From the 9th century through the 19th, the Jews of Fustat, a suburb of Cairo, left discarded manuscripts in the genizah (repository) of the Ben Ezra synagogue, but it was not until the end of the 19th century that the rabbi and scholar Solomon Schechter realized what a boon this collection could be for the study of Jewish history, and set about examining it systematically. Playing a key role in making this collection available to scholars was Stefan Reif, who has recently written a memoir. Yakir Feldman writes:
Highly readable and richly laced with understated . . . British humor, [the memoir] is factual, yet a good story; funny, yet serious; personal, yet universal. . . . Powered by a seemingly near-photographic memory and buttressed by disciplined research and a natural raconteur’s inerrant sixth sense of what is relevant and interesting, Stefan Reif brings post-World War II Edinburgh to life, conveying in indelible verbal images that are unstintingly honest what conditions were like in that bygone era for a bright child of struggling Jewish immigrant parents.
In an interview, Reif tells Feldman:
I was twenty-nine years old when Cambridge appointed me to look after this collection. There were 200,000 fragments, most of them deteriorating, lying in crates—unavailable, unexamined, unconserved. The prevalent idea in the Cambridge University Library was that this was not at all a priority and was in any case too enormous a job for one career, one scholar, one lifetime. I disagreed.
Just as the Dead Sea Scrolls completely changed our understanding of the Second Temple Period, the Cairo Genizah completely changed our understanding of the early medieval period, the 10th century to the 13th century in the Mediterranean as a whole—from France to India. It contains priceless treasures—for example, 120 writings in Maimonides’ own handwriting.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/the-scholar-who-defied-odds-to-unveil-the-treasures-of-the-cairo-genizah-book-review-672627