#genizah

[medievalistsnet]

New Medieval Books: The Illustrated Cairo Genizah - Medievalists.net

The Cairo Genizah stands as one of the most significant collections of medieval documents, offering unparalleled insights into the past. Thi

[askjumblr]

Help 😭😭

Theoretically speaking, what would you do if you accidentally printed out a document containing a name of g-d? Is there any way to properly get rid of it or do I just have to keep it forever and keep it safe and stuff? Hypothetically? I can't handle that kind of responsibility! I should not be trusted with a printer. I mean, the hypothetical person in this hypothetical scenario shouldn't be trusted with a printer

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[upennmanuscripts]

Chag Pesach sameach! In celebration we present Genizah Fragment Halper 63, a Judeo-Arabic commentary on the Haftarot (Shabat Shuvah / Seventh day of Passover). This fragment was written in the 12th or 13th century.

Online:

[girlactionfigure]

[pollyj]

A letter in Judeo-Persian dealing with financial and family matters, from the Afghan Geniza.

Two pages of an account-book belonging to Abū Naṣr Yehuda

The Afghan Geniza is a collection of Jewish manuscript fragments found in caves in Afghanistan. Genizah is Hebrew for storeroom.

The manuscripts include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, which are written in Hebrew letters. Some of them are 1,000 years old; they were found in caves that had been used as hideouts by Taliban.

The collection constitutes the largest body of original materials from the region prior to the modern era. It represents virtually the only primary source for information about this once-thriving Jewish community, as well as the region's Islamic and Persian cultures prior to the Mongol invasion.

[fiction-quotes]

“Maybe Abba is going away to visit all the days from last year,” Mosheh overheard her saying to her mother one evening. “Are the years that already happened in a place a person can go?”

“No, my love,” David's wife had told her.

“Because we don't have a map?” she asked.

“Because that days that have passed belong to God,” her mother answered.

“Where does God keep them?” the girl asked.

Mosheh had wondered, then, if he should interrupt and answer her question. But the answer David's wife gave him surprised him, and silenced him.

“In a genizah,” she said softly. “But only God has the key.”

  —  A Guide for the Perplexed (Dara Horn)

[jewish-pride]

What Can You Find in the World's Oldest Yiddish Letter? Exactly What You Would Expect

Among the treasures discovered in the Cairo Genizah are also documents written in Yiddish.

In fact the Cairo Genizah is the source of the oldest Yiddish texts in the world – an anthology of midrashim and parables, and even a German folk legend about a valiant duke who performs acts of gallantry to win the heart of a Greek princess.

But daily life interests us more than legends of knights and princesses, so we decided to present excerpts from a series of letters from Rachel Zussman, an elderly widow who lived in Jerusalem, to her son Moshe, who settled with his family in Cairo for business reasons. The letters were written in Yiddish in the mid 1560’s, and eventually made their way to the Cairo Genizah. They teach us much about the composition of the community in Jerusalem, its economic state, and communication and travel between Jerusalem and Egypt, as well as a mother-son relationship dating back 500 years.

[girlactionfigure]

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