Can Computers Break Codes of Cairo Genizah?
By Hand and Machine: Lucy Cheng works to preserve fragments from the Cairo genizah at Cambridge University in Britain. Image by Cambridge University Library
The Friedberg Genizah Project will use a high performance computer network at Tel Aviv University to break the codes of the Cairo Genizah.
The project, announced on Sunday, will match up pieces of over 200,000 ancient manuscripts discovered more than 100 years ago in the Cairo Genizah.
Most of the fragments of pages, documents and books recovered from the genizah and spread to universities and museums throughout the world have been digitally photographed and enhanced through the project.
The site was uncovered in 1895, a sealed loft inside the ancient Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo which functioned between the 8th century and 17th century. The vast collection of manuscripts found inside the crypt date back as far as 1,000-years ago and represent a remarkable millennium-long continuum of religious and regional history. The find comprised the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts ever found.
The Friedberg Genizah Project established Genazim in 2006, to advance the Cairo Genizah’s slow-moving documentation process. The database is accessible to both scientists and laypeople. The Friedberg Genizah Project was established in 2007 with a multi-million dollar grant by Canadian hedge-fund mogul, Dr. Albert Friedberg
The latest project involves more than 100 linked computers at Tel Aviv University that will analyze millions of pairings in an effort that will take about five weeks.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
