Thursday, October 24, 2024

A Qilliri Yom Kippur Geniza fragment

GENIZA FRAGMENT OF THE MONTH (OCTOBER 2024): A fragment of a piyyut by Qilliri for Yom Kippur from the Collection of Yeshiva University (Shulamith Berger, Joseph Ginsberg, and Aaron Koller).
Yeshiva University owns two Geniza fragments. The first, published back in 1906 by Siegmund Fraenkel, is a section of Saadia’s commentary on Isaiah.2 The second is a fragment of a piyyut by El‘azar Qilliri. Although the piyyut is well known and has been published with a full critical apparatus and commentary, the YU fragment has flown under the radar.3 As we will see, though, our little fragment has its own stories to tell.

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This eleventh-century fragment has now been (remotely) joined up with a fragment containing much of the rest of the manuscript. The latter is housed in the Jewish Theological Seminary Geniza collection. This manuscript has some variant readings from the traditional German-Polish text, but none that weren't already known from other manuscripts.

For more on the late-antique poet Qilliri's piyyutim (liturgical poetry), see here. For more on the piyyut more generally, see here.

For many PaleoJudaica posts noting Cairo Geniza Fragments of the Month in the Cambridge University Library's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, start here and follow the links.

For Yom Kippur, belatedly noted.

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