Gueniza

A gueniza or guenizah (héb.: גניזה “of placing on tip”; plur. guenizot ) is the part of a Synagog being used as warehouse, mainly for works treating of religious subjects written in Hebrew, become unusable, while waiting to bury them in a cemetery, because it is interdict to throw written documents comprising one of the seven Noms of God whom one cannot erase, including personal letters and legal contracts which open by an invocation of God. In practice, the guenizot contained as profane documents, including/understanding or not the usual invocation of opening, as well as documents compiled in other idioms as Hebrew, but using the Hebrew alphabet (it is the case of the languages Judéo-Arabic S, the Judéo-Persan , the Ladino, the Yiddish, etc).

There was a habit consistent in the solemn collection of the material stored in the gueniza, before burying it in cemeteries. The synagogs of Jerusalem buried the contents of their guenizot every seven years, like during one year of dryness, in order to bring the rain.
Cette habit is associated with that, much older, to bury a notable or honourable man with a '' sefer '' become passoul (unsuitable with use, because of a transcription error, of an unobtrusive letter or its seniority). In Morocco, in Algeria, in Turkey and Egypt, the burial of documents was often practiced.

The gueniza by far most famous, for the importance as well numerical as qualitative of the texts which were stored there, is the Gueniza of Cairo, discovered in 1864 by Jacob Sapphire, and mainly studied by Solomon Schechter.

Guenizot in Talmud

The references to the gueniza in the Talmud are practically all in the treaties Chabbat and Pessa' him:

the Talmud of Babylon (treated Chabbat 115a) sign that very written holy in another language that Hebrew requires the gueniza , i.e. safeguarding. Rabban Gamliel orders that the Targoum Livre of Job is hidden ( yigganez ) under the nidbak (a layer of stones).
It is in the same direction as the treaty Pessa' him, 56a page, indicates that Hizkiah hid ( ganaz ) a medical work.
In T.B Pessa' him 118b, Study Bureau gueniza means “treasure”.
In Chabbat 30b, it is there refers at the time of a rabbinical controversy as for inclusion in the gun of the Hebraic Bible of the Books of the Ecclésiaste and the Proverbes. In the same way in Chabbat 13b in connection with the Book of Ézéchiel, and in Pessa' him 62 about the Book of the Genealogies.

At the medieval era

With the Middle Ages, the tickets and handwritten Hebrew which were relegated to the gueniza were known like shemot (" Noms") because their holy character, and thus their right to safeguarding, rested on the presence of the one of the seven Noms of ineffaceable God.

In addition to papers, objects of worship, like the Tzitzit, the Loulav im, or them branches of myrtle, were placed there.

According to the folklore, these tickets were used to hide the Golem of Prague, whose body would rest in the gueniza Altneushul of Prague.

With the 21e century

In their book The Jesus Family Tomb , Charles Pellegrino and Simcha Jacobovici report that the Tombeau of Talpiot (which they present as being the true family vault of Jesus and his family) would have been transformed into gueniza by the rabbinical authorities of Jerusalem.

References

See too

Gueniza of Cairo

External bonds

the entry of the '' Jewish Encyclopedia ''

Category: Laws and ritual Jews Category: Place of Jewish worship Category: Jewish literature

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