragments but additional funding must be found to complete the process. The Collection is now in a better physical condition than at any time since its arrival in Cambridge but with such precious items there is no room for complacency.
The published catalogues of parts of the Collection's fragmentshave given scholars engaged in Jewish studies splendid new research tools. Yet these catalogues account for less than sixty percent of the Collection's total holdings. Similar guides are needed for other major sections of the Genizah material. The ideal would be to catalogue every fragment in the Collection - a time-consuming and costly task.
Meanwhile, the Publications Programme of the Genizah Research Unit is only beginning. If the Taylor-Schechter Collection is to fulfil its vast potential for today's scholarship, it must be enabled to prepare and publish many studies and reports in addition to catalogues.
There is also an exciting educational potential in the Collection that remains unrealized. If support could be obtained, University teaching posts and new courses in the Genizah area could be established and more students encouraged to devote themselves to Hebrew and Jewish studies.
A testament to the story of Jewish survival
The future of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection is important not only to scholars and academicians but to men of affairs as well, especially those committed to meeting current Jewish problems.
The Collection is something more than just an accumulation of ancient manuscript fragments. In the last analysis, it is a unique and precious commentary. stretching over two thousand years, on the chief instrument of Jewish survival. past and present. That instrument - and universal message to the world - is the Hebrew Bible.
Other ancient peoples contemporary with the Jews produced great civilizations and important literatures, and disappeared. But only the Hebrews produced an inspired Scripture, carried, cherished and transmitted wherever Jews wandered.
In a thousand ways, from the exalted to the humble, the Genizah Collection is a stirring record of how a people carried their Scripture with them, were guided, sustained and preserved by it, and how they passed it on, interpreted and re-interpreted, to succeeding generations.
Some four generations of Genizah scholars have now reconstructed many inspiring entries from that record, which had been lost in the course of time.
In the liturgical poets of the Holy Land in the 6th and 7th centuries they have found the heirs of the Psalmists. In the codification of Jewish law they have identified the continuation of that legal tradition which goes back to the Ten Commandments. In the development of Hebrew language traditions they have traced that attachment to the 'holy tongue' which looks back to the Bible and forward to the twentieth century revival of spoken Hebrew.
In the letters and records of Jews who
suffered the terrors of Muslim and Christian persecution
and survived to build anew, they have found the forerunners
of the incredible men and women who survived the Holocaust
and built new lives. And in the Hebrew poets of Provence
and Spain, they have marked the voices of those who somehow
found courage to sing the Lord's song by the rivers of new
Babylons.
To this generation - struggling to meet great threats to Jewish survival - from without and from within - the Genizah Collection has a special meaning:
It is a vital testament to the Jewish will to live. Though physically dry and brittle these fragments are spiritually saturated with Jewish history and pulsating with Jewish life. From their worn pages and faded texts the scholars of today and tomorrow have much information and inspiration yet to extract.
Maintenance and needs
Last year's budget for work on the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection was in the region of £150,000 ($240,000).The cost was met by the University Library, with the generous support of a number of external bodies, philanthropic foundations and interested individuals. Without such support many important aspects of the Unit's work would not be able to continue.
To maintain its present activities, the Taylor-Schechter Collection will require to raise the sum of £800,000 ($1,280,000) over the next five years. To expand important aspects of its work, and to fund some exciting new initiatives, will require much larger sums.
The Collection welcomes support from all interested foundations, institutions and individuals. This support may be for any aspect of the programme, may be designated for a particular number of years, and may be for any amount. The Library has a number of major projects relating to the Genizah Collection that require substantial funding and that may provide naming opportunities.
Suggested ways in which more modest support may be expressed are:
- By a grant of £20,000 ($32,000) towards the cost of engaging one Research Assistant or Visiting Research Associate to work on a special topic for one year.
- By a grant of £10,000 ($16,000) towards the cost of the Publications Programme.
- By a grant of £5,000 ($8,000) towards the cost of part-time assistance.
- By a grant of £2,500 ($4,000) towards the cost of using computer technology to assist the project.
- By a grant of £1,000 ($1,600) towards the cost of conserving the fragments.
- By a grant of £500 ($800) towards the cost of bringing the results of Genizah research to the layman by public lectures, pamphlets, exhibitions and a newsletter.
All payments should be made to the "University of Cambridge" which enjoys charitable status for tax and similar purposes. Such contributions and all enquiries for further information and for copies of the Unit's newsletter should be directed to:
Dr Ben Outhwaite, Head
Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit
Cambridge University Library
West Road
Cambridge
CB3 9DR
England
UK
Tel: (00-44-1223) 333129 (direct line)
Fax: (00-44-1223) 333160
In the USA, "Cambridge in America" supports the Taylor-Schechter Collection with its unfunded grant number 7/78. If you are interested in supporting this project, please contact the Director of the Annual Appeal at: Cambridge in America, 100 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013, USA, Phone: (212) 984-0972, Fax: (212) 984-0970, Switchboard: (212) 984-0960, E-mail: mail@cantab.org, Website: www.cantab.org.
Cambridge in America is the alumni, development, and communications center for the American constituents of Cambridge University (UK) and its member Colleges. Cambridge in America is recognized by the IRS as a charitable organization and contributions are legally deductible for United States income tax purposes. They are similarly deductible in Canada even if made directly to Cambridge.