NEW COURSE
JEWISHST 156 – The Cairo Genizot and their Literature
Semester: Fall
Offered: 2022
Instructor: Miriam Goldstein
Meeting Time: Th 12:00pm-2:00pm
Ancient and medieval Jews did not throw away Hebrew texts they considered sacred, but rather, they deposited and/or buried them in dedicated rooms known as Genizot. The most famous of these depositories was in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, which contained perhaps the single most important trove ever discovered of Jewish literary and documentary sources from around the Mediterranean basin, sources dating as early as the ninth century and extending into the early modern period. This course will introduce students to the Jewish manuscript remains of the medieval Cairo Genizah as well as other important Cairo manuscript caches. Students will study the wide variety of types of literary and documentary genres in these collections, and will gain familiarity with the history of the Genizah’s discovery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as well as the acquisition of these manuscripts by institutions outside the Middle East (including Harvard). Readings, including primary Genizah sources, will be in English translation, but students with knowledge of Arabic will be offered an additional weekly session providing instruction in reading Judeo-Arabic and centered on readings of sources in the Judeo-Arabic original.
Class Notes: Texts in this course will be read in English translation or in Judeo-Arabic, in accordance with the background of course participants. The course may include a special session for reading Judeo-Arabic texts in the original; this session will be open to students with at least two years of Arabic study. For this special session, background in Judeo-Arabic is not required; I will teach the Hebrew alphabet with an introduction to reading Arabic in Hebrew letters.
For more details please visit the Harvard Course Catalog.