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Sacred Trash: The Lost And Found World Of The Cairo Geniza (2011)

by Adina Hoffman(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0805242589 (ISBN13: 9780805242584)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Schocken

review 1: A fascinating view of scholarship, archaeology, and the Cairo Geniza. Hoffman follows the history of the discovery, transcription, and translation of the myriad written and printed materials found in the Cairo geniza. If you are interested in late 19th and 20th century literary, biblical, and Jewish textual study, this book is perfect for you. Hoffman writes for a general educated Jewish audience, with bibliographic essays supporting each chapter. After finishing the book, I want to learn more about the millennium of riches stored within the geniza, now disbursed amongst various libraries in Europe and North America.
review 2: This is a wonderful book dealing mostly with the recovery of a little known period of Jewish history as a result of the discovery of th... moree Cairo Genizah. The latter was a repository of ancient Jewish documents spanning mostly from the 7th through the 15t centuries although there are documents from other eras. Currently, there are over 330,000 documents of fragments of documents and the book relates the discovery of the Genizah and the realization of the significance of the contents. Among the many intellectual giants is Solomon Schechter, who worked tirelessly to move the documents from Cairo to Cambridge and then to the Jewish Theological Seminary in NY, catalog them and describe the most significant documents, including the original Hebrew version of Ben Sirah which, until its discovery in the Genizah, existed only in Greek translation.The Genizah gives a full picture of the life and interactions of the Jews during the Middle Ages not only in Egypt but the whole Middle East, including Persia, Iraq, Jerusalem and the substantial commercial interaction of Jewish merchants with the many countries of the Mediterranean area but also as far as India. The book also deals with the intellectual environment of the times, the great poets Ibn Ezra, Yehuda HaLevi and Dunash ben Labrat. There is a nice chapter about the interaction between the traditional Rabbinic outlook and the Karaite Jewish communities and other ‘free thinking’ segments of the Jewish community. Also touched upon is the basic social interaction between Jews and Moslems and the instances of persecution under some Moslem rulers. Overall, however, it is clear that the Jews lived securely under the Moslem rule as long they accepted a second class status. If nothing else, a book such as Sacred Trash throws light on a very dynamic Jewish community during the Middle Ages, their every day communal lives and their wide ranging commercial and religious activities. Sadly, the Jewish contribution to various aspects of society have been neglected by mainstream historians and this book helps, to a small extent, to rectify the situation. less

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