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By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Thu 2 Sep 2021

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 4 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 1982:

The Genizah has proved to be a mine of biographical information about the scholars of mediaeval Egypt, especially of the Maimonides family who were leaders of Egyptian Jewry for over 200 years. Indeed, communal and literary documents have come to light which testify to the sustained intellectual activity of Oriental Jewry’s most illustrious family.
Dr Paul Fenton,... Read More

Has tags: Abraham Maimonides, Genizah Fragments, Moses Maimonides, mystical, Sufism

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Marc Michaels on Wed 1 Sep 2021

Marc, what are you working on today?

Today I'm actually writing a couple of gittin (divorce documents), but I'm also working on two articles, one specifically related to my PhD (on Sefer Tagin) and one looking at special scribal practices in Megillat Esther. The first article deals with transmission of the text, and includes a new Genizah fragment that is a further part of the fragments I covered in my recent book Sefer Tagin Fragments from the Cairo Genizah A Critical Edition,... Read More

Has tags: Genizah Fragments, palaeography, Q&A, scribe

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Kim Phillips on Wed 25 Aug 2021

Kim, what are you working on today?

I’m working on T-S A43.6, and its associated fragments. They are a Shorthand Bible, or a Psalter, to be more precise.

A Shorthand Bible – is this the same as a Serugin manuscript?

Sort of. For the past too-long I’ve been looking at the different ways the mediaeval Jewish community in Fustat produced Bibles (or parts of Bibles) written in abbreviated form. It turns out there are three basic ways they did it: sometimes they just wrote the initial word, or few words, of a given verse, then the same for... Read More

Has tags: Bible, codex, Genizah Fragments, Q&A, serugin

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Thu 19 Aug 2021

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 6 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 1983, by Sebastian Brock:

That the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection contains a smattering of Christian texts has long been known. Written mainly in Christian Palestinian Aramaic but also in Coptic, Georgian, Greek, Latin and Syriac, these are all to be found in manuscripts technically known as palimpsests. Such manuscripts consist of parchment leaves whose original writing (in this case... Read More

Has tags: Christian, Genizah Fragments, Syriac

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Zina Cohen on Wed 18 Aug 2021

Zina, you have a new book coming out soon about inks in Genizah manuscripts. How did your interest in the fragments come about?

I have a Masters in archaeology, but have always been interested in science. I came to be interested in archaeometry – science applied to archaeology. During my Masters degree I worked on an Islamic complex in Morocco dating to the 14th century, analysing the mortar to try to understand if there were strategies involved in preparing the mortar. My main subject of interest, though, was manuscripts and pigments, and I planned to continue my... Read More

Has tags: Genizah Fragments, ink, ketubba, Moses Maimonides, paper, Q&A, scribe

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Thu 12 Aug 2021

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 28 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 1994, by J.D. Pearson, Emeritus Professor of Bibliography at the University of London. He recalls his days as a young man in Cambridge, fetching manuscripts, encountering Genizah researchers, and battling the smells of the fragments:

Having joined the Library staff as a “boy” (today called an assistant) in 1928, at the age of sixteen, I became acquainted with the documents... Read More

Has tags: conservation, Genizah Fragments

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Craig Perry on Wed 11 Aug 2021

Hi Craig – what are you working on at the moment?

Next week (12 August) is the UK publication date for volume 2 of the Cambridge World History of Slavery of which I am co-editor and contributing author. I wrote chapters on slavery and the slave trade in the western... Read More

Has tags: Abraham Maimonides, Genizah Fragments, Ibn Yiju, legal, Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Moses Maimonides, Q&A, responsa, slave

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Thu 5 Aug 2021

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 16 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 1988, by Joel Kraemer:

The importance of the Cambridge Genizah for the study of Maimonides manuscripts is widely acclaimed. Not long ago, Dr David Goldstein (of blessed memory) delivered a lecture at Cambridge on these manuscripts (see Genizah Fragments 11, April, 1986).

The survival of a... Read More

Has tags: Genizah Fragments, ink, Moses Maimonides, responsa

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Dotan Arad on Wed 4 Aug 2021

Dotan, what are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on a group of documents, mainly in Judaeo-Arabic, related to the relations between Karaites and Rabbanites in the Ottoman period, especially in Cairo and Jerusalem. Most of the documents are part of the Firkovich collection, such as Evr. Ar. II 1143, Evr. Ar. II 1408, Evr. Ar. II 1458 and more, but a few of them belong to other collections. For example, Mosseri VII.84.1, a torn loan deed, written in the 16th century, which testifies that a Karaite borrower, Jacob ibn Farjallah, owed money to a Rabbanite... Read More

Has tags: debt, Firkovich, Genizah Fragments, Karaite, marriage, Ottoman, Q&A, Rabbanite, responsa

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Tue 3 Aug 2021

On his return to Britain, Solomon Schechter described his ‘pilgrimage’ to the Genizah in the Ben Ezra Synagogue. His account, an article entitled ‘A Hoard of Hebrew Mss’, was published in The Times 124 years ago, on 3 August, 1897. 

After introducing the concept of a Genizah to the British public:

‘The Genizah of the old Jewish community... represents a combination of sacred lumber-room and secular record office.’ 

Schechter outlines his motivation for visiting Cairo and thanks his patrons:

‘especially Dr. Taylor, the Master... Read More

Has tags: Genizah Fragments, Solomon Schechter

 

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