Genizah Fragments

In recent weeks Genizah researchers recorded two radio interviews about the collection and its Bible fragments for the Catholic radio station Radio Maria England. On 24 July 2023, Dr Ben Outhwaite gave an introductory talk on the Cairo Genizah covering its history and importance to our understanding of Jewish medieval life, and on 25 September, Dr Kim Phillips followed up with a talk about early Bible fragments in the Genizah collections, explaining how scribes maintained the accuracy of their holy texts and how that relates to the Bible you read today. 

Radio Maria England aims to...

Most Genizah fragments are damaged – “torn”, “stained”, “rubbed”, “faded” occur frequently in Genizah catalogues – but some fragments are more damaged than others. Ink corrosion can destroy a text almost completely. A page torn vertically is harder to make sense of than one torn horizontally. It is especially frustrating but also tantalising when writing is preserved but earlier conservation work has, through error or a misunderstanding, obscured it. In such cases, working today with the UL’s Conservation...

The Kedem YouTube channel has recently published three video interviews with Ben Outhwaite, dealing with some recent discoveries and perennial fascinations of the Genizah. So, if you are interested in hearing what he thinks about the Kyiv Letter’s origins (spoiler: he thinks Norman Golb was spot on) or the new Maimonides discovery by Prof. Delgado (...

In December 1033 CE – late afternoon on the 12th day of the Hebrew month of Tevet – a terrible earthquake shook Palestine. Across the region, cities were levelled and a tsunami wave arrived on the Mediterranean coast. The events of that day and its aftermath reached Egypt soon afterwards in a letter written by the scribe Solomon ben Ṣemaḥ. The letter, T-S 18J3.9, can be seen on Cambridge Digital Library with...

Catherine, what are you working on at the moment?

I’m writing about the Rosetta Stone and a connection it has to Cambridge, dating from the time it was originally shipped from Alexandria to London in 1801. The British Museum’s current exhibition to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the decipherment of hieroglyphs by Jean-Francois Champollion from the text on the Stone, provides a good opportunity to investigate this further.

We’ll look forward...

Pepe, what are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on a new book about daily life in al-Andalus, and I’ve been looking for new materials to include in it. I decided to have a look at a list I made when I visited 6 years ago of lexicographical Genizah fragments, to see if any of them might be suitable for the book, and saw in my list one I had described as ‘Andalusi script’. I had a look at it and something about it seemed familiar. At the last line, I realised what I was looking at. I had seen this handwriting before. I quickly sent a message to my friend Amir...

Elyashiv, what are you working on at the moment?

I’ve been looking at tiny fragments in T-S AS 96. One of my guilty pleasures is to look at Genizah fragments and try to identify them. I then look for other pieces that might go with the fragment I’m looking at. They often have very little connection to my research, so I will pass them onto other researchers. If I find anything connected to the Jerusalem Talmud – the Yerushalmi – I study them myself. While I was looking for something else in T-S AS 96, I found two tiny fragments in the language of the Jerusalem Talmud...