The European Genizah is entirely different [from the Cairo Geniza]. For the most part, its contents reflect the hundreds of manuscripts that have been preserved from that era. It therefore contains relatively few innovations. The European Genizah does, however, have a certain advantage. While the Cairo Genizah preserves the books that had reached a single city, the European Genizah contains the remnants of libraries from dozens of Jewish communities throughout Central Europe, and thus offers a comprehensive snapshot of the culture of Central European Jewry during the late medieval and early modern eras. ...I noted the author's book, Hidden Treasures from Europe here and a more recent book on the European Geniza here.I mentioned above that most fragments discovered in the European Genizah come from works that were very prevalent in Central Europe at the end of the Middle Ages: Scripture and its commentaries, prayer books, the Talmud and its traditional commentaries, and familiar halakhic works. Most of these works were already available to us both in printed editions and in dozens of complete manuscripts. Thus, the European Genizah has not yielded much new material. Nevertheless, the Genizah makes novel contributions to a variety of disciplines.
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