toward the Geniza fragments extended well beyond the borders of Egypt—and may have had as much to do with scholarly territorialism as it did with the assertion of colonial privilege. In a January 12 letter (marked “private”) to the mild-mannered Cambridge librarian Francis Jenkinson, Schechter outlined his work in Cairo, describing the dust and bugs and aggravating interactions with the beadle, as well as the thirteen sacks of fragments he had collected to date, then moving on to a “great request” he wished to make of Jenkinson. Schechter was “anxious to send the first lot home to England” and wanted to know if Jenkinson would be willing to “give them a place in the University Library till I return.” The emphatic underlinings are all Schechter’s own:
The MSS will probably belong soon to your library. I want only to hear first whether you and the syndics will agree to certain conditions which I have to make. Money plays no important part in these conditions and I am sure you will find them very fair and just . But till then I want the MSS to be considered as my private property; so that the boxes must not be opened before I have returned. For I am very anxious to [be] the first to examine them properly . If you cannot agree to these condition [ SIC ] will you do me the favour to send at once—when the boxes arrive for Mrs Schechter ( 2 Rock Road ) and hand her over the boxes, who will bring them into some place of safety till I return P[lease].G[od].
While he was waiting for Jenkinson’s answer, a somewhat skittish Schechter announced to Mathilde that “I do not think it is safe to keep here all my fragments” as “there is such a thing as an evil eye of certainpeople.” He believed it best to set about arranging for an export permit so that the manuscripts could be shipped off sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, he found time to spend a day examining what he called “the second Genizah,” which was in the “cemetery”—apparently the Basatin—and to unearth certain fragments there. (It is hard to say what, precisely, Schechter took from the graveyard or other local synagogue storerooms; he occasionally refers in his letters to the “Genizas,” plural, and though he says he “found almost nothing” in “the other Geniza” —which geniza is not specified—his final count of manuscripts includes what he described as “one and a half sacks from the other Genizas.”) He toured the Coptic churches of Old Cairo with some English friends; prayed in the Karaite synagogue; received a visit from the first secretary to Lord Cromer; took a drive with Cattaui; stopped in at the English embassy; and ate several Sabbath dinners with the rabbi who “kisses me every minute (which is not very pleasant).” He also befriended, among others, a Jewish waiter at his hotel—who supplied him daily with a little piece of grilled kosher meat—and a British businessman, Reginald Henriques, who lived in Cairo and wound up acting as a kind of private manuscript scout after Schechter left Egypt, writing in 1898 to announce that “I have been having most exciting times lately in your Geniza.” He had, he reported, intercepted the excavations that Count d’Hulst and “some twenty Arabs” were carrying out in the Ben Ezra courtyard. Henriques eventually sent to Cambridge several shipments of these newly unearthed fragments, which “but for my timely intervention … would now have been carried off to the Bodleian Library.”
On the whole, Schechter found Cairo “a glorious place, enjoying an Italian opera, French dancing masters, English administration, and Mohammetan huris. The last are very ugly, and I do not wonder they are so careful to cover their faces.” Schechter had, it seems, made a splash in fashionable circles. A rich Jewish acquaintance told him that “there is much talk in the Turf (English) Club about the great Jewish Savant etc.etc.” And toward the end of his stay he finally met the
The MSS will probably belong soon to your library. I want only to hear first whether you and the syndics will agree to certain conditions which I have to make. Money plays no important part in these conditions and I am sure you will find them very fair and just . But till then I want the MSS to be considered as my private property; so that the boxes must not be opened before I have returned. For I am very anxious to [be] the first to examine them properly . If you cannot agree to these condition [ SIC ] will you do me the favour to send at once—when the boxes arrive for Mrs Schechter ( 2 Rock Road ) and hand her over the boxes, who will bring them into some place of safety till I return P[lease].G[od].
While he was waiting for Jenkinson’s answer, a somewhat skittish Schechter announced to Mathilde that “I do not think it is safe to keep here all my fragments” as “there is such a thing as an evil eye of certainpeople.” He believed it best to set about arranging for an export permit so that the manuscripts could be shipped off sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, he found time to spend a day examining what he called “the second Genizah,” which was in the “cemetery”—apparently the Basatin—and to unearth certain fragments there. (It is hard to say what, precisely, Schechter took from the graveyard or other local synagogue storerooms; he occasionally refers in his letters to the “Genizas,” plural, and though he says he “found almost nothing” in “the other Geniza” —which geniza is not specified—his final count of manuscripts includes what he described as “one and a half sacks from the other Genizas.”) He toured the Coptic churches of Old Cairo with some English friends; prayed in the Karaite synagogue; received a visit from the first secretary to Lord Cromer; took a drive with Cattaui; stopped in at the English embassy; and ate several Sabbath dinners with the rabbi who “kisses me every minute (which is not very pleasant).” He also befriended, among others, a Jewish waiter at his hotel—who supplied him daily with a little piece of grilled kosher meat—and a British businessman, Reginald Henriques, who lived in Cairo and wound up acting as a kind of private manuscript scout after Schechter left Egypt, writing in 1898 to announce that “I have been having most exciting times lately in your Geniza.” He had, he reported, intercepted the excavations that Count d’Hulst and “some twenty Arabs” were carrying out in the Ben Ezra courtyard. Henriques eventually sent to Cambridge several shipments of these newly unearthed fragments, which “but for my timely intervention … would now have been carried off to the Bodleian Library.”
On the whole, Schechter found Cairo “a glorious place, enjoying an Italian opera, French dancing masters, English administration, and Mohammetan huris. The last are very ugly, and I do not wonder they are so careful to cover their faces.” Schechter had, it seems, made a splash in fashionable circles. A rich Jewish acquaintance told him that “there is much talk in the Turf (English) Club about the great Jewish Savant etc.etc.” And toward the end of his stay he finally met the
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