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Copyright

Stefan Reif;

Published On

2025-03-07

Page Range

pp. 5–30

Language

  • English

Print Length

26 pages

To What Extent is Geniza Research on Jewish Liturgy a Continuation of the Work of Leopold Zunz?

  • Stefan Reif (author)
Chapter of: Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 2: The Medieval World, Judaeo-Arabic, and Neo-Aramaic(pp. 5–30)
The study examines the extent to which the foundational work of Leopold Zunz influenced Geniza research on Jewish liturgy, focusing on the methods and achievements of Zunz and their legacy in later scholarship. Zunz’s contributions to the Wissenschaft des Judentums established a rigorous approach to Jewish texts, integrating philology, history, and cultural analysis to illuminate Jewish liturgy as an integral aspect of historical and spiritual experience. Geniza research, emerging from the discovery of the Cairo Geniza, built on these methods, revealing previously unknown details about medieval Jewish liturgical practices, including regional rites, variations, and interactions between Babylonian and Palestinian traditions. While Zunz’s emphasis was on Jewish cultural continuity, Geniza scholarship expanded this perspective by incorporating broader social, political, and historical contexts, reflecting changes in the academic environment and addressing the needs of modern Jewish scholarship.

Contributors

Stefan Reif

(author)
Emeritus Professor of Medieval Hebrew Studies and Fellow at University of Cambridge

Stefan Reif (OBE, PhD, London, DLitt, Cambridge) is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Hebrew Studies and Fellow of St John’s College at the University of Cambridge. After academic posts at the University of Glasgow and at Dropsie College (Philadelphia), he was appointed to be responsible for the Cairo Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library and taught Hebrew courses in the Faculty of Oriental Studies. He has served as Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and at George Washington University. He has written or edited twenty volumes, as well as almost five hundred articles and reviews, and organised various international conferences. His recent publications include Jewish Prayer Texts from the Cairo Genizah (Brill, 2016), Jews, Bible and Prayer (De Gruyter, 2017), his autobiography, Bouncing Back – and Forward (Vallentine Mitchell, 2021), and Jewish Manuscripts, Prayers and Scholars (de Gruyter, 2025).