A Catalogue of Fragments of Halakhah and Midrash from The Cairo Genizah

in The Elkan Nathan Adler Collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America by Neil Danzig.

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York and Jerusalem 1997

[87], 362, XVI pp., 12 photo-reproductions.

ISBN: 965-456-022-4

This catalogue is devoted to the identification and description of Rabbinic fragments in the Adler Genizah Collection of the JTS in New York. Some 8,000 pages of Rabbinic texts are dispersed throughout the collection of diverse Genizah material obtained by Adler in 1896.

The material described herein runs the whole gamut of Rabbinic literature – Halakhah (Jewish law) and Midrashim and Aggadah (interpretations of the Bible and Rabbinic lore), from classical texts through medieval writings and later material. These items include: Mishnah, Tosefta, Minor Tractates, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, Talmudic commentaties, midrashim of all sorts, derashot (homilies), halakhic codes, novellae and more.

The material described in this volume is supreme testimony to the level and intensity of Rabbinic learning in Jewish communities around the Mediterranean, primarily during the 11th-13th centuries – the “classical” period of the Genizah – and in the 16th-18th centuries, the later period of Genizah material.