Hebrew Voices #235 – The Illustrated Cairo Genizah: Part 1

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Dr. Melonie Schmierer-Lee: I almost always show this particular manuscript. It’s a prenuptial contract, a prenup from the 11th century, and it’s… I find it just very funny, because it’s a man, and before he gets married, he’s having to stand up in court and promise to behave himself, that he won’t have anything to do with his drunken, dissolute, idiotic friends. He won’t drink with them in the street. He won’t have anything to do with them. He won’t bring them back to his house. And he also promises that he won’t go off traveling anywhere unless his future wife gives him permission to do that.

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I am here today with Dr. Melonie Schmierer-Lee, who serves as the public education officer at the Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library. Welcome to the program, Melonie. It’s great to have you.

Melonie: Thank you, Nehemia.

Nehemia: So, I think I was one of the first people to preorder your book, which is entitled The Illustrated Cairo Genizah. I don’t know if I was, but it seems like the day it was announced, I ordered it. And this is the book. You’ve coauthored it with Nick Posegay, who we’ve had on the program. He’s talked about the vowels. And you actually interviewed me once when I was doing work at Cambridge University Library. So, the tables have turned, or, as I think they say, comically, the turns have tabled or something. All right.

So, it’s called The Illustrated Cairo Genizah. And I feel like we’ve done a bunch of programs on the Cairo Genizah. Can you give us, like, the, I don’t know, the two-minute version of, what is the Cairo Genizah from your perspective? Maybe it’s not two minutes, maybe it’s longer. But the audience has heard about the Cairo Genizah many times. Doesn’t mean they know what it is, but just give us, like, the short version.

Melonie: Yes, I’ll try and be short. I can go for a few hours. So, the…

Nehemia: A woman after my own heart. That’s what I do. So, I’ve been nicknamed Short Story Long.

Melonie: So, the Cairo Genizah is a collection of almost 200,000 manuscripts that we have in Cambridge University Library. And they were stored away in a synagogue storeroom in Cairo for hundreds and hundreds of years where they were stashed away because they might have been sacred in some way. And eventually they came to the attention of the Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter, and he got permission to bring them to Cambridge, and we’ve been working on them here ever since. And they shed enormous light on the daily life of the communities in the Middle Ages, as well as their religious practices and all the sort of religious and sacred texts that were found in this room as well.

Nehemia: When you say the communities, like, let’s be more specific. Which communities are these?

Melonie: Oh, so, I mean, in Egypt, in the Middle Ages, you have Jews, Muslims, Christians, and each of those can be broken down into different subgroups as well. So, for the Jews in medieval Cairo, there was a Jerusalemite community that looked towards the Jerusalem yeshiva for their religious leadership, the Babylonian community that looked towards the Babylonian academies for their guidance, and there’s a community of Karaites as well.

Nehemia: Okay. And so, I didn’t know there were a whole lot of Christian… The Muslim documents, I feel like I’ve seen some fragments of, but, like, what would be the most interesting Christian document that is… and I know it’s a very subjective question. Interesting to you, I guess.

Melonie: Yeah. Okay. So, there are Christian Arabic Bibles in the Genizah, but some of the most interesting ones, references to Christians, are when they’re sort of interacting with the Jewish community. And just one document comes to mind; it’s a record of these two Christian women who wanted to convert.

Nehemia: Oh, wow.

Melonie: “And we want to convert and become Jewish.” And they were told, “No, you can’t, you can’t, you shouldn’t.” And they kept insisting again and again that they wanted to convert. And then the rabbi said, “Okay, well if you’re going to convert then you’re going to need some husbands.” So, they threw it over to the community. Who wants to marry these women? And two men stood up and said, “Okay, we’ll marry them.” And…

Nehemia: Why were they being told not to? So, this will be surprising to some of my audience, other parts of the audience know. You know, if you came to a Muslim in the Middle Ages and said, “I want to convert,” they would embrace you with open arms. And if you came to the Christians today or in the Middle Ages, they’d be… Why were the Jews saying, “No, you shouldn’t do that”?

Melonie: Well, it’s, I mean, it’s just not something that happens very often. Traditionally, Judaism isn’t seeking converts, and so, it doesn’t necessarily know what to do with them.

Nehemia: So, they were literally told “you shouldn’t convert”.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: That’s incredible. I mean, I was told growing up that if somebody comes and wants to convert, you’re supposed to turn them away three times. I’m not sure the sources for that, but this maybe is in practice what was done. And also, it was probably illegal under Islamic rule for someone to change religion. I mean, does that sound right?

Melonie: People did convert and change religion. You have examples of people becoming Muslim.

Nehemia: Right, right. Meaning, you could change your religion, but only to become Muslim. Wasn’t there something like that?

Melonie: Yeah. So, we don’t see people coming from the Jewish community to the Christians, or vice versa, very often. If people were going to do that, they’d probably have come from outside Egypt. And like, you have this story of this monk in 1102 that has a vision in Italy, and he decides he wants to convert. And he has to leave…

Nehemia: Wait, I don’t know this story. Is this in the Genizah?

Melonie: Yes, yes.

Nehemia: No! Tell us.

Melonie: Okay. Yes. So, there was a monk or a priest, I’m not quite sure. He was called Johannes, and he had a vision just after the First Crusade has come through. It’s a great time to have a vision and realize that you’re going to become Jewish. And so, he has to leave his community. And he goes traveling around the Middle East looking for a community to accept him, and he settles in Egypt. And he wrote his memoirs; he wrote a prayer book.

Nehemia: What? Really.

Melonie: And he also apparently studied or learned Gregorian chant, and so we have in the Genizah some music where he wrote some Hebrew verses that set to Gregorian chants.

Nehemia: Oh, that’s cool!

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: So… wow! So… oh, that’s really interesting. Because I imagine most of the music we have is from much… or let’s say of musical notation, which I know nothing about, is much later. And so…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Wow, that’s very cool. That’s very cool.

Melonie: You can go to, and you can listen to, all sorts of different groups performing this music that…

Nehemia: Oh, wow. All right, so, he comes from Italy, converts to Judaism, but it’s a pretty rare thing. So, you mentioned that there were Arabic Christian Bibles. Why would those end up in the Cairo Genizah? Right? I mean, the Genizah was in the Ben Ezra Synagogue. Did the Christians put it there? Or did it somehow get into Jewish hands, and they’re like, “This is a holy book. We can’t let it be damaged”? Or what was the… do we know?

Melonie: So, it might have come in because the… maybe, yeah, maybe a Jewish person had this in their possession for some reason and then deposited it in the Genizah. Because in addition to putting Jewish sacred texts that are no longer fit for purpose into this Genizah storeroom, the instruction in the Mishnah is to put any worn out sacred text, even if it’s one that you don’t read yourself.

Nehemia: Really.

Melonie: That’s it. Yeah.

Nehemia: So, is there Quranic material? Like, are there copies of Qurans or pieces of Qurans in the Cairo…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: There are? Wow.

Melonie: Yeah. And that’s really interesting because some of them, and these are individual pages…

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: Some of them, the Qurans, show fold lines. And it seems like they were once folded up, these pages of the Quran, quite small, and we think they’re being used as amulets.

Nehemia: Ooh. Okay. Wow! So, do we think that there were Jews… I mean, I guess I don’t know if we know… are there sources that say Jews would use a piece of a Quran as an amulet?

Melonie: Yeah. And one of the most interesting manuscripts that… I really like showing this to people. I show it alongside a page of the Hebrew Bible transcribed into Arabic script, is a part of the Quran in Arabic language that’s been transcribed into Hebrew characters.

Nehemia: Oh, wow.

Melonie: And I think it’s from a notebook of a Jewish magician, because on the other side of the document it has text to do with predicting the future based on how birds are flying in the sky.

Nehemia: Okay. It’s really interesting, I read, like, you know, in the Tanakh, about these things like me’onenim and kosmim, these forms of… and like, we’ll just throw out terms, divination, magic. We don’t really necessarily know what the specifics are. And here’s actually an example of that.

There’s this great story in the Talmud where it’s talking about this rabbi who’s teaching his students magic, and they say to him, “You’re not allowed to do that. Why are you doing that?” He’s like, “Well, how will they identify it when they encounter it if they don’t know what it is?” Right? Meaning, it’s forbidden in the Torah. Well, how do you even know what it is?

So, let’s talk about magic for a minute, because you have a whole chapter. When you say it’s an amulet… you know, there’s a piece of the Aleppo Codex that turned up a few decades ago. It was carried around by this Jew from Aleppo who had gone by the synagogue after it was ransacked, and he found a piece of the Aleppo Codex. He walked around with it in his pocket, in his wallet, laminated… and then I think when he died, his daughter gave it, eventually, to the Israel Museum. So, that’s an example of the most prestigious manuscript in Judaism being used as an amulet.

What is an amulet? Like, what? I’m… So, this guy in New York, probably, I mean, he was a taxi driver, thought it was protecting him. But what did it mean in the Middle Ages?

Melonie: So, an amulet is wearable magic.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: So, you might have a sort of a little bit of paper or parchment that has something written on it and you wear it. An amulet holds it around your neck. You could also… So, a mezuzah is kind of like an amulet for your house, that you put a scroll…

Nehemia: Talk about that. Because when I say it, people are skeptical. They think, “Oh, you’re just saying that because you’re a Karaite.” What does that mean; “it’s like an amulet”? Is that actually how people view it even today, or in the Middle Ages viewed it?

Melonie: What, a mezuzah?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Melonie: Yeah. So, I mean, a mezuzah is kind of… it is an amulet, really, for your house. It’s a scroll with something written on it. It’s a biblically authorized amulet for your house. And in the Middle Ages, sometimes in Egypt, people would add extra elements onto their mezuzahs to make them presumably more powerful. So, we have examples of…

Nehemia: So, I have the book right here in front of me. So, I’m looking here in your book on page 116… and guys, this is a worthwhile book to have. This is amazing. And you’re going to talk, I assume, about this 10th to 11th century mezuzah with some added material. Is that what we’re talking about?

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: So, tell us about this mezuzah amulet.

Melonie: So, it has the names of angels down the side.

Nehemia: On the mezuzah!

Melonie: Little boxes drawn around them.

Nehemia: Wow! So, like this says Azriel.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Zadkiel…

Melonie: There’s Raphael.

Nehemia: Oh, Raphael is, you know, “may God heal” or “God heals”. Gavriel. And then… what’s this?

Melonie: Yeah. So, this is, you know, the divine name sort of repeated.

Nehemia: So, this is like Yud-Hey, Yud-Hey, Yud-Hey.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: But it looks like it’s written as three different words, so…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Oh, but then here at the bottom, it’s just a series of Yud-Hey’s.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: It repeats it in sort of a magical way. And you can see the Star of David there at the bottom. And…

Nehemia: Oh!

Melonie: …the Star of David isn’t so much a Jewish symbol as a magical symbol. In the Islamic tradition, it’s called the Seal of Solomon, and in Jewish tradition it’s called the Star of David.

Nehemia: Or the Shield of David, really, right?

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Magen David.

Melonie: It’s been added here for magical purposes, not for a Jewish reason.

Nehemia: This is interesting, because I get contacted… I’m sure you guys as well get contacted all the time by people who have, you know, they found a Torah scroll or some manuscript, and you immediately know it’s fake because it has a Star of David prominent on the front. I think these are probably made in Turkey or Jordan. There’s like a little cottage industry of fakes. But here, there’s a Star of David that’s real.

So, do we know if they called it the Star of David in the 10th or 11th century? Or was this just… In other words, we have a Star of David in the Leningrad Codex, but there it’s just a geometric design.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: There it also has, like, a nine-point star or whatever, right? Meaning…

Melonie: And we also have a sort of an early example of it. We have a child’s alphabet primer, a little booklet for learning.

Nehemia: Is that in the book here?

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, did Jews in Egypt believe in magic?

Melonie: Yes, many of them did. And this was a huge headache to Moses Maimonides when he became the head of the Jewish community in Egypt. And he actually said, specifically about people that wrote their mezuzahs and added the names of angels and magical symbols onto them, he said that they’ll have no part in the world to come.

Nehemia: Wow!

Melonie: But this didn’t stop people of all sorts of walks of life from using it for very everyday things. You’d have someone, you know, if someone’s a shopkeeper, they want to, you know, bring people into their shop. They’re going to try and use some kind of magical text for that. There’s a text that says the shopkeeper wanted these genies to go out and catch the feet of passersby and draw them into his shop. And we have lots of magic to make people successful in business and to make people fall in love with you. We have childbirth amulets, and some of them have interesting stains on them, so we’re not sure if they were there, you know, in the moment. Maybe we can do some analysis of the stains and find that out in the future.

Nehemia: Yeah. There are techniques to do that. So, although you’re not destroying the document, I think they’re considered invasive because you’re removing microscopic like, you know, elements from it. But there might be something with photography you can do, I’m not sure. FTIR maybe.

So, we have this on the one hand, Jews… or let’s say, in Judaism it says don’t engage in magic, and Maimonides is very upset about the magic. On the other hand, in practice, they’re doing it.

Melonie: Yeah. And even in the time before Maimonides, there was a head of the community… So, a man called Mashkea Owen, he was the head in the, what was his time… in the early 12th century. And we have an amulet that was written for him. It was meant to sort of keep him safe; it didn’t work long term because…

Nehemia: He was the head of the community, and he had an amulet written… Did he approve of it?

Melonie: Presumably, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, Maimonides is coming at it from a perspective that it’s forbidden, and you even lose your portion… like, it’s not even just a harmless thing…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: …you lose your portion in the world to come. So, I’m looking here in your book on page 127, and there’s something profoundly ironic here. Can you talk about this? This is the magical Maimonides.

Melonie: Yes. Yeah. So, after the time of Maimonides, someone has used a page of one of his works to make an amulet out of it.

Nehemia: So, they took a page from Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, 36 years after his death… so that’s a pretty early copy, and they’ve turned it into an amulet.

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: Wow.

Melonie: They should have spent a bit more time reading…

Nehemia: Reading it [laughter], right! That’s very interesting, yeah. So, that’s interesting. So, why are people making amulets? In other words, like, I see there’s one here for headaches, right?

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, like, imagine being Maimonides, and you’re a doctor, and somebody says, “Oh, I don’t need your services. I’ve got an amulet.”

Melonie: Well, I think it’s there to provide support from all different directions. You can consult a physician; you can have an amulet. You’re coming at it from different directions. And some problems, you know, you can’t solve very easily. There’s a magical spell to make a young child have a bath, and as you know, if you’re a parent of a young child, you can sort of identify with the frustration that that person must have been feeling in order to feel they needed to call on magic to deal with their child.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, that’s interesting, because I usually think of it like… well, you know, you might have been better off with an amulet than going to a doctor who’s going to do, like, bloodletting, right? Meaning, like, at least the amulet, in a physical sense, maybe a spiritual… you know, that’s a matter of opinion, but in a physical sense it’s harmless, right? Whereas going to the doctor… George Washington, our country’s… not your, but our country’s first president, died from medical treatment, from bloodletting.

Melonie: So, one of the magical texts that we have in the Genizah is… it’s deadly magic. And it’s a template, so you can actually put the name of the person in that you want to have die. And so, you say their name and you say this incantation, and you write it on these plates of lead and bury it in a fresh grave, and this person…

Nehemia: What?

Melonie: …targeted will die. And someone has written a note at the bottom saying, “This really works.”

Nehemia: Wow. And that’s in a Jewish text?

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: Have we ever… So, I don’t know; did anybody ever find lead plates like that with…

Melonie: Not that I’m aware of.

Nehemia: That would be a great find. Now, we have the magical bowls, but that’s beyond the scope of your books. Let’s not get into that. That’s the whole thing we can do. I mean, it’s just very interesting. Like, here I’m looking at… on page 119. Talk about this here. I’m going to share the screen. So, here you describe this as a seal for demons. And what’s interesting here is like, okay, in Judaism, you would think that there’s a prohibition against, let’s say anthropomorphic imagery. Meaning, in Christianity, obviously, there is not, or most forms of Christianity. In Islam, I would imagine there’s a pretty strict prohibition. And in Judaism, certainly, let’s say in an artistic context, they would allow it, but in a religious one, not. Well, I mean, in a sense, this is supernatural. So, this is a bit surprising. Talk about this.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s surprising.

Melonie: It’s also very similar to the kinds of drawings of… I mean, we sort of think that they’re demons. They’re the type of drawings that you see in magic bowls that you mentioned. Because the magic we see in Egypt in the Genizah manuscripts, it really comes from a long line of magical tradition that goes back to Greek and Roman, and even maybe earlier…

Nehemia: Well, like I said, it’s mentioned in the Torah, so that means people were doing it.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Right? Meaning, maybe not these specific forms, but…

Melonie: So, we have amulets to keep you safe from scorpions, and they incorporate the name of the Greek goddess Aphrodite.

Nehemia: What? In Hebrew or Judeo-Arabic or something?

Melonie: Yeah, in Hebrew script. Yeah, Aphrodite.

Nehemia: In Hebrew script. Wow!

Melonie: And the Jewish magician that wrote those amulets to keep people safe from scorpions maybe didn’t know that this was the name of a Greek goddess that he was writing down. It’s just a magical word that was…

Nehemia: Ah.

Melonie: …handed down from, you know, from many generations before of magic practitioners.

Nehemia: There’s this thing called… I think it’s the great light and magical papyrus, if I’m not mistaken, and it has one section which says, “This spell is…” something to the effect of “this spell,” or “this charm is Hebrew, and therefore it’s powerful and it’s been tested.” Right? And it’s in Greek, and it’s clear that there are words you can recognize. The word baruch, for example, you know, that’s clear what that word… Other words sound like gibberish because they must have overheard a Jewish magician reciting something, and they wrote down the best they knew how to record the words, right? Meaning, they didn’t know Hebrew, so… But, you know, they probably thought it worked, so…

Melonie: Yeah, magic is very…

Nehemia: This is very interesting, yeah.

Melonie: …a liminal area. And people will take from one…

Nehemia: What do you mean by liminal?

Melonie: Well, if they’re on the border between… It’s in the sort of… it’s there on the edge of what you’re allowed to do and, and it, sort of… people tend to borrow from other cultures and traditions, and then use it for magic in their own.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, I mean… but the death spell that you mentioned, that’s obviously not in anybody’s border. There’s no rabbi who… maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think there’s any rabbi who would say that’s okay.

Melonie: No.

Nehemia: Okay. So, it’s interesting, there’s this book called Sefer Harazim, The Book of Secrets, and it’s clear that it’s not being written by a rabbi, or… it mentions the rabbis as this outside group of people who they have great respect for, but it’s “those guys over there.” And it sounds like it’s written by someone who is maybe… I wouldn’t say a less educated Jew, because he’s educated in a certain field of information, but not the field of information that the intellectuals consider to be important. Which is, you know, at the time, you know, the literature, or let’s say, the teachings of the sages, I don’t know, that had been formed as a literature yet.

Yeah. That’s interesting. So, we have this going back to biblical times, and we have it in Iraq in like the 5th, 6th century and those magical bowls, and here we have it in the Middle Ages in the Cairo Genizah. Look, Israel has a law that was passed not that long ago that you’re not allowed to give someone an amulet in exchange for their vote. And why did they need to make this law? Because that’s what parties were doing. There were political parties doing that, and they said, “Wait, that’s a bribe. How is that different than giving them cash?” Right? Meaning, if the person receiving it believes the amulet has power only if they cast the vote for you, then that’s a bribe, right? You’re giving them something in exchange. So, they’re so prevalent in Judaism that we have to have a law in Israel about them. So, that’s kind of interesting.

I’m really interested in this… you mentioned the mezuzah. Talk a little bit about how the mezuzah functioned as an amulet in the Middle Ages.

Melonie: Well, so, I mean, so, like amulets you’d wear on your body. It’s… you have a bit of parchment with a… I mean, the mezuzah has the text, the biblical text on it that you’re meant to have, the Shema.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Melonie: And then it was to be, you know, rolled up and put in a holder, just like how you’d roll up an amulet and put it in an amulet holder which you’d then wear on your person. But for a mezuzah, you’re putting it on your house. And the fact that people are adding other magical elements onto some of their mezuzahs shows us that they were kind of viewing it in a similar kind of way.

Nehemia: And then the fact that there are… and I’m just going to share the screen here again, if I… So, here’s one that we looked at before, but on page 116. So, here is the Shema.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: And then at the bottom we have… and this is interesting; this is 10th to 11th century. And maybe this is a discussion for when I interview someone else, but we have crowns on the letters. If this really is 10th to 11th century, this might be the earliest text with crowns. So, that’s very interesting.

Melonie: Yeah. I mean, we’re sort of guessing about the time period for it; it might be a bit later.

Nehemia: Okay. But anyway, here at the bottom we have five Stars of David, which… In other words, you’re saying they wouldn’t have used this as a Jewish symbol, they would have used it as a magical symbol. Is that what you’re saying?

Melonie: Yes. I think that here it’s serving a magical purpose, yeah. But from a similar time period we have this child’s alphabet primer.

Nehemia: Oh, let’s see that. And by the way, here at the bottom after the Shema is Yah, Yah, Yah, Yah, Yah, Yah, Yah, Yah, which is obviously from Halleluyah, a form of the divine name. So, they must have understood this as some kind of protection. By the way, this also has widened letters. My guess is that this is a little bit later than the 11th century, but since the Cambridge University Library hasn’t authorized any Carbon-14 tests yet, I guess it’s somewhat speculative. It’s somewhat of a bitter subject. I’d like to C14 a few things, but… Anyway, so the children’s document; where can we find that?

Melonie: So, it’s in the education chapter. And there’s a double page spread that has some of the children’s primers, these booklets that they’d be learning the alphabet from.

Nehemia: All right. Yeah. So, tell us about the child’s… where was the Star of David there?

Melonie: You can go back up. Back up to the… back up to that, that one there. So, it has the red and it’s…

Nehemia: Oh, okay. There’s a Star of David. And again, if somebody contacted me on Facebook or by email with this, I would immediately know it was fake because it has a menorah and a Star of David. Those are the two telltale signs. Except this one’s real! Amazing!

Melonie: Yes, but…

Nehemia: This probably is…

Melonie: It’s in a child’s alphabet book. It’s not on the front cover of a Bible that’s been forged in Turkey.

Nehemia: Right. Well, then it’s usually like one page, or like, you know, it’s a single quire when they have the forged ones. So… What’s interesting about this is, here are the vowels, and this is how I learned Hebrew in kindergarten. They would have each vowel with the letter Aleph, and you would recite that after the teacher, and then each letter vowel with the letter Bet. And then we had Vet, you know, when I was a kid and we did it, you know, so, it would be… I don’t know how they pronounced it. I presume it was the Sephardic pronunciation, so it would be ah, ah, eh, eh, ee, etc. or unless they had some kind of Tiberian, then it would be maybe like oh, ah, eh, ey, ee, I don’t know. But this is the way we learn Hebrew in the 20th century, and this is almost a thousand years ago!

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: This is… Yeah, that’s amazing.

Melonie: Yeah. And we can see that the Star of David on the cover of the book is being used together with the menorah, so, it is being used as a Jewish…

Nehemia: So, that’s a Jewish symbol. So, there’s no magical protection in a child’s… That’s interesting, wow. So, this could be some of the earliest examples of the Star of David. I mean, people think, “Oh, the Star of David went back to David.” There’s another narrative that says, “No, it’s from like the 19th century when it was chosen as a Jewish symbol.” And then, maybe if you go back to the 13th century in Prague, it was on the coat of arms of the Jews of Prague. And I actually think… yeah, it was in the synagogue there, and they… I don’t know if that’s a replica or the original, what they have on display. Like, there’s this, I think it’s a flag, if I remember, in the synagogue in Prague. But here we have it in the Middle East on a Jewish children’s book. That’s pretty cool.

Melonie: So, children mastered the alphabet and the vowels.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Melonie: They would also learn to write the alphabet in reverse order.

Nehemia: Really?

Melonie: Yeah. And then they would…

Nehemia: Do we have that somewhere here?

Melonie: Perhaps…

Nehemia: You mean they’d start with Tav? Is that what you’re saying?

Melonie: Yeah. So, starting… yeah. Being able to write it backwards and then writing it in Atbash. So, writing…

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

Melonie: …the first letter and then the last letter, and then the second first letter, and the second last letter. So, it’s making sure that children were able to use the letters in different combinations, and they knew it really well.

Nehemia: But Atbash is a code, meaning it’s a code, like you said, where instead of Aleph you write Tav instead of Bet, you write…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Shin. Et cetera.

Melonie: And so, they could write the alphabet in that way. So…

Nehemia: So, that’s interesting, because there’s a passage in Rashbam, who is the grandson of Rashi, where he writes in Atbash what he believes the pronunciation of God’s name to be. And a later rabbi comes along and says, “This is ridiculous. Anybody could read this. Why even bother with the code?” And so, that’s interesting. So, I wonder if, in Rashbam’s time, or area, or whatever, they didn’t teach children that way. And I forget who the other rabbi was, but in this other rabbi’s time he’s like, “Yeah, we everybody can read Atbash like, what’s that?” So, that’s really interesting!

So, what’s interesting to me, and I don’t know how accurate this is, but there’s this idea that I’ve heard that the reason that you would have a Jewish minister of finance in, you know, in some Islamic emirate in like, you know, in Spain or something like that, is that Jews had very wide and almost universal literacy. Whereas the non-Jews in those places in the Middle Ages, unless you were from the nobility, you probably couldn’t read and write. Is there… What is your thought on that, based on these children’s books?

Melonie: Yeah, so, I don’t know whether it translates into the reason that people are being picked as, you know, finance ministers…

Nehemia: Well, also, they’re not going to overthrow the government because no one will follow them. That’s another reason, for sure.

Melonie: Yeah. But we do think that for the Jewish community in Egypt in the Middle Ages, there was a very widespread literacy. We think that just about all Jewish children are learning to read and write. And if parents couldn’t afford to pay for their children’s schooling, then the community would pay, because it was seen as the responsibility of the community to ensure that the children have literacy. And we know that a lot of girls were educated as well. We have letters that were sent home from school. There’s one in the book… a teacher writes back to let the boy’s family know that he’s been fighting with his sister in school today.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. We’ve got to look at that. Where is that? That’s cool!

Melonie: It’ll be in the education…

Nehemia: Okay, let’s find that. That’s worth showing people. Let me look for the word “sister” here.

Melonie: It’s on 254.

Nehemia: 254. All right. Oh, that’s cool. What that reminds me of is, there’s this, you know, old Disney movie… I think they made a remake, but I haven’t seen that… Lilo and Stitch, where, like, I don’t know, stitch is like an alien or something. But he’s really like a puppy, and he’s fighting with his sister. And I had four sisters. I’m like, this is a documentary! This is so accurate of what it’s like to have sisters and brothers. I didn’t have any brothers, but I grew up with four sisters. I’m like, “Wow, that looks like my upbringing.” And so, there’s this letter about an unruly student. I love it.

Melonie: …picked this letter, this bit of scrap of parchment. See, there’s a hole in the middle of it. This is a hole in the original parchment. So, it’s written around it. It’s not like that hole has fallen out afterwards. And on the back is another letter that presumably was sent to the teacher. So, he’s reused something that someone sent to him…

Nehemia: So, is there something on the other side, or is this a palimpsest?

Melonie: No. There’s something on the other side of it.

Nehemia: Okay, all right. Parchment was expensive. I’m surprised he used parchment. Meaning, they had paper in the 12th or 13th century. Wouldn’t that be cheaper?

Melonie: Yeah. But he’s just making use of this scrap that he’s got around.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: And he’s letting the boy’s older brother know, because the parents are not well, so the boy’s older brother is the responsible adult.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: This boy has been fighting with his sister in school, and he gave him a beating. But then the teacher from the next classroom came rushing in, and it was a female teacher, and she came rushing in. She said, “Stop, you’re about to kill him!”

Nehemia: Oh, wow.

Melonie: So, he stopped. And he’s written this note home instead, so that maybe the boy will get more of a beating when he gets home.

Nehemia: Oh, wow. And what’s interesting is… so, this is in Hebrew characters, but this is Arabic.

Melonie: Yeah. Arabic language, which everyone is using. But…

Nehemia: Although, the opening greeting looks to me… and I’m not sure, but I believe that’s Aramaic; Tsafra tav u’varikh. And then he… Oh, maybe that’s Arabic too, I don’t know. You know, “Good morning, and blessed…” And then alathi or al alam or something; that’s clearly Arabic. Wow! So, the language of communication was Hebrew characters, but the Arabic language.

Melonie: Yeah. So, Jewish children are learning to write in… they learn to read Hebrew so they can read the Bible, and then it becomes just sort of… the next stage would be to write the language that you speak, which is Arabic, with the Hebrew characters that you’ve learned for your religious instruction.

Nehemia: So, that’s interesting. We have this kind of idea that Hebrew was a dead language for nearly 2,000 years, and then people kind of jumped to the conclusion, “Oh, that’s like Akkadian. That was a dead language.” Right? Or ancient Egyptian. Well, ancient Egyptian is different. But Akkadian was… nobody could read or write Akkadian for, I don’t know, 2,000 years. Hebrew, that was never the case. People always read… So, talk to me about that, because we have these books here where they’re learning Hebrew. This isn’t the product of the 19th century Zionist movement; this is 11th to 13th century.

Melonie: Yeah. So, like I said, Jewish children are learning Hebrew. And the boys will then be able to read in the synagogue, and they needed to know Hebrew because Hebrew was what was used in the synagogue. And also, if you met a Jewish person from another country, your common language, you’re going to be able to communicate in… If someone comes from Byzantium, they don’t know Arabic, you can speak to them in Hebrew. And more learned people are able to compose really, really lovely letters in Hebrew. So, it’s not, in any way, really, a dead language.

Nehemia: Okay. And maybe it’s analogous, to some extent, to the way Latin was used in medieval Europe, right? Nobody ever stopped speaking Latin, they just weren’t speaking it as their mother tongue.

Melonie: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: So, wow, that’s very cool. Ooh, here’s something where it says, “Reading from all sides,” on page 255. I love this. Talk about… So, here’s again, guys, this is part of the whole subject of education, which is… I mean, it’s a rare glimpse, because, you know, when I was growing up, history was dates of battles and kings. And then, here we have an access to, well, this is what education was like in the 11th or 13th century, and, you know, and that’s a side of history that the ruling elite, when they write history, you know, centuries ago, they wouldn’t write about that. And I don’t know if this is true, but there’s this meme going around that hundreds of years ago there were three condiments on the table; pepper, salt, and we don’t know what the third one was. And again, that might just be an urban legend. But the idea there is, “Well, why would anybody write about what the condiments on the table are? Everybody knows that.” Well, now, we don’t know because it’s hundreds of years later, and nobody bothered to write it. Here we have a glimpse into what daily life was like. I love this. So, what’s this thing about, reading from all sides, on page 255?

Melonie: So, books are fairly expensive and, in a classroom, not every child is having their own book to read from. And if they grow up, when they’re older, maybe in the synagogue, in other sorts of situations, they won’t have their own book. So, you can’t only learn to read what’s right in front of you. What about if you have to read, if you’re standing at the side of someone who’s holding the book, or being able to read upside down? If you’re all standing around and someone’s holding a page in the middle and you’re looking at it upside down, you have to be able to read from all directions. So, this letter that you’re talking about was sent from a father who’s away traveling for work, and he sends this letter back, you know, saying, “Make sure he learns to read, my child learns to read, from all different sides.”

Nehemia: That’s so cool! So, what’s cool about that, especially, is that that was documented in the 20th century in the Jewish communities of Yemen. Because Yemen is one of the few Jewish communities that never had printing, and so, they were still producing manuscripts in the 20th century. And books were still rare, and they were so isolated that you might have ten or more children reading from one book. And you see, there’s photos like, meaning it’s in the photographic age, where they’re sitting around in a circle, all reading from a book, from different angles. That’s amazing. And this was going on in the 13th century. That’s very cool.

Melonie: And in that same letter, he also says… if you could go back to, to look at the…

Nehemia: Yeah. And this letter is in Hebrew; this is not in Arabic.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, people were writing Hebrew. And you said he was… ah, because he was from Byzantium, so, he didn’t know Arabic.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. Or maybe he was more comfortable in Hebrew, right? Maybe he spoke it but wasn’t fluent.

Melonie: So, he’s sending this letter from abroad to his friend, and then the friend is going to pass the message on to the boy’s mother. And he also says, “Make sure that she tells the children to wash their hands, and not to play outside where things might fall on them.” You imagine, like, bits of brick falling on the children.

Nehemia: Or people are throwing their, you know, their night pot out into the street, right? Meaning… Wow, that’s very cool.

Melonie: Make sure they wash their hands.

Nehemia: Wow, that’s very cool. So, this is kind of like a glimpse into daily life. What blows my mind is that this is one genizah from one synagogue, which, yes, lasted a long time, right? Meaning, it’s… I don’t know. What’s the latest document from the Genizah? I don’t know the answer to that. I saw a newspaper!

Melonie: So, all the manuscripts that we call the Cairo Genizah now, it’s a bit more complicated than it seems, because some things made their way into the collection in Cambridge, and so, there’s a bit of Yiddish newspaper that probably Solomon Schechter was looking at himself and somehow it got mixed up…

Nehemia: Oh! So, not everything necessarily came from the Ben Ezra Synagogue.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: And there’s stuff I think… I had Ben Outhwaite on a couple of years back, a few years back, and, I don’t remember, I think he said that… I don’t remember if he talked just to me privately or in public about the cemetery. Can you say something about that?

Melonie: Yeah. So, there was a nearby Jewish cemetery, and some of the manuscripts were taken and buried there.

Nehemia: So, not everything came from the synagogue, some came from a nearby cemetery.

Melonie: Yeah. And so, after Schechter brought the manuscripts, a lot of manuscripts, back to Cambridge, he left some money in Egypt. And he said, “If anyone else finds some more old manuscripts and you want to send them in, we’ll buy them.” And so, over the next few years, lots of other manuscripts were sent in to Cambridge and became sort of included in the Cairo Genizah collection.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: Many of them were originally from this synagogue, in this storage room, but not all.

Nehemia: Okay. So, I saw in the book here, there’s a Yiddish codex. What’s the story of that? Because the Yiddish newspaper, okay, Schechter was reading that, but…

Melonie: So, the Yiddish Codex is old.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: So, it’s called the Yiddish Codex. It’s not actually a codex, not a book. It’s a…

Nehemia: Let me show that photo here, guys. This is on page 25. I mean, this is just… the diversity and the eclectic nature of this collection is astounding. Yeah, so, it’s not a codex, okay.

Melonie: Yeah. So, it’s a collection of texts that are now put together as a book. Yeah, it has some early Yiddish texts that were… I think it’s from the 14th century, but…

Nehemia: It says 1382, and it’s not approximately, so there must be some internal…

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: … evidence of how you know it’s specifically 1382. Okay.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, that’s really interesting, because in the 14th century, at least there’s now a hypothesis or a theory that there was a genetic bottleneck stemming out of the massacres from the Black Death. In other words, the Jews were blamed for the Black Plague, and there were massacres all over Europe, and then, when you come out of the 14th century, there’s a relatively small number of Jews. And I’ve heard numbers that I don’t believe, like there were 350… that doesn’t make any sense to me, but I don’t know. Maybe 350 families; even that doesn’t make sense. But that there’s this genetic bottleneck; it’s one of the reasons Ashkenazi Jews have so many genetic diseases because there’s 10 million people descended from a very small number. But here in 1382, they’re writing… how does this reach the Cairo Genizah?

Melonie: Yeah. So, books last for a long time, and even, like… so, pamphlets… and these people travel around with them, people keep them, hand them down to their children and grandchildren. And we have a fairly lengthy correspondence from the 15th century, it’s in Yiddish, between a mother in Jerusalem, and she’d moved to Jerusalem… she was originally from Prague, and she writes to her son, who’s based in Cairo.

Nehemia: Wow.

Melonie: And so, we have her letters to him. And then he presumably gathers them all up, and eventually they end up in the Genizah.

Nehemia: So… and maybe this is outside your purview, but I want to just ponder this for a minute. So, you have a Jew from Prague…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: …who’s writing in Yiddish, who moves to Jerusalem, in what… you said the 15th century.

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: And has a son in Cairo?

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: So…

Melonie: And he’s married, and he’s living in Cairo, and she’s trying to persuade him to move to Jerusalem. And she says, “There’s lots of opportunities for you to open a shop here, maybe… you’re not writing me often enough.”

Nehemia: It sounds like my mother. So… although I don’t WhatsApp her often enough, but… So, I wonder how usual this is that you have a community who has… Meaning like, there’s this idea that in the Middle Ages, most people never went five miles from their home. Let’s say the peasants, right? Meaning, like, maybe the nobles did, they traveled all over, but the average person, who wasn’t part of the ruling class, didn’t travel. And if they went, like the Canterbury Tales, it was a really big deal, because they’re traveling, you know, maybe hundreds of miles or something, right? It was like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing that you would do.

And here you have this international… I’m afraid to use the phrase, this international community, or this… I mean, yeah, it’s really an international family in this case, and it doesn’t sound like these are ruling classes. She’s like, “Come and open up a little shop,” right? Right? These aren’t people who are independently wealthy. And they’re traveling all over the world, and they’re part of an integrated Jewish community in the sense that he can live in Prague. And I know not all Jews could live wherever they wanted, right? She’s probably left Prague because of persecution, I would imagine. But she has the ability to integrate into a community in Prague, in Cairo, in Israel, in Jerusalem, and this is all part of… I mean, she would come to Israel, and they wouldn’t say, “Oh, no, you’re an Ashkenazi Jew. You’re…” I mean, maybe she went to a different synagogue, right? But I mean, that’s an interesting thing. Like, how much of this internationalism do we see in the Cairo Genizah, these international trade connections? Like, we saw a guy from Byzantium…

Melonie: Yeah. So, I mean, so, Rachel from Prague, she’s in the 15th century, but, you know, going back to the 11th century, 12th century, we’ve got people traveling very widely. And it’s really the norm for young men if they want to…

Nehemia: Really?

Melonie: …you know, if they want to be… do anything, they get into trade and they work, maybe helping someone else for a bit before they are taking on more responsibility for themselves. And in the 11th century, it’s mainly focused around the Mediterranean, so people are going on short trips, maybe for a few weeks. And they can actually, if they have family, they can take their family with them. There are Jewish communities all over the place. Then, when the Italians start to dominate the Mediterranean, it becomes less secure, so Jews in Egypt turn towards India and they start traveling to India. And then you’re going sort of, you know, five years, ten years or more at a time.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s not a short incursion to India back then, I guess.

Melonie: Yeah. And you can’t take your family with you, so you leave them back in Cairo. And maybe you come back, maybe you don’t. Maybe you meet someone in India, and you stay there.

Nehemia: Wow.

Melonie: And so…

Nehemia: So, I think one of the things Ben talked about when I had him on, if I remember, was the letter of Maimonides’ brother, who died on a trip to India, right?

Melonie: Yeah, yeah. We think the destination was probably India, but yeah, he died after getting on a boat at the Sudanese port of Haidob and heading off into the Indian Ocean somewhere…

Nehemia: Well, and what they called India might not be what we call India today, right? Meaning, if they’re going to the Spice Islands or wherever, they might have called that Hodu, right? I mean, you know.

Melonie: Mangalore, yeah.

Nehemia: Yeah. What’s the most interesting document for you in this book?

Melonie: Okay. So, there are so many, it’s really hard to choose a favorite, but…

Nehemia: You don’t have to choose. We’ll do multiple.

Melonie: Oh.

Nehemia: Top five!

Melonie: Okay. So, when we have visitors to Cambridge University Library, people come see the Genizah. I almost always show this particular manuscript; it’s a prenuptial contract, a prenup from the 11th century, and it’s… I find it just very funny, because it’s a man, and before he gets married, he’s having to stand up in court and promise to behave himself, that he won’t have anything to do with his drunken, dissolute, idiotic friends. He won’t drink with them in the street. He won’t have anything to do with them. He won’t bring them back to his house. And he also promises that he won’t go off traveling anywhere unless his future wife gives him permission to do that.

Nehemia: Wow.

Melonie: And he promises he won’t get a slave girl for himself unless future wife, who’s called Faiza…

Nehemia: And this… So, okay. Do you remember what the term there is for slave girl, like that…?

Melonie: Oh, it’s essentially to be a concubine…

Nehemia: Okay, so, it’s not like she’s just doing the dishes, she’s… okay. So, that was an option in Muslim countries, let’s say.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. So, wow! So, he’s committing not to do that. That’s…

Melonie: He promises all these things. It’s very embarrassing, you know, that he says ten different words for “drunken idiotic friends”. These were really… he’s moving with a bad crowd, but he promises he’s going to behave himself.

Nehemia: Okay, wow!

Melonie: This prenup is exactly tailored to the concerns of that individual couple and the situation, and… yeah, I just find it very funny.

Nehemia: All right, so that’s one. What’s the next one?

Melonie: Okay. Other ones. So, I often show the people that letter of the boy at school that was given a beating for fighting with his sister.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Melonie: There’s another one that was sent home from school; a teacher letting the boy’s parents know that he was bullied at school that day, and the bully broke his writing board, and…

Nehemia: Wow!

Melonie: And so, the teacher’s letting the parents know it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t careless. He’s kind of new at the school, and he was being a little bit too clever, and they bullied him.

Nehemia: What is a writing board in this context? I think like in the Roman period…

Melonie: So, it’s sort of a little table for your lap, really. So, it’s a little… a wooden board that you balance across your knees, and then you could sort of rest on that for…

Nehemia: Oh, it’s not like a pinax covered with wax, where…

Melonie: No. I think it’s like a little tray table sort of thing…

Nehemia: Okay. Oh, wow. That’s like the desk, basically.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: They didn’t have desks. Okay, interesting. All right, what’s number three? In no particular order.

Melonie: Another one that I really like to show people, show visitors, is a letter that was written by a professional scribe. He’s writing it for a poor older woman who is completely destitute, and she’s got absolutely nothing at all to her name. She’s got no family, she’s got no clothes, she’s unwell, and she’s even got a flesh-eating disease on her nose that’s causing her nose to be eaten away.

Nehemia: Oh, wow. Do we know what that was? Is that like leprosy or something?

Melonie: They’re calling it that, but it could have been any kind of flesh-eating bacteria.

Nehemia: Oh, wow.

Melonie: So, she’s in a really bad way, and a scribe has written this letter for her in the 11th century, to the head of the Jews, just, you know, asking for help. Maybe he can connect her with a community, maybe in a smaller town outside Cairo, and they’ll be responsible for looking after her. And the fact that we have details about her life and her experiences that are alongside, you know, all the other sort of more famous people in the Geniza, the, like Moses Maimonides, I think is really, really special.

And also, it shows just how charitable and generous the community was. And they had a big sort of call on their resources after the First Crusade, and you had so many refugees coming down to Egypt. And the Egyptian Jewish community raised huge amounts of money to support these newcomers.

Nehemia: Okay, wow. So, yeah, meaning, the Jews of Jerusalem… there’s a story, I don’t know how accurate it is, that they were all gathered into the synagogue and it was set on fire, but there were some refugees who escaped. There were also prisoners. We’ll look at that. We’ll talk about Maimonides in a minute. We’ll look at some of those documents. This is very cool. All right, what’s your number four?

Melonie: Okay, so number four, I would say, is a trousseau list. So, it’s a…

Nehemia: Spell that for people. I know that word, but probably most… and for those who are from a Jewish background, that’s nedunia.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: What is trousseau? It’s a French word.

Melonie: A trousseau. So, I’ll describe what it is. So, when a bride is getting married, she, or someone with her, would make a list of every single thing that she owns, that she is taking into the marriage with her. So, all of her clothes… And in this particular one, because she’s a very wealthy woman, it lists all of her clothes in a lot of detail, her jewelry, and, you know, the colors and the stones that are in her jewelry, and her household items. She’s got a pen writing set from China; she’s got a medical kit.

Nehemia: She has a pen writing set from China, and it says China? What is China called? Do you remember?

Melonie: I have to consult the…

Nehemia: Let’s look in the book. What page is that? That’s cool enough to…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: That’s very cool. And what’s the purpose of writing this list? That… well, I’ll let you say it.

Melonie: If they get divorced, she can take all of these things with her.

Nehemia: Okay, so… And then, part of the Jewish traditional, let’s say marriage, is that there’s a ketubah, where he has to pay her, sort of like, a… some money if they get divorced.

Melonie: Yeah. And so, she’ll get the money, and she’ll get these things, and if she can’t…

Nehemia: Right, so he can’t say, “Oh, I’m paying you in the form of this pen writing from China.” She’s like, “No, I brought that in. That doesn’t count.”

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. Very cool.

Melonie: So, it’s on page 196.

Nehemia: All right.

Melonie: So, she’s got…

Nehemia: Ooh, 284 we have to look at too… 196, let me find that.

Melonie: A pair of peacock pins, a crystal rooster, equipment for bloodletting…

Nehemia: Equipment for bloodletting, you said?

Melonie: Yeah. A green robe with gold and a wax-colored wimple. So, that’s like a head covering.

Nehemia: Tell us what a wimple is.

Melonie: Yes. A sort of a head covering for women. She’s got a blue handbag. [Laughter]

Nehemia: Uh-huh.

Melonie: And she’s got 250 dinars worth of books. She’s got a lot of books.

Nehemia: So, what do you like about this so much? Because I know a lot of people will hear that, and say, “Who cares about what was in her dowry or trousseau? That’s boring.”

Melonie: It helps me imagine what the streets were like. And you’re walking along and running into people who are wearing things like this. I mean, maybe she wasn’t dressed up in all of this stuff every day, but it just… the colors of her clothes.

Nehemia: So, it says here, “a cloud-colored festival attire consisting of a robe, a wimple and a grayish headband.” And it’s worth 50 dinars. So, is that something she would have worn, like on the Jewish holidays to synagogue, do we think? Or what do we think here?

Melonie: Yeah. Or if she had some other special occasion to go to, I don’t know. A green robe with gold threads; it just… it all sounds great. And…

Nehemia: And she has four enslaved women named Iz, Dulal, Nusa and Wafa?

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: What? So, they’re not her concubines, right? I mean, what is their…

Melonie: So, they would probably be helping her in the home. And a lot of the slaves that were owned by Jewish families came from sub-Saharan Africa and from India.

Nehemia: Wow.

Melonie: So, these slaves were then brought in, became sort of members of the household. They would have Shabbat off.

Nehemia: So, how do sub-Saharan Africans end up in Egypt being purchased by Jews as slaves? The Jews didn’t go to sub-Saharan Africa to kidnap them, I imagine. I’m asking, I don’t know.

Melonie: Yeah. So, they’re probably being brought up by traders and purchased. There’s a woman who writes to her trader husband, who’s gone over to India, saying, “Can you bring me back a young child no more than six?”

Nehemia: So, help me understand this. And maybe we’ll edit this part out. He goes to India… does he just kidnap a six-year-old? Or does he buy the child in a market?

Melonie: Buying a child in a market, yeah.

Nehemia: So, that’s one of the things I’ve heard lately is that, I don’t know if it’s Britain or England in 1830, but whichever it was, was the first country in history to abolish slavery, or the slave trade. And slavery is a universal human experience. Meaning, like, this is, and certainly under, let’s say Islamic rule, it was just like being under Roman rule. It’s just what you do.

And there’s a great story of… what is his name? I want to say he’s 15th century. He’s a rabbi, and there are these two slaves from Ethiopia that a Jewish family purchases. And they find out that they’ve been purchased by a Jew, and they say, “We’re Jewish.” And the rabbi goes and investigates, and he finds out there are Jews in Ethiopia! And he says, “Okay, you have to, you know, you…” I don’t remember, I think maybe they freed them or something. But it’s… I believe it’s the first like, historical reference to the Ethiopian Jews. And he says, “They’re Jews for all intents and purposes. They’re no different than any other Jews. They’re an established Jewish community, and we have to treat them like any other Jews.” And I can’t remember his name; it’s like on the tip of my tongue.

But… wow! So, that’s interesting. So, I find that very interesting, because the Arabic word abd, which is the cognate of the Hebrew eved, slave, means black person. Meaning, that is, in modern Arabic at least, abd refers to any black person… in the way that in English the word slave comes from the word slav, because the Vikings would kidnap all these Slavic people, and most slaves… it was very common to have a slave who was Slavic. And in Arabic, the equivalent is abd for black person.

That’s kind of mind blowing, because coming from the United States, we have this idea that there’s this… you know, there’s people who call it the original sin of America. It’s this uniquely American thing to specifically enslave black people. But why did they enslave black people? Because that’s who they bought from the Arab slave traders on the west coast of Africa, probably. I mean, not probably; there’s documentation about that. It’s not the only way in which black people were enslaved, but… So, to see that this is going on in, you know, in the 13th century or 12th century here, sorry, it says 1128 to 1153, that’s… I don’t know. It kind of gives me… I don’t know, it’s chilling. It’s horrifically chilling, let’s put it that way. So, wow. That’s… wow.

All right, but she’s got a pen… Yeah, go ahead, sorry.

Melonie: And so, and we can find out, you know, about the lives of some of these enslaved people in the Genizah manuscripts, again, which is really rare to have that insight into people of that level of society as they don’t normally make it into the historical record.

Nehemia: So, what do we know about the enslaved people?

Melonie: So, I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s in the book. There’s a man, he goes to court, and he says that he’d promised his wife that he was going to free her slave girl, her slave woman, but he was just sort of clarifying in court that he hadn’t meant it.

Nehemia: Does that count, to say, “I didn’t mean it”?

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay. And she’s upset because she wants her slave to be freed?

Melonie: She did, yes.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: And she couldn’t free the slave herself; it was up to her husband?

Melonie: So, while they’re married, he’s sort of administratively responsible for his wife’s possessions, which include her enslaved women. And he’s not being very nice about it, saying that he promised to free her, but he’s actually not.

Nehemia: And he’s like, “I lied.”

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: “And I’m not bound by what I said.” That’s kind of shocking to me. All right, so, I typed here the word China to see what else you have about China, because like, that seems so… like, we have a Jewish community in China in this period, right? Meaning, there’s the Jews of Kaifeng, who are there from at least the Song Dynasty. Some people say a lot older, meaning, that the oldest… I want to say that the oldest documents in Hebrew script after the Dead Sea Scrolls, if I’m not mistaken, are from the Afghan Genizah. Which is a different story and a different interview. And they’re on the Silk Road, and they’re written in Judeo-Persian, and they’re part of trade with China.

So, here we have, on page 284, you have this lovely Sephardi Haggadah with human-headed snakes, and it says here… okay, it’s talking about how paper… talk about paper. Because most people, you know, there’s something called the Tiffany Paradox. The Tiffany Paradox is, if you’re writing fiction in the Middle Ages, you can’t have a figure named Tiffany because people assume Tiffany is a modern name, which it’s not. It existed in the Middle Ages.

So, the example in my field is the word bottle, which appears in the book of Jeremiah. People are like, “Oh, that’s an anachronism. Bottles didn’t exist.” Yes, they did. They weren’t made of glass necessarily. In the time of Jeremiah, they definitely weren’t made of glass, right? But the word bottle actually appears, even the Hebrew word bottle, bakbuk, if I’m not mistaken, which is onomatopoeia, appears in ancient sources. So, paper existed in the Cairo Genizah going back to a pretty early period. And how is that possible? Isn’t paper a modern invention?

Melonie: So, the technology for making paper gets developed in China a long time before our genizah times, the Middle Ages. So, this technology gets invented in China, and it gradually spreads westward, making its way along the various trade routes. And it doesn’t get really to Egypt in any significant amount until the 10th century. And then, from the 10th century onwards, we have papermaking firmly established in Egypt. They make it out of old clothes that are mashed up for their fibers, and the sheets of paper are made out of clothes, so it’s called rag paper. If you look…

Nehemia: And by the way, US dollar bills in the 21st century are made from denim, right? Meaning, in this case, it’s not necessarily old clothes, but I think they’re specifically made for that, or they’re cuttings from it. But to this day, the feeling of US money… I think in the UK it’s plastic today, or some kind of nylon or something, but to this day we’re making paper out of out of cloth. Wow, that’s… and so, okay.

Melonie: So, if you look at the Genizah papers under a microscope, you’ll see the fibers of the clothes that we use to make them.

Nehemia: Wow!

Melonie: And the arrival of paper in Egypt means a lot of things. It really democratizes the writing process, because instead of having to rear and slaughter a sheep to get writing material, which is a time-consuming and expensive process, you can make paper more cheaply. And so, maybe, in schools before the 10th century, maybe children were mainly learning to read, but from the 11th century onwards they’re writing as well. So, we have their homework exercises. They’re practicing to write…

Nehemia: Wow.

Melonie: And then later on paper gets made in different ways. So, you can see paper from certain periods looks quite different. My coauthor, Nick Posegay is the big sort of expert on…

Nehemia: Watermarks, right?

Melonie: Paper, and watermarks, and yeah.

Nehemia: Are there watermarks in the, like, 11th century or 12th century? Or is that a later thing?

Melonie: No, it’s a later thing, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. And so, explain what watermark… I know Nick is the expert, but if you could just explain… Do you have watermarks in the Cairo Genizah?

Melonie: We do, yes. I have some in the book as well.

Nehemia: Where is that in the book? That’s cool.

Melonie: I think in bookmaking or in printing.

Nehemia: Here we go. So, it starts on page 282.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: Watermark. Oh, this is cool. So, I’m going to share this. This is very cool. So, here’s the watermark. And so… what is this, and why is it important for… Wow, I mean, here you have a date 1483 to 1509; that’s very specific.

Melonie: So, the paper makers, they have these metal grids that they’re spreading this pulp on that will be turned into the sheet of paper, these sort of metal grids, and they sort of brand them and say, “Okay, well, we made this one. That’s why it’s so nice.” They start to put pictures in them. And so, I think on that page, or the page after that, in the book, there’s a watermark.

Nehemia: There’s a watermark of kind of… I don’t know what that is, like a…

Melonie: On the next page, I think there’s a mermaid…

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

Melonie: Yeah, there’s a mermaid there.

Nehemia: So, whoever’s using the paper doesn’t know there’s a mermaid here and doesn’t care.

Melonie: Well, if they’d held it up…

Nehemia: Necessarily.

Melonie: So, if they’d held up their sheet of paper to the light, that’s when you can see that mark in the paper shining through. So, we took these pictures… Nick took these pictures with a backlight to give an effect.

Nehemia: Right, very cool.

Melonie: But if you hold it up to a light, you’ll be able to see them.

Nehemia: And the significance, I’m told… I know almost nothing about this, is that these meshes didn’t last that long. And so, if you have a dated manuscript with the watermark…

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: …you can then analogize that to an undated manuscript and say, within a relatively tight frame, when the document was written. I’ve seen stuff from, like, the 15th century, where they’ll date it within a decade. And their argument is, “Well, the watermark from that manufacturer changed a decade later,” unless it was really old paper stock, right? Then, you never know, right? But still, it gives you a very tight framework for dating them.

And they have these books with, like, thousands of watermarks from dated manuscripts and documents. You know, it’ll show this form of it with, let’s say the mermaid has like a certain form of the tail or something, I don’t know… or she has, you know, three wings instead of two wings is, you know, has a thing from this specific period. It’s like this whole world. We’ll have to have Nick on to talk about that, because it’s fascinating.

Melonie: And so, if you see the kind of paper that you know might have a watermark, then first thing you do when you’re looking at a Genizah manuscript like that is to hold it up to the light. “Oh, yes, there’s a watermark there.” And because the watermarks for these pages were made as great big sheets that were then cut up into smaller pages for sale, so, you might just get the edge of the watermark on your manuscript. And so, you’ve got…

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: …like half of a pair of scissors and…

Nehemia: And you don’t have the whole manuscript…

Melonie: Yes.

Nehemia: …you might have one page or something. And then, that’s another interesting thing; the watermarks change throughout manuscripts, right? Meaning, I’ve looked at, like, complete manuscripts when I was in Rome, and I’m looking at the watermark. And then I go like 100 pages later and it’s a different watermark, because they ran out of that, you know, ream of paper, or whatever, and went to another one.

And so, this is actually quite interesting, because here you have the Babylonian Talmud from around 1480, and it has a watermark. And it reminds me of this story in the… I forget who the rabbi was, but he goes to the bathhouse in Caesarea, and his students, they’re upset. They say, “There’s a statue of Aphrodite there. What are you doing, going to the bathhouse?” And he says, “She came into my bathhouse. I didn’t go into hers.” Meaning, like, when they’re writing this, let’s see, it’s A Hebrew Grammar by David Kimhi, by RaDaK, they’re not concerned that there’s a mermaid there because it’s not functionally part of the paper, right? It’s just paper.

Oh, and then the next page has the one I was talking about before, the Sephardic Haggadah with the human-headed snakes. Can you talk about… This is cool. This reminds me of Kennecott 1, which has the anthropomorphic letters, where the scribe writes his name in these, like, human shaped letters. But these are… like, what was the purpose of this?

Melonie: They’re just a decorative; they’ve decorated the letters and, yeah, put little… on them. It’s a page from Passover Haggadah. It’s not typical of what we see in the Genizah. It’s come from Europe; it’s come from Spain.

Nehemia: Okay.

Melonie: Possibly with, you know, people fleeing Spain, and they’ve brought their book with them. So, it comes from a different world to the…

Nehemia: So, Jews fled Spain, and they go all over the Mediterranean, and this is one of the things that’s confusing. I once had a conversation with someone online about this Sephardic Jew, and he said, “Oh, his grandmother must be 400 years old because there haven’t been Jews in Spain since 1492.” And I’m like, “Wait, what? No.” And this is interesting; so, the Jews of Egypt are called Sephardic, which means Spanish, but they were there before the Jews fled from Spain. So, it’s a bit of a…

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: …meaning, the more popular term will be to call them the Edot Hamizrach, the Communities of the East. But then the Shas party in Israel, they say, “No, we’re Sephardic.” Right? Our founders are from Morocco, but their ancestors were refugees from Spain.

Melonie: So, in the 14th and 15th centuries, there’s not a great deal of manuscripts in the Genizah from that time. But then, from later in the 15th and 16th century on, you see a huge amount of texts, and they’re different kinds of texts, more Hebrew and in cursive script. And so, these are written by people who came and settled in Egypt. And they started living around the Ben Ezra Synagogue again, and using it more, and so, they revitalized the community and sort of changed the nature of the manuscripts we find in the Genizah.

Nehemia: Oh, wow. So, there’s this large influx of, let’s say, very educated, super educated Jews coming from Spain, and probably Portugal as well. Wow, that’s very interesting. So, I’ve heard Ben talk about, like, the Golden age, I think he calls it, of the Genizah, or the classical age of the Genizah.

Melonie: Yeah.

Nehemia: And then maybe there’s like a… I’ve heard people say there’s like the second golden age of the Genizah, following the influx of Jews from Iberia. So, that’s really interesting. Wow.

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Nehemia: Speaking of Jews from Iberia, we talked about the slave girls. Let’s talk about the more famous people; Maimonides.

Melonie: Okay.

Nehemia: Before we get to Maimonides, who are some other famous people who’s… not just copies of their works, but what we would call like autographs. Not that they signed their name necessarily, but stuff they wrote with their own hand. Who are some of the most famous people in the Cairo Genizah?

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