ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question:  Aside from holy books, what other kinds of documents were found in the Cairo Genizah?

The Cairo Genizah, is a collection of Jewish manuscript fragments and administrative documents that were kept in the storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, Egypt. These manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Andalusian Jewish history between the 6th and 19^th centuries CE, and comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world. During the Middle Ages the Jewish community of Alandalús was one of the most prosperous ones on the Iberian Peninsula, both economically and culturally.  Many of the documents from this area ended up in the Genizah in Cairo.

The exhibition “La Edad de Oro de los Judíos de Alandalús” (The Golden Age of the Jews of Alandalús), at Centro Sefarad-Israel in Madrid, contains a wide variety of these documents, and through them we can get an idea of what daily life was like for the Andalusian Jewish community  during these centuries. All of the explanations are in both English and Spanish. 

The exhibition was organized by Centro Sefarad-Israel with the participation of the Casa del Mediterraneo, Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies and The George Feldenkers Program in Judaic Studies of the University de Miami, la Red de Juderías de España, the World Jewish Congress and the  Fundación HispanoJudía.

It was also made possible with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,  European Union and Cooperation; ElAl Airlines, the Cervantes Institute, the University of Cambridge, the University of Granada, Trinity College Dublin and the European Research Council.

The exhibit was curated by José Martínez Delgado, professor of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada.  Dr. Ben Outhwaite has been Head of the Genizah Research Unit in Cambridge University Library since 2006, having worked for the previous seven years as a Genizah researcher. He spoke with us about the Cairo Genizah and this exhibition.  (You can see the Cambridge Library’s Cairo Genizah documents here.)

Admission to the exhibition is free and you can visit it through March 31, 2024. They also organize group tours, especially for educational institutions.