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Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (review)

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (review) Book Reviews Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole. New York: Schocken Books, 2011. 283 pp. $26.95. In the newest addition to the Nextbook series, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole have written a remarkably literary history of the vast, but scattered, manuscript fragments that make up the Cairo Geniza. They begin their story with the discovery of a page of the lost Hebrew text of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) at the end of the nineteenth century in Cambridge, England, and close with the discovery of yet another page of that special text at the beginning of the twenty-first century in Geneva, Switzerland. In between, the book moves at a breathless pace as the authors recount the race to acquire the Geniza fragments, then to decipher and publish them, and finally to reconstruct medieval Mediterranean Jewish economic and social history from them. The key to the success of this book is the lively yet meticulous portrayal of the key characters. The portrait of Solomon Schechter, the volatile, driven scholar of Judaica who worked tirelessly to acquire the largest part of the Geniza for the Cambridge University Library, is riveting. Schechter's http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Purdue University Press

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (review)

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Publisher
Purdue University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Purdue University.
ISSN
1534-5165
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Book Reviews Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole. New York: Schocken Books, 2011. 283 pp. $26.95. In the newest addition to the Nextbook series, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole have written a remarkably literary history of the vast, but scattered, manuscript fragments that make up the Cairo Geniza. They begin their story with the discovery of a page of the lost Hebrew text of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) at the end of the nineteenth century in Cambridge, England, and close with the discovery of yet another page of that special text at the beginning of the twenty-first century in Geneva, Switzerland. In between, the book moves at a breathless pace as the authors recount the race to acquire the Geniza fragments, then to decipher and publish them, and finally to reconstruct medieval Mediterranean Jewish economic and social history from them. The key to the success of this book is the lively yet meticulous portrayal of the key characters. The portrait of Solomon Schechter, the volatile, driven scholar of Judaica who worked tirelessly to acquire the largest part of the Geniza for the Cambridge University Library, is riveting. Schechter's

Journal

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish StudiesPurdue University Press

Published: Sep 13, 2012

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