Tracing the Trade in Genizah Fragments through Solomon Aaron Wertheimer’s Sales Correspondence, Or.1080
Between February 1893 and July 1897, Rabbi Solomon Aaron Wertheimer, a Jerusalem-based scholar and bookseller, corresponded with Solomon Schechter, lecturer in Talmudic studies at the University of Cambridge, and Francis Jenkinson, the University Librarian. Their exchanges primarily concerned the sale and acquisition of Hebrew manuscripts, many of which were fragments believed to derive from a genizah or genizot in Egypt. Only Wertheimer’s side of the correspondence appears to have survived,1 yet even this partial record offers valuable insights into the formation of the Cambridge Hebrew manuscript and Cairo Genizah collections. These records also convey much information about Wertheimer himself, both as a scholar and as an impoverished bookseller.
An Hungarian-born Rabbi, Solomon Aaron Wertheimer (1866–1935) was just 26 years old, and already a father of three, when he began selling manuscripts to libraries in England. A student of the Sephardi yeshivot and self-taught in Arabic, Wertheimer collected old books, manuscripts, and fragments from local markets and dealers in Jerusalem and Egypt to support his growing scholarship.2 But as the financial demands of family life increased, he realized he would need to turn his passion into a livelihood. He began selling some of his most valuable finds, including materials he had already studied and published. This strategy also helped him promote his scholarly work through sales of his own publications. Thanks to his involvement in the antiquities trade, at least five major academic libraries now own Wertheimer’s fragments as part of their Cairo Genizah collections.3
Wertheimer’s first documented manuscript sales took place in 1892, when he sent a bundle of 67 fragments (including multi-folio items) to Adolf Neubauer, Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian for which the library recorded payments of £1.1 and £3.5. The fragments were afterwards provenanced in the library’s catalogue as “from the Geniza.” Around the same time, Wertheimer established a connection with Solomon Schechter in Cambridge, sending him a copy of his recently published book Darke Shel Torah, along with four manuscripts offered to the University Library for £4.4 A note in the Library’s Or.1080.2 folder, dated February 13, 1893, details the contents of these four manuscripts: a 12th-century divorce document, a 12th-century calendar, an 11th-century lease, and a 13th-century commentary on the Talmud.5
Image 1: note recording the purchase of four manuscripts for £4, Or.1080.2 (iii)
Information about this transaction also appears in a postcard from Wertheimer, dated February 27, 1893, written in German and addressed to “The Magnifizent University Library”. In addition to acknowledging receipt of the anweisung (remittance) for £4, he also enumerated a list of thirteen items that he was sending on approval for the total price of £6 and 3 three shillings. Next to no. 3, a penciled note reads “taken,” while a “0” is penciled next to numbers 10 and 13, presumably indicating they were not selected. Wertheimer also penned a short note in Hebrew down the side of the postcard: a reminder to Schechter about the two shillings he had promised him for the Darke Shel Torah.
Image 2: postcard from Wertheimer to Schechter, dated 20 August 1893, Or.1080.2 (vii)
The next five communiqués (sent between 1893 and 1894) were written in English and addressed directly to Francis Jenkinson. Alongside information about the number of items offered, their prices, and occasional brief notes about their content, Wertheimer’s correspondence reveals the difficulties he encountered in dealing with foreign entities, including slow communications, delayed payments, lost or unreturned pieces, and unexpected customs fees, all of which exacerbated his already precarious financial situation. In one postcard, he complained bitterly about having to pay 6.65 lire to customs to reclaim a returned packet that should have arrived prepaid. In the same message, he further observed that one fragment was missing from the parcel of 31 returned to him, and that the 13 fragments sent earlier had not been sent back to him at all. These frustrating circumstances, in which the burden of risk was placed squarely on Wertheimer, prompted him to write to Schechter instead. Addressing him in Hebrew, Wertheimer outlined further manuscript offerings, urged Schechter to press Jenkinson for timely responses and payments, and appealed to him to purchase and endorse his scholarly work.
Image 3: postcard from Wertheimer to Jenkinson, dated 12 October 1893, Or.1080.2 (viii)
Despite their historical significance, the substance of Wertheimer’s correspondence has received only limited scholarly attention. The first to publish substantial excerpts from his postcards and letters was the late Eleazar Gutwirth, who included the five written in English (see table below) as an appendix to his 1996 article, “Coplas de Yoçef from the Genizah.”6 Gutwirth transcribed them in order to demonstrate the circuitous routes by which certain fragments, such as MS Add.3355, the Cambridge copy of Coplas de Yoçef (a 15th–16th-century anonymous Spanish poem on the biblical story of Joseph), entered institutional collections.7
Ironically, Gutwirth himself fell into the trap of assigning provenance based on incomplete or potentially misleading evidence. His study of MS Add. 3355 illustrates how complex transmission histories can lead to questionable assumptions about Genizah origins. González Llubera, the first scholar to publish the manuscript in 1935, was able to offer only limited provenance, identifying watermarks that pointed to 15th-century southern France. He also consulted Herbert Loewe, the Cambridge Curator of Oriental Literature, who told him that the manuscript had come from Jerusalem.8
Gutwirth attempted to investigate the acquisition history of the manuscript more closely. In the Register of Additional Manuscripts at Cambridge, he found that MS Add.3355 had been supplied by Wertheimer together with other items that, by this time, had been provenanced as Genizah fragments. As a result, he began to suspect that the Coplas manuscript might also have originated from the Cairo Genizah. He supported this reasoning by noting that other previously unknown printed fragments of Judaeo-Spanish verse had been discovered within the Genizah collections. In addition, Gutwirth ascertained that Wertheimer had sold Genizah fragments to the Bodleian together with a Judaeo-Spanish manuscript (MS Heb. e.63) around the same time as the sale of the Coplas to Cambridge. Yet the Bodleian’s Judaeo-Spanish manuscript was not attributed to the Genizah in the library’s catalogue.9 Moreover, Wertheimer himself rarely specified provenance, aside from occasional references to old Egyptian genizahs in relation to the sale of a Torah scroll, and he often sold manuscripts and fragments from various sources together, offering them to both institutions.10 This becomes more apparent when one reads the seven additional postcards and letters that Wertheimer sent to Cambridge (see the full list in the appendix below).
Examining the full extent of Wertheimer’s correspondence is essential, not only to better understand the nature and chronology of his Genizah fragment sales, but also to gain deeper insights into the dynamics of the antiquities trade. Across the complete set of twelve letters, we see Wertheimer employing different languages, sometimes within the same letter, to suit his audience and context as he navigated between Eastern and Western scholarly worlds. He used German when writing formally to the Oxford and Cambridge librarians, lending a tone of bureaucratic credibility to his enquiries. With Jenkinson, he switched to English for more transactional matters, such as postal issues and delayed payments. His English was serviceable, but his awkward phrasing clearly placed him at a disadvantage in negotiating business terms. His Hebrew letters, addressed to Schechter, are deferential but reveal a greater ease with someone who understood Jewish cultural and scholarly references and who could advocate on his behalf with the Library.
A comparison of Wertheimer’s correspondence with institutional records allows us to analyze the prices set and paid for fragments and gain insights into their perceived value by both sellers and buyers. On average, Wertheimer asked for 5 shillings a fragment (around £40 in today’s currency), an extremely low amount given their current worth.11 He also seems to have adjusted the price down from his first offering of 13 MSS for £6.3 in February 1893 to his second of 30 MSS for £3 in June 1893 (although the latter bundle probably did not include manuscripts).12
In July 1894, Wertheimer listed both manuscripts and fragments in his postcard to Schechter. Manuscripts were individually described and priced, whereas fragments were simply numbered and priced by the bundle, unless they contained text Wertheimer deemed would be of interest to Schechter. Thus, the first item he described as a: מדרש הגדול (חסר בו רק דף הראשון) Midrash ha-Gadol (missing only its first page) and priced £15. This manuscript, MS Add.3403, a 268-folio Yemenite Midrash ha-Gadol on Exodus, dated 1652, was purchased for £6. The second item, which he described as: חידושים ולקוטי וגאוני קדמאני על פסחים novellae and early Gaonim on tractate Pesahim (MS Or.1080.13.39) was 11 folios and priced at £1. The third, a similar fragment of commentaries on tractate Rosh Hashanah (MS Or.1080.13.40) was priced at 3 shillings, and the fourth, a fragment of ספר עץ החיים (שלא נדפס) Sefer Etz Hayim (not published) (MS Or.1080.13.38) at 10 shillings. The Library offered £1 for both commentaries (Pesahim and Rosh Hashanah) and 6 shillings for the Sefer Etz Hayim.
Image 4: postcard in Hebrew from Wertheimer to Schechter, 30 July 1894, Or.1080.13 (vii)
Fragments 6–31 in Wertheimer’s list were bundled together for the price of £6 or 5 shillings each. Nos. 7, 27, 32 were not described, but they were priced at 10 shillings each.13 An inventory in Jenkinson’s handwriting (also filed in Or.1080.13) titled “MSS received 1894 Aug. 11 from Rabbi Wertheimer” records that nos. 7 and 32 were “unique” and “printed from this,” and that no. 27 was a marriage contract from 1773. The asking price of 10 shillings was accepted for each one.14
Image 5: first page of inventory of Jenkinson's inventory of fragments received from Wertheimer in August 1894, Or.1080.13 (iii)
By subjecting Wertheimer’s collection of letters to greater scrutiny, we can also use them to trace the present location of his fragments. Sixty-six were placed in the Library’s Additional (Add.) Series and one was designated as Or.1035.1. The Midrash ha-Gadol and the aforementioned Judaeo-Spanish poems were both placed in Add.3403 and 3355 respectively. These were all identified as Wertheimer purchases in the Library’s register and described in the catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library.15 However, an unknown number of fragments purchased from Wertheimer in the 1890s were placed in unsorted boxes; during the 1950s they were dispersed into the library’s new Or.1080–1081 series (mostly in Or.1080.13, Or.1080.B2, Or.1081.2 and Or.1081.A) intermingled with other fragments of unrecorded or uncertain provenance.
The key to tracing Wertheimer’s fragments in the Or.1080–1081 series is to search for the numbers he inscribed on the manuscripts themselves.16 Forty-four fragments in the Add. Series bear his telltale handwritten number. These numbers frequently correspond to items listed in his letters, providing a valuable tool for matching individual fragments to specific transactions. This process, however, is far from straightforward. As the correspondence reveals, Wertheimer reused numbering systems across different shipments. For instance, as mentioned above, in February 1893, he sent thirteen fragments labeled 1–13 and at least 11 of them were kept. In June, he followed with another thirty, and then three more, which he numbered 31/2/3. The following year, he sent thirty-two fragments numbered 1–32, followed by a second batch of sixty-three, numbered 33–95. As a result, the same Wertheimer number may appear on several different manuscripts. For example, MS Or.1080.13.38, which contains the two leaves of Sefer Etz Hayim bears Wertheimer’s distinctive handwritten “No. 4” at the top of the page. The same number also appears on the verso of Add.3124a, a ketubah according to the Egyptian rite dated to 1295 CE.
Image 6: detail from the back of Add.3124a, showing Wertheimer's numbering in ink
Further complicating matters, a postcard from October 1893 reveals that the aforementioned group of manuscripts numbered 1–33, sent in June, had been returned to Wertheimer. After paying the customs fee to recover the package, Wertheimer discovered that item No. 5 was missing. The confusion is even further compounded by Cambridge University Library institutional records, which list most of the Wertheimer acquisitions as occurring in 1896.17 This likely reflects the accession date rather than the date of receipt, which was mostly in the summer of 1894.
Jenkinson’s inventory from August 1894 provides additional evidence of the number of pieces offered together with their prices. Furthermore, he noted which fragments on the list were “not wanted” or considered “worthless”. In a letter to Schechter, dated December 19, 1894, Wertheimer confirmed that Jenkinson had communicated his decision:
… I received a letter from Mr. Jenkinson, dated the 28th of the aforementioned month, in which he notified me of the price for each individual number, except for the following items: 9, 13, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 31 … I responded to Mr. Jenkinson that I accept the stated price, and I requested that he return to me the aforementioned numbered items … Until today, I am still awaiting the payment and his response regarding the manuscripts I sent in this second shipment … I hope that he will agree to the price I have set, for in accordance with the precious value of these very old manuscripts, I am offering a generous price. [translated from the Hebrew].
Image 7: Postcard in Hebrew from Wertheimer to Schechter, Or.1080.13 (ix)
The numbered fragments that Wertheimer requested returned correspond exactly to those marked as “not wanted” on the first page of Jenkinson’s list (1–32).
Although Schechter and Jenkinson had conferred on the packets of manuscripts and fragments and decided together which pieces to reject,18 Wertheimer’s letter, lamenting the lack of communication and reiterating the favourable price for such precious old manuscripts, may have prompted a reconsideration. Indeed, by tracing Wertheimer’s handwritten numbering, I have found that several originally marked as “not wanted” were, in fact, retained. For example, the 1894 list includes: “21. Psalms — not wanted.” However, Or. 1080.A13.15, a bifolium containing Psalms 22:9–24:2 and 38:10–40:3, bears Wertheimer’s handwritten “21” at the top of the first page, indicating that it was preserved. Similarly, items numbered 35–39, described in the list as “5 leaves Targum” and marked “not wanted at all,” are now held as Or. 1080.B2.2, ff. 1r–5v, with Wertheimer’s original numbers clearly visible on the leaves.
Image 8: detail from Or.1080 A13.15, with Wertheimer's numbering in ink
In all, I have been able to locate 81 of the 95 numbered fragments from the 1894 list. These include 37 that were placed in the Add. series, and another 44 integrated into the Or.1080–Or.1081 series. I have confirmed that 33 of the fragments housed in the Or.1080.13 folder originated with Wertheimer; the other 11 numbered fragments are scattered across folders Or.1080 A, Or.1080 C, Or.1081.2, and Or.1081 A. However, as noted above, some of Wertheimer’s fragments bear duplicate numbers (14 in this case). The picture will hopefully become clearer as my research continues. With further work, we should arrive at a more accurate count and gain a clearer understanding of when specific fragments arrived and how they were processed into the Library’s manuscript collections. Nevertheless, some of Wertheimer’s fragments will remain untraceable, particularly those sent after 1896.
According to the extant records, Wertheimer offered only two manuscripts to Cambridge in 1896. On May 2, he wrote to Solomon Schechter about a collection of responsa by Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, which he described as very old, originating from Egypt (underscored) and containing some unpublished responsa and many variants within those already published. He priced this unusual piece at £4.19 The second offering was an expanded edition of Hilchot Sefer Torah for £3. Wertheimer disclosed that he had edited a section of the manuscript in his new book Ginze Yerushalem, a copy of which he also offered to Schechter for 2 shillings and asked that he recommend its purchase to other scholars.20
But by 1897, Wertheimer appears to have abandoned his earlier practice of numbering and describing items for sale. In a letter to Francis Jenkinson dated June 22, 1897, he returned to writing in German and confirmed receipt of a £3.10 payment and mentioned he would be sending a “Paquet mit Manuscripten, deren Preis von £5.” At the top of the page is a note written by Jenkinson: “£3 sent / 1897 July 5 / rest sent back,” likely indicating that a portion of the latest material received had been returned. In a final postcard dated July 21, Wertheimer confirmed receipt of the £3 and again referenced a package valued at £5. Here Jenkinson’s note states: “£4 paid by / Mr. Schechter’s request / 1897 August 28” which, again, suggests that an unknown portion of the £5 packet was rejected. Altogether, this episode underscores the complexities of tracing manuscript sales and the need for close archival reading, even when the records themselves are incomplete, ambiguous or sometimes misleading.
Image 9: letter in German from Wertheimer to Jenkinson, June 1897, with Jenkinson's note at the top, Add.6463.3561
Appendix
The complete list of the extant correspondence from Wertheimer is as follows:
| No. | Date | Addressee | Language | Type | Location |
| 1 | Feb 27, 1893 | Cambridge University Library | German & Hebrew | Postcard | Or.1080.13 |
| 2 | April (1), 1893 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | English | Postcard | Add.8393.1221 |
| 3 | June 8, 1893 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | English | Letter on quadrille paper | Or.1080.13 |
| 4 | August 20, 1893 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | English | Postcard | Or.1080.2 |
| 5 | October 12,1893 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | English | Postcard | Or.1080.2 |
| 6 | December 5, 1893 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | English | Postcard | Or.1080.2 |
| 7 | July 30, 1894 | Solomon Schechter | Hebrew | Postcard | Or.1080.13 |
| 8 | September 10, 1894 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | English | Postcard | Or.1080.222 |
| 9 | December 19, 1894 | Solomon Schechter | Hebrew | Postcard | Or.1080.13 |
| 10 | April 23, 1896 | Solomon Schechter | Hebrew | Postcard | T-S Misc.34 |
| 11 | June 22, 1897 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | German | Letter on quadrille paper | Add.6463.3561 |
| 12 | July 21, 1897 | The Librarian (Francis Jenkinson) | German | Letter on quadrille paper | T-S Misc.34 |
Footnotes
1 Jenkinson added short notes to some of Wertheimer’s missives to record when he had answered them, e.g., on Add.8398/12, he writes: “ad [answered] 1893 May 21”.
2 See Meir Bar-Ilan’s article, ‘The Genizah: Antonin’s and Wertheimer’s Collections,” Alei Sefer 23 (2013), 121–37 for possible sources of Wertheimer’s collection and an examination of his scholarly contributions.
3 See the appendix of Genizah Collections in Rebecca J.W. Jefferson, The Cairo Genizah and the Age of Discovery in Egypt, I. B. Tauris, 2022, 191–207.
4 Solomon Aaron Wertheimer, דרכי של תורה, Zichron Shlomo Press, 1891.
5 The divorce document is likely Add.3350 and the commentary is Add.3207 (with Wertheimer’s numbering - a no.1 on folio 15r.).
6 Eleazar Gutwirth, “Coplas de Yoçef from the Genizah,” Revue des Etudes Juives, 155: 3–4 (1996), pp. 397–400. Transcriptions of the postcard from April 1893 and the letter from June 8, 1893 were also provided by Melonie-Schmeirer-Lee in “Found in one of the Genizas of old Egypt”, Genizah Fragments: Blog of the Genizah Research Unit, June 8, 2022: https://genizahfragments.lib.cam.ac.uk/2022/06/08/found-in-one-of-the-genizas-of-old-egypt/
7 The manuscript also contains a second Judaeo-Spanish poem: fifty-two folios of Proverbios Morales by Shem Tov b. Isaac Ardutiel.
8 For a discussion of European watermarks in Genizah fragments and their value in tracing paper production, usage, and trade networks in Cairo and across the Ottoman Empire, see Nick Posegay and Orietta Da Rold, “Following the Mediterranean Paper Trail: A Study of European Paper in Late Medieval Cairo (c. 1350–1600), The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 25 (4), 430–452.
9 See Adolf Neubauer & Arthur Ernest Cowley, eds., Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906, pp. 357–358. Neither MS Heb. e. 68 nor MS Add. 3355 are included in the Friedberg Genizah Project database.
10 See also Rebecca J. W. Jefferson, “The Trade in Cairo Genizah Fragments in and out of Palestine in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 14 (2023), 1–30.
11 This figure is derived from https://www.measuringworth.com.
12 Similar prices were offered to and paid by the Bodleian, although the ledger (C59) only records total payments rather than itemized accounts.
13 I have identified the manuscripts that correlate to Wertheimer’s list by finding his handwritten number on the manuscript (for more on this see below). No. 7 is MS Or.1080.13.4, a halachic composition. To date, I’ve been unable to identify the other two pieces.
14 See Jenkinson’s handlist, dated August 11, 1894, in Or.1080.13 (iii). To compare Wertheimer’s sales to the Bodleian, see Rebecca J. W. Jefferson, “History of the acquisitions ‘from the Geniza’ in the Bodleian Library: a first assessment.” Fragments, manuscrits, livres dans le monde juif. Publications de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études. Eds. Corazzol, G., & Fargeon, S. Paris, Librarie Droz, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4000/13sug
15 Stefan C. Reif, et al, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Add.3344 is not attributed to the genizah in this catalogue, but it is recorded as such in the Friedberg Genizah Project database.
16 See Rebecca J. W. Jefferson, "Thirteen Fragments of the Passover Haggadah: Tracing Their Exodus from Egypt to Cambridge." From the Battlefield of Books: Essays Celebrating 50 Years of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit. Eds. Posegay, N, Connolly, M., Outhwaite, B., Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, Volume 16 (2024): 259.
17 Reif’s catalogue, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library, based on the institutional records and earlier catalogues, assigns the date 1896 to all but eleven of the items in the Add. Series supplied by Wertheimer. One is stipulated as bought in 1893, a second is tentatively assigned to 1894, and nine are described as having been bought before 1896.
18 Jenkinson recorded these consultations in his diary, see Stefan C. Reif, “Jenkinson and Schechter at Cambridge: an expanded and updated assessment” Jewish Historical Studies 32 (1990–1992), p. 301, 314.
19 This might be Or. 548, a 76-folio manuscript of a collection of responsa mainly by Me’ir b. Barukh of Rothenburg, which Reif’s Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts (no. 340, pp.206-207) states was “Bought before 1902,” and “Text varies in important respects from the printed editions.” The MS is also included in the Friedberg Genizah project database.
20 Solomon Aaron Wertheimer, ספר גנזי ירושלם … Jerusalem [1896], volume 1, section b: ספר תורה (או תקון) הלכות מרבנו תם. I have been unable to locate this fragment.
21 Gutwirth erroneously cited this postcard as Add.8398/19, p. 398.
22 Gutwirth’s transcription of the postcard to Jenkinson, dated September 10, 1894, is only partial; he omitted Wertheimer’s list of manuscripts and their prices.
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