The Cairo Genizah Impact for the History - Essay Example

? The Cairo Genizah Introduction The Cairo Genizah means much for the world’s history. The time of the “Jewish treasure” finding is officially determined as 19th century, however new texts are still being discovered. The Cairo Genizah represents the collection of Jewish writings. The texts, precisely the largest part of the collection, were hidden in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo in 11-19th centuries. They were stored in the room for damaged or poor written texts, which were kept there until they were burned. The darkness and atmosphere in the room made it possible for the texts to be saved and available today as some of them were written in 8-9th century. The significance of the texts is in their content as they tell many unknown facts about the history of Middle East. The texts are deservedly considered to be the largest collection of ancient manuscripts in the world thus its value is really high. The Cairo Genizah overshadows the glory of famous Dead Sea Scrolls, a well-known document found more than 60 years ago. While Dead Sea Scrolls shed the light only on the sectarian Judaism describing a life of small sect, the Cairo Genizah provides us with the detailed description of Jewish life. “In some ways, the contents of the Cairo Genizah are more important than the Dead Sea Scrolls, several scholars believe. While the Dead Sea scrolls were the religious literature of a small sect that lived in the desert for a few years, the Cairo Genizah told the story of the day-to-day details of a millennium of Jewish life, from the mundane to the magnificent” (Shurkin, 2011). “Genizah“ is a word of Hebrew language, it is meaning can be explained by the phrase “hide from view”. Hebrew is considered to be the holy language and all the literature written in Hebrew has always been treated with respect. It is a real miracle that so many documents of 8-13th century were saved and became known to us. This happened predominantly due to the specificity to the laws, which did not allow to destroy sacred texts. If the text could not be used any more, it should either have been burned or sent to genizah. At the beginning people were studying the collection with caution as they were frightened by the superstition that everybody who dared to remove any contents from the text would go through many troubles. Actually, this fact also helped save texts unchanged and untouched. In 19th century famous European libraries obtained some of the manuscripts. Many manuscripts also were sold to scholars and dealers that contributed to their spreading. “The Cairo Genizah was housed in the Ben Ezra synagogue of Fustat (Old Cairo), which remained intact from the 11th century onward; and since the storeroom also contained writings dating from much earlier, it would eventually accumulate about a millennium's worth of material. These riches were emptied out in the late-19th and early-20th centuries; today, something like a quarter-million individual pieces of writing traceable to it, many of them mere scraps, are preserved in libraries throughout the world” (Crossman, 2011). German lyricist Simon von Geldern is considered to be the first visitor of the Cairo Genizah in the times close to our century. He visited the synagogue in 1753 and this is known from his writing. However, the superstition prevented him from examining the texts carefully. The next visitor came to the room only a century later in 1864, but he also left it without any results restrained by ancient beliefs. However, it is also known that there could be more visitors as some pages disappeared from the collection in 18-19 centuries (The Cairo Genizah). In 1890 a scholar and investigator from Jerusalem Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer started publishing texts, which were obtained by him. He researched the texts carefully and provided necessary explanations to them. The texts were sold with the purpose to get finances to obtain new texts as the researcher was the first who understood the value of Cairo Genizah while other people recognized its worth only by 1897. In 1986 Dr. Solomon Schechter for the University of Cambridge who studied ancient documents saw some pages of Jewish ancient writing and got a great desire to find their origins. He found the ways to organize an expedition that led him to Cairo. In Ben Ezra synagogue the professor found the room with many ancient Jewish texts. Dr. Schechter managed to get the permission to bring the text to Cambridge in order to do the investigation. Several years later the professor brought some texts to New York. Crossman argues: “At the time, no one had any idea how much of Schechter's spoils was treasure and how much trash. The subsequent history of Genizah research, which takes up the remainder of both books, is a story of single-minded labor by archivists and scholars who classified, catalogued, preserved, deciphered, analyzed, and placed in historical context this abundance of writing. At first the focus was on locating the work of "great men" already known from other sources; but very soon it became clear that every humdrum fragment could help piece together what Jewish life was like a millennium ago” (Crossman, 2011). It is also known that approximately the same time, at the beginning of 19th century two scholars Albert Harkavy and Abraham Firkovich obtained some pages and brought them to Russia with the purpose to reconstitute the history of Jews. Cairo has always been very important for the Middle East as cultural and economic center. Therefore, the citizens of Cairo were considered to be the most influential Jews in the region. The city was built in 10th century near the former capital Fostat that became the administrative center after Arab conquest. The Ezra Synagogue was restored in 882 from the old Saint Michael Church (Greenhouse, 2013). The finding of Cairo Genizah is considered to be one the most outstanding events. It provided a great number of comprehensive details about Mediterranean Region and Middle East. There is no other collection in the world that contains the documents from the 10th century. Until the Cairo Genizah was found, Jews did not know much about this period in their history. The texts revealed that the relations between Arabs and Jews were warm and Jews played an important role in the life of the Middle East. There were found many important documents such as contracts, marriage certificates, private letters. Also it was possible to get to know interesting facts about famous poets and writers as well as to discover a lot of new important personalities. “Many genizah documents have become a unique historical source for the Middle East, providing important information for Muslim and Christian scholars in addition to Jewish ones. The rich store of linguistic works shed light on Hebrew grammar and lexicology as well as a history of Arabic dialects. Unique Arab manuscripts were found, such as the pharmacological work of 11th century doctor Ahmed Ibn Al-Djazzar and a love story of Umayyid caliph Al-Walid II dating from the mid-eighth century. There were fragments of Greek translations of the Bible by Aquila, the Covenant of Damascus and ancient Babylonian and Spanish piyyutim” (Oreck, 2013). Now the largest collection of Cairo Genizah texts can be found in the Cambridge University Library. This collection was created by the above-mentioned Solomon Schechter who was the first who brought ancient Jewish manuscripts to Cambridge for investigation. This collection is called The Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collection. There is also another collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts that can be found in Cambridge, it was called the Jacques Mosseri Genizah Collection after his creator, a businessman Jacques Mosseri. First, these documents were planned to be kept in Egypt, however, when Mosseri died in 1934 and his family left Egypt, the texts were lost and was found only in 1970s. Then the manuscripts were microfilmed and since 2006 this microfilm can be found in Cambridge University Library. The Cairo Genizah also included abundant material on the history of the Karaites and numerous responsa from the Gaonic Period, including works by Saadiah ben Joseph, the gaon of Sura, in the early tenth century, and other Babylonian geonim. “Today, a large portion of the Cairo Genizah's documents are available at the University Library in Cambridge, where documents are under glass, bound in albums or placed loosely in boxes. Smaller collections are spread out across the world, in libraries in London, Oxford, Paris Frankfurt, Vienna, Budapest, Leningrad and Philadelphia”. (Oreck, 2013T Really, Cairo Genizah offered scientists plenty of valuable information not only about Jewish religion but also about the everyday life of the ancestors. Speaking about the investigation of Jewish manuscripts it is essential to mention that it has always been very difficult. The scientists have been going a great job to gather the parts of the collection, place the fragments logically and make the texts readable. Now the experts have recourse to the help of artificial intelligence in order to gather the texts. Scholars from Tel Aviv University managed to identify not less than 1,000 documents this way. Still, they say it will take many years until the work is finished. According to Rabbi Reuven Rubelow, the head of one of the Genizah project branches, “the Genizah contains information about every single Jewish subject in the world — all learning. If it is holy, they kept it in this room” (cited in Shurkin 2011). The method of Tel Aviv investigators is a break-through that will allow to advance the research greatly. The trouble is that some texts are full while some are just fragments that should be properly gathered. They may represent only a passage or even a few words and it is not very easy to understand the content. Another difficulty is that the fragments of one text can be stored in different libraries in the world, thus artificial intelligence will certainly be very helpful in the attempts to gather the fragments and reveal the contents. “The fragments are spread out through 70 different libraries and museums around the world. One page of a letter could be in Oslo and another in Philadelphia” (Shurkin 2011). Before the investigator faced many difficulties and has to rely only on providence: they had to remember how the document looks and recollect where they may have seen the similar! It was an extremely difficult task that made the progress slow. However, now it will be possible to use computers to implement this task. A computer will store the data and find the fragments of one document. “The documents are scanned using algorithms, segments of which were developed for facial recognition. The computer ignores content and looks for matching physical attributes. So far, the computing project has found about 5,000 fragments that might be rejoined, mostly from collections in Geneva and New York, but scholars have gone through those and affirmed that only 1,000 of them are actual matches (Shurkin, 2011). Conclusion Our history is full of secrets, many of which will never be revealed. Some things will remain secrets, that is why any small opportunity to shed the light on some historical details is precious. The scientists try to use any small detail to recreate the picture from the history and while the opportunities of material proofs found in expeditions are limited, the manuscripts are perfect and the best source of information. Ancient manuscripts brought much valuable information about the Middle East to our contemporaries. But for the Cairo Genizah, we would lose many important facts about the life of our ancestors. As the valueless of the Cairo Genizah is apparent, texts from archive is still being discovered and researched. The collection is deservedly considered to be the real treasure for Jewish history and also for the history of the whole world. It is not very easy to research the documents and it takes much time to bring the fragments together, however we will hope that new technical opportunities our century can offer will help scientists advance the research and receive new valuable information from the Cairo Genizah texts, a real “Jewish treasure”. References The Cairo Genizah n.d., Retrieved March 23, 2013 from http://www.genizah.org/TheCairoGenizah.aspx Greenhouse, E 2013, THE NEW YORKER Retrieved March 23, 2013 from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/03/treasures-in-the-wall-the-riches-of-the-cairo-genizah.html Grossman, L 2011, Sifting the Cairo Genizah Retrieved March 23, 2013 from http://www.jewishideasdaily.com http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/855/features/sifting-the-cairo-genizah/ Oreck, A 2013, The Cairo Genizah. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise Retrieved March 23, 2013 from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Genizah.html Shurkin, Joel N 2011, Hidden Treasures of Cairo Genizah 2011, Forward.com http://forward.com/articles/145977/hidden-treasures-of-cairo-genizah/?p=all Read More