The Living Sea Scrolls: the Cairo Geniza and Medieval Jewish History
Professor Craig Perry, University of Cincinnati, Department of Judaic Studies

There is an ancient Jewish tradition that written religious works should never simply be thrown away. Rather such texts should be given a proper burial or resting place, a geniza, where they can decay in dignity. For most of a millennium, the Jewish community of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Egypt took this practice quite seriously. By current estimates, the Ben Ezra synagogue preserved over 300,000 manuscripts that now comprise arguably the richest archive for the study of Jewish life and culture in the Middle Ages. Over three evenings, this course will explore the unlikely story of the Cairo Geniza’s survival into the modern age as well as how its contents have revolutionized what we are able to know about the everyday life of Jews in one of the foremost political and economic capitals of the medieval Islamic world. Topics we will study include trade and travel; heresy and communal politics; and Jewish women’s social capital.