Download or read book Sacred Trash written by Adina Hoffman and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST WINNER OF THE 2012 AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S SOPHIE BRODY AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN JEWISH LITERATURE Sacred Trash tells the remarkable story of the Cairo Geniza—a synagogue repository for worn-out texts that turned out to contain the most vital cache of Jewish manuscripts ever discovered. This tale of buried communal treasure weaves together unforgettable portraits of Solomon Schechter and the other modern heroes responsible for the collection’s rescue with explorations of the medieval documents themselves—letters and poems, wills and marriage contracts, Bibles, money orders, fiery dissenting religious tracts, fashion-conscious trousseaux lists, prescriptions, petitions, and mysterious magical charms. Presenting a panoramic view of almost a thousand years of vibrant Mediterranean Judaism, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole bring contemporary readers into the heart of this little-known trove, whose contents have rightly been dubbed “the Living Sea Scrolls.” Part biography, part meditation on the supreme value the Jewish people has long placed in the written word, Sacred Trash is above all a gripping tale of adventure and redemption. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)
Download or read book Sacred Treasure The Cairo Genizah written by Rabbi Mark S. Glickman and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code in an old Egyptian synagogue--the amazing story of one of the most important discoveries in modern religious scholarship. In 1896, Rabbi Solomon Schechter of Cambridge University stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, and there found the largest treasure trove of medieval and early manuscripts ever discovered. He had entered the synagogue's genizah--its repository for damaged and destroyed Jewish texts--which held nearly 300,000 individual documents, many of which were over 1,000 years old. Considered among the most important discoveries in modern religious history, its contents contained early copies of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, early manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and other sacred literature. The importance of the genizah's contents rivals that of the Rosetta Stone, and by virtue of its sheer mass alone, it will continue to command our attention indefinitely. This is the first accessible, comprehensive account of this astounding discovery. It will delight you with its fascinating adventure story--why this enormous collection was amassed, how it was discovered and the many lessons to be found in its contents. And it will show you how Schechter's find, though still being "unpacked" today, forever transformed our knowledge of the Jewish past, Muslim history and much more.
Download or read book The Cairo Genizah and the Age of Discovery in Egypt written by Rebecca J. W. Jefferson and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cairo Genizah is considered one of the world's greatest Hebrew manuscript treasures. Yet the story of how over a quarter of a million fragments hidden in Egypt were discovered and distributed around the world, before becoming collectively known as “The Cairo Genizah,” is far more convoluted and compelling than previously told. The full story involves an international cast of scholars, librarians, archaeologists, excavators, collectors, dealers and agents, operating from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and all acting with varying motivations and intentions in a race for the spoils. Basing her research on a wealth of archival materials, Jefferson reconstructs how these protagonists used their various networks to create key alliances, or to blaze lone trails, each one on a quest to recover ancient manuscripts. Following in their footsteps, she takes the reader on a journey down into ancient caves and tombs, under medieval rubbish mounds, into hidden attic rooms, vaults, basements and wells, along labyrinthine souks, and behind the doors of private clubs and cloistered colleges. Along the way, the reader will also learn about the importance of establishing manuscript provenance and authenticity, and the impact to our understanding of the past when either factor is in doubt.
Download or read book Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection written by Freer Gallery of Art and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book India Traders of the Middle Ages written by Shelomo Dov Goitein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 949 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The annotated and translated letters of 11th-12th century traders of the Jewish Indian Ocean, found in the Cairo Geniza, provide fascinating information on commerce between the Far East, Yemen and the Mediterranean, medieval material, social, and spiritual civilization among Jews and Arabs, and Judeo-Arabic.
Download or read book Hebrew Bible Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections Volume 4 Taylor Schechter Additional Series 32 225 with Addenda to Previous Volumes written by Cambridge University Library and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive catalogue of Hebrew Bible fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Additional Series, describing 14,679 items.
Download or read book Sefer Tagin Fragments from the Cairo Genizah written by Marc Michaels and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sefer Tagin Fragments from the Cairo Genizah, Marc Michaels recreates fragments from the scribal manual concerning decorative tagin and 'strange' letters found in some Sifrey Torah.
Download or read book The Last Watchman of Old Cairo written by Michael David Lukas and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “wonderfully rich” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the author of the internationally bestselling The Oracle of Stamboul, a young man journeys from California to Cairo to unravel centuries-old family secrets. “This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman WINNER OF: THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S SOPHIE BRODY AWARD • THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • THE SAMI ROHR PRIZE FOR JEWISH LITERATURE • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the BBC • Longlisted for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize • A Penguin Random House International One World, One Book Selection • Honorable Mention for the Middle East Book Award Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the centuries-old history that binds the two sides of his family. From the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, where generations of his family served as watchmen, to the lives of British twin sisters Agnes and Margaret, who in 1897 leave Cambridge on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue, this tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces that attempt to bridge that divide. Moving and richly textured, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a poignant portrait of the intricate relationship between fathers and sons, and an unforgettable testament to the stories we inherit and the places we are from. Praise for The Last Watchman of Old Cairo “A beautiful, richly textured novel, ambitious and delicately crafted, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is both a coming-of-age story and a family history, a wide-ranging book about fathers and sons, religion, magic, love, and the essence of storytelling. This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman “Lyrical, compassionate and illuminating.”—BBC “Michael David Lukas has given us an elegiac novel of Cairo—Old Cairo and modern Cairo. Lukas’s greatest flair is in capturing the essence of that beautiful, haunted, shabby, beleaguered yet still utterly sublime Middle Eastern city.”—Lucette Lagnado, author of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years “Brilliant.”—The Jerusalem Post
Download or read book Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders written by S. D. Goitein and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern international business has its origins in the overseas trade of the Middle Ages. Of the various communities active in trade in the Islamic countries at that time, records of only the Jewish community survive. Thousands of documents were preserved in the Cairo Geniza, a lumber room attached to the synagogue where discarded writings containing the name of God were deposited to preserve them from desecration. From them Professor Goitein has selected eighty letters that provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of the medieval Jewish traders. As the letters vividly illustrate, international trade depended on a network of personal relationships and mutual confidence. Organization was largely through partnerships, based usually on ties of common religion but often reinforced by family connections. Sometimes the partners of Jews were Christians or Muslims, and the letters show these merchants working together in greater harmony than has been thought, even in partnerships that lasted through generations. The services rendered to a friend or partner and those expected from him were great, and the book opens with an angry letter from a merchant who believed he had been let down by his friend. The life of a trader was full of dangers, as the letter describing a shipwreck illustrates, and put great strain on personal relationships. One of the most moving letters is that written to his wife by a man absent in India for many years while endeavoring to make the family's fortunes. Although never ceasing to love her and longing to be with her, he offers to divorce her if she feels she can wait for him no longer. A decisive event in the life of the great Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, was the death of his brother David, who drowned in the Indian Ocean. Printed here is the last letter David wrote, describing his safe crossing of the desert and announcing his intention to go on to India, against his brother's instructions. Professor Goitein has provided an introduction and notes for each letter, and a general introduction describing the social and spiritual world of the writers, the organization of overseas trade in the Middle Ages, and the goods traded. The letters demonstrate that although it reached from Spain to India, the traders' world was a cohesive one through which these men could move freely and always feel at home. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt written by Eve Krakowski and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of what we know about life in the medieval Islamic Middle East comes from texts written to impart religious ideals or to chronicle the movements of great men. How did women participate in the societies these texts describe? What about non-Muslims, whose own religious traditions descended partly from pre-Islamic late antiquity? Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt approaches these questions through Jewish women’s adolescence in Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt and Syria (c. 969–1250). Using hundreds of everyday papers preserved in the Cairo Geniza, Eve Krakowski follows the lives of girls from different social classes—rich and poor, secluded and physically mobile—as they prepared to marry and become social adults. She argues that the families on whom these girls depended were more varied, fragmented, and fluid than has been thought. Krakowski also suggests a new approach to religious identity in premodern Islamic societies—and to the history of rabbinic Judaism. Through the lens of women’s coming-of-age, she demonstrates that even Jews who faithfully observed rabbinic law did not always understand the world in rabbinic terms. By tracing the fault lines between rabbinic legal practice and its practitioners’ lives, Krakowski explains how rabbinic Judaism adapted to the Islamic Middle Ages. Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt offers a new way to understand how women took part in premodern Middle Eastern societies, and how families and religious law worked in the medieval Islamic world.
Download or read book Studies in Judaism written by Solomon Schechter and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Business of Identity written by Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cairo Geniza is the largest and richest store of documentary evidence for the medieval Islamic world. This book seeks to revolutionize the way scholars use that treasure trove. Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman draws on legal documents from the Geniza to reconceive of life in the medieval Islamic marketplace. In place of the shared practices broadly understood by scholars to have transcended confessional boundaries, he reveals how Jewish merchants in Egypt employed distinctive trading practices. Highly influenced by Jewish law, these commercial practices served to manifest their Jewish identity in the medieval Islamic context. In light of this distinctiveness, Ackerman-Lieberman proposes an alternative model for using the Geniza documents as a tool for understanding daily life in the medieval Islamic world as a whole.
Download or read book Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah written by Lawrence Schiffmann and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, the authors assemble a group of Jewish incantation texts which were copied in the Middle Ages and preserved in the Cairo Genizah. Most of these texts, now in Cambridge University Library, are published here for the first time. All the texts are translated and provided with detailed philological and historical commentary, tracing the praxis and beliefs of the Jewish magical tradition of Late Antiquity. Their relation to Jewish legal and mystical teachings is also explored.
Download or read book The Cambridge Genizah Collections written by Shulamit Reif and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-23 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by international experts summarizing recent developments in Genizah research.
Download or read book A Mediterranean Society written by S. D. Goitein and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The New Jewish Encyclopedia written by David Bridger and published by Behrman House, Inc. This book was released on 1976 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is more than a book of facts. To turn its pages is to explore the wonder and excitement and awesome adventure of what it means to be a Jew . . . to stride through the grandeur of your inheritance, spanning the ages and the continents and the seas from Ur of the Chaldees and Pharaonic Egypt to present-day Israel and America.
Download or read book The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia written by Cecil Roth and published by W H Allen. This book was released on 1970 with total page 1044 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
