Today we are announcing a new piece of Genizah research and a new book in the field of book history from our friends over at Gorgias Press. This book, titled Literary Snippets: Colophons Across Space and Time, is a collection of essays examining the widespread phenomenon of ‘colophons’ in manuscript culture. From Gorgias Press:
The colophon, the ultimate or “crowing touch” paragraphs of a manuscript or a book, provides readers with a the historical context in which the scribe produced the manuscript (or the publisher, a book). At its most fundamental level, the... Read Moreprinted
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 9 Jun 2022
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 46 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 2003, by Bill Rebiger (then Research Assistant at the Institut für Judaistik, Freie Universität Berlin):
An intriguing phenomenon is the existence of non-Jewish fragments among the material from the Cairo Genizah. One such example at Cambridge University Library bears the classmark T-S NS 298.73. The fragment consists of... Read MoreHas tags: Ashkenaz, Christian, Genizah Fragments, printed
Nick Posegay
on Fri 27 May 2022
The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source for the study of medieval Jewish history, and that is mainly what we focus on in our work at the Genizah Research Unit. However, Egyptian Jews continued to produce and consume textual media all the way up to the Genizah’s “discovery” in 1896 (and beyond). As a result, Genizah collections also contain hundreds of manuscripts produced during the 19th century, written even as Oxbridge scholars sought to move them from Egypt to England. Among these are Arabic textbooks, Ladino novels, French wedding invitations, Yiddish newspapers, and Viennese Bibles.... Read More
Has tags: article, Genizah Fragments, Ottoman, printed
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 4 Nov 2021
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 60 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 2010, by Ronny Vollandt:
The installation of a Hebrew press at Constantinople in 1503 by David b. Nahmias ushered in a period of prosperity for Jewish printing in the Ottoman Empire. Gershom Soncino, head of the Soncino family and universally acknowledged towering figure of five centuries of Hebrew printing, followed in 1530 and established his Jewish publishing house in... Read MoreHas tags: Bible, Genizah Fragments, printed, Targum
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 28 Oct 2021
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issues 5 and 6 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in April and October 1983, by Paul Fenton, with a response in the next issue by S.D. Goitein:
An exciting discovery recently made in the Unit may well open a new chapter in the history of Hebrew printing. Dr Paul Fenton has dated a Hebrew print in the Genizah Collection (... Read MoreHas tags: Genizah Fragments, Goitein, mamluk, printed
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Nick Posegay
on Wed 12 May 2021
Q&A Wednesday gives a short interview with a Genizah researcher: what are they working on today? And why?
Nick, what are you working on this week?
Lately I’ve been working on late-dated manuscripts in Genizah collections. Looking at fragments dated after 1864, trying to work out how they ended up in genizot, and thinking about what that means for “Cairo Genizah” collections as we typically understand them.
Have you found many fragments that are dated that late?
I’ve found about 25 that are explicitly dated, but I suspect... Read More
Has tags: Agnes Lewis, Genizah Fragments, Greville Chester, ketubba, Margaret Gibson, printed, Q&A, Solomon Schechter, Yemen