Presented by Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich
Editor-in-Chief and Director, The Jewish Publication Society
How did the Cairo Genizah transformed our understanding of Jewish History?
The modern recovery of documents stored for centuries in the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Cairo, Egypt revealed a hidden treasure: hundreds of thousands of discarded Jewish texts and fragments, now known as the Cairo Genizah. The study of these materials, which began in the early twentieth century and continues today, has uncovered an astonishing panorama of Jewish life: not only from the medieval and post-medieval eras, but also from the earliest stages of Jewish settlement in the region. This lecture will trace the dramatic story of the Genizah’s discovery and explore how its most remarkable finds have transformed our understanding of how rabbinic Judaism took shape.
Register to receive the Zoom link to join us online.
Barring technical issues, this session will be posted in our Program Archive.
Thank you to Judith F. Mazo for generously sponsoring this program!
Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich is the Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Publication Society and Visiting Professor at Yeshiva University’s Revel Graduate School for Jewish Studies. Her first book, The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria, was published in 2016, and her second book, Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism, was published with JPS in 2018 and received the 2019 AJL Judaica Reference Honor Award. Her third book, Letters From Home: The Creation of Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity, was published in June 2024.
She is the author of over a hundred published articles, including pieces that have been published in journals such as the Harvard Theological Review, the Journal for the Study of Judaism, the Jewish Review of Books, Tablet, and The Christian Century.
As a Council Member of President Isaac Herzog’s Voice of the People delegation, a Sacks Scholar for the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Foundation, a Kogod Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and a past Leon Charney Fellow at the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies, Simkovich speaks regularly to audiences across North America and beyond on topics related to the Hebrew Bible, Jewish history, and contemporary Jewish-Christian relations. She served as the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies and Director of Catholic-Jewish Studies at Catholic Theological Union from 2014–2024.
We extend a special thank you to Andrew R. Ammerman for sponsoring our Fall 2025 program lineup. He dedicates the our learning in loving memory of Josephine and H. Max Ammerman and Stephen C. Ammerman.