A New Geniza Fragment of Saadia Gaon's Commentary on Parashat Behukkotai, copied by Rabbi Zakkay the Judge on the Reverse of a Court Document
In the Taylor-Schechter Geniza Collection at Cambridge University Library, a single leaf measuring 25×16 cm had been catalogued in general terms for decades: one side described as "a philosophical (?) work, mentioning natural science, astronomy, etc."; the other as a legal document concerning tax-farming in the Egyptian Delta town of al-Mahalla al-Kubra, signed by one Zakkay b. Moses and ʿAmram b. Jacob. The identification rested there until the automatic transcription tools of the EU-funded MiDRASH project made it possible to search the entire Geniza corpus for word-clusters. Running such a search against the texts of my recent critical edition of Saadia Gaon's commentary on Leviticus, I recognised T-S 13J3.6 as something the cataloguers had not suspected: a passage from Saadia Gaon's sharḥ (detailed commentary) on Parashat Behukkotai.
The discovery has a second dimension. The philosophical text on one side of the leaf and the legal deed on the other were written by the same hand — that of Rabbi Zakkay b. Moses, a judge (dayyan) active in Fustat and al-Mahalla al-Kubra in the mid-twelfth century, and a member of the circle of Rav Matsliach ha-Kohen Gaon, the last Gaon to unite Egyptian Jewry under a single authority. On one side of his page, Rabbi Zakkay recorded a compassionate financial arrangement to relieve a community burdened by tax debt. On the other, he was copying Saadia Gaon's rational proofs for the existence of an afterlife. The two activities sit on either side of the same sheet of paper, separated by no more than the thickness of the leaf.
I. The Fragment and Its Two Lives
T-S 13J3.6 is a single leaf, paper, 25×16 cm, written in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew script, the standard written medium of medieval Egyptian Jewry) in a semi-cursive hand. The existing catalogues had noted its two sides without connecting them. The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge (2014) described the recto as "a philosophical (?) work, mentioning natural science, astronomy, etc.," and the verso as a legal document concerning tax-farming in al-Mahalla al-Kubra, signed by Zakkay b. Moses and ʿAmram b. Jacob.1 Goitein engaged with it from different angles — economic, communal, and social;2 Delbes listed it as a dated document;3 Friedman mentioned it in his discussion of Abū l-Faraj Yeshuʿa b. Abraham, who appears in the legal deed.4 No one identified the text on the recto, because searching the entire Geniza corpus for specific word-clusters was not possible until recently.
The EU-funded MiDRASH project changed that. Its automatic transcriptions of close to 400,000 Geniza fragments, released in late 2025, are now searchable in full text.5 Running a search against phrases from my recent critical edition of Saadia Gaon's commentary on Leviticus, I found this fragment and recognised the recto as a passage from Saadia's sharḥ on Parashat Behukkotai.
II. Rabbi Zakkay b. Moses: Judge, Copyist, Reader
Rabbi Zakkay b. Moses was a dayyan active in Fustat and al-Mahalla al-Kubra in the mid-twelfth century. He is known from a small but revealing dossier of Geniza documents: a letter addressed to him by a judge at Minyat Zifta, several court documents bearing his signature, and a business letter in his hand (T-S 8J21.9).6 In these sources he appears as "the wise and insightful judge, God-fearing, crown of the discerning." His earliest preserved court document from Fustat dates to 1127, the year Rav Matsliach ha-Kohen Gaon arrived in that city from Damascus — though he may well have been active there earlier.
Matsliach was the last Gaon of the Palestinian yeshiva to unite Egyptian Jewry under a single authority, and his circle maintained a deep intellectual engagement with the writings of Saadia Gaon. Among the Geniza fragments associated with this circle are several sermon notebooks in Rabbi Zakkay's hand containing homilies by Matsliach, which draw extensively on Saadia's works.7 The attachment was not merely institutional. It was, as the fragment before us suggests, genuinely personal.
By 1147, the year of the legal deed on the verso, Rabbi Zakkay had moved from Fustat to serve as judge in al-Mahalla al-Kubra. The deed he signed that summer concerns a tax-farm (ḍamān): a contract by which the right to collect taxes from the Jewish community had been sold to a private individual, who would pay a fixed sum to the government treasury and absorb whatever shortfall or surplus resulted. Tax-farming of this kind was common under the Fatimids.8 What is less common is the reason Jacob b. Joseph gives for taking on the contract: he had considered the community's "straits and debts... and placed the improvement of their situation before the improvement of my own."
III. The Two Sides of the Leaf
The recto contains a passage from Saadia's sharḥ on Parashat Behukkotai. The sharḥ is Saadia's detailed Arabic commentary on the biblical text, distinct from his tafsīr (translation). While the tafsīr was copied and transmitted across generations, the sharḥ was not: it survives only in scattered Geniza fragments, most of them damaged.9 The passage Rabbi Zakkay copied forms part of a longer sequence in which Saadia marshals rational arguments — ḥujaj maʿqūla — for the existence of an afterlife of recompense. This was Saadia's response to a genuine theological difficulty: Parashat Behukkotai (Leviticus 26) frames all reward and punishment in this-worldly terms, with no explicit mention of the World to Come. Saadia's sharḥ enumerates seven rational proofs that complete recompense must lie beyond this world. Four of them appear in our fragment.10
The text begins mid-sentence, in the middle of the second argument — which means Rabbi Zakkay had started copying on an earlier leaf, now lost. He filled the recto, then turned the leaf over and continued in the upper and right margins of the verso, writing around the legal deed already inscribed there. When the marginal space ran out, the copying stopped. Whether he stopped because he had no more room, or because he had reached a natural endpoint after copying the four arguments of particular interest to him, cannot be determined from the physical evidence alone.
The four arguments preserved here move from the visible to the celestial. The first reasons from the centrality of the human being in creation: just as the most valuable part of any natural thing — the seed within leaves, the kernel within the fruit, the yolk within the egg — lies at the center, so the earth stands at the center of the spheres, and the human being is the cause of that centrality. If the earth's protection of the human being serves no purpose beyond this life, then "he and the beast are equal in this world." The second argument turns to the rational commandments: God implanted in human reason the appreciation of things burdensome to natural inclination — honesty, debt repayment, justice even at personal cost — and arranged that the soul should endure "struggle and hardship, difficulty and toil" in pursuing them. This would be inexplicable without a reward beyond this world. The third and fourth arguments — from astronomy and from the lunar cycle — have no parallel in Saadia's better-known philosophical work, Emunot ve-Deot (Book of Beliefs and Opinions), where he treated the same topic with different proofs. Saadia observed that the human soul can grasp the paths of the celestial bodies, the distances between the stars, the science of the poles and of climatic variation: it would be incongruous for a soul capable of such knowledge to receive no higher reward than the eating and drinking available to any animal. As for the moon: Saadia notes, with apparent astronomical precision, that the part of the moon from which light disappears does not truly go dark — it turns its face away from the sun, and the same face receives the light when it turns back. From this he draws his inference: "The Protector of the human being has not arranged for the moon's light to return to it except when the human being's light also returns to him." These two arguments appear to be Saadia's own synthesis, without precise parallels in the Muʿtazilite Kalām literature he otherwise drew upon.11
IV. Why Did Rabbi Zakkay Copy This Passage?
The question is worth sitting with. Rabbi Zakkay had access to Saadia's Emunot ve-Deot, where the topic of afterlife reward is treated at length in Treatise IX. Yet he copied from the sharḥ — a text far less widely circulated, preserved today only in fragments — and specifically the section containing arguments that Emunot ve-Deot does not include.
Two explanations present themselves, and they are not mutually exclusive. The first is personal study. The arguments in this passage are empirical rather than abstract: they reason from seeds, eggs, the lunar cycle, and the movement of the stars. He may have copied these proofs precisely because they were not available elsewhere in Saadia's more widely circulated writings.
The second possibility is that he intended the material for a homily. The sermon notebooks in Rabbi Zakkay's hand that survive in the Geniza show him copying Matsliach's homilies for communal use, and arguments for the World to Come were standard material for funeral orations. A manuscript collection of sermons attributed to Rabbi Isaac ben Shuwayk of Baghdad (Bodleian Library, MS Huntington 241, copied 1321–22) shows the same tradition at work: several of its funeral addresses deal directly with reward and recompense in the afterlife.12 The progression of the four arguments — from the visible and domestic (the seed, the egg) to the distant and celestial (the stars, the moon) — would work well as a homiletical sequence, moving a general audience from the familiar to the sublime.
One small detail points toward the homiletical explanation. Between lines 21 and 22 of the recto, Rabbi Zakkay omitted a sentence present in both other Geniza witnesses to this text, a sentence whose content would have been inappropriate before a communal audience. He moved directly from one clause to the next, leaving no gap — an editor's choice, not a copyist's error.
V. A Fragment, a Discovery, and What Comes Next
The fragment TS 13 J 3.6 carries three distinct contributions. It adds a text to the reconstruction of Saadia's sharḥ on Behukkotai — a commentary that was never systematically transmitted and survives only in pieces. Two other Geniza fragments preserve overlapping portions of the same passage (TS Ar. 23.96 and EVR ARAB II 1150 144r, at the National Library of Russia), but both are damaged at different points. The three witnesses together allow a more reliable reconstruction of the text than any one of them permits alone, and the variants between them are discussed in the critical edition of Saadia's Leviticus commentary published separately.
It also offers a glimpse of Rabbi Zakkay as something more than a signatory on legal documents. The same hand that certified a community's tax arrangement on one side of a leaf was, on the other side, working through Saadia's proofs that the justice of this world is necessarily incomplete — that the soul capable of grasping the paths of the stars deserves more than what this world provides. Whether he was reading for himself or preparing to speak to others, the copy he made is the record of a mind at work.13
And it is a reminder of what the MiDRASH project makes possible. This fragment had been catalogued, cited, and discussed for decades. Its legal deed was known. Its philosophical text was described, vaguely, as a work on natural science. The connection between the two sides — and the identification of the recto as Saadia's sharḥ — required searching for specific phrases across the entire Geniza corpus at once. That became possible only when the automatic transcriptions were released in late 2025. There will be other fragments like this one.
T-S 13J3.6 recto and verso
Appendix: Selected Passages from T-S 13J3.6
The following passages are selected from the full transcription. Line numbers follow the original line-breaks of the manuscript. Interlinear additions in the original are indicated by forward slashes. The full transcription and textual variants are discussed in the critical edition of Saadia's Leviticus commentary (n. 9 above).
A. Recto – Saadia Gaon's Commentary on Parashat Behukkotai (Sharḥ)
[Judaeo-Arabic original]
1. הו אפצ֗ל מנהא לתחפט֗ה הי כמא נגד אלחב נבאתא פי מא
2. בין אלורק כחב אלבקול ונגד אלת֗מר אלד֗י יכון מנה אלגרס דאכ֗ל
3. אלועא כאלנוא דאכ֗ל אלת֗מרה ואללוזה דאכ֗ל אלקשרה וכמא
4. נגד אלמחה אלתי תכון מנהא אלפרך֗ מתוסטה פי אלביצ֗ה וכמא
5. נגד קלב אלחיואן מתוסטא פי גסמה וכמא נגד אלרוח אלבאצר
6. מוסטא אלעין כד֗לך יגב עלי הד֗ה אלמקדמאת אן תכון אלארץ֗
7. הי אפצ֗ל /מן כת֗יר\ אלאשיאן למא צח אנהא מתוסטה /פי\ אלאפלאך ולא יגוז
8. אן תכון עלה פצילתהא אלבהאים ואלנבאת ולכנה אלאנסן פאחיטת
9. הי בה לתחפט֗ה פאן לם יכן חפט֗הא לה לינקל אלי דאר אכ֗רי
10. פלם חפט֗תה והו ואלבהימה סיאן פי הד֗ה אלדאר.
[Verso margin – continuation of recto]
1. [...] ת֗ם אנא נרי אלקמר אלד֗י הו
2. אקרב אגזא אלעלויין מן אלארץ֗. וקד יצח לנא אנה אנמא כ֗לק
3. ליחפט֗ הד֗א אלאנסן נגד לה אבתדי נור ונקצאן ועודה
[Right margin:]
1. פי נצפה אלד֗י ילינא. ול[י]סנא נשך פי אן אלגז אלד֗י זאלאל נור ענה לאנה ראסה ען אלשמס
2. הו בעינה אלד֗י וקע פיה אלנור ענד מילה אליהא פלם יגעל חאפט֗ אלאנסן יעוד אליה
3. נורה אלא ואלאנסן עאיד אליה נורה.
[...]
29. פי אלעשר אלאול מן אלול שנת א'תנ'ח' שריר ובריר וקיים
30. ע י ש
31. זכאי בר משה נע' עמרם ביר' יעקב נבע
32. מ ע
[English Translation]
[Recto]
1. it is more noble than them in order to protect it. Just as we find the seed growing as a plant among
2. the leaves, like the seeds of vegetables; and we find the fruit from which the
3. sapling will grow inside the casing, like the kernel inside the date and the almond inside its shell; and just as
4. we find the yolk – from which the chick will develop – positioned at the center of the egg; and just as
5. we find the heart of the animal at the center of its body; and just as we find the optic spirit
6. at the center of the eye – so too it is necessary on the basis of these premises that the earth
7. is the most noble [of many] things, given that it has been established that it is at the center of the celestial spheres. And it cannot be
8. that the cause of its nobility is the beasts and the plants, but rather it is the human being. So it has surrounded
9. him in order to protect him. But if its protecting him is not in order to transfer him to another abode –
10. why has it protected him? For he and the beast are equal in this world.
[Verso margin]
1. [...] Then we observe that the moon, which is
2. the closest of the celestial bodies to the earth – and it has been established for us that it was created
3. only to protect this human being – we find that it has continually a beginning of light, then waning, then return
[Right margin:]
1. in the half facing us. And we have no doubt that the part from which the light has departed – because it has turned its face away from the sun –
2. is the very same part in which the light falls when it turns toward it. The Protector of the human being has not arranged for the moon's light
3. to return to it except when the human being's light also returns to him.
[…]
30. ʿ-Y-SH [= ʿezrī me-ʿim Adonai ʿoseh shamayim va-ʾareṣ, "My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth," Ps. 121:2]
31. Zakkay b. Moses, may he rest in Eden | ʿAmram b. Jacob, may his soul be bound in the bond of life
32. M-ʿ-W [= part of the same acrostic, reading downward]14
Footnotes
1 Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library, catalogue entry dated 25.11.2014.
2 S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. 1: Economic Foundations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 26, 116, 425, 465; vol. 2: The Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 61, 66, 359, 377; vol. 4: Daily Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 287.
3 P. Delbes, Documents Datés, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, Paris, 1991–92, p. 88; p. 40 (index).
4 M.A. Friedman and S.D. Goitein, Sefer Hodu B: Madmun Nagid Ereẓ Teman ve-Saḥar-Hodu [India Book II: Madmun, Nagid of Yemen and the India Trade], Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, 2011, p. 42.
5 Stoekl Ben Ezra, D., Bambaci, L., Kiessling, B., Lapin, H., Ezer, N., Lolli, E., Rustow, M., Dershowitz, N., Kurar Barakat, B., Gogawale, S., Shmidman, A., Lavee, M., Siew, T., Raziel Kretzmer, V., Vasyutinsky Shapira, D., Olszowy-Schlanger, J., & Gila, Y. (2025). MiDRASH Automatic Transcriptions. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17734473.
6 On Rabbi Zakkay b. Moses and his family, see: Y. Seewald, "Derasha le-Ḥag ha-Shavuʿot: Sidrat Derashot ve-Ḥiburim mi-Bet Midrasho shel Rasag" [A Shavuot Sermon: A Series of Sermons and Compositions from the School of Saadia Gaon], Kovets Beit Aharon ve-Yisraʾel 203 (Sivan–Tammuz 2019), pp. 14–33, esp. pp. 24–33. The business letter TS 8J21.9 was published by M. Gil, Be-Malkhut Yishmaʿel bi-Tequfat ha-Geonim [In the Kingdom of Ishmael in the Geonic Period], Ben-Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, 1983, vol. 4, pp. 362–363.
7 Seewald, ibid. (n. 6 above), pp. 14–24.
8 On tax-farming (ḍamān) in Jewish communities under the Fatimids, see: Goitein, Mediterranean Society, vol. 2, pp. 395–402; M. Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), pp. 241–268.
9 On the state of preservation of the sharḥ on Leviticus, see the introduction to: Y. Seewald and D. Sklare, Perush Rabbenu Saʿadya Gaon le-Sefer Vayiqra [Saadia Gaon's Commentary on the Book of Leviticus], Alei Zayit Institute, ed. Rabbi Shimon Szimonowitz, Lakewood, NJ, 2026, pp. XLIV–XLVII.
10 The seven arguments in full: (a) complete good exists only in the world to come; (b) the centrality of the human being in creation; (c) the rational commandments; (d) from astronomy; (e) from the moon; (f) the soul never attains tranquility in this world; (g) a person blind from birth sees visions that must originate from the supernal realm. Arguments (a), (f), and (g) are reconstructed from other Geniza fragments and published in the critical edition (n. 9 above).
11 On the absence of precise Muʿtazilite parallels for these arguments and Saadia's anthropological premises, see: S. Stroumsa, "Saadya and Jewish Kalam," in D.H. Frank and O. Leaman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 71–90.
12 Mateh ʿOz (Staff of Strength): Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Huntington 241 (= Neubauer 241). Copied in 1321–22. On the manuscript and its author, see: Y. Seewald, "Derashot Qeṣarot mi-Sefer Mateh ʿOz le-Rabbi Yiṣḥaq Shuwayk Gaon" [Short Sermons from the Book Mateh ʿOz by Rabbi Isaac Shuwayk the Gaon], Shinnena 1 (Kislev 2025), pp. 27–33.
13 Seewald-Sklare (n. 9 above). On the two parallel fragments: TS Ar. 23.96 contains a large lacuna disrupting the sequence; EVR ARAB II 1150 144r begins in the middle of the passage, at the words wa-akhdh al-adwiya al-kariha ("and taking bitter medicines"), corresponding to lines 13–14 of our fragment.
14 The letters above and below Rabbi Zakkay's signature — read from top to bottom and right to left — yield ʿezrī me-ʿim Adonai ʿoseh shamayim va-ʾareṣ: "My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth" (Psalm 121:2). On this reading convention and its attestation in Geniza documents, see M.A. Friedman, "ʿIṭṭurei Ḥotamim ve-Shita Meyuḥedet le-Ẓiyyun ha-Taʾarikh" [Decorative Signet Motifs and a Distinctive Method of Dating], Tarbiz 48 (1979), pp. 160–163.
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