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[David Maimonides] This is my story.

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Please don't spank my child for being late.

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The policeman appeared for the poll tax.

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The robe is of the utmost beauty.

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[Madmun ben David] Please buy for me useful books.

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[David Maimonides] After Passover,

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I booked for Aidab in a caravan.

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We have weaned the baby.

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Open for me the gates of righteousness.

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Be so kind as to help

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the bearer of this letter.

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We constantly face danger of death.

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I praised God and thanked Him.

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[Writer to Nahray] I received your letter.

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I leave to each of the four synagogues

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money for oil so that people may study at night.

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Wherever you have a Jewish community,

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you must have geniza.

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Would you open up the doors, please, of our geniza?

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A geniza is a repository for damaged

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and destroyed Jewish documents.

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Geniza is the Hebrew word which means to hide,

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so to speak.

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And this is a concept of Jewish law that says that

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you are not allowed to destroy or to deal disrespectfully

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with any written material

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in which the name of God is written.

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Yeah, I got a whole bunch more.

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You're not allowed to throw it away, ever.

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That document has to be treated with a reverence

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you would accord to a human body.

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So what do you do with things after they become unusable

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but very literally indisposable?

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Typically, you bury it in a cemetery.

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We're going to celebrate what they were

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and what they have been,

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and we're gonna give them the dignity

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that these books deserve as ones who have supported us

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throughout the years.

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Yet it's inconvenient to

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schlep things out to the cemetery

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and dig up a grave every time

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a book or a document becomes unusable.

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Usually you have at your home

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a special box called, "geniza,"

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in which you put this material.

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And then when your box is full,

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you take it to the nearby synagogue

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where there is a bigger box.

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And typically the community

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will let this pile of documents grow

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and then periodically take the documents out

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and bury them in the cemetery.

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That's the way it typically happens, but not always.

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Different communities in the world

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did it in different ways.

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Some bury them, some put them in a synagogue room,

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some people put them in caves.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls, probably a geniza.

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And so in different ways,

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they treated this material with respect.

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♪ Ah, ah ♪

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♪ Ah, ah ♪

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♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪

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♪ Ah, ah ♪

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♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪

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♪ Amen ♪

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The Jews of Medieval Cairo

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had a little bit of a different custom.

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Their custom was to not only save any document

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that had God's name in it,

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but any document written in Hebrew letters.

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They also had a little bit of an unusual custom in that

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they did not empty their room-size Geniza

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in over 900 years.

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For reasons that we'll never know,

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nothing that was thrown into that Geniza

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was ever sent along the way to the final step to burial.

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There were stories that those who had visited

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did not survive or that there was a curse,

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or that there was a snake

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which bit anybody who came to the Geniza.

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All these kind of superstitions

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succeeded in keeping this material safe.

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You can't imagine the amount of material

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that was found there.

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Now we know that the Geniza consists of

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more than half a million fragments,

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probably the largest shelf collection

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ever found in any other culture.

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This is all Geniza.

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Down here we have the old series and the additional series,

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and that's all down here and all down here and down here.

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It gave us a kind of video on life a thousand years ago,

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which is totally unique,

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but it's not just unique for the extent,

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it's unique for the content.

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In the Geniza,

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there are things that you would expect to be in a geniza.

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These are Torah scrolls.

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Parchment, basically leather really.

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The whole volume consists of Talmud fragments.

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You expect Bible fragments

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and you would expect Talmud fragments.

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All that's there, fine.

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We have in the goodies not just sacred literature,

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there are things that you would never expect

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to have been preserved for no religious reason whatsoever.

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There are documents, there are bills,

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there are lists, there are personal letters.

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Every possible aspect of life is represented there.

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It's like walking into a living room full of people,

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but from the middle of the 11th or the 12th century.

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This unwillingness to destroy anything,

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to throw anything away,

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means you actually have the exercises

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that the children produced.

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The alphabet written by some 11th or 12th century child.

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If talking is silver,

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then silence is of gold.

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So what do you think this is?

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Probably a boy in the classroom in the 14th century

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who made some noise

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and his teacher asked him to copy 50 times this saying.

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We have here some piece of life in the 14th century,

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and it was kept for 700 years.

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And until we found it and we can show it.

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The Cairo Geniza really allows us such an intimate insight

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into what the community life was like.

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There's no cleaning up process.

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There's no editing.

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We actually delve right into the heart of the community

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and we see how they have troubles with their neighbors.

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We see how they have troubles with their wives

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or their family.

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We see the community in its raw form.

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This is a list of people

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who are recipients of loaves of bread.

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The Geniza is also very important for

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our better understanding of the Islamic society

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that was surrounding the Jewish community of Old Cairo.

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Here we have an internal bureaucratic report

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summarizing the daily practice of these minor bureaucrats.

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The Geniza contained documents spanning about 1,000 years.

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We have more documents from the the period of 1000 to 1250

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than we really have for any other period

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represented in the Geniza.

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That period also happens to correspond with

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the high point of Fustat as a Jewish community.

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Fustat is now the oldest part of Cairo,

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but it started as a separate city.

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This is where the Geniza in the Ben Ezra Synagogue was.

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This is one of the earlier discoveries in the Geniza,

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which is a letter and it's signed Moshe bar Rabbi Maimon.

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So it's Moses Maimonides.

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It's his signature.

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And in fact, the whole letter is written in his handwriting.

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Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon,

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was born in Cordoba in Spain,

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and then about 1160, he went to Cairo.

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Maimonides is one of the main figures in Jewish history.

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He played various roles.

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He was a physician, but he was a philosopher,

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and he was the one who made

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the first comprehensive codex of Jewish law.

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It's fair to characterize Maimonides as the Acme,

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as the fulfillment of this great culture of Jews,

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Arabic-speaking Jews in the Middle Ages.

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Maimonides lived in Fustat.

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And it's not so surprising that a lot of his material

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is in the Geniza.

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We do have masses of amounts of stuff

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from Moses Maimonides,

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suggesting that there was a deliberate attempt

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to keep his papers.

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These volumes, as you can see,

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are labeled, "Maimonides Family Geniza Fragments."

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We have his draft of his greatest work of philosophy,

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which is:

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In the original Arabic,

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which is, "The Guide for the Perplexed."

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And this is his draft in his own peculiar scroll

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that he used when he was writing for his own purposes,

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and not so that Ibn Tibbon could copy and translate it.

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In fact, this may be the earliest draft.

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He's got crossings out and additions

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and so on in the margin.

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And also you see where his pen ran out

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and he tried to get it working again.

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I considered that it was possible to reconstruct

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and feel that one is sitting in Maimonides' Academy,

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in his yeshiva, and listening to his lectures.

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What you see here is not Maimonides' writing,

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but you see here Maimonides' thinking.

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If you've got a letter of Judah Halevi

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or Maimonides on the table in front of you,

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how can you not gasp?

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The Cairo Geniza gave us a view that we hadn't seen before

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into the richness of Judeo-Arabic culture.

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What was happening in the Eastern Mediterranean

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a thousand years ago?

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How did Jews and Muslims

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and Christians live with each other?

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When did they fight?

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When did they live quietly together?

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How did people make a living?

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How did families exist?

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What was the role of women?

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How did people pray?

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There's a whole seething cauldron of ideas

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going on at this time.

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We often think of the 12th century as being so long ago

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that those people weren't even people yet.

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But what I think is important to remember is that

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12th century Cairo was actually

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the tech capital of the world.

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This was a city that was at

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the crossroads of a global economy.

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This was at science's cutting-edge.

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This was a society that in one very important way

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was not that different from ours,

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which is that this was a society that was constantly trying

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to push back the limitations of human knowledge.

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Egypt for the Jews is the obvious place to go.

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That's kind of where the action is.

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It's like saying to a Jew in 1900,

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"Do you wanna go to New York?"

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Of course. Who doesn't wanna go to New York?

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So saying to a Jew in 1130, "Do you wanna go to Fustat?"

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Of course. That's just the obvious choice.

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The documents from the Geniza

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are not just the records of a few famous men,

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but the records of people's daily lives.

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You have a record of what somebody ate for lunch.

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You have a record of what people were wearing.

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You have a record of what it was like

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to be in the marketplace.

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You have a record of what people used

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to medicate their headache.

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I think when you have the level of detail

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that the Geniza provides,

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it's like looking back at that time

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through the memory of God.

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We constantly face danger of death.

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For we were near to the Crusaders day and night,

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hearing their talk, and they heard ours.

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Our bread was colored with blood.

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I think our impression of the Middle Ages is animosity,

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tremendous animosity, particularly because of the Crusades,

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the blood libel in England,

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the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, from France,

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the restrictions in Germany.

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And in the world of Islam where there may have been caliphs

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who destroyed synagogues, who destroyed churches.

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At the same time, there were periods,

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particularly in Egypt,

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between the 10th and 12th centuries

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where the Jews did flourish.

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Traditionally, the center of Jewish Letters

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and of Jewish culture had been seen to be in Europe.

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And yet in this period that we're talking about

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something like 90% of all Jews lived under Islam.

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But before the Geniza was found,

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we just had very few sources for them.

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One of the great interests of scholars

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in the 19th century was finding manuscripts.

267
00:14:06.150 --> 00:14:08.370
This hunt for manuscripts exploded,

268
00:14:08.370 --> 00:14:11.340
and there's probably a number of explaining factors.

269
00:14:11.340 --> 00:14:16.340
Certainly scholars, they all knew that in Christian terms,

270
00:14:16.470 --> 00:14:21.470
we possessed only rather flaky manuscript evidence

271
00:14:21.630 --> 00:14:24.390
for the New Testament that we had.

272
00:14:24.390 --> 00:14:26.070
The English speaking world had been accustomed,

273
00:14:26.070 --> 00:14:28.560
for hundreds of years, to the King James Version.

274
00:14:28.560 --> 00:14:31.440
To then to be told that it was based on perhaps

275
00:14:31.440 --> 00:14:35.730
dubious Greek texts and that a lot of the translation,

276
00:14:35.730 --> 00:14:38.400
although very elegant, could be better,

277
00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:41.212
was enormously unsettling for people.

278
00:14:41.212 --> 00:14:42.690
Of course, when you look at the Bible

279
00:14:42.690 --> 00:14:44.790
and it's there in black and on the shelf,

280
00:14:44.790 --> 00:14:46.440
it looks like it's been there forever.

281
00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:48.450
Why would they think it hadn't been there forever?

282
00:14:48.450 --> 00:14:49.950
And that what we have in those pages,

283
00:14:49.950 --> 00:14:51.990
the same as was copied down by whoever?

284
00:14:51.990 --> 00:14:55.140
Ezekiel or Moses or Matthew or Mark.

285
00:14:55.140 --> 00:14:57.480
But in fact, anyone who's worked with manuscripts

286
00:14:57.480 --> 00:14:59.400
realize that until printing

287
00:14:59.400 --> 00:15:01.680
everything was handwritten by man,

288
00:15:01.680 --> 00:15:03.600
and anything could have happened.

289
00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:05.640
And now in the 19th century,

290
00:15:05.640 --> 00:15:08.190
there was more room for skepticism.

291
00:15:08.190 --> 00:15:10.020
Ideally, I think they would've liked to find

292
00:15:10.020 --> 00:15:12.270
the Gospel of Mark written by Mark, you know?

293
00:15:13.200 --> 00:15:15.300
But they were very brave, these people.

294
00:15:15.300 --> 00:15:17.310
Because they might have found a book written by Jesus

295
00:15:17.310 --> 00:15:19.350
that said, "Don't trust my disciples.

296
00:15:19.350 --> 00:15:20.190
They're a bunch of liars,

297
00:15:20.190 --> 00:15:21.690
and I actually died in a bar," or something.

298
00:15:21.690 --> 00:15:22.523
You never knew.

299
00:15:22.523 --> 00:15:24.000
They didn't know what they were going to find,

300
00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:27.330
so it was very adventurous, very sort of wild Westy,

301
00:15:27.330 --> 00:15:28.353
only in the East.

302
00:15:32.670 --> 00:15:36.033
So this prompted a great hunt for manuscripts.

303
00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:39.930
Men were involved, women were involved.

304
00:15:39.930 --> 00:15:43.173
Christians and Muslims and Jews were involved.

305
00:15:46.710 --> 00:15:49.710
By the late 19th century, several European collectors

306
00:15:49.710 --> 00:15:52.410
and rabbis and scholars had visited the Geniza,

307
00:15:52.410 --> 00:15:55.080
and the Jewish antiquarian manuscript market

308
00:15:55.080 --> 00:15:57.450
had seen its fair share of Geniza manuscripts,

309
00:15:57.450 --> 00:15:59.610
but nobody had paid it much attention

310
00:15:59.610 --> 00:16:03.543
until Solomon Schechter made his visit in late 1896.

311
00:16:06.540 --> 00:16:10.860
Solomon Schechter was born in a small Romanian shtetel,

312
00:16:10.860 --> 00:16:14.190
a little Jewish town, to a Hasidic Jewish family,

313
00:16:14.190 --> 00:16:16.050
a very observant Jewish family,

314
00:16:16.050 --> 00:16:18.570
where from early on he was known as an Ilui,

315
00:16:18.570 --> 00:16:20.040
a genius student.

316
00:16:20.040 --> 00:16:21.540
And unlike many of his classmates,

317
00:16:21.540 --> 00:16:23.550
Schechter, as the years went on,

318
00:16:23.550 --> 00:16:27.210
shed the black hat and black coat of his youth.

319
00:16:27.210 --> 00:16:29.160
And through a series of moves,

320
00:16:29.160 --> 00:16:32.790
both geographically and intellectually westward,

321
00:16:32.790 --> 00:16:37.050
he eventually found himself in the mid and late 1890s

322
00:16:37.050 --> 00:16:40.743
as the only Jewish faculty member at Cambridge University.

323
00:16:46.350 --> 00:16:48.900
Perhaps Cambridge was ahead of its time

324
00:16:48.900 --> 00:16:51.750
in England at least because they employed the first Jew

325
00:16:51.750 --> 00:16:53.760
to teach Rabbinics in the 1860s,

326
00:16:53.760 --> 00:16:58.560
at a time when Jews themselves were not able to take degrees

327
00:16:58.560 --> 00:16:59.790
in the university.

328
00:16:59.790 --> 00:17:01.950
And subsequently Schechter fitted in

329
00:17:01.950 --> 00:17:02.910
quite well in Cambridge.

330
00:17:02.910 --> 00:17:05.793
Even though as a Jew in Cambridge, he was unusual.

331
00:17:09.270 --> 00:17:11.550
The Schechters had a wide circle of friends.

332
00:17:11.550 --> 00:17:12.383
Now I think there was

333
00:17:12.383 --> 00:17:14.610
a kind of circle of Cambridge outsiders

334
00:17:14.610 --> 00:17:18.900
because the establishment was Church of England, Episcopal,

335
00:17:18.900 --> 00:17:21.660
and there were all kinds of people who really

336
00:17:21.660 --> 00:17:23.910
weren't integrated into college life very well.

337
00:17:23.910 --> 00:17:27.180
And that included, of course, Presbyterians,

338
00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:31.290
Jews, Methodists, all women.

339
00:17:31.290 --> 00:17:33.030
The tip that Solomon Schechter got

340
00:17:33.030 --> 00:17:35.640
that ultimately led him to the Geniza

341
00:17:35.640 --> 00:17:38.370
came from a rather unusual source,

342
00:17:38.370 --> 00:17:43.170
which was two Scottish, Presbyterian, widowed,

343
00:17:43.170 --> 00:17:45.120
middle-aged identical twins,

344
00:17:45.120 --> 00:17:46.983
Margaret Gibson and Agnes Lewis.

345
00:17:49.860 --> 00:17:52.800
They were academics in all but name.

346
00:17:52.800 --> 00:17:55.890
In the 19th century, being Scottish, being a woman,

347
00:17:55.890 --> 00:17:59.280
being a Presbyterian meant you couldn't be an academic.

348
00:17:59.280 --> 00:18:01.533
I mean, particularly because of their sex.

349
00:18:04.650 --> 00:18:07.440
They met Solomon Schechter in Cambridge

350
00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:08.610
through his wonderful wife,

351
00:18:08.610 --> 00:18:10.473
his very literary wife, Mathilde.

352
00:18:11.460 --> 00:18:14.070
Solomon Schechter was an observant Jew,

353
00:18:14.070 --> 00:18:15.930
not really part of the establishment.

354
00:18:15.930 --> 00:18:18.960
The same thing can be said of Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson.

355
00:18:18.960 --> 00:18:21.153
They're just on the edge of the community.

356
00:18:22.950 --> 00:18:25.920
These two were born in a small town in Scotland.

357
00:18:25.920 --> 00:18:27.690
Their father brought them up

358
00:18:27.690 --> 00:18:30.030
and educated them much as he would've done boys.

359
00:18:30.030 --> 00:18:33.600
Given a very good Presbyterian education of that time.

360
00:18:33.600 --> 00:18:36.120
Presbyterian education meant you learned Hebrew,

361
00:18:36.120 --> 00:18:38.640
you learned Semitic languages, you knew your Bible.

362
00:18:38.640 --> 00:18:40.740
They excelled particularly in languages.

363
00:18:40.740 --> 00:18:43.200
I believe they knew 14 between the two of them.

364
00:18:43.200 --> 00:18:44.280
And like Schechter,

365
00:18:44.280 --> 00:18:47.730
they had an affinity for old manuscripts.

366
00:18:47.730 --> 00:18:49.110
So they became great linguists

367
00:18:49.110 --> 00:18:51.513
but also are great travelers.

368
00:18:54.990 --> 00:18:57.090
And these weren't just weekend jaunts

369
00:18:57.090 --> 00:18:58.170
out into the countryside.

370
00:18:58.170 --> 00:18:59.003
Oh, no.

371
00:18:59.003 --> 00:19:01.680
They would take multi-continent excursions

372
00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:05.433
often in search of interesting antiquarian manuscripts.

373
00:19:08.370 --> 00:19:12.060
These twins went to St. Catherine's Monastery

374
00:19:12.060 --> 00:19:13.863
at the foot of Mount Sinai.

375
00:19:17.490 --> 00:19:18.870
St. Catherine's Monastery

376
00:19:18.870 --> 00:19:21.630
was this wonderful repository of ancient manuscripts,

377
00:19:21.630 --> 00:19:24.690
second only to the Vatican in its holdings.

378
00:19:24.690 --> 00:19:28.800
And Agnes read that there were manuscripts in Syriac,

379
00:19:28.800 --> 00:19:30.900
which is language like Aramine,

380
00:19:30.900 --> 00:19:32.550
that Jesus and the disciples spoke,

381
00:19:32.550 --> 00:19:35.010
that hadn't been examined.

382
00:19:35.010 --> 00:19:37.020
This fired up Agnes's imagination

383
00:19:37.020 --> 00:19:39.990
and she taught herself Syriac.

384
00:19:39.990 --> 00:19:41.310
She said it wasn't that difficult

385
00:19:41.310 --> 00:19:43.563
if you already knew Hebrew and Arabic.

386
00:19:49.380 --> 00:19:50.580
So when the time came,

387
00:19:50.580 --> 00:19:55.200
the two sisters sailed from England to Alexandria in Egypt.

388
00:19:55.200 --> 00:19:58.170
They took a train from Alexandria to Cairo.

389
00:19:58.170 --> 00:20:00.780
They took a carriage from Cairo to the Red Sea.

390
00:20:00.780 --> 00:20:03.960
Sailed across the Red Sea and embarked on what I believe was

391
00:20:03.960 --> 00:20:07.260
an 11 day camel schlep through the wilderness

392
00:20:07.260 --> 00:20:08.583
to this monastery.

393
00:20:13.740 --> 00:20:14.790
They walked most of the way.

394
00:20:14.790 --> 00:20:15.960
They did ride the camels,

395
00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:18.090
but they complained it was too bumpy

396
00:20:18.090 --> 00:20:21.243
to read the Psalms in Hebrew while you were riding a camel.

397
00:20:22.707 --> 00:20:24.090
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪

398
00:20:24.090 --> 00:20:27.173
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪

399
00:20:28.410 --> 00:20:31.170
Imagine the apparition of two Presbyterian women

400
00:20:31.170 --> 00:20:33.660
in full skirts speaking modern Greek,

401
00:20:33.660 --> 00:20:35.100
probably with heavy Scottish accents,

402
00:20:35.100 --> 00:20:36.651
appearing out of nowhere.

403
00:20:36.651 --> 00:20:38.026
♪ Ah, ah ♪

404
00:20:38.026 --> 00:20:41.109
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ♪

405
00:20:42.177 --> 00:20:43.380
And they were absolutely welcomed.

406
00:20:43.380 --> 00:20:46.380
It turned out the monks at Sinai have always welcomed women.

407
00:20:48.360 --> 00:20:50.700
The librarian said, "What would you like to see?"

408
00:20:50.700 --> 00:20:54.087
And Agnes said, "All your oldest manuscripts."

409
00:20:57.660 --> 00:20:59.610
In a dark closet off a dark room

410
00:20:59.610 --> 00:21:01.380
underneath the archbishop's lodgings,

411
00:21:01.380 --> 00:21:04.160
there were several trunks of rather derelict manuscripts

412
00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:07.830
in Syriac there were very, very ancient indeed.

413
00:21:07.830 --> 00:21:09.390
These chests were brought up

414
00:21:09.390 --> 00:21:11.940
and they took several documents out of them

415
00:21:11.940 --> 00:21:14.910
and one was this relatively small codex,

416
00:21:14.910 --> 00:21:17.400
and Agnes could see that it was a palimpsest.

417
00:21:17.400 --> 00:21:19.740
Well, that meant that the vellum,

418
00:21:19.740 --> 00:21:20.910
the animal hide on which

419
00:21:20.910 --> 00:21:23.430
this lives of saints had been copied,

420
00:21:23.430 --> 00:21:25.113
had been used previously.

421
00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:28.500
They discovered in this monastery,

422
00:21:28.500 --> 00:21:32.610
the world's earliest version in Syriac

423
00:21:32.610 --> 00:21:34.650
of the Gospel, according to Mark.

424
00:21:34.650 --> 00:21:36.480
They took photographs, they brought them back to Cambridge

425
00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:37.980
and then they had a great deal of trouble

426
00:21:37.980 --> 00:21:39.540
actually convincing anyone in Cambridge

427
00:21:39.540 --> 00:21:41.043
to look at their photographs.

428
00:21:43.620 --> 00:21:45.420
This after considerable struggles

429
00:21:45.420 --> 00:21:47.640
back in Cambridge was vindicated.

430
00:21:47.640 --> 00:21:50.910
It was indeed the earliest manuscript we have

431
00:21:50.910 --> 00:21:52.530
and the most complete manuscript we have

432
00:21:52.530 --> 00:21:53.780
of the Gospels in Syriac.

433
00:22:03.300 --> 00:22:04.470
They brought this back to England,

434
00:22:04.470 --> 00:22:05.700
they translated it into English.

435
00:22:05.700 --> 00:22:07.260
They became world famous.

436
00:22:07.260 --> 00:22:09.180
And they continued traveling back to Egypt

437
00:22:09.180 --> 00:22:11.073
looking for more manuscripts.

438
00:22:14.100 --> 00:22:17.250
They got word from someone in Cairo to say that

439
00:22:17.250 --> 00:22:19.350
there were Hebrew manuscripts coming on the market,

440
00:22:19.350 --> 00:22:21.480
and this naturally interested them.

441
00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:24.780
And they went to Cairo where they,

442
00:22:24.780 --> 00:22:27.243
for the first time, bought manuscripts.

443
00:22:28.266 --> 00:22:30.690
There was a person selling Hebrew manuscripts

444
00:22:30.690 --> 00:22:33.270
on the street who followed them back to their hotel

445
00:22:33.270 --> 00:22:34.830
and convinced them to buy

446
00:22:34.830 --> 00:22:37.443
a large quantity of Hebrew manuscripts.

447
00:22:39.270 --> 00:22:40.950
They were looking through these manuscripts

448
00:22:40.950 --> 00:22:42.210
after they returned to Cambridge

449
00:22:42.210 --> 00:22:43.680
and discovered that there were several among them

450
00:22:43.680 --> 00:22:45.450
they didn't really know how to identify,

451
00:22:45.450 --> 00:22:49.080
and so they contacted their friend Solomon Schechter.

452
00:22:49.080 --> 00:22:51.110
Agnes bumped into Solomon Schechter,

453
00:22:51.110 --> 00:22:53.010
it was in the street when she was doing her shopping,

454
00:22:53.010 --> 00:22:54.120
and said, "You must come back

455
00:22:54.120 --> 00:22:56.607
and look at some of the things we've got."

456
00:22:58.290 --> 00:23:01.500
I met him by chance on King's Parade

457
00:23:01.500 --> 00:23:04.140
and told him we had a number of things at home,

458
00:23:04.140 --> 00:23:06.063
which awaited his inspection.

459
00:23:07.260 --> 00:23:10.650
Schechter makes a beeline right to their house.

460
00:23:10.650 --> 00:23:11.940
It's called Castle Brae,

461
00:23:11.940 --> 00:23:15.033
a big beautiful mansion not far from downtown Cambridge.

462
00:23:16.080 --> 00:23:17.700
When she got back from her shopping,

463
00:23:17.700 --> 00:23:20.160
there was already Solomon Schechter in their dining room

464
00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:21.930
on their enormous dining room table

465
00:23:21.930 --> 00:23:24.993
going over these manuscripts in a state of great excitement.

466
00:23:25.860 --> 00:23:28.290
I returned after doing a little shopping

467
00:23:28.290 --> 00:23:30.180
and found him in the dining room

468
00:23:30.180 --> 00:23:33.960
with our two bundles of fragments on the table.

469
00:23:33.960 --> 00:23:37.387
He held up a dirty scrap of paper.

470
00:23:37.387 --> 00:23:41.307
"This is very interesting. May I publish this?"

471
00:23:42.990 --> 00:23:45.870
One of the fragments was a piece of the Talmud Yerushalmi,

472
00:23:45.870 --> 00:23:47.910
which is the Palestinian Talmud.

473
00:23:47.910 --> 00:23:50.250
Very rare to have manuscripts of that Talmud

474
00:23:50.250 --> 00:23:54.020
because the Babylonian Talmud was the standard Talmud text.

475
00:23:54.020 --> 00:23:56.490
But there was another fragment there.

476
00:23:56.490 --> 00:23:59.673
And the other fragment made him extremely excited.

477
00:24:01.050 --> 00:24:02.910
And in one of the great understatements

478
00:24:02.910 --> 00:24:05.373
of modern scholarship, Solomon Schechter said,

479
00:24:07.207 --> 00:24:11.340
"And this, this might be of some value too."

480
00:24:11.340 --> 00:24:12.540
And so very carefully,

481
00:24:12.540 --> 00:24:15.240
Solomon Schechter packed this old piece of paper up

482
00:24:15.240 --> 00:24:16.590
and put it into his case

483
00:24:16.590 --> 00:24:19.350
and walked out of Castle Brae thinking that

484
00:24:19.350 --> 00:24:21.060
maybe, just maybe,

485
00:24:21.060 --> 00:24:23.190
this piece of paper that he was carrying with him

486
00:24:23.190 --> 00:24:24.960
might be a page from

487
00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:27.813
the original Hebrew of the Book of Ben Sira.

488
00:24:30.450 --> 00:24:34.110
The Book of Ben Sira is a work from The Apocrypha,

489
00:24:34.110 --> 00:24:36.030
also known as Ecclesiasticus.

490
00:24:36.030 --> 00:24:37.740
It's part of the Catholic Bible,

491
00:24:37.740 --> 00:24:41.550
not included in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanach,

492
00:24:41.550 --> 00:24:44.460
but it is quoted by the rabbis in the Talmud

493
00:24:44.460 --> 00:24:47.610
and other rabbinic works as scripture.

494
00:24:47.610 --> 00:24:49.800
Its original Hebrew was unknown

495
00:24:49.800 --> 00:24:52.530
until Schechter, knowing the tradition,

496
00:24:52.530 --> 00:24:54.180
took a look at the Hebrew,

497
00:24:54.180 --> 00:24:59.180
recognized that this was probably the lost Hebrew

498
00:24:59.490 --> 00:25:01.833
original of the Book of Ben Sira.

499
00:25:03.060 --> 00:25:05.430
The last person to have seen

500
00:25:05.430 --> 00:25:08.550
the original Hebrew of the Book of Ben Sira

501
00:25:08.550 --> 00:25:10.994
was the renowned Babylonian sage:

502
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:14.700
And he had died in the year 952.

503
00:25:14.700 --> 00:25:17.370
And there sitting at the dining room table,

504
00:25:17.370 --> 00:25:21.333
he sees what he thinks might be a page from that very book.

505
00:25:22.230 --> 00:25:25.590
So he goes straight to the university library

506
00:25:25.590 --> 00:25:28.200
where he pulls a Catholic Bible off the shelf, opens it up,

507
00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:31.207
and immediately the bells start to sound in his head.

508
00:25:31.207 --> 00:25:33.210
"This is it. This is it.

509
00:25:33.210 --> 00:25:35.820
This is a page of the original Hebrew of

510
00:25:35.820 --> 00:25:36.810
the Book of Ben Sira."

511
00:25:36.810 --> 00:25:39.090
Nobody had seen it for centuries,

512
00:25:39.090 --> 00:25:41.100
and there it is, sitting right in front of him.

513
00:25:41.100 --> 00:25:45.300
This fragment actually supported his side of an argument

514
00:25:45.300 --> 00:25:48.180
that he was having at that time with a man called

515
00:25:48.180 --> 00:25:51.030
Samuel David Margoliouth in Oxford.

516
00:25:51.030 --> 00:25:53.790
Jewish family who had converted to Anglicanism,

517
00:25:53.790 --> 00:25:55.470
Episcopalians.

518
00:25:55.470 --> 00:25:59.610
And he had said that the Book of Ben Sira,

519
00:25:59.610 --> 00:26:01.560
written in the second century,

520
00:26:01.560 --> 00:26:04.620
for him the authentic version was the Greek

521
00:26:04.620 --> 00:26:05.940
and Syriac version.

522
00:26:05.940 --> 00:26:08.340
Schechter said, "No, there was an original Hebrew.

523
00:26:08.340 --> 00:26:10.770
The Greek and the Syriac are translations of it.

524
00:26:10.770 --> 00:26:12.690
I wish we could one day find it."

525
00:26:12.690 --> 00:26:15.330
Of course all the arguments were purely theoretical

526
00:26:15.330 --> 00:26:18.753
because the book had long been lost to history.

527
00:26:19.830 --> 00:26:21.300
Or so everybody thought.

528
00:26:21.300 --> 00:26:23.700
This is the Ben Sira, Book of Ecclesiasticus,

529
00:26:23.700 --> 00:26:26.493
that the sisters first showed to Solomon Schechter.

530
00:26:29.460 --> 00:26:31.650
There were very few people in the world in those days

531
00:26:31.650 --> 00:26:34.170
who would've recognized what this manuscript was.

532
00:26:34.170 --> 00:26:36.000
And, you know, it just happened

533
00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:37.740
Schechter was one of those very few,

534
00:26:37.740 --> 00:26:39.480
if not the only, person.

535
00:26:39.480 --> 00:26:40.710
That's the amazing thing.

536
00:26:40.710 --> 00:26:43.620
Had he been shown other manuscripts and not this one,

537
00:26:43.620 --> 00:26:46.380
he may never have gone off to Egypt.

538
00:26:46.380 --> 00:26:48.270
That's the great serendipity of the story is that

539
00:26:48.270 --> 00:26:52.050
this one happened to turn up in the initial batch

540
00:26:52.050 --> 00:26:53.370
that the Scottish ladies bought,

541
00:26:53.370 --> 00:26:54.360
and was one of the ones that

542
00:26:54.360 --> 00:26:55.590
they couldn't identify themselves

543
00:26:55.590 --> 00:26:57.000
and they showed to Schechter.

544
00:26:57.000 --> 00:26:58.620
And he got terribly excited about it.

545
00:26:58.620 --> 00:27:00.630
And then he wrote them this brilliant note.

546
00:27:00.630 --> 00:27:03.210
Dated 13th of May, 1896:

547
00:27:03.210 --> 00:27:04.260
Dear Mrs. Lewis,

548
00:27:04.260 --> 00:27:06.990
I think we have reason to congratulate ourselves,

549
00:27:06.990 --> 00:27:08.160
for the fragment I took with me

550
00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:11.537
represents a piece of the original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus.

551
00:27:11.537 --> 00:27:12.660
It is the first time that

552
00:27:12.660 --> 00:27:14.820
such a thing was discovered.

553
00:27:14.820 --> 00:27:19.110
Please do not speak yet about the matter till tomorrow.

554
00:27:19.110 --> 00:27:22.110
I will come to you tomorrow about 11:00 p.m.

555
00:27:22.110 --> 00:27:23.640
and talk over the matter with you

556
00:27:23.640 --> 00:27:25.860
and how to make the matter known.

557
00:27:25.860 --> 00:27:28.080
In haste and great excitement,

558
00:27:28.080 --> 00:27:30.183
yours sincerely, Solomon Schechter.

559
00:27:32.040 --> 00:27:35.490
What Solomon Schechter is now holding in his hands

560
00:27:35.490 --> 00:27:39.857
is the original Hebrew of The Wisdom of Ben Sirach.

561
00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:44.047
And he looks at these women and says,

562
00:27:44.047 --> 00:27:45.927
"Where did you find this?"

563
00:27:52.290 --> 00:27:53.940
In fact, he knew where they were coming from

564
00:27:53.940 --> 00:27:55.740
because he had been involved in correspondence

565
00:27:55.740 --> 00:27:57.930
for this man in Jerusalem called Wertheimer,

566
00:27:57.930 --> 00:27:59.520
who was a bookseller

567
00:27:59.520 --> 00:28:01.740
who had been sending manuscripts to Cambridge

568
00:28:01.740 --> 00:28:03.120
and to Oxford to sell them.

569
00:28:03.120 --> 00:28:04.800
But Schechter just wasn't interested

570
00:28:04.800 --> 00:28:06.030
in the kinds of manuscripts

571
00:28:06.030 --> 00:28:07.500
that he was seeing from Wertheimer.

572
00:28:07.500 --> 00:28:09.600
But as soon as the Ben Sira turned up,

573
00:28:09.600 --> 00:28:12.000
he realized that Wertheimer must be sitting on

574
00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:16.920
a great store of potentially incredibly exciting material.

575
00:28:16.920 --> 00:28:19.980
And Wertheimer had told him where he was getting them from.

576
00:28:19.980 --> 00:28:23.403
From an old synagogue in Fustat, in Old Cairo.

577
00:28:25.380 --> 00:28:27.153
Schechter knew then where to go.

578
00:28:28.620 --> 00:28:30.570
At the end of the 19th century,

579
00:28:30.570 --> 00:28:32.280
the Ben Ezra Synagogue,

580
00:28:32.280 --> 00:28:35.640
where most of the Geniza documents were preserved,

581
00:28:35.640 --> 00:28:37.920
was falling to pieces

582
00:28:37.920 --> 00:28:41.460
and the community decided to carry out

583
00:28:41.460 --> 00:28:42.750
repairs in the building.

584
00:28:42.750 --> 00:28:44.850
And it's in the course of these repairs

585
00:28:44.850 --> 00:28:48.000
that the discovery of the Geniza was made.

586
00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:50.070
But I think when we say, "Discovery,"

587
00:28:50.070 --> 00:28:52.950
I think the people in charge of the synagogue

588
00:28:52.950 --> 00:28:55.860
discovered that these old pieces of paper

589
00:28:55.860 --> 00:28:59.910
held an interest for these curious European travelers

590
00:28:59.910 --> 00:29:02.640
who were prepared to pay enormous amounts of money

591
00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:03.690
to buy them.

592
00:29:03.690 --> 00:29:07.170
This is how news sneaked out of

593
00:29:07.170 --> 00:29:09.453
the presence of a geniza in Cairo.

594
00:29:13.380 --> 00:29:14.730
Schechter made arrangements

595
00:29:14.730 --> 00:29:15.600
as quickly as he could

596
00:29:15.600 --> 00:29:18.587
to get to Cairo to see the Geniza.

597
00:29:19.500 --> 00:29:21.360
He wants to go to Cairo, he wants to get money,

598
00:29:21.360 --> 00:29:22.500
he wants to get a travel grant,

599
00:29:22.500 --> 00:29:24.300
he needs to go to a committee.

600
00:29:24.300 --> 00:29:27.720
And in those days, as today,

601
00:29:27.720 --> 00:29:29.760
there are always leaks from committees.

602
00:29:29.760 --> 00:29:33.960
He was advised not to go to the committee by Charles Taylor.

603
00:29:33.960 --> 00:29:36.870
Charles Taylor was a Hebraist and he was a theologian.

604
00:29:36.870 --> 00:29:39.030
He was wealthy, he was a mathematician,

605
00:29:39.030 --> 00:29:40.020
and he was master of a college.

606
00:29:40.020 --> 00:29:41.340
Very powerful man.

607
00:29:41.340 --> 00:29:43.710
He told Schechter, "Don't go to the committee.

608
00:29:43.710 --> 00:29:45.060
Don't ask for money.

609
00:29:45.060 --> 00:29:47.430
Because you go to the committee, someone will find out,

610
00:29:47.430 --> 00:29:50.217
and others will go to Cairo before you get there."

611
00:29:55.530 --> 00:29:57.780
And he was particularly worried that Oxford,

612
00:29:57.780 --> 00:30:00.480
which in Cambridge is known as, "The other place,"

613
00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:02.550
that Oxford would hear about it and beat him to it.

614
00:30:02.550 --> 00:30:03.998
Because he knew that

615
00:30:03.998 --> 00:30:05.010
they were doing business with Wertheimer.

616
00:30:05.010 --> 00:30:06.240
He may also have known that

617
00:30:06.240 --> 00:30:09.150
they had people on the spot in Cairo.

618
00:30:09.150 --> 00:30:12.420
And he got hundreds of pounds from Charles Taylor

619
00:30:12.420 --> 00:30:14.160
to make the journey.

620
00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:16.860
Now we know that Charles Taylor was right.

621
00:30:16.860 --> 00:30:19.530
Oxford had been negotiating with

622
00:30:19.530 --> 00:30:21.420
the Ben Ezra Synagogue people,

623
00:30:21.420 --> 00:30:25.320
but Oxford and Cambridge, of course, great rivalry.

624
00:30:25.320 --> 00:30:26.687
Cambridge won that battle.

625
00:30:45.210 --> 00:30:47.310
Schechter went to Cairo

626
00:30:47.310 --> 00:30:50.820
and Schechter was able to develop a good relationship

627
00:30:50.820 --> 00:30:55.500
with the Chief Rabbi of Cairo, Aaron Raphael Ben Shimon.

628
00:30:55.500 --> 00:30:58.680
He spends a lot of time trying to suppress his excitement

629
00:30:58.680 --> 00:31:00.360
and having endless cups of coffee

630
00:31:00.360 --> 00:31:01.770
and cigarettes with the Chief Rabbi,

631
00:31:01.770 --> 00:31:05.790
quite a young Chief Rabbi of Cairo at that time.

632
00:31:05.790 --> 00:31:06.623
Although they were from

633
00:31:06.623 --> 00:31:07.590
completely different worlds,

634
00:31:07.590 --> 00:31:09.180
I mean Schechter an Eastern European Jew,

635
00:31:09.180 --> 00:31:10.200
the Chief Rabbi of Egypt

636
00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:12.270
from a long established Fadi family,

637
00:31:12.270 --> 00:31:15.360
they had a kind of intellectual meeting of minds.

638
00:31:15.360 --> 00:31:19.830
And Schechter was able somehow to win him over

639
00:31:19.830 --> 00:31:21.737
and virtually to give him the keys to the Geniza

640
00:31:21.737 --> 00:31:25.770
and to remove whatever he wanted back to Cambridge.

641
00:31:25.770 --> 00:31:28.500
The oral tradition in Cambridge is that

642
00:31:28.500 --> 00:31:30.120
he was given permission by the Chief Rabbi

643
00:31:30.120 --> 00:31:32.610
and by the leading families of the Jewish community

644
00:31:32.610 --> 00:31:35.400
to take as much as he wanted and that he was welcome to it.

645
00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:37.170
This was a gift.

646
00:31:37.170 --> 00:31:40.260
Now, in actual fact, we have other accounts

647
00:31:40.260 --> 00:31:44.340
from the agents who were working for Oxford on the ground

648
00:31:44.340 --> 00:31:47.400
who were also trying to negotiate access to the synagogue

649
00:31:47.400 --> 00:31:48.990
who say that unfortunately Schechter turned up

650
00:31:48.990 --> 00:31:51.270
dispersing hundreds of pounds,

651
00:31:51.270 --> 00:31:53.100
which they couldn't compete with,

652
00:31:53.100 --> 00:31:54.797
and that's how he got the Geniza.

653
00:31:59.328 --> 00:32:02.790
He was taken down to Fustat, so Old Cairo,

654
00:32:02.790 --> 00:32:05.238
and taken to the Ben Ezra Synagogue.

655
00:32:05.238 --> 00:32:07.531
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

656
00:32:16.465 --> 00:32:18.960
The Ben Ezra Synagogue, as Schechter saw it,

657
00:32:18.960 --> 00:32:20.110
had been built in 1040,

658
00:32:21.788 --> 00:32:24.000
although it's in fact fallen down many times in its history

659
00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:25.380
and been rebuilt many times.

660
00:32:25.380 --> 00:32:27.580
It probably was there for centuries earlier.

661
00:32:28.478 --> 00:32:30.780
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪

662
00:32:30.780 --> 00:32:32.760
After showing me over the place,

663
00:32:32.760 --> 00:32:35.190
or rather ruins,

664
00:32:35.190 --> 00:32:39.000
the rabbi introduced me to the beadles of the synagogue,

665
00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:42.660
who are at the same time the keepers of the geniza

666
00:32:42.660 --> 00:32:45.725
and authorized me to take from it what

667
00:32:45.725 --> 00:32:47.772
and as much as I liked.

668
00:32:47.772 --> 00:32:49.077
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

669
00:32:49.077 --> 00:32:51.090
He was shown the Geniza chamber in the synagogue,

670
00:32:51.090 --> 00:32:55.290
where it seems for a thousand years the Jews of Fustat

671
00:32:55.290 --> 00:32:58.533
had been putting in their discarded writings.

672
00:33:04.320 --> 00:33:05.670
Schechter had to go into

673
00:33:05.670 --> 00:33:08.430
the upstairs section, take a big ladder,

674
00:33:08.430 --> 00:33:09.420
climb up to the top.

675
00:33:09.420 --> 00:33:13.687
And in that hole in the wall, that's where the geniza was.

676
00:33:24.180 --> 00:33:27.773
Schechter jumped down into this geniza

677
00:33:28.740 --> 00:33:31.290
and found himself covered with

678
00:33:31.290 --> 00:33:33.603
this manuscripts of centuries.

679
00:33:38.460 --> 00:33:41.310
The first thing he was aware of was the dust,

680
00:33:41.310 --> 00:33:45.960
clouds and clouds of what turns out to be ancient dust.

681
00:33:45.960 --> 00:33:49.620
He said that he almost suffocated from all the dirt

682
00:33:49.620 --> 00:33:53.760
and, you know, of 1,000 years coming to his face.

683
00:33:53.760 --> 00:33:55.713
And after just a few moments,

684
00:33:56.670 --> 00:33:58.500
the dust clouds parted

685
00:33:58.500 --> 00:34:02.850
and Solomon Schechter couldn't believe what he was seeing.

686
00:34:02.850 --> 00:34:06.150
Because there right in front of him,

687
00:34:06.150 --> 00:34:09.690
in this dusty old attic in Cairo, Egypt,

688
00:34:09.690 --> 00:34:12.663
was a mountain of old manuscripts.

689
00:34:15.810 --> 00:34:17.160
He realized picking things up

690
00:34:17.160 --> 00:34:19.830
that these were old manuscripts,

691
00:34:19.830 --> 00:34:22.410
much older than most manuscripts we had ever found

692
00:34:22.410 --> 00:34:25.470
on subjects that we knew almost nothing about,

693
00:34:25.470 --> 00:34:28.200
and that they would revolutionize

694
00:34:28.200 --> 00:34:30.510
our knowledge of Jewish history and literature.

695
00:34:30.510 --> 00:34:33.033
And that is exactly what did happen.

696
00:34:38.850 --> 00:34:40.050
[Madmun ben David] Please buy for me

697
00:34:40.050 --> 00:34:44.400
any fine copies of useful books you can lay your hands on

698
00:34:44.400 --> 00:34:46.620
and kindly send them to me.

699
00:34:46.620 --> 00:34:50.013
May I never be deprived of you and never miss you.

700
00:34:56.708 --> 00:35:00.961
Geniza is the testimony for literacy.

701
00:35:00.961 --> 00:35:03.810
We're talking about a very literate society,

702
00:35:03.810 --> 00:35:05.670
very high degrees of literacy

703
00:35:05.670 --> 00:35:08.013
and obsession with the written word.

704
00:35:09.300 --> 00:35:11.130
There is a price list of oil

705
00:35:11.130 --> 00:35:13.260
that was consumed by the synagogue

706
00:35:13.260 --> 00:35:16.800
in order to keep it illuminated during the nights

707
00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:18.693
so that people could come and study.

708
00:35:19.800 --> 00:35:22.890
People used to have quite significant libraries

709
00:35:22.890 --> 00:35:24.090
in their home.

710
00:35:24.090 --> 00:35:27.300
They used not only to read them or to buy them,

711
00:35:27.300 --> 00:35:28.983
they also copied them.

712
00:35:32.160 --> 00:35:34.980
I asked a friend in Susa to buy parchment

713
00:35:34.980 --> 00:35:37.290
and deliver it to a copyist.

714
00:35:37.290 --> 00:35:40.773
Unfortunately, they have only one copyist there.

715
00:35:46.260 --> 00:35:48.330
I have to hold it very gently

716
00:35:48.330 --> 00:35:50.580
because it is particularly fragile.

717
00:35:50.580 --> 00:35:54.090
It's a paper manuscript

718
00:35:54.090 --> 00:35:56.820
and there is a color font that you can see here

719
00:35:56.820 --> 00:35:58.410
where I am showing you.

720
00:35:58.410 --> 00:36:00.780
It is only partly preserved,

721
00:36:00.780 --> 00:36:05.280
but the scribe is saying that while he copied this book,

722
00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:09.600
he corrected it with the original.

723
00:36:09.600 --> 00:36:13.530
So it shows that there was this care about writing books

724
00:36:13.530 --> 00:36:15.273
exactly according to the models.

725
00:36:18.780 --> 00:36:21.210
Books also had a social meaning.

726
00:36:21.210 --> 00:36:22.770
It was a sign of friendship

727
00:36:22.770 --> 00:36:27.180
when you lended a book to a friend.

728
00:36:27.180 --> 00:36:30.273
And books were also a common subject of talking.

729
00:36:31.380 --> 00:36:33.600
People wrote about books to friends.

730
00:36:33.600 --> 00:36:35.283
People talked about books.

731
00:36:37.590 --> 00:36:39.600
Dear brother, believe me,

732
00:36:39.600 --> 00:36:41.730
I can in no circumstances leave the house

733
00:36:41.730 --> 00:36:43.830
for various reasons.

734
00:36:43.830 --> 00:36:45.870
The most important being that I am staying at home

735
00:36:45.870 --> 00:36:49.350
to study medicine, language, Talmud,

736
00:36:49.350 --> 00:36:50.943
and the science of theology.

737
00:36:52.740 --> 00:36:55.110
Dear brother, you can't imagine what I suffer

738
00:36:55.110 --> 00:36:56.733
by being separated from you.

739
00:36:59.220 --> 00:37:01.890
The Jews reflected in the Geniza documents

740
00:37:01.890 --> 00:37:04.980
inhabited a world where they participated freely

741
00:37:04.980 --> 00:37:07.170
in the culture of the dominant society.

742
00:37:07.170 --> 00:37:09.240
They thought about the same ideas,

743
00:37:09.240 --> 00:37:11.760
they borrowed freely from their intellectual tradition,

744
00:37:11.760 --> 00:37:13.230
their religious tradition.

745
00:37:13.230 --> 00:37:14.820
Jewish, Muslims, and Christians

746
00:37:14.820 --> 00:37:17.670
would read from the same book.

747
00:37:17.670 --> 00:37:19.020
Not pray from the same book,

748
00:37:19.020 --> 00:37:22.503
but talk about theology, about philosophy.

749
00:37:23.670 --> 00:37:26.550
It wasn't the Golden Age in every place,

750
00:37:26.550 --> 00:37:29.490
but they felt very much at home in these countries.

751
00:37:29.490 --> 00:37:30.940
They spoke the same language.

752
00:37:32.550 --> 00:37:34.680
Looking at this and knowing Hebrew,

753
00:37:34.680 --> 00:37:36.930
you would assume that this is Hebrew.

754
00:37:36.930 --> 00:37:39.630
But it's not Hebrew. It's written in Arabic.

755
00:37:39.630 --> 00:37:41.463
So the beginning says:

756
00:37:46.950 --> 00:37:50.010
Arabic was spoken, was read,

757
00:37:50.010 --> 00:37:51.840
was written by everybody,

758
00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:54.720
Muslims, Jews, Christians, everybody.

759
00:37:54.720 --> 00:37:57.960
This was the international language

760
00:37:57.960 --> 00:37:59.853
of the Mediterranean Basin.

761
00:38:00.960 --> 00:38:03.570
The Jews of Fustat spoke Arabic,

762
00:38:03.570 --> 00:38:06.450
but because they were Jews, they also used a lot of Hebrew.

763
00:38:06.450 --> 00:38:08.850
Now at school to learn Hebrew.

764
00:38:08.850 --> 00:38:11.400
They were taught basically how to write it.

765
00:38:11.400 --> 00:38:12.600
The end result was not just that

766
00:38:12.600 --> 00:38:13.590
they could read Hebrew very well,

767
00:38:13.590 --> 00:38:15.330
but they could also write the language.

768
00:38:15.330 --> 00:38:16.740
So when they came to write Arabic,

769
00:38:16.740 --> 00:38:19.863
the most natural thing for them was to write Judeo-Arabic.

770
00:38:21.090 --> 00:38:25.320
Basically Judeo-Arabic is colloquial Arabic.

771
00:38:25.320 --> 00:38:28.350
It's the language that people speak at home,

772
00:38:28.350 --> 00:38:31.143
represented in Hebrew letters.

773
00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:37.323
Judeo-Arabic has been used by Jews for about 12 centuries.

774
00:38:42.660 --> 00:38:47.660
Only one area we don't find Arabic at all.

775
00:38:47.880 --> 00:38:48.960
The official liturgy,

776
00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:53.960
the official rite in the synagogue was completely Hebrew.

777
00:38:55.650 --> 00:39:00.360
In that way we preserved some kind of cultural autonomy.

778
00:39:00.360 --> 00:39:03.633
It was our culture of our community.

779
00:39:04.470 --> 00:39:07.620
As much as we are open to the environment still,

780
00:39:07.620 --> 00:39:11.760
we want also to keep something for ourselves.

781
00:39:11.760 --> 00:39:16.320
Here we've got a page from a prayer book

782
00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:18.600
that as you can see is written in a simple hand,

783
00:39:18.600 --> 00:39:21.570
would've been used by a member of the Jewish community

784
00:39:21.570 --> 00:39:23.673
in Cairo in about the 12th century.

785
00:39:31.320 --> 00:39:33.780
Here in the Geniza fragment, it's obvious.

786
00:39:33.780 --> 00:39:37.560
Here, you know, it's just sort of dumb luck

787
00:39:37.560 --> 00:39:39.450
when we have these Geniza fragments

788
00:39:39.450 --> 00:39:44.450
because there they were in the piles in that room in Fustat.

789
00:39:45.630 --> 00:39:48.330
And it's just our good, good fortune

790
00:39:48.330 --> 00:39:49.950
that one of them matches

791
00:39:49.950 --> 00:39:52.620
and is a complete page of what it is

792
00:39:52.620 --> 00:39:54.120
that we happen to be studying.

793
00:39:55.920 --> 00:39:56.910
In the Geniza material,

794
00:39:56.910 --> 00:39:58.260
not only are we dealing with history,

795
00:39:58.260 --> 00:40:00.570
but we are also dealing with a lot of thought,

796
00:40:00.570 --> 00:40:03.150
philosophy, liturgy.

797
00:40:03.150 --> 00:40:04.260
How did we pray?

798
00:40:04.260 --> 00:40:06.720
And how did the prayer book change?

799
00:40:06.720 --> 00:40:08.733
Or how did the prayer book evolve?

800
00:40:12.570 --> 00:40:15.030
When you study out of an almost a thousand year old book,

801
00:40:15.030 --> 00:40:17.580
here you are doing exactly what your ancestors did.

802
00:40:18.570 --> 00:40:20.970
This offered very important evidence

803
00:40:20.970 --> 00:40:23.970
regarding the development of Jewish prayer

804
00:40:23.970 --> 00:40:25.200
in the Middle Ages.

805
00:40:25.200 --> 00:40:29.343
These are fundamental to our religion and to our people.

806
00:40:33.330 --> 00:40:35.280
So we have in the Geniza fragments,

807
00:40:35.280 --> 00:40:39.600
that are obviously Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic,

808
00:40:39.600 --> 00:40:41.400
but there are other languages,

809
00:40:41.400 --> 00:40:43.590
Jewish languages I would call them.

810
00:40:43.590 --> 00:40:45.600
There was a Byzantine community.

811
00:40:45.600 --> 00:40:47.940
So we have texts in Judeo-Greek.

812
00:40:47.940 --> 00:40:51.480
Jews used Greek in Hebrew characters.

813
00:40:51.480 --> 00:40:55.920
Judeo-Spanish, Spanish written in Hebrew characters.

814
00:40:55.920 --> 00:40:57.660
Judeo-Persian.

815
00:40:57.660 --> 00:41:02.660
And nobody quite believes this when I tell them, Yiddish.

816
00:41:02.760 --> 00:41:06.137
Judeo-German, that Yiddish is represented in the Geniza.

817
00:41:11.520 --> 00:41:15.540
Schechter has been choked with dust and bad air

818
00:41:15.540 --> 00:41:18.090
and has worked like a horse.

819
00:41:18.090 --> 00:41:20.703
He wishes he had a respirator.

820
00:41:22.170 --> 00:41:26.580
Solomon Schechter himself describes the very hard work

821
00:41:26.580 --> 00:41:29.280
that he has to do, physically hard,

822
00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:31.770
inside the Geniza chamber with all the dust

823
00:41:31.770 --> 00:41:33.450
and all the insects.

824
00:41:33.450 --> 00:41:36.090
He spent weeks in the Geniza itself,

825
00:41:36.090 --> 00:41:37.590
choking in this atmosphere.

826
00:41:37.590 --> 00:41:38.997
You know, in the heat of Egypt with the dust,

827
00:41:38.997 --> 00:41:40.770
and he was a heavy smoker as well

828
00:41:40.770 --> 00:41:42.480
so his lungs were probably terrible.

829
00:41:42.480 --> 00:41:44.640
But he wasn't particularly interested in

830
00:41:44.640 --> 00:41:46.110
a lot of what the Geniza had to offer,

831
00:41:46.110 --> 00:41:48.990
so he thought he would sort through it while he was there.

832
00:41:48.990 --> 00:41:50.940
And so he and Mrs. Lewis

833
00:41:50.940 --> 00:41:52.110
and Mrs. Gibson, of course,

834
00:41:52.110 --> 00:41:54.330
who came to join him in Cairo a little later,

835
00:41:54.330 --> 00:41:56.430
tried to sort out the fragments a little bit,

836
00:41:56.430 --> 00:41:58.560
tried to clean them up a little bit.

837
00:41:58.560 --> 00:42:00.870
I think the task probably proved too much to him

838
00:42:00.870 --> 00:42:04.173
and in the end he just decided to take as much as he could.

839
00:42:10.074 --> 00:42:12.247
He knew he had something very important here

840
00:42:12.247 --> 00:42:16.380
and so he managed to take almost everything from that room

841
00:42:16.380 --> 00:42:18.436
to Cambridge University Library.

842
00:42:29.383 --> 00:42:30.216
He sent a note

843
00:42:30.216 --> 00:42:31.747
to the university librarian saying,

844
00:42:31.747 --> 00:42:33.330
"These are very important fragments.

845
00:42:33.330 --> 00:42:35.040
Don't give them to anybody else.

846
00:42:35.040 --> 00:42:37.140
I will come back and I will work on them."

847
00:42:38.010 --> 00:42:39.690
>And when he got back to Cambridge,

848
00:42:39.690 --> 00:42:43.710
they gave him a room in the library where he could unpack

849
00:42:43.710 --> 00:42:45.543
and study this material in detail.

850
00:42:47.040 --> 00:42:48.570
He is the first to open the crates

851
00:42:48.570 --> 00:42:50.373
and really see what he brought back.

852
00:43:13.710 --> 00:43:15.690
He was looking for Ben Sira manuscripts.

853
00:43:15.690 --> 00:43:16.670
That is what he was most interested in,

854
00:43:16.670 --> 00:43:18.420
the Book of Ecclesiasticus.

855
00:43:18.420 --> 00:43:19.950
He'd already found that one leaf.

856
00:43:19.950 --> 00:43:21.810
He wanted to find the rest of the book.

857
00:43:21.810 --> 00:43:25.203
But the thing that he was most worried about was Oxford.

858
00:43:29.550 --> 00:43:32.820
That competition, that race for the Ben Sira,

859
00:43:32.820 --> 00:43:35.553
caused an Oxford librarian to look for it.

860
00:43:37.020 --> 00:43:39.090
Once they heard that there was Ben Sira fragments,

861
00:43:39.090 --> 00:43:41.430
they dug within their own Gineza collection,

862
00:43:41.430 --> 00:43:42.780
which they'd been quietly buying

863
00:43:42.780 --> 00:43:44.337
in the days before Schechter from Wertheimer

864
00:43:44.337 --> 00:43:46.710
and also from their agent in Egypt,

865
00:43:46.710 --> 00:43:48.960
and discovered they had bits of Ben Sira.

866
00:43:48.960 --> 00:43:51.150
And they actually published it before Schechter,

867
00:43:51.150 --> 00:43:53.163
which caused him immense pain.

868
00:44:00.420 --> 00:44:01.650
Cambridge has today something like

869
00:44:01.650 --> 00:44:04.620
75% of all the Geniza material.

870
00:44:04.620 --> 00:44:06.540
Solomon Schechter brought it all back to Cambridge,

871
00:44:06.540 --> 00:44:07.980
including all the Ben Sira.

872
00:44:07.980 --> 00:44:09.870
But the Ben Sira fragments was only part!

873
00:44:09.870 --> 00:44:11.460
They were only part of the story.

874
00:44:11.460 --> 00:44:15.060
He hadn't realized the story would be so broad.

875
00:44:15.060 --> 00:44:18.990
Every aspect of life of a Jewish community

876
00:44:18.990 --> 00:44:20.850
in the Eastern Mediterranean

877
00:44:20.850 --> 00:44:23.940
from the 10th to the 13th centuries and beyond those,

878
00:44:23.940 --> 00:44:26.613
but especially in those centuries, is represented.

879
00:44:30.840 --> 00:44:33.900
Between 1909 and the 1950s,

880
00:44:33.900 --> 00:44:37.410
what Schechter had dealt with, continued to be dealt with,

881
00:44:37.410 --> 00:44:41.100
but the vast majority of the fragments were simply stored

882
00:44:41.100 --> 00:44:44.070
and unavailable to such an extent that

883
00:44:44.070 --> 00:44:47.820
in the 1950s when Shelomo Dov Goitein, S.D. Goitein,

884
00:44:47.820 --> 00:44:50.040
came to Cambridge, started to work on the Geniza,

885
00:44:50.040 --> 00:44:51.577
he was asked by the university librarian,

886
00:44:51.577 --> 00:44:54.077
"What shall we do with all these other fragments?"

887
00:44:55.542 --> 00:44:57.837
And Goitein said, "Well, I'll have a look at them."

888
00:44:57.837 --> 00:45:00.030
And Goitein realized immediately that

889
00:45:00.030 --> 00:45:02.370
these thousands of fragments were just as important

890
00:45:02.370 --> 00:45:03.720
as the ones that Schechter

891
00:45:03.720 --> 00:45:05.620
and some other scholars had worked on.

892
00:45:08.010 --> 00:45:10.927
At that point, he himself became, as he said,

893
00:45:10.927 --> 00:45:15.510
"Electrified with what was yet to be found in the Geniza,"

894
00:45:15.510 --> 00:45:17.823
and became a Geniza man.

895
00:45:19.440 --> 00:45:21.570
Professor Shelomo Goitein discovered that

896
00:45:21.570 --> 00:45:25.770
we had here a treasure trove of unique information,

897
00:45:25.770 --> 00:45:27.960
all sorts of aspects of society,

898
00:45:27.960 --> 00:45:30.093
which we had no other sources for.

899
00:45:32.250 --> 00:45:35.223
This is a name of someone involved in the India trade.

900
00:45:36.300 --> 00:45:39.633
His great achievement was to recreate that world.

901
00:45:40.830 --> 00:45:44.100
With his major work, "A Mediterranean Society,"

902
00:45:44.100 --> 00:45:47.163
Goitein really changed the history of Geniza research.

903
00:45:48.630 --> 00:45:50.430
With the work of Shelomo Dov Goitein,

904
00:45:50.430 --> 00:45:53.700
the Cairo Geniza, with all its aspects

905
00:45:53.700 --> 00:45:56.280
from very important biblical texts,

906
00:45:56.280 --> 00:45:59.430
lost works of Medieval poetry,

907
00:45:59.430 --> 00:46:02.880
but also daily life texts, children exercises,

908
00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:05.490
shopping lists, lists of merchants,

909
00:46:05.490 --> 00:46:07.293
became extremely important.

910
00:46:13.200 --> 00:46:18.200
This was not an archive, this was the Medieval Facebook

911
00:46:18.300 --> 00:46:20.850
filled with so much mundane junk

912
00:46:20.850 --> 00:46:24.180
that you could reconstruct an entire world from it

913
00:46:24.180 --> 00:46:26.680
if only you could actually read through all of it.

914
00:46:35.790 --> 00:46:38.610
Schechter describes the Geniza

915
00:46:38.610 --> 00:46:41.700
was a very hazardous place for books

916
00:46:41.700 --> 00:46:43.590
because as you entered the Geniza,

917
00:46:43.590 --> 00:46:47.520
you first had to jump down from its entrance.

918
00:46:47.520 --> 00:46:50.430
As soon as you jumped, you heard crunch.

919
00:46:50.430 --> 00:46:55.080
As you walk around, you walk on books and manuscripts,

920
00:46:55.080 --> 00:46:56.313
destroying them.

921
00:46:58.140 --> 00:47:00.810
It is a battlefield of books!

922
00:47:00.810 --> 00:47:05.070
A battle in which the literary productions of many centuries

923
00:47:05.070 --> 00:47:06.810
has a share.

924
00:47:06.810 --> 00:47:09.870
Some of the belligerents are perished outright

925
00:47:09.870 --> 00:47:12.360
and are literally ground to dust

926
00:47:12.360 --> 00:47:15.870
in the terrible struggle for space.

927
00:47:15.870 --> 00:47:19.680
Whilst others, as if overtaken by the general crush,

928
00:47:19.680 --> 00:47:23.310
are squeezed into big unshapely lumps,

929
00:47:23.310 --> 00:47:26.070
which even with the aid of chemical appliances,

930
00:47:26.070 --> 00:47:27.720
can no longer be separated

931
00:47:27.720 --> 00:47:31.440
without serious damage to their constituents.

932
00:47:31.440 --> 00:47:33.440
The detritus of the Geniza Collection.

933
00:47:35.520 --> 00:47:36.510
What the crates look like

934
00:47:36.510 --> 00:47:38.070
once they've taken the good stuff out.

935
00:47:38.070 --> 00:47:40.350
Although it's bits in here from the 11th, 10th,

936
00:47:40.350 --> 00:47:42.270
maybe even earlier centuries,

937
00:47:42.270 --> 00:47:43.820
there's no usable text on them.

938
00:47:53.820 --> 00:47:55.522
The problem with Geniza is that

939
00:47:55.522 --> 00:47:57.600
the pages are very much mutilated.

940
00:47:57.600 --> 00:48:00.090
And already before Solomon Schechter

941
00:48:00.090 --> 00:48:03.270
brought the Geniza fragment to Cambridge University,

942
00:48:03.270 --> 00:48:06.390
the other 40% or so were scattered in about

943
00:48:06.390 --> 00:48:10.383
70 different public library or private collection,

944
00:48:11.280 --> 00:48:12.753
70 all over the world.

945
00:48:13.710 --> 00:48:15.750
This is where we keep our Geniza Collection

946
00:48:15.750 --> 00:48:19.110
here at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

947
00:48:19.110 --> 00:48:20.790
Books have been split up,

948
00:48:20.790 --> 00:48:23.760
different leaves have gone to different parts of the world,

949
00:48:23.760 --> 00:48:25.350
and even within the same leaf,

950
00:48:25.350 --> 00:48:27.150
different bits have gone here and there.

951
00:48:27.150 --> 00:48:29.670
If you wanted perhaps to examine, you know,

952
00:48:29.670 --> 00:48:32.160
one particular work in the Geniza,

953
00:48:32.160 --> 00:48:35.130
you might have to travel to New York, to Budapest, to Paris.

954
00:48:35.130 --> 00:48:36.393
All sorts of places.

955
00:48:38.070 --> 00:48:41.040
A splendid example is this manuscript.

956
00:48:41.040 --> 00:48:41.873
It's:

957
00:48:44.430 --> 00:48:46.020
Which is a fragment of a letter

958
00:48:46.020 --> 00:48:49.230
which was written about 1035.

959
00:48:49.230 --> 00:48:52.440
Another half of this document is found in

960
00:48:52.440 --> 00:48:54.693
Taylor-Schechter Collection in Cambridge.

961
00:49:00.990 --> 00:49:03.750
Sometimes just by the way something looked,

962
00:49:03.750 --> 00:49:05.760
the script, the shape, the size,

963
00:49:05.760 --> 00:49:08.107
you could match material that you see and you'd say,

964
00:49:08.107 --> 00:49:09.660
"Oh, I remember the piece of that

965
00:49:09.660 --> 00:49:11.967
from such and such collection."

966
00:49:13.020 --> 00:49:18.020
I had gone through 1/3 to 1/2 of the Cairo Geniza material,

967
00:49:18.030 --> 00:49:21.510
which was a half a million items.

968
00:49:21.510 --> 00:49:23.910
The vast majority of them I went through

969
00:49:23.910 --> 00:49:26.684
by looking in old fashioned microfilms.

970
00:49:26.684 --> 00:49:29.793
Microfilming was a technique that was used in World War II.

971
00:49:35.994 --> 00:49:37.380
There was a whole slew of problems

972
00:49:37.380 --> 00:49:41.253
in analyzing all the Geniza fragments around the world.

973
00:49:42.360 --> 00:49:45.510
You can imagine that the child goes into a playroom,

974
00:49:45.510 --> 00:49:49.080
picks out dozens of boxes of puzzles,

975
00:49:49.080 --> 00:49:50.850
throws them all on the floor,

976
00:49:50.850 --> 00:49:53.790
then throws away 2/3 of the pieces,

977
00:49:53.790 --> 00:49:56.820
then stomps on all of them until they're all in shreds,

978
00:49:56.820 --> 00:49:59.243
and now you're trying to put it back together again.

979
00:50:01.290 --> 00:50:05.580
I've applied roughly 30 to 40 paper repairs

980
00:50:05.580 --> 00:50:06.960
to this sheet of paper.

981
00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:08.960
That's more or less what we're facing.

982
00:50:11.220 --> 00:50:13.597
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

983
00:50:13.597 --> 00:50:17.070
You know, Geniza scholars are very unique

984
00:50:17.070 --> 00:50:18.303
in jigsaw puzzle work.

985
00:50:20.280 --> 00:50:23.190
To imagine the life around Ben Ezra Synagogue,

986
00:50:23.190 --> 00:50:26.280
I reconstructed the neighborhood like the jigsaw puzzle

987
00:50:26.280 --> 00:50:30.174
from all Geniza collections over the world.

988
00:50:30.174 --> 00:50:32.681
And this is the map.

989
00:50:35.637 --> 00:50:38.640
The synagogue of the Babylonian Jews

990
00:50:38.640 --> 00:50:40.920
is near the Hanging Church.

991
00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:45.810
The synagogue of the Jerusalemite Jews is near Kabisa Lane.

992
00:50:45.810 --> 00:50:48.210
The El Adi Mosque is opposite

993
00:50:48.210 --> 00:50:50.373
the home of the head of the Jews.

994
00:50:52.271 --> 00:50:54.706
In Fustat, there is no Jewish ghetto.

995
00:50:54.706 --> 00:50:56.108
I mean, there is the Jewish synagogue,

996
00:50:56.108 --> 00:50:57.780
next to it you can find many Jewish houses,

997
00:50:57.780 --> 00:51:00.570
but not all of the houses around the synagogue

998
00:51:00.570 --> 00:51:02.520
were houses of Jews.

999
00:51:02.520 --> 00:51:04.143
So neighborhoods were mixed.

1000
00:51:08.430 --> 00:51:13.020
The relation between the Jews and Muslims

1001
00:51:13.020 --> 00:51:16.830
were very good at that time

1002
00:51:16.830 --> 00:51:21.570
because we considered the Jews who live in Egypt,

1003
00:51:21.570 --> 00:51:24.210
like Christians also,

1004
00:51:24.210 --> 00:51:29.013
as a part of Egyptian history, a part of the population.

1005
00:51:30.810 --> 00:51:33.900
The Jews were indigenous in the Middle East.

1006
00:51:33.900 --> 00:51:35.580
They were part of the scenery.

1007
00:51:35.580 --> 00:51:36.930
They belonged there,

1008
00:51:36.930 --> 00:51:40.440
and had been there as long as the Arabs

1009
00:51:40.440 --> 00:51:42.240
or North African Berbers,

1010
00:51:42.240 --> 00:51:45.363
wherever we're talking about geographically.

1011
00:51:47.490 --> 00:51:50.040
The official position was always

1012
00:51:50.040 --> 00:51:53.160
Jews and Christians are the People of the Book.

1013
00:51:53.160 --> 00:51:54.900
They have scriptures that we recognize

1014
00:51:54.900 --> 00:51:56.790
in a certain Islamic way

1015
00:51:56.790 --> 00:51:59.190
and therefore they are the protected minority,

1016
00:51:59.190 --> 00:52:03.660
as long as they do not attempt to go beyond

1017
00:52:03.660 --> 00:52:05.010
what they're allowed to do.

1018
00:52:06.444 --> 00:52:09.989
The People of the Books, or Dhimmi,

1019
00:52:09.989 --> 00:52:11.640
the term of Dhimmi,

1020
00:52:11.640 --> 00:52:16.640
it means the Christians and the Jews

1021
00:52:16.800 --> 00:52:19.113
must be protected by the government.

1022
00:52:26.040 --> 00:52:29.160
Protection means freedom of religious observance,

1023
00:52:29.160 --> 00:52:31.740
security for persons and property,

1024
00:52:31.740 --> 00:52:36.510
and in return the Dhimmi must, generally speaking,

1025
00:52:36.510 --> 00:52:39.360
maintain a respectful attitude towards Islam

1026
00:52:39.360 --> 00:52:42.120
as well as pay an annual tax,

1027
00:52:42.120 --> 00:52:46.020
which is a discriminatory tax that's only levied on Dhimmis.

1028
00:52:46.020 --> 00:52:48.360
Every Jew had to pay this tax and have a certificate,

1029
00:52:48.360 --> 00:52:50.433
have a receipt to say he paid it.

1030
00:52:52.110 --> 00:52:54.810
The policeman appeared for the poll tax.

1031
00:52:54.810 --> 00:52:57.097
He saw me in the ship and said to me,

1032
00:52:57.097 --> 00:53:00.030
"Do you intend to depart and take along the poll tax

1033
00:53:00.030 --> 00:53:02.340
which belongs to the government?

1034
00:53:02.340 --> 00:53:04.230
I shall not leave until you have come with me

1035
00:53:04.230 --> 00:53:05.880
to the office."

1036
00:53:05.880 --> 00:53:08.310
I can imagine what you felt when you came to the boat

1037
00:53:08.310 --> 00:53:09.663
and did not see me in it.

1038
00:53:11.070 --> 00:53:14.400
There are documents which testified to

1039
00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:16.890
the difficulties that the lower classes

1040
00:53:16.890 --> 00:53:19.290
had in paying the heavy tax,

1041
00:53:19.290 --> 00:53:23.430
which sometimes amounted to 1/3 of their annual revenues.

1042
00:53:23.430 --> 00:53:27.510
For the poor, it was a great burden.

1043
00:53:27.510 --> 00:53:30.120
And the community collected money

1044
00:53:30.120 --> 00:53:33.363
to help subsidize individuals who could not pay.

1045
00:53:36.810 --> 00:53:39.810
Maimonides writes a letter on behalf of a scholar

1046
00:53:39.810 --> 00:53:43.387
and his son who are traveling from Egypt, and he says,

1047
00:53:43.387 --> 00:53:45.900
"These people don't have the money to pay the tax.

1048
00:53:45.900 --> 00:53:48.630
Please, you in the Jewish community where they're coming,

1049
00:53:48.630 --> 00:53:51.657
please pay the tax for them because they are poor scholars."

1050
00:53:56.190 --> 00:53:57.023
Be so kind

1051
00:53:57.023 --> 00:53:59.280
as to help the bearer of this letter.

1052
00:53:59.280 --> 00:54:03.060
Tell the community official, God preserve him,

1053
00:54:03.060 --> 00:54:05.490
to entrust his problem to the community

1054
00:54:05.490 --> 00:54:07.740
and see the money for his poll tax

1055
00:54:07.740 --> 00:54:09.183
collected from among you.

1056
00:54:10.110 --> 00:54:13.217
Moses, son of the scholar Maimon.

1057
00:54:18.924 --> 00:54:22.380
In the Geniza, the Jews are responding to

1058
00:54:22.380 --> 00:54:26.040
the Christian and Muslim world of the time,

1059
00:54:26.040 --> 00:54:28.260
and trying to establish their own position,

1060
00:54:28.260 --> 00:54:30.390
their own theological position.

1061
00:54:30.390 --> 00:54:32.880
And that's interesting because it means,

1062
00:54:32.880 --> 00:54:35.580
contrary to what we had thought before,

1063
00:54:35.580 --> 00:54:37.380
Jews are not living in a vacuum.

1064
00:54:37.380 --> 00:54:40.800
They're not separate from the other communities.

1065
00:54:40.800 --> 00:54:42.570
They're living in communities where they know

1066
00:54:42.570 --> 00:54:44.890
what the other traditions are, where they visit each other,

1067
00:54:44.890 --> 00:54:47.703
where they give each other presents on their holidays.

1068
00:54:54.120 --> 00:54:58.080
The Jews lived in cultural symbiosis.

1069
00:54:58.080 --> 00:54:59.520
They were part of society.

1070
00:54:59.520 --> 00:55:02.640
I call it the cultural marketplace

1071
00:55:02.640 --> 00:55:05.310
where everybody met everybody

1072
00:55:05.310 --> 00:55:08.913
and they were able to exchange whatever they liked.

1073
00:55:14.041 --> 00:55:15.240
The 9th, 10th century

1074
00:55:15.240 --> 00:55:18.780
is the period of transmission of philosophical ideas,

1075
00:55:18.780 --> 00:55:21.870
of medical learning, of mathematics,

1076
00:55:21.870 --> 00:55:24.480
astronomy and so on and so forth.

1077
00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:28.263
And the Jews partook in this general development of culture.

1078
00:55:29.550 --> 00:55:31.310
There was a real revolution

1079
00:55:31.310 --> 00:55:34.650
in the way Jews were thinking about such questions,

1080
00:55:34.650 --> 00:55:38.280
because mainly through Arabic they have become connected to

1081
00:55:38.280 --> 00:55:42.450
the legacy of Classical philosophy.

1082
00:55:42.450 --> 00:55:45.540
Greek, Roman, Classical sciences,

1083
00:55:45.540 --> 00:55:48.573
all these were translated into Arabic.

1084
00:56:00.750 --> 00:56:02.970
This is the door to the holy arc

1085
00:56:02.970 --> 00:56:04.740
where the Torah scrolls were kept

1086
00:56:04.740 --> 00:56:09.003
in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo for at least 800 years.

1087
00:56:11.490 --> 00:56:13.200
This central oval medallion

1088
00:56:13.200 --> 00:56:16.620
with these pinched ends in the four corner motifs

1089
00:56:16.620 --> 00:56:20.043
is influenced directly by Islamic book design.

1090
00:56:23.010 --> 00:56:25.410
The Islamic influence that you see on the front

1091
00:56:25.410 --> 00:56:27.510
is continued on the back,

1092
00:56:27.510 --> 00:56:31.290
and there's another beautiful spinning motif

1093
00:56:31.290 --> 00:56:35.823
which is also influenced very much by Islamic design.

1094
00:56:38.730 --> 00:56:43.320
We owe a lot to these people who lived then by modifying,

1095
00:56:43.320 --> 00:56:46.440
updating and renovating Jewish culture

1096
00:56:46.440 --> 00:56:50.163
and life to be relevant to people of the Middle Ages.

1097
00:56:57.900 --> 00:57:01.560
What all conservators share is a love of history.

1098
00:57:01.560 --> 00:57:03.690
And so doing what we do,

1099
00:57:03.690 --> 00:57:05.943
we are touching history quite literally.

1100
00:57:07.680 --> 00:57:10.050
This is usually how I receive the fragments

1101
00:57:10.050 --> 00:57:11.310
from the researchers.

1102
00:57:11.310 --> 00:57:15.810
It's a little tricky because as you can see it's quite bent,

1103
00:57:15.810 --> 00:57:18.720
so I just want to open it up slightly

1104
00:57:18.720 --> 00:57:21.063
just so I could see the condition inside.

1105
00:57:24.969 --> 00:57:29.207
Okay.

1106
00:57:29.207 --> 00:57:32.343
As you can see, there is a bit of dirt.

1107
00:57:33.810 --> 00:57:37.980
It just show you how dirty these fragments can be.

1108
00:57:37.980 --> 00:57:41.523
I think it's over sort of three months, I accumulated these.

1109
00:57:48.757 --> 00:57:51.300
[Jacob ben Salman] The price in Ramla of the cypress silk

1110
00:57:51.300 --> 00:57:52.953
is two dinars per pound.

1111
00:57:54.450 --> 00:57:57.360
Please advise me whether I should sell it here

1112
00:57:57.360 --> 00:57:59.760
or carry it to you in Fustat,

1113
00:57:59.760 --> 00:58:02.013
in case it's fetching a good price there.

1114
00:58:03.420 --> 00:58:05.730
By God, answer me quickly.

1115
00:58:05.730 --> 00:58:08.580
I have no other business here except awaiting answers

1116
00:58:08.580 --> 00:58:09.663
to my letters.

1117
00:58:12.450 --> 00:58:15.750
The Islamic conquests brought with them

1118
00:58:15.750 --> 00:58:18.423
a kind of commercial revolution.

1119
00:58:20.190 --> 00:58:24.240
The unification of the former Sasanian-Persian Empire

1120
00:58:24.240 --> 00:58:28.980
and the Byzantine Roman Empire into one vast unit

1121
00:58:28.980 --> 00:58:31.140
opened up new opportunities

1122
00:58:31.140 --> 00:58:32.973
and they traded far and wide.

1123
00:58:35.250 --> 00:58:37.803
From India to Spain.

1124
00:58:38.910 --> 00:58:41.220
This is mercantile society

1125
00:58:41.220 --> 00:58:43.533
in the most basic meaning of the term.

1126
00:58:44.610 --> 00:58:46.110
In one sense or another,

1127
00:58:46.110 --> 00:58:50.013
everybody was a trader or a merchant.

1128
00:58:51.180 --> 00:58:54.630
Commerce was cool.

1129
00:58:54.630 --> 00:58:58.200
To become a merchant was really the dream of every child.

1130
00:58:58.200 --> 00:59:03.200
It was a way to go to distant places to make a lot of money.

1131
00:59:03.563 --> 00:59:06.557
A merchant was a respectable person.

1132
00:59:08.522 --> 00:59:09.570
[Barhun ben Isaac] This year a caravan,

1133
00:59:09.570 --> 00:59:12.633
the likes of which we've never seen is in preparation.

1134
00:59:14.170 --> 00:59:15.660
But I wasn't ready to let that caravan go

1135
00:59:15.660 --> 00:59:17.910
without sending something in it,

1136
00:59:17.910 --> 00:59:19.950
for I know it will arrive in summer

1137
00:59:19.950 --> 00:59:22.293
when everyone burns to buy.

1138
00:59:30.990 --> 00:59:33.690
There were different hubs of trade,

1139
00:59:33.690 --> 00:59:37.740
but in this period, Fustat was the most important.

1140
00:59:37.740 --> 00:59:39.273
That was the market.

1141
00:59:40.110 --> 00:59:43.080
Goods were always in demand.

1142
00:59:43.080 --> 00:59:45.120
There was never enough.

1143
00:59:45.120 --> 00:59:48.333
It's not like today where it's easy to create a surplus.

1144
00:59:50.040 --> 00:59:52.440
And remember, everything was handmade in those days.

1145
00:59:52.440 --> 00:59:54.630
The quality made a difference.

1146
00:59:54.630 --> 00:59:57.630
And those who could afford it, of course, were ready to pay.

1147
00:59:58.500 --> 01:00:01.320
Everything was carried back and forth.

1148
01:00:01.320 --> 01:00:03.303
The biggest item was flax.

1149
01:00:09.060 --> 01:00:10.350
Flax was grown in Egypt.

1150
01:00:10.350 --> 01:00:12.330
It was used for the production of linen

1151
01:00:12.330 --> 01:00:15.210
and also ultimately for the production of paper.

1152
01:00:15.210 --> 01:00:18.360
Egyptians started spinning flax and making linen

1153
01:00:18.360 --> 01:00:20.787
as early as we know anything about Egypt.

1154
01:00:20.787 --> 01:00:24.000
But they also traded in dozens

1155
01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:26.463
and dozens of other commodities.

1156
01:00:29.010 --> 01:00:29.843
Beads.

1157
01:00:29.843 --> 01:00:30.676
Coral.

1158
01:00:30.676 --> 01:00:31.509
Ornaments.

1159
01:00:31.509 --> 01:00:32.342
Cosmetics.

1160
01:00:32.342 --> 01:00:33.175
Books.

1161
01:00:33.175 --> 01:00:34.008
Grains.

1162
01:00:34.008 --> 01:00:34.841
Metal goods.

1163
01:00:34.841 --> 01:00:35.674
Hides.

1164
01:00:35.674 --> 01:00:36.507
Stones.

1165
01:00:36.507 --> 01:00:38.070
Fruits, vegetables.

1166
01:00:38.070 --> 01:00:38.903
Jewels.

1167
01:00:38.903 --> 01:00:39.736
Sugar.

1168
01:00:39.736 --> 01:00:40.740
Rhubarb.

1169
01:00:40.740 --> 01:00:42.120
Textiles.

1170
01:00:42.120 --> 01:00:43.260
Cotton, wool.

1171
01:00:43.260 --> 01:00:44.093
Silk.

1172
01:00:44.093 --> 01:00:44.926
Headgear.

1173
01:00:44.926 --> 01:00:47.580
Cloaks, embroidery floss.

1174
01:00:47.580 --> 01:00:48.413
Robes.

1175
01:00:48.413 --> 01:00:49.530
Medicinal substances.

1176
01:00:49.530 --> 01:00:50.400
Saddles.

1177
01:00:50.400 --> 01:00:54.270
Fish exported in jars, sometimes as salted fish.

1178
01:00:54.270 --> 01:00:55.410
The olive.

1179
01:00:55.410 --> 01:00:57.450
Olives are eaten, olive oil is eaten.

1180
01:00:57.450 --> 01:00:59.130
Olives are used for lamps.

1181
01:00:59.130 --> 01:01:00.810
Olives are used for soap.

1182
01:01:00.810 --> 01:01:01.643
Perfumes.

1183
01:01:01.643 --> 01:01:02.476
Shoes.

1184
01:01:02.476 --> 01:01:03.330
Dyes.

1185
01:01:03.330 --> 01:01:04.200
Indigo.

1186
01:01:04.200 --> 01:01:05.400
Resin of pine.

1187
01:01:05.400 --> 01:01:06.233
Spices.

1188
01:01:06.233 --> 01:01:07.066
Spices.

1189
01:01:07.066 --> 01:01:07.899
Spices.

1190
01:01:07.899 --> 01:01:08.880
Spices!

1191
01:01:08.880 --> 01:01:11.070
Some spices are used in food

1192
01:01:11.070 --> 01:01:13.350
and dying and medicine.

1193
01:01:13.350 --> 01:01:14.250
Cinnamon.

1194
01:01:14.250 --> 01:01:15.083
Saffron.

1195
01:01:15.083 --> 01:01:15.916
Turmeric.

1196
01:01:15.916 --> 01:01:16.950
Peppers.

1197
01:01:16.950 --> 01:01:17.783
Galangal, a root.

1198
01:01:17.783 --> 01:01:18.616
Clove.

1199
01:01:18.616 --> 01:01:21.870
Information was probably the most important commodity

1200
01:01:21.870 --> 01:01:25.143
that was exchanged, as important as anything else.

1201
01:01:27.262 --> 01:01:28.560
[Writer to Nahray] I received your letter

1202
01:01:28.560 --> 01:01:30.300
in which you announced to me

1203
01:01:30.300 --> 01:01:32.760
the arrival of my letter to you.

1204
01:01:32.760 --> 01:01:35.460
Meanwhile, I have written two other letters

1205
01:01:35.460 --> 01:01:37.020
in which I informed you about

1206
01:01:37.020 --> 01:01:40.713
the arrival of one of the ships of Ibn Abi Hakim.

1207
01:01:41.970 --> 01:01:43.950
Everybody was just hungry.

1208
01:01:43.950 --> 01:01:46.980
Hungry and thirsty for information.

1209
01:01:46.980 --> 01:01:51.030
Within every letter there are references to other letters

1210
01:01:51.030 --> 01:01:54.840
and requests to describe what the prices were,

1211
01:01:54.840 --> 01:01:57.090
what ships were going, where were the ships.

1212
01:01:57.090 --> 01:01:59.160
People were watching out from the shore

1213
01:01:59.160 --> 01:02:02.520
to see if the ships had passed or not passed.

1214
01:02:02.520 --> 01:02:04.413
And they kept track of these things.

1215
01:02:05.280 --> 01:02:08.160
It was a way of sort of entering data into the computer

1216
01:02:08.160 --> 01:02:10.050
so people could keep track.

1217
01:02:10.050 --> 01:02:13.180
You can see the traces are folding vertically

1218
01:02:13.180 --> 01:02:17.490
and then in a very, very small packet horizontally.

1219
01:02:17.490 --> 01:02:18.480
You see?

1220
01:02:18.480 --> 01:02:22.680
So you can very easily see that it was really folded

1221
01:02:22.680 --> 01:02:24.280
into a little envelope and sent!

1222
01:02:28.415 --> 01:02:29.820
[Abraham Ben Yiju] My brother,

1223
01:02:29.820 --> 01:02:33.420
I have set out from India and arrived safely in Aden

1224
01:02:33.420 --> 01:02:36.843
with my belongings, life, and children well preserved.

1225
01:02:38.340 --> 01:02:40.230
Now, I wish to let you know that

1226
01:02:40.230 --> 01:02:43.080
I have enough to live on for all of us.

1227
01:02:43.080 --> 01:02:45.060
May God be exalted.

1228
01:02:45.060 --> 01:02:48.660
Let this money be a living for me and my children

1229
01:02:48.660 --> 01:02:50.643
and be sufficient for you as well.

1230
01:02:52.140 --> 01:02:53.910
I started looking at these documents.

1231
01:02:53.910 --> 01:02:55.680
And suddenly one day, you know,

1232
01:02:55.680 --> 01:02:57.810
I felt like I was actually listening to

1233
01:02:57.810 --> 01:02:59.523
the voice of Abraham Ben Yiju.

1234
01:03:01.170 --> 01:03:05.370
In the early 1100s, Abraham Ben Yiju settled in a town

1235
01:03:05.370 --> 01:03:07.230
which today is known as Bangalore

1236
01:03:07.230 --> 01:03:09.483
on the Malabar Coast in India.

1237
01:03:10.350 --> 01:03:14.100
He wasn't an extraordinary man, you know?

1238
01:03:14.100 --> 01:03:18.090
He was an ordinary merchant with everyday concerns.

1239
01:03:18.090 --> 01:03:19.890
And I guess in a strange way,

1240
01:03:19.890 --> 01:03:23.010
even though Ben Yiju culturally, religiously,

1241
01:03:23.010 --> 01:03:26.040
in every possible way very, very distant

1242
01:03:26.040 --> 01:03:28.530
from any world that I was familiar with,

1243
01:03:28.530 --> 01:03:31.143
I felt an extraordinary sense of closeness to him.

1244
01:03:34.110 --> 01:03:37.770
And the other thing that we have lots of in the Geniza

1245
01:03:37.770 --> 01:03:38.883
is economic tests.

1246
01:03:39.810 --> 01:03:44.130
The Cairo Geniza contains hundreds of letters

1247
01:03:44.130 --> 01:03:47.220
and other documents relating to commerce.

1248
01:03:47.220 --> 01:03:50.220
This is merchants documents,

1249
01:03:50.220 --> 01:03:54.210
and what we have here are orders of payment.

1250
01:03:54.210 --> 01:03:55.530
I mean, checks basically.

1251
01:03:55.530 --> 01:03:58.140
All written by the same man, Abu Zikri Kohen.

1252
01:03:58.140 --> 01:03:59.940
These documents show us

1253
01:03:59.940 --> 01:04:03.330
how this commerce functioned.

1254
01:04:03.330 --> 01:04:04.920
And the checks are all written

1255
01:04:04.920 --> 01:04:06.240
according to the same formula,

1256
01:04:06.240 --> 01:04:08.640
which he probably didn't invent himself.

1257
01:04:08.640 --> 01:04:11.733
He's drawing on an established tradition of paper money.

1258
01:04:13.129 --> 01:04:14.227
Is Aramaic.

1259
01:04:14.227 --> 01:04:15.127
Is Hebrew.

1260
01:04:15.127 --> 01:04:17.190
Is in Arabic script.

1261
01:04:17.190 --> 01:04:18.060
Meaning money.

1262
01:04:18.060 --> 01:04:19.380
And then next to it you have a number,

1263
01:04:19.380 --> 01:04:20.820
which is a Coptic numeral.

1264
01:04:20.820 --> 01:04:23.370
Coptic numerals are basically Greek numerals.

1265
01:04:23.370 --> 01:04:27.273
Which is the actual amount of the check written in numbers.

1266
01:04:28.350 --> 01:04:30.230
Pirates can take your money,

1267
01:04:30.230 --> 01:04:34.050
so normally you travel with your personal expenses.

1268
01:04:34.050 --> 01:04:35.973
But the big money is given a check.

1269
01:04:37.470 --> 01:04:42.153
So don't expect to find a shipwreck with gold.

1270
01:04:49.830 --> 01:04:53.550
Travel was usually along the coastline

1271
01:04:53.550 --> 01:04:55.983
because it was less treacherous.

1272
01:04:57.210 --> 01:05:01.140
However, there were great dangers involved in this travel.

1273
01:05:01.140 --> 01:05:02.370
Sailing along the coast,

1274
01:05:02.370 --> 01:05:06.483
your ship might be grounded or attacked by pirates.

1275
01:05:07.614 --> 01:05:09.000
Pirates!

1276
01:05:09.000 --> 01:05:12.540
Pirates would capture people and rather than killing them,

1277
01:05:12.540 --> 01:05:13.862
they would ransom them.

1278
01:05:13.862 --> 01:05:16.230
In other words, it was a business.

1279
01:05:16.230 --> 01:05:19.020
However, it's not due to pirates

1280
01:05:19.020 --> 01:05:22.350
or to warfare that people die at sea.

1281
01:05:22.350 --> 01:05:25.500
A lot of these merchants died at sea on ships that sank

1282
01:05:25.500 --> 01:05:28.140
because the ships really aren't that good.

1283
01:05:28.140 --> 01:05:30.513
Data can show how terrifying the sea is.

1284
01:05:32.201 --> 01:05:33.870
[Italian Traveler] On Monday at noontime,

1285
01:05:33.870 --> 01:05:35.823
a storm broke loose upon us.

1286
01:05:36.660 --> 01:05:39.900
On the third day, the ship began to leak

1287
01:05:39.900 --> 01:05:42.183
and water penetrated it from all sides.

1288
01:05:43.410 --> 01:05:45.183
The sea became ever wilder.

1289
01:05:46.170 --> 01:05:49.050
I'm unable to describe how we cried,

1290
01:05:49.050 --> 01:05:51.720
for when I saw that those who knew how to swim

1291
01:05:51.720 --> 01:05:55.650
had given up hope for life, what should I do?

1292
01:05:55.650 --> 01:05:59.043
One who cannot stand water as high up as the ankles.

1293
01:06:03.180 --> 01:06:07.083
This is the place where the mast was attached to the ship.

1294
01:06:08.520 --> 01:06:13.350
This ship is a Phoenician ship, dated to 5th century, BCE.

1295
01:06:13.350 --> 01:06:16.680
Its capacity almost 15 tons.

1296
01:06:16.680 --> 01:06:19.311
It's like the Geniza merchants used

1297
01:06:19.311 --> 01:06:21.423
when sailing along the coast.

1298
01:06:22.470 --> 01:06:24.270
We have different sizes of ships,

1299
01:06:24.270 --> 01:06:27.483
but the way they were built is almost identical.

1300
01:06:32.190 --> 01:06:34.530
Moses Maimonides was very, very close

1301
01:06:34.530 --> 01:06:37.680
to his younger brother David, who was a successful merchant.

1302
01:06:37.680 --> 01:06:41.240
And we know that David Maimonides was lost at sea

1303
01:06:41.240 --> 01:06:43.860
on a trade voyage to India.

1304
01:06:43.860 --> 01:06:45.600
It was horribly upsetting,

1305
01:06:45.600 --> 01:06:47.970
horribly catastrophic for his older brother,

1306
01:06:47.970 --> 01:06:48.803
Moses Maimonides.

1307
01:06:48.803 --> 01:06:51.270
And it sent the rabbi into a deep depression

1308
01:06:51.270 --> 01:06:53.733
from which it took him years to recover.

1309
01:06:56.227 --> 01:06:58.830
[David Maimonides] This is my story.

1310
01:06:58.830 --> 01:07:01.290
I reached Qus and after Passover,

1311
01:07:01.290 --> 01:07:03.303
I booked for Aidab in a caravan.

1312
01:07:04.470 --> 01:07:06.900
I am well, but my mind is very much troubled

1313
01:07:06.900 --> 01:07:08.400
so that I walk around the bazaar

1314
01:07:08.400 --> 01:07:11.220
and do not know by our religion where I am

1315
01:07:11.220 --> 01:07:13.440
or how much you must worry about me.

1316
01:07:13.440 --> 01:07:16.200
He goes on to describe the harrowing journey

1317
01:07:16.200 --> 01:07:18.243
that he had taken to get to Aidab.

1318
01:07:19.324 --> 01:07:21.270
[David Maimonides] We arrived in Aidab safely

1319
01:07:21.270 --> 01:07:22.923
with our entire baggage.

1320
01:07:23.940 --> 01:07:26.160
We were unloading our things at the city gate

1321
01:07:26.160 --> 01:07:27.573
when the caravans arrived.

1322
01:07:28.470 --> 01:07:30.930
Their passengers had been robbed and wounded

1323
01:07:30.930 --> 01:07:32.733
and some had died of thirst.

1324
01:07:33.600 --> 01:07:35.730
There was only a small distance between us

1325
01:07:35.730 --> 01:07:37.083
and those who were robbed.

1326
01:07:38.070 --> 01:07:40.230
I'm sure this letter will reach you at a time when I,

1327
01:07:40.230 --> 01:07:43.263
God willing, shall have already made most of the way.

1328
01:07:44.400 --> 01:07:46.050
He posted that letter.

1329
01:07:46.050 --> 01:07:48.240
A couple of hours, maybe a couple of days afterward,

1330
01:07:48.240 --> 01:07:51.210
he got on the boat and was never seen again.

1331
01:07:51.210 --> 01:07:54.600
Right in the center of the letter is a large hole.

1332
01:07:54.600 --> 01:07:57.120
Imagining Moses Maimonides, the great scholar,

1333
01:07:57.120 --> 01:07:59.250
reading the last words

1334
01:07:59.250 --> 01:08:01.260
that he would ever receive from his brother,

1335
01:08:01.260 --> 01:08:03.540
I can't help but think that the hole in the middle of it

1336
01:08:03.540 --> 01:08:06.120
comes not from the natural effects of aging,

1337
01:08:06.120 --> 01:08:08.730
but rather from the tears of a grieving

1338
01:08:08.730 --> 01:08:10.173
and very loving brother.

1339
01:08:14.616 --> 01:08:16.980
I don't know if you could see there is a vulnerable area.

1340
01:08:16.980 --> 01:08:18.450
There's a hole here.

1341
01:08:18.450 --> 01:08:20.613
So I'm just gonna pat it down a little.

1342
01:08:22.110 --> 01:08:24.210
I want to shape out an area

1343
01:08:24.210 --> 01:08:28.140
that would cover the area I want to repair.

1344
01:08:28.140 --> 01:08:33.140
And what I want to do is lift up that piece of paper.

1345
01:08:36.584 --> 01:08:37.560
Okay.

1346
01:08:37.560 --> 01:08:42.060
Then place it on top of the fragment

1347
01:08:42.060 --> 01:08:43.983
with the adhesive side down.

1348
01:08:47.490 --> 01:08:50.880
I hope you could see this, but this is the area I repaired.

1349
01:08:50.880 --> 01:08:52.530
You can still see the hole,

1350
01:08:52.530 --> 01:08:56.040
but there's no danger of someone just getting caught

1351
01:08:56.040 --> 01:08:59.343
and accidentally tearing the area anymore.

1352
01:09:00.270 --> 01:09:03.840
Sometime I do hold my breath when I turn the fragment over.

1353
01:09:14.233 --> 01:09:16.170
The Geniza survived

1354
01:09:16.170 --> 01:09:19.680
and that's how we get a great opportunity

1355
01:09:19.680 --> 01:09:23.160
to be part of the very intimate moment

1356
01:09:23.160 --> 01:09:26.880
of the meeting between the Medieval patient

1357
01:09:26.880 --> 01:09:28.833
to Medieval physician.

1358
01:09:30.270 --> 01:09:33.240
It's very rare and important, of course,

1359
01:09:33.240 --> 01:09:35.433
for historian of medicine.

1360
01:09:37.500 --> 01:09:40.440
I hiccup until midnight

1361
01:09:40.440 --> 01:09:43.500
and believe the hiccup would never stop.

1362
01:09:43.500 --> 01:09:47.370
Then I so desired a bit of fried cheese.

1363
01:09:47.370 --> 01:09:48.900
But for three days more,

1364
01:09:48.900 --> 01:09:51.840
the call of nature has not come to me.

1365
01:09:51.840 --> 01:09:55.260
Fever, headache, weakness and shaking do not leave me

1366
01:09:55.260 --> 01:09:56.760
all day long.

1367
01:09:56.760 --> 01:09:59.940
So what do you prescribe for me?

1368
01:09:59.940 --> 01:10:02.013
I drink very much water.

1369
01:10:04.200 --> 01:10:08.280
We are looking on a special prescription,

1370
01:10:08.280 --> 01:10:12.947
one out of 140 that were identified and found in Geniza.

1371
01:10:13.830 --> 01:10:17.520
This is a very specific recipe.

1372
01:10:17.520 --> 01:10:20.163
It was meant to treat one person.

1373
01:10:21.090 --> 01:10:24.783
So their medicine was very holistic.

1374
01:10:25.650 --> 01:10:28.383
And the prescription is penned with:

1375
01:10:29.850 --> 01:10:33.660
Which means: Beneficial, if God will.

1376
01:10:33.660 --> 01:10:38.070
Which mean the physician doesn't take full responsibility

1377
01:10:38.070 --> 01:10:43.070
for the recipe, and God was involved in every step of life.

1378
01:10:46.920 --> 01:10:48.990
The transmission of scientific knowledge

1379
01:10:48.990 --> 01:10:51.540
is linked to the circles of scholars,

1380
01:10:51.540 --> 01:10:54.930
of physicians or astronomers, astrologers.

1381
01:10:54.930 --> 01:10:59.370
Magic appears to be a more daily life activity,

1382
01:10:59.370 --> 01:11:01.413
a more daily life interest.

1383
01:11:04.170 --> 01:11:05.003
In those days,

1384
01:11:05.003 --> 01:11:06.360
you wanted a woman to fall in love with you?

1385
01:11:06.360 --> 01:11:08.760
Very simple. You buy an amulet.

1386
01:11:08.760 --> 01:11:09.810
And you buy this amulet,

1387
01:11:09.810 --> 01:11:11.490
you write certain things on the amulet,

1388
01:11:11.490 --> 01:11:13.710
you do some magic spells over the amulet,

1389
01:11:13.710 --> 01:11:15.450
you put it under a pillow.

1390
01:11:15.450 --> 01:11:16.860
And people made money from it.

1391
01:11:16.860 --> 01:11:19.770
There were people who did a very good trade in amulets.

1392
01:11:19.770 --> 01:11:21.720
This is an amulet that we believe that

1393
01:11:21.720 --> 01:11:26.190
was against the bite of scorpions that were, of course,

1394
01:11:26.190 --> 01:11:28.290
one of the dangers of Medieval Cairo.

1395
01:11:28.290 --> 01:11:31.080
And this is interesting because we can see the magician,

1396
01:11:31.080 --> 01:11:33.900
let's say, that produced this amulet was not very successful

1397
01:11:33.900 --> 01:11:37.170
because he just sold like four or six of them,

1398
01:11:37.170 --> 01:11:39.340
and then all the rest ended up in the Geniza.

1399
01:11:39.340 --> 01:11:40.920
So it was thrown away.

1400
01:11:40.920 --> 01:11:44.250
So probably these amulets were not particularly effective.

1401
01:11:44.250 --> 01:11:45.390
But the fact that we find

1402
01:11:45.390 --> 01:11:48.510
this kind of evidence in the Geniza means that

1403
01:11:48.510 --> 01:11:52.890
the magic and daily life magic also

1404
01:11:52.890 --> 01:11:55.803
for simple things was widespread.

1405
01:11:59.520 --> 01:12:03.480
Historians like the smell of human flesh history.

1406
01:12:03.480 --> 01:12:05.460
It's a human science.

1407
01:12:05.460 --> 01:12:10.050
And the Geniza does give us this insight into daily life

1408
01:12:10.050 --> 01:12:11.850
and problems of people.

1409
01:12:11.850 --> 01:12:14.373
Just everyday problems of people.

1410
01:12:16.590 --> 01:12:18.870
We have weaned the baby.

1411
01:12:18.870 --> 01:12:21.510
Do not ask me what we suffer for him.

1412
01:12:21.510 --> 01:12:24.840
Trouble, crying, sleepless nights.

1413
01:12:24.840 --> 01:12:26.370
So much so that the neighbors,

1414
01:12:26.370 --> 01:12:29.013
God as my witness, are complaining.

1415
01:12:30.780 --> 01:12:32.730
It's very exciting when you pick up a Geniza fragment

1416
01:12:32.730 --> 01:12:35.873
and you see that it's a letter from a woman to her husband.

1417
01:12:35.873 --> 01:12:38.460
Because then you think, "Ah! Hang on.

1418
01:12:38.460 --> 01:12:40.827
Wait a minute. Women are writing?"

1419
01:12:42.300 --> 01:12:44.340
Sometimes we think that women wrote the letters.

1420
01:12:44.340 --> 01:12:46.230
Sometimes we think they dictated them.

1421
01:12:46.230 --> 01:12:48.210
Sometimes men wrote to their wives.

1422
01:12:48.210 --> 01:12:49.290
We have examples of that.

1423
01:12:49.290 --> 01:12:52.320
Sometimes they wrote to a representative of their wives.

1424
01:12:52.320 --> 01:12:53.880
So if there are such distinctions,

1425
01:12:53.880 --> 01:12:55.930
it's clear that some women were literate.

1426
01:12:58.890 --> 01:13:01.440
Girls are not spending a huge number of years

1427
01:13:01.440 --> 01:13:03.750
as legally independent beings.

1428
01:13:03.750 --> 01:13:05.910
They're first under the tutelage of their fathers

1429
01:13:05.910 --> 01:13:09.150
and then they're incorporated into a household

1430
01:13:09.150 --> 01:13:10.233
with their husbands.

1431
01:13:12.870 --> 01:13:15.690
Normally a bride was a teenager,

1432
01:13:15.690 --> 01:13:17.850
15, 16, 17, 18,

1433
01:13:17.850 --> 01:13:21.843
and a groom may have been about 20 or so.

1434
01:13:23.760 --> 01:13:26.010
This is actually a legal document

1435
01:13:26.010 --> 01:13:29.070
that was drawn up before a marriage between two people.

1436
01:13:29.070 --> 01:13:31.563
Basically it is a prenuptial contract.

1437
01:13:32.550 --> 01:13:33.780
He evidently came,

1438
01:13:33.780 --> 01:13:36.510
is going into the marriage with a poor reputation.

1439
01:13:36.510 --> 01:13:39.810
And so consequently, the lovely Faiza is insisting that

1440
01:13:39.810 --> 01:13:41.610
he changes his behavior.

1441
01:13:41.610 --> 01:13:43.897
It says, for instance, here that,

1442
01:13:43.897 --> 01:13:46.050
"I will not let into my house."

1443
01:13:46.050 --> 01:13:47.670
And then there's about 10 different words,

1444
01:13:47.670 --> 01:13:49.830
which are all synonyms for idiot.

1445
01:13:49.830 --> 01:13:51.510
And he won't spend one day away from her

1446
01:13:51.510 --> 01:13:53.250
unless it's her express will,

1447
01:13:53.250 --> 01:13:54.630
in which case obviously he'll clear off.

1448
01:13:54.630 --> 01:13:56.370
Or he won't buy a concubine,

1449
01:13:56.370 --> 01:13:58.380
effectively a slave girl for himself,

1450
01:13:58.380 --> 01:14:01.080
all the time that he's married to the beautiful Faiza.

1451
01:14:02.940 --> 01:14:04.113
Are not at all.

1452
01:14:05.460 --> 01:14:07.740
Unless she wants me to.

1453
01:14:07.740 --> 01:14:09.773
And then of course he will, straight away.

1454
01:14:12.030 --> 01:14:15.783
The question here: Is polygamy allowed in Jewish law?

1455
01:14:17.760 --> 01:14:19.590
And polygamy existed in Jewish law.

1456
01:14:19.590 --> 01:14:22.620
One of the clauses, additional clauses,

1457
01:14:22.620 --> 01:14:25.140
that you find in legal documents

1458
01:14:25.140 --> 01:14:30.140
can be the demand of the wife not to marry a second wife.

1459
01:14:30.570 --> 01:14:33.570
Even though I have found some 70 items

1460
01:14:33.570 --> 01:14:35.760
dealing with polygamous marriages,

1461
01:14:35.760 --> 01:14:39.363
the overwhelming majority of marriages were monogamous.

1462
01:14:40.950 --> 01:14:42.480
This is one of my favorite fragments.

1463
01:14:42.480 --> 01:14:44.550
It's this letter from Abu Bar Ahkhat

1464
01:14:44.550 --> 01:14:48.150
to his niece's husband.

1465
01:14:48.150 --> 01:14:51.000
There is some kind of beating every Friday,

1466
01:14:51.000 --> 01:14:53.647
and now you know he doesn't agree with this.

1467
01:14:53.647 --> 01:14:55.590
"You say she doesn't do her hair,

1468
01:14:55.590 --> 01:14:57.810
she doesn't make up her hair.

1469
01:14:57.810 --> 01:15:00.540
Yeah, Akob, you clever one."

1470
01:15:00.540 --> 01:15:01.650
I like that expression.

1471
01:15:01.650 --> 01:15:02.707
You clever one.

1472
01:15:02.707 --> 01:15:06.957
"So if she was all right, would she not comb her hair?"

1473
01:15:08.190 --> 01:15:10.230
The language is so vivid and so model!

1474
01:15:10.230 --> 01:15:13.105
I mean, when you read it, it could be a contemporary letter.

1475
01:15:15.828 --> 01:15:16.661
Wuhsha!

1476
01:15:16.661 --> 01:15:17.494
Al-Wuhsha.

1477
01:15:17.494 --> 01:15:18.327
Al-Wuhsha!

1478
01:15:18.327 --> 01:15:19.160
Wuhsha's very unique.

1479
01:15:19.160 --> 01:15:22.860
This is actually the document that describes

1480
01:15:22.860 --> 01:15:24.315
the case of Al-Wuhsha.

1481
01:15:24.315 --> 01:15:25.830
Al-Wuhsha was a trade woman.

1482
01:15:25.830 --> 01:15:27.150
Not married.

1483
01:15:27.150 --> 01:15:29.820
She had also some taste with regard to men.

1484
01:15:29.820 --> 01:15:33.270
Who had a child outside of marriage.

1485
01:15:33.270 --> 01:15:35.310
There was a question, "Who's the father of the kid?"

1486
01:15:35.310 --> 01:15:38.790
She is quite keen on making sure that

1487
01:15:38.790 --> 01:15:41.580
her son will not have any problems,

1488
01:15:41.580 --> 01:15:44.793
so she does it with a trick.

1489
01:15:46.590 --> 01:15:48.570
I was with the cantor when Al-Wuhsha,

1490
01:15:48.570 --> 01:15:50.287
the broker, came in and said,

1491
01:15:50.287 --> 01:15:52.740
"Do you not have any advice for me?

1492
01:15:52.740 --> 01:15:56.370
I had an affair with Hassun and conceived from him,

1493
01:15:56.370 --> 01:15:58.470
but I am afraid that he may deny

1494
01:15:58.470 --> 01:16:01.260
being the father of my child."

1495
01:16:01.260 --> 01:16:03.840
The cantor said, "Go and gather some people

1496
01:16:03.840 --> 01:16:05.700
and let them surprise you with him

1497
01:16:05.700 --> 01:16:08.217
so that your assertion might be confirmed."

1498
01:16:09.060 --> 01:16:11.197
She went to two of her tenants and said,

1499
01:16:11.197 --> 01:16:14.190
"Please come up to my place for something."

1500
01:16:14.190 --> 01:16:15.674
The two went up with her

1501
01:16:15.674 --> 01:16:18.240
and found Hassun sitting in her apartment

1502
01:16:18.240 --> 01:16:21.843
and wine and perfumes.

1503
01:16:22.740 --> 01:16:24.480
It's interesting that she was able to lead

1504
01:16:24.480 --> 01:16:27.780
that kind of life, a very independent life,

1505
01:16:27.780 --> 01:16:29.250
probably because she was wealthy

1506
01:16:29.250 --> 01:16:32.170
and yet at the same time we have all this

1507
01:16:33.270 --> 01:16:34.920
documentation relating to her,

1508
01:16:34.920 --> 01:16:38.283
which shows that the community is having problems with it.

1509
01:16:40.740 --> 01:16:42.780
I leave to each of the four synagogues

1510
01:16:42.780 --> 01:16:47.463
in Fustat money for oil so that people may study at night.

1511
01:16:48.750 --> 01:16:52.713
To Hassun, not one penny should be given.

1512
01:16:53.670 --> 01:16:57.300
I think that around her one can build a nice movie.

1513
01:16:57.300 --> 01:17:00.360
Synagogue, women, women merchants,

1514
01:17:00.360 --> 01:17:03.210
places and women in the society.

1515
01:17:03.210 --> 01:17:05.640
She's such a good example for how even women

1516
01:17:05.640 --> 01:17:09.183
can succeed in these quite hostile societies.

1517
01:17:11.640 --> 01:17:14.610
Please order five fine robes,

1518
01:17:14.610 --> 01:17:18.060
one gazelle blood, one pure violet,

1519
01:17:18.060 --> 01:17:20.460
one reddish brown,

1520
01:17:20.460 --> 01:17:23.550
one silvery, one intense yellow,

1521
01:17:23.550 --> 01:17:27.813
two others, pure clean white inclining to yellow.

1522
01:17:28.920 --> 01:17:31.203
This is a society of colors.

1523
01:17:33.300 --> 01:17:34.860
You can see at the museum

1524
01:17:34.860 --> 01:17:37.620
really outstanding pieces of clothing

1525
01:17:37.620 --> 01:17:39.750
from the same period of time

1526
01:17:39.750 --> 01:17:44.340
and some of them really testified to a very rich culture.

1527
01:17:44.340 --> 01:17:48.513
They had a special sensitive approach to colors.

1528
01:17:51.840 --> 01:17:54.000
The robe is of the utmost beauty,

1529
01:17:54.000 --> 01:17:57.570
but not exactly what I wanted for it is white and blue.

1530
01:17:57.570 --> 01:18:00.090
While I wanted to have instead of the latter,

1531
01:18:00.090 --> 01:18:02.463
an onion color, an open color.

1532
01:18:09.690 --> 01:18:13.503
They are wearing some mighty fancy clothes.

1533
01:18:14.790 --> 01:18:18.510
The earliest known piece of knitting is a Fatimid sock

1534
01:18:18.510 --> 01:18:20.133
and it's very elaborate.

1535
01:18:22.380 --> 01:18:25.680
Clothing was not just a shirt and trousers,

1536
01:18:25.680 --> 01:18:29.310
but actually a lot of pieces of textiles

1537
01:18:29.310 --> 01:18:30.753
wrapped around the body.

1538
01:18:33.270 --> 01:18:36.270
A wealthy woman would keep it for her whole life

1539
01:18:36.270 --> 01:18:38.490
and even pass it on to the next generation,

1540
01:18:38.490 --> 01:18:42.120
to her daughters and to her children.

1541
01:18:42.120 --> 01:18:44.340
Most people, by the way,

1542
01:18:44.340 --> 01:18:47.730
had at least two sets of clothing.

1543
01:18:47.730 --> 01:18:48.810
One for every day

1544
01:18:48.810 --> 01:18:52.350
and the other one for Saturdays for Shabbat

1545
01:18:52.350 --> 01:18:55.323
in order to go to the synagogue in a respectable way.

1546
01:18:59.316 --> 01:19:01.619
What do I see around the synagogue?

1547
01:19:01.619 --> 01:19:03.570
I see the heart of the Jewish life,

1548
01:19:03.570 --> 01:19:05.642
the smell of the Jewish life,

1549
01:19:05.642 --> 01:19:08.142
the colors of the Jewish life.

1550
01:19:09.630 --> 01:19:12.510
Come on Sabbath. Just visit us on Sabbath.

1551
01:19:12.510 --> 01:19:14.700
For the whole neighborhood, even women,

1552
01:19:14.700 --> 01:19:16.110
would go to the synagogue

1553
01:19:16.110 --> 01:19:18.180
in order to participate in the prayer.

1554
01:19:18.180 --> 01:19:19.590
But it's not only the prayer.

1555
01:19:19.590 --> 01:19:21.780
Announcements were made there.

1556
01:19:21.780 --> 01:19:22.740
If there was a widow

1557
01:19:22.740 --> 01:19:25.350
who she didn't get the money from the heirs

1558
01:19:25.350 --> 01:19:26.460
or if there was a wife

1559
01:19:26.460 --> 01:19:29.010
who didn't get the money from the battering husband,

1560
01:19:29.010 --> 01:19:31.620
she would stop the prayer in the middle on Shabbat

1561
01:19:31.620 --> 01:19:34.320
until she'll get at least a promise that on Monday

1562
01:19:34.320 --> 01:19:36.480
her case will be taken by the court.

1563
01:19:36.480 --> 01:19:38.370
So Saturday was an event.

1564
01:19:38.370 --> 01:19:41.220
The kids would go around, enjoying life,

1565
01:19:41.220 --> 01:19:43.140
because every day, Sunday for example,

1566
01:19:43.140 --> 01:19:45.940
when they come to the synagogue they have classes there.

1567
01:19:48.510 --> 01:19:51.540
This is a book for school boys

1568
01:19:51.540 --> 01:19:54.813
to learn the Arabic alphabet.

1569
01:19:57.930 --> 01:20:01.980
In the Geniza, a significant corpus is in Arabic script

1570
01:20:01.980 --> 01:20:04.023
and not only in Arabic script,

1571
01:20:04.920 --> 01:20:07.680
they're completely non-religious,

1572
01:20:07.680 --> 01:20:09.513
which is staggering.

1573
01:20:10.770 --> 01:20:13.800
It's small compared to the Judeo-Arabic

1574
01:20:13.800 --> 01:20:15.600
and Hebrew documents in the Geniza,

1575
01:20:15.600 --> 01:20:20.600
but it may be larger than all other extent collections

1576
01:20:20.790 --> 01:20:23.940
put together that we have from the same period,

1577
01:20:23.940 --> 01:20:26.913
especially for state related documents.

1578
01:20:30.120 --> 01:20:31.680
What we're starting to understand is that

1579
01:20:31.680 --> 01:20:33.780
many, many documents have been preserved in the Geniza

1580
01:20:33.780 --> 01:20:35.610
that have nothing to do with Jews.

1581
01:20:35.610 --> 01:20:38.550
We can actually look at documents that were composed by

1582
01:20:38.550 --> 01:20:40.473
and for Christians and Muslims.

1583
01:20:43.020 --> 01:20:47.760
Arabic decrees are these grand, grand, grand documents

1584
01:20:47.760 --> 01:20:49.770
that can, in the Fatimid period,

1585
01:20:49.770 --> 01:20:52.383
the longest one I've ever seen is 10 meters long.

1586
01:20:55.350 --> 01:21:00.090
Official decrees were written with huge space

1587
01:21:00.090 --> 01:21:03.690
between the lines and it was done because

1588
01:21:03.690 --> 01:21:07.260
it was way to show, "We can waste paper,

1589
01:21:07.260 --> 01:21:09.000
we have lots of money."

1590
01:21:09.000 --> 01:21:10.170
You're the provincial governor,

1591
01:21:10.170 --> 01:21:13.350
you're sitting in Damascus or Ramla, wherever you are,

1592
01:21:13.350 --> 01:21:15.750
you get this decree, you enact the terms of the decree.

1593
01:21:15.750 --> 01:21:16.680
And what are you gonna do?

1594
01:21:16.680 --> 01:21:17.670
These things are huge.

1595
01:21:17.670 --> 01:21:19.230
You can't keep them around all the time.

1596
01:21:19.230 --> 01:21:22.113
After the decree was announced,

1597
01:21:23.370 --> 01:21:26.940
it was sold in the market as used paper.

1598
01:21:26.940 --> 01:21:29.970
The provincial archives simply got sold off

1599
01:21:29.970 --> 01:21:34.200
and kind of put back into circulation as recycled documents.

1600
01:21:34.200 --> 01:21:35.940
So that's what I'm working on now is kind of

1601
01:21:35.940 --> 01:21:38.163
trying to track down these state documents.

1602
01:21:40.080 --> 01:21:41.100
One day I'm in the library

1603
01:21:41.100 --> 01:21:44.940
and Roni Shweka sends me a shelf mark of a fragment

1604
01:21:44.940 --> 01:21:48.407
of an 8th century text that he was researching called:

1605
01:21:49.710 --> 01:21:53.040
Basically homilies on legal topics.

1606
01:21:53.040 --> 01:21:54.990
He had found 120 fragments

1607
01:21:54.990 --> 01:21:58.230
and he began to piece them together like pieces of a puzzle.

1608
01:21:58.230 --> 01:21:59.220
So I looked at the other side

1609
01:21:59.220 --> 01:22:02.010
and I see a gigantic row of Arabic.

1610
01:22:02.010 --> 01:22:03.847
So I start to drool and I think,

1611
01:22:03.847 --> 01:22:08.610
"This is clearly part of a governmental decree.

1612
01:22:08.610 --> 01:22:10.230
How wonderful."

1613
01:22:10.230 --> 01:22:12.930
And then a few hours later, he sends me another shelf mark

1614
01:22:12.930 --> 01:22:14.820
and then another shelf mark, and then another shelf mark.

1615
01:22:14.820 --> 01:22:16.920
And then finally he sent me six shelf marks.

1616
01:22:16.920 --> 01:22:18.300
And what he's managed to do is

1617
01:22:18.300 --> 01:22:21.750
to reconstruct a meter of a rotalus

1618
01:22:21.750 --> 01:22:24.048
containing on one side the:

1619
01:22:24.048 --> 01:22:26.190
And on the other side, a Fatimid decree.

1620
01:22:26.190 --> 01:22:27.023
Because you have like

1621
01:22:27.023 --> 01:22:31.110
10 to 15 rows of Hebrew writing per fragment,

1622
01:22:31.110 --> 01:22:33.660
you can actually reconstruct the Hebrew side

1623
01:22:33.660 --> 01:22:35.010
relatively easily.

1624
01:22:35.010 --> 01:22:36.660
If you flip to the Arabic side,

1625
01:22:36.660 --> 01:22:39.090
what you see is per fragment,

1626
01:22:39.090 --> 01:22:40.920
maybe half a line of Arabic text.

1627
01:22:40.920 --> 01:22:43.470
I never would've been able to reconstruct this by myself.

1628
01:22:43.470 --> 01:22:46.020
It's a sheer question of textual density.

1629
01:22:46.020 --> 01:22:48.840
And it's one of those things where like it was under my nose

1630
01:22:48.840 --> 01:22:51.030
and I just hadn't seen.

1631
01:22:51.030 --> 01:22:53.917
And then once I saw it I realized,

1632
01:22:53.917 --> 01:22:55.587
"Oh, you just have to see."

1633
01:22:57.360 --> 01:22:59.130
Three of the fragments are from Cambridge,

1634
01:22:59.130 --> 01:23:00.510
two are from New York,

1635
01:23:00.510 --> 01:23:03.540
and one of them is from the John Rylands Collection

1636
01:23:03.540 --> 01:23:04.623
in Manchester.

1637
01:23:06.960 --> 01:23:09.150
Modern research on the Geniza has been revolutionized

1638
01:23:09.150 --> 01:23:11.223
by the interest of Albert Friedberg.

1639
01:23:13.200 --> 01:23:17.640
I was always fascinated by text, especially Jewish text,

1640
01:23:17.640 --> 01:23:20.827
and so one of the things that was always in my mind was,

1641
01:23:20.827 --> 01:23:24.240
"How can I do something that will help scholars

1642
01:23:24.240 --> 01:23:26.010
begin to get some taste of

1643
01:23:26.010 --> 01:23:27.867
what the original text look like?"

1644
01:23:31.470 --> 01:23:33.720
When the Friedberg Genizah Project was started,

1645
01:23:33.720 --> 01:23:37.320
one of the things that we did was to digitize,

1646
01:23:37.320 --> 01:23:41.310
to have digital images of all Geniza manuscripts

1647
01:23:41.310 --> 01:23:42.210
all over the world,

1648
01:23:42.210 --> 01:23:44.530
and have them available through our servers

1649
01:23:44.530 --> 01:23:46.773
in an internet open to everyone.

1650
01:23:51.510 --> 01:23:54.660
Digitization provides an accessibility to this fragment.

1651
01:23:54.660 --> 01:23:57.060
You don't have to come to the library to see it,

1652
01:23:57.060 --> 01:23:58.743
you can see it on your computer.

1653
01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:02.940
So these are the fragments

1654
01:24:02.940 --> 01:24:06.390
and this is how they are presented in the folders.

1655
01:24:06.390 --> 01:24:09.660
Obviously we cannot in any stage of the process

1656
01:24:09.660 --> 01:24:11.520
manipulate the image.

1657
01:24:11.520 --> 01:24:14.973
We must provide the archival image.

1658
01:24:16.410 --> 01:24:20.493
One person does about 200 images per day.

1659
01:24:22.710 --> 01:24:24.120
When you realize how old

1660
01:24:24.120 --> 01:24:25.920
and how important the collection is,

1661
01:24:26.760 --> 01:24:29.880
you can imagine that to work with this fragment is,

1662
01:24:29.880 --> 01:24:30.813
it's amazing.

1663
01:24:32.610 --> 01:24:36.000
We have now digitized all the fragments

1664
01:24:36.000 --> 01:24:38.640
and all the manuscripts that were in that synagogue

1665
01:24:38.640 --> 01:24:41.073
where Professor Schechter first found them.

1666
01:24:42.660 --> 01:24:44.340
More than half a million

1667
01:24:44.340 --> 01:24:46.770
digital images of Geniza fragments

1668
01:24:46.770 --> 01:24:50.190
are already available on our servers on the internet

1669
01:24:50.190 --> 01:24:52.590
to anyone who wishes to look at them.

1670
01:24:52.590 --> 01:24:56.100
I would dare to say that this is the largest collection

1671
01:24:56.100 --> 01:25:00.243
of digital images of historical manuscript in any library,

1672
01:25:00.243 --> 01:25:02.373
any language, any culture.

1673
01:25:03.480 --> 01:25:04.313
This is it.

1674
01:25:07.320 --> 01:25:09.450
Once we finished with digitizing,

1675
01:25:09.450 --> 01:25:12.600
we had the second task, which was much, much more complex.

1676
01:25:12.600 --> 01:25:16.260
The joint project is actually

1677
01:25:16.260 --> 01:25:18.780
an answer to one of the great difficulties

1678
01:25:18.780 --> 01:25:20.670
every Geniza researcher is faced

1679
01:25:20.670 --> 01:25:22.420
when he's studying Geniza fragment.

1680
01:25:23.820 --> 01:25:27.630
Without finding all the different pieces as in a puzzle

1681
01:25:27.630 --> 01:25:28.890
and putting them together,

1682
01:25:28.890 --> 01:25:31.320
we can't really research the fragment.

1683
01:25:31.320 --> 01:25:35.293
So we ask ourself, "Can the computer help us in that?"

1684
01:25:36.316 --> 01:25:39.165
By recognizing the fact that these two pieces,

1685
01:25:39.165 --> 01:25:41.700
these two fragments, come from the original manuscript,

1686
01:25:41.700 --> 01:25:43.320
this is what's called a join.

1687
01:25:43.320 --> 01:25:44.703
We join them together.

1688
01:25:45.900 --> 01:25:48.593
As in a puzzle. Exactly as in a puzzle.

1689
01:25:50.490 --> 01:25:53.850
We were asked to build something that can help locate,

1690
01:25:53.850 --> 01:25:56.310
identify, and detect fragments

1691
01:25:56.310 --> 01:25:59.523
that 1,000 years ago belonged to the same book.

1692
01:26:03.450 --> 01:26:07.710
Every single scribe writes in a very individual way,

1693
01:26:07.710 --> 01:26:10.170
so every single thing that this person writes

1694
01:26:10.170 --> 01:26:14.550
will be individual like his fingerprints.

1695
01:26:14.550 --> 01:26:16.530
So we try to distinguish between

1696
01:26:16.530 --> 01:26:19.833
different handwritings based on the shape of the letters.

1697
01:26:22.080 --> 01:26:23.130
So we took ideas

1698
01:26:23.130 --> 01:26:24.930
that had worked with facial recognition

1699
01:26:24.930 --> 01:26:26.880
and tried to apply them to manuscripts.

1700
01:26:28.230 --> 01:26:30.990
>We can give the computer two images

1701
01:26:30.990 --> 01:26:34.387
without any further knowledge, and ask the computer,

1702
01:26:34.387 --> 01:26:36.630
"Do you think that these two fragments

1703
01:26:36.630 --> 01:26:38.660
were written by the same scribe?"

1704
01:26:39.570 --> 01:26:41.790
We compare every fragmentary or fragment.

1705
01:26:41.790 --> 01:26:45.780
It's about 12.4 billions pairs.

1706
01:26:45.780 --> 01:26:47.070
The computer came back with

1707
01:26:47.070 --> 01:26:50.400
a complete list of scores of similarities saying

1708
01:26:50.400 --> 01:26:52.050
which are more similar to which,

1709
01:26:52.050 --> 01:26:55.470
which could then make it easy to supply any scholar

1710
01:26:55.470 --> 01:26:57.240
looking at a particular document

1711
01:26:57.240 --> 01:27:00.753
with the most similar other pages in the collection.

1712
01:27:03.030 --> 01:27:05.520
For more than a hundred years,

1713
01:27:05.520 --> 01:27:09.660
only about 4,000 joins were found by those scholars

1714
01:27:09.660 --> 01:27:12.570
and we found hundreds just in a couple of months,

1715
01:27:12.570 --> 01:27:14.463
as suggested by the computer.

1716
01:27:19.290 --> 01:27:22.050
Obviously the Friedberg Genizah Project for digitization

1717
01:27:22.050 --> 01:27:24.030
has changed absolutely everything.

1718
01:27:24.030 --> 01:27:28.320
Now the digital image of the document itself

1719
01:27:28.320 --> 01:27:31.410
is our first point of access.

1720
01:27:31.410 --> 01:27:33.450
I love the fact that I can work with

1721
01:27:33.450 --> 01:27:34.740
a couple of other scholars

1722
01:27:34.740 --> 01:27:36.150
who are working on the same documents

1723
01:27:36.150 --> 01:27:37.800
and each of us is in a different city,

1724
01:27:37.800 --> 01:27:40.980
and we all have the Friedberg Genizah website open

1725
01:27:40.980 --> 01:27:42.780
and get our images from there.

1726
01:27:42.780 --> 01:27:47.780
But once you actually go to the archives and see a document,

1727
01:27:49.080 --> 01:27:51.210
there's so much that's there

1728
01:27:51.210 --> 01:27:54.603
that even escape high resolution scans.

1729
01:27:55.470 --> 01:27:56.490
You know when you deal with

1730
01:27:56.490 --> 01:27:59.340
the material aspects of the manuscripts,

1731
01:27:59.340 --> 01:28:01.050
you are touching the person.

1732
01:28:01.050 --> 01:28:02.520
You are very close to the person

1733
01:28:02.520 --> 01:28:04.255
who wrote these manuscripts.

1734
01:28:06.300 --> 01:28:08.940
The original lets you feel like

1735
01:28:08.940 --> 01:28:10.950
you are living the documents.

1736
01:28:10.950 --> 01:28:13.830
It's something touches you.

1737
01:28:13.830 --> 01:28:15.900
Because you say, "Okay, this is his hand.

1738
01:28:15.900 --> 01:28:19.197
This is his or her handwriting."

1739
01:28:20.520 --> 01:28:21.353
It's wonderful.

1740
01:28:21.353 --> 01:28:22.230
It's like being a detective.

1741
01:28:22.230 --> 01:28:25.860
You can reconstruct what people were doing.

1742
01:28:25.860 --> 01:28:28.800
I'm always struck by the fact that

1743
01:28:28.800 --> 01:28:33.800
people a thousand years ago, are very like people today

1744
01:28:34.230 --> 01:28:36.697
and their interests and their worries

1745
01:28:36.697 --> 01:28:40.507
and their challenges are very like our own.

1746
01:28:41.955 --> 01:28:42.788
At the same time,

1747
01:28:42.788 --> 01:28:45.360
I think it's a great mistake to imagine that

1748
01:28:45.360 --> 01:28:48.450
other moments in time are the same as this moment in time.

1749
01:28:48.450 --> 01:28:49.780
One has to accept that

1750
01:28:49.780 --> 01:28:52.560
there is something in there that you'll never know.

1751
01:28:52.560 --> 01:28:55.113
That these people were really quite different.

1752
01:28:59.970 --> 01:29:01.800
The past is a foreign country.

1753
01:29:01.800 --> 01:29:03.690
They do things differently there.

1754
01:29:03.690 --> 01:29:06.090
And they do things differently not because they're behind

1755
01:29:06.090 --> 01:29:08.850
or incomplete versions of who we are,

1756
01:29:08.850 --> 01:29:11.250
but because it has its own logic.

1757
01:29:11.250 --> 01:29:13.260
Their world made sense to them

1758
01:29:13.260 --> 01:29:16.053
and we have to understand it as a totality.

1759
01:29:20.340 --> 01:29:21.173
Looking over

1760
01:29:21.173 --> 01:29:24.450
this enormous mass of fragments about me,

1761
01:29:24.450 --> 01:29:26.880
I cannot overcome a sad feeling

1762
01:29:26.880 --> 01:29:30.720
that I shall hardly be worthy to see all the results

1763
01:29:30.720 --> 01:29:32.250
which the Geniza will add

1764
01:29:32.250 --> 01:29:35.013
to our knowledge of Jews and Judaism.

1765
01:29:40.110 --> 01:29:40.943
Once we take

1766
01:29:40.943 --> 01:29:44.490
the Geniza Society of Medieval Egypt on its own terms,

1767
01:29:44.490 --> 01:29:46.320
I think it does something more than

1768
01:29:46.320 --> 01:29:47.580
teach us about the Middle Ages.

1769
01:29:47.580 --> 01:29:49.980
I think it teaches us something about ourselves.

1770
01:29:53.032 --> 01:29:54.720
The work is not for one man

1771
01:29:54.720 --> 01:29:57.210
and not for one generation.

1772
01:29:57.210 --> 01:29:59.880
It will occupy many a specialist

1773
01:29:59.880 --> 01:30:01.983
and much longer than a lifetime.

1774
01:30:03.030 --> 01:30:05.737
However, to use the old adage,

1775
01:30:05.737 --> 01:30:09.090
"It is not thy duty to complete the work,

1776
01:30:09.090 --> 01:30:12.177
but neither are thou free to desist from it."

1777
01:30:17.820 --> 01:30:19.500
>In the documents together,

1778
01:30:19.500 --> 01:30:23.917
it is as if they are chanting to us across time and space,

1779
01:30:23.917 --> 01:30:24.780
"We are here!

1780
01:30:24.780 --> 01:30:26.430
We are here! We are here!

1781
01:30:26.430 --> 01:30:28.830
Look at this vibrant, fascinating,

1782
01:30:28.830 --> 01:30:31.763
Judeo-Arabic civilization!"

1783
01:30:31.763 --> 01:30:33.676
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪

1784
01:30:33.676 --> 01:30:37.175
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

1785
01:30:37.175 --> 01:30:40.821
♪ Oh, oh ♪

1786
01:30:40.821 --> 01:30:42.904
♪ Oh, oh ♪