Sacred Treasure - The Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic
Rabbi Glickman introduces readers to a little-known treasure that shines a light on Jewish history. A genizah is a storage place for damaged Jewish religious documents. Any sacred text must be stored in a genizah or buried in a cemetery. The genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, a city that once had a large, prosperous Jewish community, housed one of the world’s largest collections of documents. Glickman offers an overview of Jewish history, an introduction to the early scholars who explored this genizah, and an explanation of the various religious texts, some startling, found there. He then focuses on Rabbi Solomon Schechter, a shtetl scholar who became a Cambridge professor and, along with two intrepid Scottish sisters, studied these fascinating early manuscripts. Glickman brings the colorful story up to date with information about the post-Schechter work, the dispersal of the genizah’s collection to other libraries around the world, and the efforts to preserve and digitize the documents so that scholars everywhere can use them. Anyone who loves books and history will relish this. --Barbara Bibel