What the World of the Cairo Geniza Can Teach Us About Responding to COVID-19

In the twelfth century, a cantor from a small town in Egypt found himself nearly destitute. He described his plight in a letter to a Jewish communal leader in Cairo:

I am chronically ill; I am unable to get up from my place even one span of a hand except while screaming with pain. God is my witness: I can pray only while seated. I am in a difficult situation because of illness and [poverty]. I swear by Moses and Aaron, I have no money beyond what I earn at the synagogue on Mondays. My illness demands many (silver coins).”[1]

We know about the cantor’s predicament because his letter was deposited in the Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo. A Genizah is a chamber that Jews traditionally use to dispose of sacred books. But the Jewish community of medieval Egypt used their Genizah for a much wider range of texts, including personal letters, business contracts, and court documents. Over hundreds of years, they deposited nearly all their written material into the chamber. The vast majority date between the 11th and 13th centuries. Egypt’s dry climate ensured that these papers did not disintegrate.[2]  

The Cairo Genizah is one of the largest caches of documents from the pre-modern world ever discovered. The documents found within it shed light on the everyday experiences of men, women, and children who lived a thousand years ago.

The world of the Cairo Geniza was a world of precarity. As in all pre-modern societies, dramatic reversals of fate were common. We read routinely about wealthy merchants who were shipwrecked and lost everything. We also hear the desperate voices of their surviving wives and children, left without any means of support. And we learn about all too many men, women, and children who were taken captive by pirates or conquering armies and sold into slavery. This is not to mention, of course, the looming threat of famine and, yes, plague. 

Until recently, this world seemed incredibly foreign. COVID-19 has reminded us how precarious our existence continues to be. People are suffering and dying from a disease that we still do not fully understand. Jobs that once seemed secure vanished practically overnight; millions of Americans now find themselves on the edge of poverty. We remain powerless to fully control the natural world. 

On Rosh Hashanah it is written; on Yom Kippur it is sealed: how many shall pass on, how many shall come to be; who shall live and who shall die; who shall see ripe age and who shall not; who shall perish by fire and who by water; who by sword and who by beast; who by hunger and who by thirst; who by earthquake and who by plague; who by strangling and who by stoning; who shall be secure and who shall be driven; who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled; who shall be poor and who shall be rich; who shall be humbled and who exalted.

Throughout history, humans have tried to understand why bad things happen. Medieval Jews believed that everything happened according to God’s will. This is the theology expressed by Unetaneh Tokef, the liturgical poem at the center of our High Holy Day Liturgy. 

In the writings of the Cairo Geniza, we find this fatalistic attitude. As one woman who suffered from a degenerative skin disease wrote, “Because my sins and iniquities multiplied, I became afflicted on my nose, then the malady spread, and my face became wasted and eaten away.”[3] She took for granted the idea that her disease was a direct result of her sins. This is not an attitude that sits well with our contemporary sensibilities. 

 But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity temper judgment’s severe decree.

“Yet the Jews of medieval Egypt did not wallow in fatalism. Instead, they got to work. They organized their society to help people confront the challenges of living in a precarious world. ”

 Yet the Jews of medieval Egypt did not wallow in fatalism. Instead, they got to work. They organized their society to help people confront the challenges of living in a precarious world. 

In the wake of the Crusades, the leaders of the Jewish community of Egypt organized a massive pledge drive to ransom the Jewish captives from the Crusaders. They also emphasized the sacred obligation to give charity to the poor, and they established communal institutions to best collect and distribute such funds to those in need. Moses Maimonides, who became Head of the Jews of Egypt around 1171, described this system of communal charity in his Mishneh Torah (c. 1170): 

In every city inhabited by Jews, it is their duty to appoint from themselves well-known and trustworthy persons to act as alms collectors, to go around collecting from the people every Friday. They should demand from each person what is proper for him to give and what he has been assessed for, and should distribute the money every Friday, giving each poor man maintenance sufficient for seven days. This is what is called the ‘alms fund’ (quppa). They must similarly appoint collectors to gather every day, from each courtyard, bread and other eatables, fruits or money from anyone who is willing to make a free-will offering at that time. They should distribute these toward that same evening among the poor, giving therefrom to each poor man his sustenance for the day. This is what is called the “alms-tray” (tamhui).[4]

 The documents of the Cairo Geniza give us insight into how this system worked in practice. The Jews of Cairo appointed multiple parnasim, charity collectors, in each of their congregations. One letter from the thirteenth century refers to a weekly lottery to choose these individuals; the letter stipulated that any individual chosen who refused to take on this responsibility should be excommunicated.[5] These individuals collected and distributed bread, clothing, and sums of money to needy members of their community. They also oversaw a system of shelters to house those in need of a place to live, often lodging indigent foreigners in the synagogue itself. The community also paid for medical treatment for the poor.[6]

The very reason that we know about the plights of the sick cantor and the woman with the degenerative skin disease is because both individuals wrote letters to communal leaders asking for charitable support. Both suffered tremendously, but they knew that the institutions of the community existed to help support them during such a moment. 

Why did the Jews of the Cairo Geniza create this system and support it? They knew that their own good fortune was likely short-lived. Indeed, the Geniza is full of letters written by and on behalf of once-wealthy men and women who, for all sorts of reasons, found themselves destitute. For example, in the middle of the twelfth century, a communal leader wrote a letter on behalf of a certain Solomon b. Benjamin. Solomon was from a wealthy, charitable family. But war forced him to flee his home, and “many troubles” befell him and his family. As a result, Solomon and his family “fell from their wealth, became poor, and were forced to turn in their need to others.”[7] In other words, precisely because they recognized the “inherent fragility and impermanence of human existence” the Jews of the Cairo Geniza organized their society and communal institutions to care for those most vulnerable.[8]

“In other words, precisely because they recognized the “inherent fragility and impermanence of human existence” the Jews of the Cairo Geniza organized their society and communal institutions to care for those most vulnerable.”

Today, our existence feels more fragile than ever before, but we can learn a lesson from the Jews of the Cairo Geniza in how to respond. Let us use this time of uncertainty as an opportunity to re-imagine our own society, to organize our own political and communal institutions to better care of those around us: to feed the hungry, to care for the poor, to clothe the naked (Isaiah 58:7).

If our ancestors managed to do so in twelfth century Egypt, surely, we can surely do so in twenty-first century America. After all, unlike the Jews of the Cairo Geniza, we have Zoom. 

[1] Mark Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 170.

[2] On the Cairo Geniza and its discovery and contents see Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (New York: Schocken, 2011); Mark Glickman, Sacred Treasure—the Cairo Geniza: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011).

[3] Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 170.

[4] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, 9:1-2.

[5] Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 213.

[6] Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 189-242.

[7] Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 37.

[8] On this concept: Joshua Garroway, “Confronting Human Frailty.” https://vimeo.com/421129225.