Historically, most well-known documents in Jewish languages have been penned by men. However, Jewish women have also recorded their voices in writing and in song. At the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) Jewish Language Project, we searched for Jewish women’s voices throughout history. We found documents and recordings in twenty languages (some with multiple dialects) from the tenth century to the present, including letters, poetry, memoirs, lullabies, translations of religious texts, and more. To give a sense of the chronological, geographic, and linguistic... Read More
Genizah Fragments
Sarah Bunin Benor and Abby Graham
on Wed 2 Nov 2022
Has tags: Dunash b. Labrat, Genizah Fragments, language, letter, widow, Women
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Catherine Ansorge
on Wed 19 Oct 2022
Catherine, what are you working on at the moment?
I’m writing about the Rosetta Stone and a connection it has to Cambridge, dating from the time it was originally shipped from Alexandria to London in 1801. The British Museum’s current exhibition to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the decipherment of hieroglyphs by Jean-Francois Champollion from the text on the Stone, provides a good opportunity to investigate this further.
We’ll look forward... Read More
Has tags: Agnes Lewis, Egypt, Genizah Fragments, Lewis-Gibson, Margaret Gibson, Q&A
Nick Posegay
on Thu 13 Oct 2022
This post is lightly edited from the original Twitter thread here.
So there’s this box in the Genizah Research Unit at the Cambridge University Library (CUL). It’s labelled “Worman Archive.” It’s supposed to be full of stuff associated with Ernest James Worman, a librarian who catalogued the Genizah collection 120 years ago. Recently I found out that’s not all true.
... Read More
Has tags: E.J. Worman, Genizah Fragments, Geoffrey Khan, paper, Persian
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and José Martínez Delgado
on Wed 12 Oct 2022
Pepe, what are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a new book about daily life in al-Andalus, and I’ve been looking for new materials to include in it. I decided to have a look at a list I made when I visited 6 years ago of lexicographical Genizah fragments, to see if any of them might be suitable for the book, and saw in my list one I had described as ‘Andalusi script’. I had a look at it and something about it seemed familiar. At the last line, I realised what I was looking at. I had seen this handwriting before. I quickly sent a message to my friend Amir... Read More
Has tags: al-Andalus, Genizah Fragments, glossary, language, Moses Maimonides, Q&A, Romance, vocabulary
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Jason Sion Mokhtarian
on Wed 5 Oct 2022
Jason, your new book, Medicine in the Talmud, has just been published. Can you tell us about some of the Genizah fragments you used in your research?
To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t many Genizah fragments that record Talmudic medicine, but one such fragment is T-S F1(1).31, a page of the Babylonian Talmud from tractate Gittin. Five other pages from the... Read More
Has tags: Babylonian Talmud, Genizah Fragments, medical, Q&A
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Elyashiv Cherlow
on Wed 21 Sep 2022
Elyashiv, what are you working on at the moment?
I’ve been looking at tiny fragments in T-S AS 96. One of my guilty pleasures is to look at Genizah fragments and try to identify them. I then look for other pieces that might go with the fragment I’m looking at. They often have very little connection to my research, so I will pass them onto other researchers. If I find anything connected to the Jerusalem Talmud – the Yerushalmi – I study them myself. While I was looking for something else in T-S AS 96, I found two tiny fragments in the language of the Jerusalem Talmud... Read More
Has tags: Genizah Fragments, Jerusalem Talmud, parchment, Q&A
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Mon 8 Aug 2022
The Cairo Genizah was the focus of four ‘History for the Curious’ podcasts by Rabbi Aubrey Hersch and Rabbi Mena Reisner during the month of May 2022. Early listeners to the fourth episode had the opportunity to grab a place on a tour to Cambridge to see the fragments in person, and we were delighted to welcome the lucky group on 22nd July.
A liar, a smuggler and a forger. All after the prize - the most lucrative of the 19th century. Meanwhile Cairo is opening up to... Read More
Has tags: conversion, France, Genizah Fragments, podcast
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 14 Jul 2022
Congratulations to the Genizah Unit’s Nick Posegay, the 2022 winner of the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies (BIAJS) Book Prize, for his book Points of Contact: The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew (Open Book Publishers, 2021 - read it Open Access here). Nick’s win (and an honourable mention for Joan Taylor and the late David M. Hay for their book Philo of Alexandria) was announced this week at the BIAJS annual conference at... Read More
Has tags: Book, Genizah Fragments
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Gabriele Ferrario
on Wed 6 Jul 2022
Gabriele, what are you working on at the moment?
I recently looked again at a manuscript I first noticed many years ago when I worked at the Genizah Unit. The fragments T-S Ar.44.4 and T-S NS 31.6 are two halves of the same page torn in two. The manuscript was studied by Paul Fenton in an article in 1997, and he identified it as a catalogue (Fihrist) of alchemical works. On close examination I discovered it was in fact a collection of alchemical recipes. What makes it special, compared to many other alchemical recipes in the Genizah, is that there are not... Read More
Has tags: alchemy, Genizah Fragments, Q&A, science
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 23 Jun 2022
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 75 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in April 2018, by the Genizah Research Unit's very own Kim Phillips.
During the first wave of Caliph al-Hakim’s intolerance towards the People of the Book, a Fustat-based scribe – Samuel ben Jacob – completed his labours on a high quality Bible codex (circa 1008–1009). No doubt he was satisfied with his work: the codex contains all twenty-four biblical books, accurately and ornately... Read MoreHas tags: Bible, codex, Genizah Fragments, scribe