Rescue or Ransack? Unraveling the Complexities of the Cairo Geniza Chain of Custody

How did the transfer of Cairo Geniza fragments from Egypt to Western institutions impact our understanding of the Jewish practice of geniza, of storing away unused documents? What does the Cairo Geniza discovery story reveal about Eastern and Western attitudes toward Jewish heritage materials? And how did the subsequent treatment of geniza fragments by libraries and museums obfuscate their chain of custody and perpetuate myths about this storied repository?

This program was reschduled from February 28.

About the Series "Books of the People"

Jews are often called the “people of the book,” but what about the books of the Jewish people? Who owns the contents of the Cairo Geniza, the books taken from Holocaust victims, or the uniquely beautiful manuscripts of major private collectors? Who can or should preserve these items and provide or prevent access to them, materially or digitally? Undeniably, Jewish books from across the world and history form a collective heritage—but they also have particular, local, and sometimes fraught histories of possession. This series offers perspectives on the management of books as Jewish cultural property, looking at past events and current practices—and the difficult questions that attend both.