The Cairo Genizah contained hundreds of thousands of fragments of medieval manuscripts, that were purchased or plundered in the late nineteenth century and dispersed to libraries and private collections all over the world.
In this talk, Sacha Stern describes how he went about searching for lost fragments, joining them together again, and reconstructing the booklets and books to which they originally belonged. A search that took him around the world including Kyiv, Paris, Philadelphia.
Sacha Stern is Professor of Rabbinic Judaism and Head of Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at UCL. He is an ancient and early medieval Jewish historian, and a specialist in rabbinic literature, with an interest in the history of science. His latest book, The Jewish Calendar Controversy of 921/2 investigates a controversy that led Near Eastern Jews to celebrate the festivals on different dates.
This is part of the JW3-UCL partnership series and is dedicated to the memory of Ada Rapoport-Albert who died this June.
This is part of the JW3 partnership series with UCL and the Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre.
