A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University's Genizah Collection (review)

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The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2003) 631-635 Stefan C. Reif. A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University's Genizah Collection. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000. Pp. xx + 277, ill., maps. One of the most spectacular yet quiet revolutions in the modern study of the history of the Mediterranean world has resulted from the recovery just over a hundred years ago of the contents of an attic storehold in the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo. The Cairo "genizah" (the technical, religious term applied to a storage area for consigning, or "hiding away" the worn remains of texts considered narrowly or generally sacred, or even heretical, but in either case unfit for ritual use), has yielded an unprecedented cache of more than 200,000 fragmentary documents, most of which date from the 9th through the 15th centuries CE. The story of a major part of this treasure trove, its origins, rediscovery and relocation from Cairo to Cambridge University , and the significance of its contents is the subject of this much needed survey by Stefan C. Reif. Reif, the Director of the Genizah Research Unit and Head of the Oriental Division at the Cambridge University Library, Professor of Medieval Hebrew Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies and Fellow of St. John's College, combines a deep scholarly mastery of the material with an admirable pedagogic commitment to popularize the results of a century of scholarship . In this book Reif has succeeded in realizing his goal to "not restrict the activities of the Genizah Research Unit to the kind of technical conservation , manuscript research and bibliographical publication . . . but also to convey the excitement of the Genizah text to those with no more than a modest interest in what was happening a thousand years ago in the Mediterranean " (p. xiii). In so doing, he tells his story and translates exemplary documents with energy, expertise and even humor. In short, this book delivers an authoritative summation of the current state of genizah studies and a gracefully written popular entrée to the subject suitable for both specialists and non-specialists. Reif has structured the book in ten chapters, each of which is followed by a very useful annotated bibliographical "guide to reading." The first chapter introduces the reader to the formation of the Egyptian Jewish center in Fustat following the Islamic conquests beginning in the 7th century CE. Fustat was "the first city to be founded by the Muslims in Egypt" and grew under Islamic rule into "the unrivalled centre of Egyptian economic and political life." The neighboring new suburb of Cairo, located along the Nile about two miles to the northeast, gradually came to replace Fustat, beginning in the 10th century, as the administrative capital of the Fatamid caliphate, and eventually eclipsed it altogether. At its zenith under the Fatamids from the 632THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW 10th—12th centuries, however, prestigious Fustat continued to attract Jewish immigrants and was home to a variety of different Jewish populations, including Jews from the Land of Israel, from Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and further west. Internally, the Jewish community was divided theologically between Rabbanites and Karaites, and despite their differences these two groups at times intermarried and otherwise closely associated with each other. In short, Fustat, or "Old Cairo" as it came to be known, was a major urban center and familiar junction for a variety of Jewish communities around the Mediterranean. The Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat where the manuscript fragments came to be deposited was built in the 10th century, not as a church as some have speculated, but expressly to serve Jews. Though the original building was destroyed in the early 1 1th century, it was reconstructed around 1040 on the same site, whose environs existed at the crossroads of a vast trading network that stretched from India and East Asia to the northwestern Mediterranean . The Synagogue's liturgical rites, customs, architecture, furnishings, library and the diverse riches of its genizah can be explained in part, Reif suggests, by this geographically strategic location. After locating the reader geographically and historically, Reif sets about narrating the modern encounters with the contents of the Ben Ezra...