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The Hidden Treasure of the Cairo Genizah

2/21/2026

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Solomon Schechter at work in Cambridge University Library, studying the fragments of the Cairo Genizah, c. 1898
An obscure storeroom in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo was the repository for old, worn out manuscripts.  For centuries, a wide variety of writings were deposited and then lay untouched. Explore a medieval time capsule and learn why historians are so excited about a trash heap this week on Footnoting History!  

​Host: Kristin
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Further Reading

Ben 'Ezra Synagogue, Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

“Cairo Genizah,” Cambridge Digital Library, https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/genizah
 
Efraim Lev and Zohar Amar, Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean According to the Cairo Genizah, Brill, (2008).
 
Rabbi Mark Glickman, Sacred Treasure of the Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic, Jewish Lights Publishing, (2011).
 
Rebecca J. W. Jefferson, “Deconstructing the Cairo Genizah: A Fresh Look at Genizah Manuscript Discoveries in Cairo before 1897,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, 108: 4 (2018), 422-448.
 
Nick Posegay and Melonie Schmierer-Lee, The Illustrated Cairo Genizah: A Visual Tour of Cairo Genizah Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library, Gorgias Press, (2024).
 
Stefan C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection, Routledge, (2000).
 
Marina Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World), Princeton University Press, (2020).
 
“What is the Cairo Geniza?”, Genizah Lab, Princeton University, https://genizalab.princeton.edu/about/what-cairo-geniza

​Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)
Close-up of a page showing Hebrew on the left and a lamp and stars of David on the right
Education (T-S K5.13) Cairo Genizah Cambridge University Library, via Wikimedia Commons
Image of an old text in Hebrew
A letter signed by Abraham, the son of Maimonides, via Wikimedia Commons
Photographs of Ben 'Ezra Synagogue from Kristin's uncle:
A close up of the upper level of the interior, including an ornate star of David on the wall
Tall marble columns surrounded by high arches patterned in black and white
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