The Cairo Geniza did not end when the papers left the synagogue chamber. In some ways that is when its second life began: sorting, reading, cataloguing, arguing, discovering ordinary people in scraps meant never to be literary.
Schechter understood that the treasure was not only famous names. It was bills, letters, drafts, school exercises and small worries. A civilisation had left its pockets turned out.
The record
Solomon Schechter travelled to Cairo in 1896-1897 and brought a large body of Geniza fragments to Cambridge.
The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library became one of the central repositories for Cairo Geniza research.
One scholar, two sacks and a mountain of discarded paper turned medieval Jewish life into something recoverable.
The record
The fragments transformed the study of medieval Jewish social, economic, religious and literary history.