Sacred Trash (36 page)

Having just completed his graduate studies in theology, Albert was passing through Oxford on his way to a fellowship in Edinburgh when he heard from a colleague about the “sensational” recent discovery of parts of the Hebrew Ecclesiasticus from Cairo and began to wonder if the Nicole family tin box might not contain additional passages from this missing scriptural link. In 1898, newly ordained as a minister, the younger Nicole brought his fragments back to Oxford, where—with Adolf Neubauer and A. E. Cowley—he examined the collection; but—
plus ça change
—apparently Neubauer wasn’t impressed (though several palimpsests drew his attention) and the material was returned to Geneva, where it lay untouched in a vault for the next 104 years. When the box was rediscovered at the start of the twenty-first century, a local Dominican scholar-priest was called in to examine the documents, which he sorted in rudimentary fashion—and back they went into the collection, until, three years later, the director of the Institute for Microfilmed Manuscripts at the National Library in Jerusalem (the goal of which is to gather copies of every Hebrew manuscript on the planet) just happened to write to the Geneva library about an administrative matter concerning a particular collection. He also asked in passing if the library had acquired any other Judaica over the course of the previous fifteen years.
“Oui et non,”
responded the Geneva librarian, who then told the story of the newly discovered old tin box, which turned out (after examination by various specialists from Jerusalem) to contain an extremely well preserved and characteristic range of Geniza goods. There was everything from Mishna, Talmud, and Gaonic fragments to liturgical texts, historical documents, Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic correspondence, and of course poetry—including previously unknown work by major and minor writers alike and, amazingly, a copy of that same foundational “wine poem” by Dunash ben Labrat that Hayyim Schirmann had identified from the caption he’d discovered as a young man in a Cambridge manuscript in the 1930s. The Geneva Dunash fragment was just the second copy of this key Spanish Hebrew poem ever seen by modern eyes; more important, this version was considerably longer than the earlier find and so raised a cloud of fresh questions, namely: Which was the “real” version of the poem? Was the shorter poem detached from its end at some point? Or was the new ending tacked on later? The different scenarios can lead to wholly disparate readings of the poem, reflecting divergent understandings of the period’s origins. Such are the ways of the Geniza that a development as dramatic as this one leaves us with more riddles than resolutions.

(
Photo Credit bm.7
)

Quieter still is another recent discovery that involves an even more essential sort of poetic justice than does the Geneva find. In the spring of 2007, a British dealer in Judaica put up for sale several unidentified Geniza fragments that had initially been purchased at auction by a German collector in 1898 and held privately ever since. In preparation for the sale, the fragments were submitted to specialists, who identified them tentatively as liturgical hymns, and they were sold to an American collector.
A short while later, digitized images of three of the manuscripts came into the skilled hands of Shulamit Elizur, a leading expert in liturgical and medieval poetry, and one of Ezra Fleischer’s most distinguished students, as well as his successor at the Geniza Research Institute named for him. Elizur easily confirmed the identification of two of the fragments as medieval poems from Spain and Palestine (one of them by Yehuda HaLevi), but the third gave her pause. This was something different. It contained none of the trademark signs of medieval verse, and its language instantly marked it as a kind of wisdom literature. But which? Though further probing left her with a strong hunch, the clock was ticking and she was late for an important meeting. She put the printout of the photographed manuscript down—and only in the taxicab heading home from her meeting did she confide in her husband, also a seasoned Geniza scholar, what she suspected.

Her excitement mounting, if not her haste, and the ghost of Schechter perhaps lurking, she continued, late into the night and with her husband’s help, to inch through the four partly torn pages of blocky letters, as she checked them against different published texts and cross-referenced translations. Preparations for the Sabbath and the Sabbath itself brought the work to a halt. (The Elizurs are strictly observant.) But after nightfall on Saturday, she resumed her investigations, and by Monday she was certain: glowing before her on the computer screen were long-lost passages from the same second-century
B.C.E
. book, the original Hebrew Ben Sira, which had triggered the initial chase for the Geniza. Missing since the tenth century, here they were well into the first decade of the new millennium being slipped into the puzzle Schechter had begun assembling in the late 1890s—a still gap-filled textual tapestry to which Neubauer, Cowley, Adler, Schirmann, and others had already contributed pieces.

And so it is that month after month Geniza miracles continue to occur, as vigilant scholars sift through the Cairene debris, sometimes on microfilm or in digitized versions, sometimes leaning over, or on, the
paper and parchment in person—pliant, resilient, immaculate pages with the ink still vivid, and thumbnail-sized remnants of brittle pages concealing faded words in their grain. If the record of the past decade, or even the past year, is any indication, other treasures, large and small, will no doubt surface as well—in Cambridge and in Oxford, in Princeton, New York, and Budapest, perhaps in another Geneva tin, at the bottom of a forgotten old-world briefcase, or maybe in Fustat itself. “Turn it and turn it,” urges the sage Ben Bag-Bag—in that same mishnaic tractate, the
Sayings of the Fathers,
that begins by elaborating the chain of tradition’s transmission and enjoins us to take no object for granted—“everything is in it.” And there are, it would seem, as many ways to write a history of the Geniza as there are scholars or readers who have stepped, or might step, through the looking glass of its scattered leaves.

ILLUSTRATIONS

  
1.1
Margaret Gibson on a camel. By permission of Westminster College, Cambridge.

  
1.2
Agnes Lewis in a tent. Westminster College, Cambridge.

  
1.3
Solomon Schechter. Courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. (All images marked “JTS” are courtesy of the JTS Library.)

  
1.4
Ben Ezra synagogue. Photographed by Richard Pare; by permission of the photographer.

  
1.5
The Geniza. Photographed by the authors, December 2009.

  
2.1
The Sphinx. From
Description de l’Egypte,
Antiquités, vol. 5 (Paris, 1823).

  
2.2
Avraham Firkovitch. Special thanks to Mikhail Kizilov for providing us with this photo.

  
2.3
Elkan Nathan Adler. This and all Cambridge University Library images (marked CUL) are reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

  
2.4
Greville Chester. From T. G. H. James,
Ancient Egypt: The Land and Its Legacy
(London, 1988).

  
2.5
Egyptological Exhibit poster from the World’s Columbian Exposition.

  
2.6
Shelomo Aharon Wertheimer. Courtesy of Shelomo and Dafna Leshem.

  
2.7
Wertheimer letter to the Cambridge librarian, April 1893. CUL Add. 8398/12.

  
2.8
Adolf Neubauer, 1899. Schwadron collection, by permission of the National Library of Israel.

  
2.9
Count Riamo d’Hulst (tentative identification by Rebecca Jefferson). CUL Views y.4.

  
3.1
Francis Jenkinson diary. CUL Add. 7417.

  
3.2
The Ben Sira page that Schechter identified in the Giblews’ dining room. CUL Or. 1102.

  
3.3
D. S. Margoliouth. CUL.

  
4.1
Mathilde Schechter. JTS.

  
4.2
Charles Taylor, 1900. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

  
4.3
The Grand Rabbi of Cairo, Raphael ben Shimon. CUL.

  
4.4
The Grand Rabbi of Cairo’s seal. JTS.

  
4.5
Villa Cattaui, Cairo. Thanks to Samir Raafat for permission to use this postcard.

  
4.6
Letter from Schechter to Mathilde, from Cairo. JTS, Schechter archive, box 26.

  
5.1
Francis Jenkinson. CUL.

  
5.2
Francis Jenkinson diary. CUL Add. 7422.

  
5.3
Schechter in the “Cairo apartment” at the Cambridge University Library, 1897. CUL.

  
5.4
Shorthand Bible, part of Leviticus 19:15–20:3. CUL T-S AS 63.5.

  
5.5
Children’s primer. JTS Mss 7737.2r.

  
6.1
Yannai/Aquila palimpsest. CUL T-S 12.184r.

  
6.2
Israel Davidson. JTS.

  
6.3
“Israel’s Delight,” 1914. JTS, Arc 28, series II, box 23, 5.

  
6.4
Salman Schocken. Alfred Bernheim photographer, courtesy of the Israel Museum.

  
6.5
Schocken department store (designed by Mendelsohn), Stuttgart, 1928. © Landesmedienzentrum, Baden-Württemberg.

  
6.6
Menahem Zulay, 1947. By permission of Ada Yardeni.

  
7.1
E. J. Worman. CUL.

  
7.2
E. J. Worman notebook. CUL, T-S Genizah Research Unit.

  
7.3
E. J. Worman notebook. CUL, T-S Genizah Research Unit.

  
7.4
Jacob Mann. CUL.

  
7.5
“In the Land of the Pharaohs,” interview with Jack Mosseri.
Jewish Chronicle,
May 5, 1911.

  
7.6
Elkan Adler bookplate. JTS.

  
7.7
JTS reading room. From the
JTS Register,
1921.

  
8.1
Karaite Bible mss., Jeremiah 20:4. JTS ENA 3913.3.

  
9.1
New Cambridge University Library. From
Cambridge University Library, 1400–1934: With a Description of the New Building Opened by His Majesty the King, 22 October 1934, and an Account of the New Science Buildings of Agriculture, Botany, Physiology and Zoology
(Cambridge, 1934).

  
9.2
Schocken Institute, Jerusalem. Courtesy of the Schocken Archive, Jerusalem.

  
9.3
Hayyim Schirmann, ca. 1940s. Alfred Bernheim photographer, courtesy of the Hebrew University.

  
9.4
The wife of Dunash fragments reunited. CUL Mosseri VIII.202.2; Mosseri IV.387.

  
9.5
Letter from Schirmann to Goitein, concerning the New Series. From the S. D. Goitein Geniza Lab (NLI, Jerusalem).

  
9.6
Letter in Yehuda HaLevi’s hand, from HaLevi in Alexandria to Halfon ben Natanel in Fustat, September 1140. JTS ENA 18.33.

  
9.7
Ezra Fleischer. Courtesy of Shula Bergstein.

10.1
“
Sodi,
” or “secret.” Letter courtesy of the Goitein family.

10.2
S. D. Goitein and Theresa Gottlieb’s wedding, Jerusalem, 1929. Other guests in the photo include S. Y. Agnon, Hugo Bergmann, and Levi Billig. Courtesy of the Goitein family.

10.3
Index card from Goitein’s Geniza Lab. Courtesy of the NLI.

10.4
Twelfth-century check. CUL T-S Ar. 30.184(3r).

10.5
S. D. Goitein with his lab, Princeton. Courtesy of the Goitein family.

10.6
Goitein in the classroom, University of Pennsylvania, 1970, with Zvi Gabay, Moshe Gil, Gary Leiser, Ellen Seidman, and Yedida Kalfon Stillman. Marion Scheuer Sofer photographer, courtesy of the Goitein family.

bm.1
Additional Series sorting: Stefan Reif, Yisrael Yeivin, Ezra Fleischer. CUL T-S Genizah Research Unit.

bm.2
Ironing manuscripts. CUL T-S Genizah Research Unit.

bm.3
Palestinian Talmud, Berakhot 2:4–3:1. CUL T-S F 17.20r.