The Fragments of Hebrew Manuscripts discovered in the binding of booksVia the SOTS list.
in the Biblioteca del Dottorato of the University of Perugia
With the recent discovery of Hebrew parchments removed from mediaeval codices and reused to cover printed books, Perugia is added to the list of centres where the phenomenon described as the "Italian Genizah" is documented, by analogy with a true Genizah, or store room where Jews since time immemorial placed sacred texts in order to avoid desecration. Today thanks to the discoveries made by Dr Gianfranco Cialini, we may now speak of the "Perugia Genizah".
It is already more than twenty-five years since the late Giuseppe Baruch Sermoneta in 1981 launched the Hebrew Fragments in Italy Project or the Italian "Genizah" Project. By a happy intuition he anticipated the systematic survey of re-used Hebrew manuscripts which was later coordinated with other projects concerned with non-Hebrew manuscripts discovered in Italy. The survey of the disiecta membra of Hebrew codices is not yet complete, but has so far brought to light around 10,000 fragments of Hebrew manuscript books, for the most part whole pages or double pages as well as smaller fragments.
Discovering these remains means giving new life, so to speak, to manuscripts that had been "dead" for four or five centuries. It involves entering into the history of the Hebrew manuscript book, following its journeys, and examining the methods and forms of its conservation, as well as its ritual destruction by the Jews in what may be described at its "death" and "burial" in a Genizah, or its destruction in the fires lit by the Church in the sad history of 2000 years of persecution - or in this case in its recycling.
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A similar project, involving Hebrew manuscript fragments recovered from book bindings in the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria in Modena, Italy, is noted here. It is not clear to me whether the projects are connected.
