The Genizah has preserved only a few glimpses of the life of the influential qabbalist Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, the Ari – הארי ז׳׳ל, 1534–72 CE.1 Similarly sparsely attested in the documentary record of the Genizah is his contemporary Joseph Karo, compiler of the Beṯ Yosef and the Šulḥan Aruḵ. Karo spent most of his later career in Safed – about forty years in fact – and was not therefore a firsthand participant in the Egyptian communities preserved in the Cairo Genizah. Luria, on the other... Read More
Safed
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 29 Jul 2021
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 23 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in April 1992, by Abraham David:
During the Mamlūk period (1250-1516), the land of Israel was politically and economically attached to the Egyptian centre and was ruled from Cairo by emirs and governors with varying degrees of authority.
From the second half of the fifteenth century, Jewish sources paint an interesting picture of relations... Read More
Has tags: charity, Genizah Fragments, Hebron, Jerusalem, mamluk, Ottoman, Safed