É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.

BEERI, Tova: The Intriguing Fate of a Geniza Document: Goldziher's Contribution to the Study of Hebrew Poetry in Babylonia

THE INTRIGUING FATE OF A GENIZA DOCUMENT Schechter's expectations.

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S From Goldziher's diary, also published by Professor Scheiber,

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9 we know that in the same year he was invited by Schechter to lecture at the Jewish Theological Seminary, then newly opened in New York. It was very likely that this manuscript had been sent to Goldziher in the course of this interaction. Scholars interested in reexamining this document tried to locate the original manuscript among the myriad of Geniza manuscripts deposited by Schechter in Cambridge, on the assumption that Goldziher had returned it to Schechter after transcribing and publishing it. Amazingly enough its whereabouts remained unknown; it was found neither in Cambridge nor in any other Geniza collection. " I myself was very anxious to find it. While working on the huge corpus of the poems of Yosef al-Baradani, Nahum's father, I was amazed by the abundance of Geniza manuscripts containing copies of his piyyutim. After all he lived and functioned in Babylonia, far from Egypt: Babylonian poets are scarcely represented in the Geniza. I assumed that in the case of Yosef al-Baradani this phenomenon was connected to Nahum's wanderings and his earlier-mentioned stay in Egypt. Taking into consideration the fact that he might make his living as a cantor outside of his homeland, 1 conjecture that Nahum took with him from Babylonia a copy of his father's collected liturgical poems, and some of his grandfather's too. It also seems likely that while preparing the repertoire of selected piyyutim to be performed, Nahum copied some of his father's poems for his own purposes. Now it should be clear why I am so anxious to locate a sample of Nahum's handwriting. Thus I too joined the search for the lost manuscript, undoubtedly an autograph, but to no avail. In utter despair I hit upon the possibility that the manuscript might have been forgotten among Goldziher's letters. I addressed Dr. Ormos, who is in charge of the Arabic Manuscripts at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and asked him to check those letters for me. He kindly carried out my request. The manuscript was not there, but in a Hebrew letter from Schechter to Goldziher dated 21 March 1905, a copy of which Dr. Ormos sent me, I found the answer to the riddle of its location. It also came to light from a private letter of Goldziher to Theodor Nöldeke dated October 31, 1904, that our manuscript had not been sent by Schechter to Goldziher in a letter as previously assumed but given to Goldziher during his visit to the States in 1904.

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8 For the history of the Cairo Geniza and its discoverer, see the comprehensive study by S. C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo. Cambridge 2000. 1

9 Ignaz Goldziher. Tagebuch

, Leiden 1978, 242, entry for April 4 (1905). 2

0 See S. Shaked, A Tentative Bibliography of Geniza Documents, Paris-The Hague 1964, 49' n- '* 2

1 See Róbert Simon, Ignaz Goldziher - His Life and Scholarship as Reflected in his Works and Correspondence, Budapest Leiden 1986, 269. See also Alexander Scheiber, 'Letters of Solomon Schechter to William Bacher and Ignace Goldziher', Hebrew Union College Annual 33 (1962), 256-257. [Goldziher visited the States once. In the early autumn of 19