Cairo Geniza

"We are mistaken in thinking that Jewish liturgy has been around for millennia in precisely its current form. The documents of the Cairo Genizah remind us that ancient words never stagnate. Often imperceptibly, sometimes violently, ancient Jewish rituals move and shift and create new realities in each generation. They are the liturgical tectonic plates of the Jewish world."

"After Schechter had climbed a rickety ladder to reach that dim attic-like opening, and once his widening eyes had adjusted to the dark, he found himself staring into a space crammed to bursting with nearly ten centuries' worth of one Middle Eastern, mostly middle-class Jewish community's detritus—its letters and poems, its wills and marriage contracts, its bills of lading and writs of divorce, its prayers, prescriptions, trousseau lists, Bibles, money orders, amulets, court depositions, shop inventories, rabbinic responsa, contracts, leases, magic charms, and receipts."

"It was by mere chance that the Cairo Geniza was forgotten and its contents so escaped the fate of other Genizas. These old writings have been saved quite contrary to the intention of those who stored them there. When in the course of the last century the Cairo Geniza was rediscovered, the men in charge of the Synagogue to which it belonged made the surprising discovery that there were some queer people in the world who were attracted by the old material, who were willing to pay considerable sums of money for these scraps of dirty parchment and paper, and that even famous universities were keenly interested in the matter."

"It is a battlefield of books, and the literary productions of many centuries had their share in the battle, and their disjecta membra are now strewn over its area."