Astren, “Goitein, Medieval Jews, and the ‘New Mediterranean Studies’,” Jewish Quarterly Review 102:4 (2012), 513–531. (original) (raw)
Related papers
In his reconstruction of what he believed to be a typical Mediterranean medieval society, Shlomo Dov Goitein gave prime of place to the documentary material found in the Cairo Geniza, and it is primarily through this prism that he sought to analyze the Geniza and the society it mirrored. Focusing, instead, on the literary material permits a different perspective on the genizot. The Cairo Geniza was shaped not only by the Jewish tradition, but also by contemporary practices, perhaps specifically Fāṭimid ones. The level of integration of scientists and philosophers within the broader Islamicate culture often surpassed what is usually described as "symbiosis." The integration of Jewish intellectuals within this philosophic sub-culture requires that we correct our perception of their place in it, and that we modify our vocabulary accordingly.
The Geniza: Legacies and Prospects
Jewish History, 2019
A century of academic scholarship on the documents of the Cairo Geniza has dramatically transformed the study of medieval Jewry. This contribution examines how the perspectives and methodologies used to analyze this material have shaped modern conceptions about its content and the societies that produced it. Taking as a basis of comparison the discovery of the papyri in Egypt, the development of their scholarship over the last century, and the importance of that material to the history of antiquity in general, I argue for a need to move beyond the Jewish/Islamicate historiographic perspective and into a global medieval historical perspective in the study of the Geniza evidence. In order to examine how the Geniza evidence-pertaining to social, economic, legal, and cultural history-corresponds with sources of other medieval societies such as Byzantium, Frankia, and Norman Sicily, a new methodology is called for, one that will lead to a new picture of medieval history.
2014
This essay continues an inquiry into the relationship between the work projects of Fernand Braudel and S. D. Goitein. Braudel’s initial contact, made via Clemens Heller in october 1954, led to a ten-year connection between Goitein, then in Jerusalem but soon to move to philadelphia, and the Centre de recherches Historiques, a unit of the VIème section of the École pratique des Hautes Études in paris. The attempt to recruit Goitein, which was organized by Heller, led Goitein to an extraordinary set of detailed self-representations of his project. It is also a tale of human uncertainty and distrust. at a certain point, Goitein decided to publish with the university of California press and changed his project accordingly. This essay provides a detailed account of the genesis of a mediterranean Society (5 vols., 1967–1988), at the same time revealing Goitein’s own groping attempts towards a description of his work, beginning with “social history” and ending with “sociography.”
2003
One of the most spectacular yet quiet revolutions in the modern study of the history of the Mediterranean world has resulted from the recovery just over a hundred years ago of the contents of an attic storehold in the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo. The Cairo genizah (the technical, religious term applied to a storage area for consigning, or hiding away the worn remains of texts considered narrowly or generally sacred, or even heretical, but in either case unfit for ritual use), has yielded an unprecedented cache of more than 200,000 fragmentary documents, most of which date from the 9th through the 15th centuries CE. The story of a major part of this treasure trove, its origins, rediscovery and relocation from Cairo to Cambridge University, and the significance of its contents is the subject of this much needed survey by Stefan C. Reif
In the Shadow of Goitein: Text Mining the Cairo Genizah
Manuscript Cultures, 2014
Sonderforschungsbereich 950 "Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa" Warburgstraße 26 D-20354 Hamburg Layout Astrid K. Nylander Cover Photo: Mobile μ-XRF Spectrometer "Artax" scanning a medieval Latin music manuscript with Fleuronné initials in blue and red; private collection. © CSMC Translations and Copy-editing Carl Carter, Amper Translation Service
Goitein, Magic, and the Geniza
Jewish Studies Quarterly, 2006
In his article "Reconstructing Jewish Magical Recipe Books from the Cairo Genizah," Gideon Bohak remarks: "The magical texts from the Cairo Genizah have yet to receive the attention they deserve. Spurned by many Genizah scholars, most notably Schechter and Goitein, many thousands of fragments relating to magic and to every conceivable method of divination lay dormant in Genizah collections worldwide unpublished , uncatalogued, and in some cases simply unnoticed." 1 That Schechter should have ignored, or in Bohaks words, "spurned" the magical texts in the Geniza is not surprising. Like other scholars at the turn of the twentieth century, what animated his interest was not social history, not the everyday life and religious practice of the average man and woman, but rather the intellectual history of the rabbinic class as well as literary fragments he discovered in the Geniza, beginning with the Hebrew original of the Greek Ben Sira, the fragment that captured his initial interest. What about Goitein? Why does this towering scholar of Jewish social history in the Geniza seem to have ignored the magical fragments? Goitein certainly was interested in every conceivable aspect of the daily life of the average man and woman. Why not Jewish beliefs in and practice of magic? Why didnt he copy such manuscripts and write about them? These may seem difficult questions to answer. I think, however, Miriam Frenkel, without touching on Goiteins neglect of the magical fragments per se, leads us in the right direction. In her article on the historiography of the Jews in Muslim countries a few years ago, published in the Hebrew quarterly Pe<amim, Frenkel assesses Goiteins contribution. 2 Goiteins Geniza, spanning what he called the "classical Geniza period"