Cairo Genizah

Today chesed is understood as an altruistic act of kindness. In the Bible, chesed and the parallel term noam refer to a covenantal arrangement between a powerful person or deity and their subject(s).

“God Seeks the Pursued”: A Midrashic text from the genizah compares Esau’s Pursuit of Jacob with Saul’s pursuit of David using a panoply of biblical verses and mishnaic halakhot.

Midrash Chad Shenati (ca. 10th cent.), discovered in the Cairo Genizah, praises Isaac for praying for Rebecca to have children, criticizing Abraham for not doing the same for Sarah, who is barren for much longer. Emphasizing the sensivity of Isaac, the only monogamous patriarch, is in line with the trend towards monogamy in Israel at the time of Midrash Chad Shenati’s composition.

Elijah the prophet is immortal, and Pinchas appears in a story long after the wilderness period. Both figures are described as zealots, leading to their identification as the same person by Pseudo-Philo (ca. 1st cent. C.E.) and later midrash. In a heated exchange preserved in a 13th-century fragment from the Cairo Genizah, two cantors and a congregant debate the rationality of this identification.

A set of homilies from the Genizah connects two biblical readings (sidrot) in Leviticus by emphasizing the importance of the mitzvah of orlah as a key to inheriting and remaining on the land.

An introduction to a series in conjunction with the University of Haifa’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research of the Cairo Genizah

Who were the midwives who risked their lives to save male Hebrew babies—Israelites or Egyptians? A text discovered at the Cairo Genizah sheds new light on this exegetical conundrum.