Genizah Research Unit

02/06/2026

New Fragment of the Month for May – Neri Ariel on a heavily used and annotated halakhic fragment from the JTS collection – hybrid vocalisation, Arabic glosses, a text being used and added to over time -- a perfect example of the Genizah as a utilitarian archive.

https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/fragment-month/fotm-2026/fragment-4

02/06/2026

In this new blog post, Marc Michaels offers a reconstruction of T-S NS 3.21, an early Torah scroll from the so-called 'silent period'. https://genizahfragments.lib.cam.ac.uk/2026/06/02/whats-my-line-reconstructing-cul-t-s-ns-3-21/

22/05/2026

This is what we have been getting up to this week!

It’s the first day of the festival of Shavuot, and 885 years since the ship carrying Judah ha-Levi raised anchor in Alexandria to take the poet to his final destination. We also looked at som…

15/05/2026

It's only the 15th of May and we've already had more than 150 visitors on show-and-tell Genizah tours this month. Here's what we've been up to this week:

It must be the time of year for booking in Genizah tours in Cambridge, as we’ve hosted more than 150 visitors since the beginning of May.

30/04/2026

The Fragment of the Month for April reveals the detailed itinerary of a new India trader, as he sets off across Egypt for Yemen. This one is written by three Princeton students, Caitlin Buckley, Mohammed Salih Cholakkalakath, and Jesse Noily:

https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/fragment-month/fotm-2026/fragment-1

30/03/2026

For March's Fragment of the Month Kim Phillips examines the layout of the Song of the Sea in relation to the earliest dated Torah scroll in the Genizah world (Ashkar-Gilson-Genizah):

https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/fragment-month/fotm-2026/fragment-3

16/03/2026

Finally in stock at Blackwells --

A thematic, illustrated guide to the Cairo Genizah collections at Cambridge University Library.

05/03/2026

Here's a great opportunity to spend a year in Erlangen (the GRU can recommend the local food and beer from personal experience) for someone with skills in medieval Jewish studies, working on one of the most unexpected finds in the Cairo Genizah:

https://www.jobs.fau.de/jobs/postdoctoral-researcher-for-dfg-project-edition-and-material-investigation-of-the-cambridge-codex-t-s-10-k-22-fau-1548/

03/03/2026

'A battle occurs between them which has never been seen nor heard of, until the water of the Euphrates turns into blood' - Sebastiano Crestani and Friederike Schmidt have found a fascinating eschatological text featuring 'the Franks' for February's Fragment of the Month:

https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/fragment-month/fotm-2026/fragment-0

06/02/2026

From 11 February - 24 June 2026 there will be a new temporary exhibition at the Manchester Jewish Museum 'Maimonides from Scratch', about a stop-motion animation film. Cambridge's Iona Hines and Anastasia Badder discuss storyboarding Maimonides in a new blog post: https://genizahfragments.lib.cam.ac.uk/2026/02/06/maimonides-from-scratch-manchester-exhibition-opening-11-february-2026/