The Friedberg Geniza Project (FGP) is a digital preservation project, one of the primary goals of which is to computerize the entire world of

Cairo Genizah The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the '' genizah'' or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, E ...

manuscripts - images, identifications, catalogs, copies, joins, and bibliographic references.

Historical background

At the end of the nineteenth century, a

genizah A genizah (; , also ''geniza''; plural: ''genizot'' 'h''or ''genizahs'') is a storage area in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery designated for the temporary storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics prior to proper cem ...

was discovered in the

Ben Ezra Synagogue The Ben Ezra Synagogue ( he, בית כנסת בן עזרא; ar, معبد بن عزرا), sometimes referred to as the El-Geniza Synagogue () or the Synagogue of the Levantines (al-Shamiyin), is situated in the Fustat part of Old Cairo, Egypt. Ac ...

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...

, containing many pages of sacred literature as well as legal and other documents. In December 1896, Prof.

Solomon Schechter Solomon Schechter ( he, שניאור זלמן הכהן שכטר‎; 7 December 1847 – 19 November 1915) was a Moldavian-born British-American rabbi, academic scholar and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the ...

, a lecturer in rabbinic literature at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, arrived at the Cairo Genizah and upon his return to Cambridge, brought with him 220,000 fragments, most of which were then transferred to the Geniza collection at Cambridge. About 100,000 more pieces have been scattered around the world and are now in about 60 libraries and various collections globally. The fragments which were found made a huge contribution to research in all branches of Judaism. By the end of the 20th century, many scholars physically had to set foot in libraries around the world in order to browse the genizah. Most of the material was photographed and is among the microfilms of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the

National Library of Israel The National Library of Israel (NLI; he, הספרייה הלאומית, translit=HaSifria HaLeumit; ar, المكتبة الوطنية في إسرائيل), formerly Jewish National and University Library (JNUL; he, בית הספרים הלא� ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

The Website

In 2008, the Friedberg Project website was launched at the initiative of Canadian researcher and philanthropist Albert Dov Friedberg. The genizah fragments were scanned for the site in excellent quality scan. Prof.

Yaacov Choueka Yaacov Choueka (Hebrew:יעקב שויקה, שוויכה 1936 - 2020) was a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University, where he served as head of the institute for Information Retrieval and Computational Linguistics. ...

, one of the founders of the Responsa Project at

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, he, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן, ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic ...

, and the lead researcher of the Rav-Milim project was enlisted for the Friedberg Project and implemented it with the help of a team of researchers and programmers. Today, the Geniza website, with over 400,000 digital images is the largest virtual collection of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in the world. The site is equipped with advanced software and research tools, and contains, in addition to the images, close to half a million other data items collected from the fruits of a century of genizah research. In 2017, the National Library of Israel (NLI) and the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society (FJMS) announced a joint venture in which projects previously affiliated with FJMS, including the FGP, would gradually be integrated into the NLI technological infrastructure. The NLI and the FGP created the International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts, also known a
Ktiv
This was a joint effort to digitally preserve multispectral, high-quality digital versions of all 100,000 Hebrew manuscripts which are believed to exist throughout the world today.

Other projects of the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society (FJMS)

The Hachi Garsinan site for variants of the

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

- including pictures and copies of all the witnesses of the Talmudic text: genizah passages, manuscripts and old prints. The site also includes a computerized synopsis for the entire Talmud in a number of viewing options that allow the user to highlight changes. The site also includes the collection of manuscripts of Talmudic literature, edited by Prof. Yaakov Sussman including hundreds of corrections. The academic director was Dr. Menachem Katz. The Judeo-Arabic corpus - includes over a hundred works in this language, a total of about four million words. Associated with it is a complete bibliography of all publications in Judeo-Arabic. The Nahum Genizah website - contains manuscripts from the Yemenite genizah collected by Yehuda Levy Nahum, who founded the "Exposure of Yemeni Manuscripts" initiative. Yad HaRambam - includes a synoptic edition of

Maimonides Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah ...

' great book ''Mishneh Torah'' based on manuscripts and old printed editions, along with hundreds of commentaries and novellae written around it. The Mahadura website - contains various and varied manuscripts, and allows researchers and those interested to use a powerful tool for copying manuscripts, and for creating a computerized and advanced synopsis.

References

External links

Friedberg Geniza ProjectThe Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society (FJMS)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friedberg Geniza Project Jewish texts Hebrew manuscripts Knowledge bases Digital preservation