Alex Epstein was 
born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1971 and moved to Israel when he was eight years old. He is the author of three collections of short stories and three novels; his work has also been translated into Russian, French, Greek, Spanish, Hungarian, Dutch, Croatian, Polish, and Italian. In 2003 he was awarded Israel’s Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature. In 2007 he participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He writes literary reviews for several newspapers and teaches creative writing in Tel Aviv. His short-short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in English in Words Without Borders, the Iowa Review, Rhino, Zeek, and Natural Bridge.
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We are very pleased to announce the availability of a landmark work in Geniza Studies. Dr. Elazar Hurvitz has spent many years cataloguing the Geniza fragments at Westminster College in Cambridge, England. The result is this 2-volume masterpiece of scholarship, an essential reference work for scholars in the field.
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Catalogue of the Cairo Geniza Fragments
in The Westminster College Library, Cambridge
by Elazar Hurvitz
Yeshiva University
(New York: Cairo Geniza Institute, Yeshiva University, 2006)
VOL. I: The Cairo Geniza. A Historical Introduction to the Antiquity and Discovery of the Geniza from Cairo, Egypt
VOL. II: Catalogue of the Cairo Geniza fragments in the Westminster College Library The Lewis-Gibson Collection. Including a detailed description and identification of over 2,500 fragments written in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic.
A forthcoming Vol. III will include the publication of selected texts from the Westminster College fragments. It will contain important discoveries in various fields of Jewish studies and supplementary material of fragments from the very same manuscripts that are scattered in other libraries which possess fragments from the Cairo Geniza.
Please contact Ken Schoen to order and arrange payment method (credit card, paypal or check accepted); universities can be invoiced.
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HARDCOVER (in Hebrew with English Introduction in Vol. I)
ISBN: 978-0-615-31448-8
Vol. I: 22, 172, XIII pp.
Vol. II: 23, 237 pp. + 40 pages of plates
Price for volumes I and II: $250.00 + S&H ($25 USA and $50 airmail foreign)
Description of Contents of Vols. I & II
Catalogue of the Cairo Geniza Fragments in The Westminster College Library, Cambridge
HISTORY & EVIDENCE:
Through the ages Egypt was a magnet for a variety of peoples and cultures. Among them also were the Jews, who arrived there after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem and continued to live there until today.
There are different proofs and pieces of evidence, literary and archaeological, for the presence of Jews in Egypt. The book of Jeremiah provides details from the Biblical period, the prophet himself having been among the exiles who came from Jerusalem to Egypt after the destruction of the First Temple. The evidence from the Greco-Roman period includes the written accounts of the Septuagint translation of the Torah, the consolidation of the apocryphal literature and Philo of Alexandria’s great works. The physical evidence includes archaeological discoveries pertaining to the Elephantine temple and its associated documents, Onias’ temple and Tel el-Yahudiyeh and the fragmentary remains of stone dedicatory tablets which point to the existence of synagogues in a number of Egyptian regions. There is also Philo’s testimony that there were many synagogues in the Jewish districts in Alexandria, the remains of which now likely lie beneath the sea. In the region of Cairo there is evidence for the existence of synagogues in al-Fustat and in the suburb of Memphis, which were built not much prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. The proofs for the cultural and literary flowering which took place in the Arabic period may be found in the tens of thousands of pages from different compositions in all Jewish subjects. These are the remains of entire works which became worn and torn from repeated use and which, on account of their holiness, were deposited in the attic of the Ben Ezra synagogue or in the burial caves of the al-Basatin cemetery. These fragments include remains from Biblical literature, the Oral Law, including Mishnah, Talmuds and Midrashic literature, liturgy and poetry, archival material belonging to the institutions of the Egyptian Jewish community and a variegated gallery of diverse personal letters.
In the same manner that the Alexandrian Jewish literature of the Greco-Roman period marks the boundary between the canonization of Biblical literature and its translation into Greek and its literary and historical exegesis through the apocryphal literature and its continuations, the literary remains found in the Cairo Geniza represent the transition from the closure of a stage in the development of the Oral Law, which began at the end of the Amoraic period in Babylonia, to the growth of a new layer whose goal was to categorize the Halachic and exegetical aspects of the early sources, to create a new layer of exegesis, to translate earlier material into Judeo-Arabic, to formulate the various prayer books, to compose Halachic codices on the basis of Geonic responsa and to create new works, such as those of Alfasi, Maimonides and their continuators.
VOLUME I:
Volume I describes all of the stages and adventures connected with the discovery of the Geniza, the personalities tied to its uncovering and transfer of its material to places throughout the Western world as well as its roots in the Ben Ezra synagogue in al-Fustat and the ancient geniza caves in the al-Basatin cemetery. The volume provides a detailed history of the Westminster College Geniza collection, including the activities of the Lewis-Gibson sisters, who spread word of the existence and importance of the Cairo Geniza in contemporary newspapers and in their biographical books. Additionally, this volume presents a wide-ranging historical study of the history of the Ben Ezra synagogue, in whose attic the pages of the Geniza were deposited, and of the antiquity and physical integrity of the structure of the synagogue, or parts of it, from ancient times to the present. In the process, the volume lays out research into the history of a number of synagogues in al-Fustat and Memphis, with the intention of proving that the settlement of Jews in the region of Old Cairo and its environs may already be found in the Biblical period and that the establishment of these synagogues is identical in point of time to that of the synagogues in Alexandria and the Fayyum and may perhaps even predate them.
VOLUME II:
The Cairo Geniza fragments of the Lewis-Gibson sisters’ collection, in the Westminster College Library were among the first to arrive in Cambridge. This collection is remarkable for its relatively well-preserved state and for its forming a representative sample of the contents of the Cairo Geniza as a whole. The fragments include biblical texts and their translations and exegesis, Mishnaic, Talmudic, Midrashic and Halachic works composed by the Babylonian Geonim, Alfasi and Maimonides, a very wide selection of Jewish religious poetry and liturgy, and philosophical and grammatical treatises. In addition, there are official documents along with personal correspondence between residents in Egypt and those in lands circling the Mediterranean Sea and the Geonic centers in Babylonia. This collection was one of the first to be the subject of scholarly and historical studies, which led to a proper assessment of the importance of the Cairo Geniza for Jewish studies. The cornerstone of this development was the discovery in this collection of a half page of Hebrew text of the apocryphal book of Ben Sira.
The present catalogue is a pioneering one in the field of Geniza research and cataloging in that it provides:
1. A full identification of each fragment or an exact description of its content when identification is impossible,
2. A consistent recording and accurate bibliography for each fragment which has already been published or utilized in scholarly editions,
3. The discovery and identification of leaves or fragments from the same manuscripts which are found in other Cairo Geniza collections and which continue or fill in existing gaps in the Westminster College fragment,
4. Guidelines for recording all of the subjects covered by the Geniza, so that researchers may know in detail the contents and characteristics of each fragment, even if the fragment or a reproduction thereof may not be present before them.
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THE AUTHOR
Dr. Elazar Hurvitz is the Dr. Samuel Belkin Professor of Judaic Studies at Yeshiva University. He has studied the texts in the Cairo Geniza for many years and has published numerous studies on them, including: “Seridim mi-Toratam shel Geonim ve-Rishonim” (1989) and an edition of Maimonides’ “Mishneh Torah” restored from hitherto unknown pages found in the Cairo Geniza (1985). He has published texts from the literature of the Rishonim, which also incorporate fragments from the Geniza. He is also the editor of the studies of Philo’s writings by his teacher, the late Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin, President of Yeshiva University, the first volume of which appeared in 1989.
MacGregor Card | Karen Weiser | Sean Casey
Saturday | February 13 | 8 pm.
The Old Firehouse | 7 Sugarloaf | S. Deerfield
Karen Weiser’s first full length collection of poetry, entitled To Light Out, is due out from Ugly Duckling Presse any minute now. It is a companion volume to MacGregor Card’s first book (see below.) Her chapbooks include “Pitching Woo” (Cy Press, 2006), “Heads Up Fever Pile” (Belladonna, 2005), “Placefullness” (Ugly Duckling Press, 2004) and “Eight Positive Trees” (Pressed Wafer, 2002). Some recent poems have appeared in the journals Aufgabe and Tight. Weiser lives in New York City where she is a doctoral candidate writing about early American novels in the post-revolutionary period.
Macgregor Card is a poet, translator and bibliographer livi ng in Queens. His first book, Duties of an English Foreign Secretary is just out from Fence Books, and is a companion volume to Karen Weiser’s To Light Out. New work is forthcoming in The Equalizer #1 (March 2010), and recent work is featured on Inknode and the Poetry Project. With Oliver Brossard he is editing an anthology of New York School poets, for simultaneous publication in English and French translation. He is currently translating Philippe Beck and Pascal Poyet from the French, and (with Megan Ewing) Uljana Wolf from the German. From 1996-2007 he co-edited The Germ: a journal of poetic research with Andrew Maxwell. He teaches poetry at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn), and works for the MLA Bibliography.
Sean Casey has work forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Columbia Journal, Invisible Ear, and The Lifted Brow. He runs The Chuckwagon , a small press which published two of 2009’s Schoen Books of the Year, Ben Hersey’s This Is What We’re Up Against and Jono Tosch’s Under Sea. For more of his work, visit www.seantcasey.com.
W E R: CHRISTIAN HAWKEY, PIOTR SOMMER, MATVEI YANKELEVICH
Когда: S a t u r d a y 21 N o v e m b e r 8pm
GDZIE: The Old Firehouse (Schoen Books)
NEARING TWO YEARS OF CELAN SALON
MATVEI YANKELEVICH played Daniil Kharms in the most popular Celan Salon to date. Now he’s back so we can celebrate his Boris by the Sea, the newest book from Octopus Books (home of our own Heather Christle. In the interim, his long poem, The Present Work, is still available from Palm Press and his Kharms translation, Today I Wrote Nothing, is in paperback, joining Oberiu: An Anthology of Russian of Absurdism.
His translation of Mayakovsky’s “A Cloud in Pants” is included in Night Wraps the Sky: Writing By and About Mayakovsky (FSG, 2008). Octopus Magazine hosts his Field Notes on Russian-American poets, and he edited Aufgabe 8, on Russian poetry and poetics, just out from Litmus Press.
A founding editor of Ugly Duckling Presse, where he designs books, co-edits 6×6 and edits the Eastern European Poets Series, he teaches at Hunter College and Columbia University School of the Arts. Let Celan Salon suggest sampling recent poems at, por ejemplo, Action Yes and in, par excellence, Damn the Caesars, selah.
PIOTR SOMMER is “the great poet of ‘everyday loneliness, contrary to yourself perhaps.’ Like Frank O’Hara, whom he has translated into Polish, he is on the lookout for what he calls ‘improper names’—the very ones that allow us to construe the unkempt and taciturn world that surrounds us.” So John Ashbery. When Sommer’s O’Hara appeared in 1987, “it led to a small poetical war between the young experimental group of poets influenced by O’Hara, known as “The Barbarians”, and their opponents “The Neo-Classicists”, who defended more traditional Polish poetry.”
Tomaz Salamun, another poet Sommer has translated–and Ashbery, Berryman, Cage, Koch, and Reznikoff are still others–sums in up: “It might come as a shock to you, but the real father of Polish poetry written in the last 20 years is Piotr Sommer. Look at his clarity, his gentle light as immediately after rain, his landscapes and touches, his fascinating human scale—and find out why.”
Sommer, who lives outside Warsaw, where he edits the seminal literary journal, Literatura na Swiecie, is a Franke Fellow at Yale for Fall 2009. In addition to ten volumes of poetry in Polish, there are two in English, with translations by Ashbery and Michael Kasper among others. The latest, Continued (Wesleyan, 2005), will be available at the reading.
CHRISTIAN HAWKEY, star of When You Think Of It, is the author of three books of poetry: The Book of Funnels (Verse Press, 2004), Citizen Of (Wave Books, 2007) and Ventrakl (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010).
Information leading to the capture of Hawkey’s chapbook, Hour, Hour (Delirium Press, 2006), or collection, Reisen in Ziegengeschwindigkeit (kookbooks, 2008), will be rewarded with a copy of the first Minutes of the Robert Walser Society of Western Massachusetts, the second Sienese Shredder, or the third Agriculture Reader, where excerpts from “Ulf” and “Sonnets in the Mouth of an Elizabethan Wolf” will and have appeared, retro-respectively.
The most recent Chicago Review features a portfolio of contemporary poets from Berlin, edited by Hawkey, who has translated Daniel Falb, Sabine Scho, Steffen Popp, and Uljana Wolf, with whom he has also translated the greatest living writer writer-in-German.
Schoen Books favorite Dara Wier will read from Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2009) on Thursday, September 24 at 7 p.m. in Memorial Hall as part of the Visiting Writers Series at UMass. Among her ten other books of poetry are Remnants of Hannah (Wave Books, 2006), Reverse Rapture (Verse Press, 2005), Hat On a Pond (Verse Press, 2002), and Voyages in English (Carnegie Mellon, 2001). Also among her works are the limited editions (X In Fix) in Rain Taxi’s Brainstorm Series, Fly on the Wall (Oat City Press), and The Lost Epic of Arthur Davidson Ficke, co-written with James Tate (Waiting for Godot Books). Her awards include the Poetry Center Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize and the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize. Her poetry has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the American Poetry Review. In 2005 she held the Rubin Distinguished Chair at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Her editing work includes publishing limited edition chapbooks and broadsides with Factory Hollow Press, North Amherst, Massachusetts, a small independent press she co-edits with Emily Pettit and Guy Pettit. Along with James Haug and James Tate she edits the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Series for poetry. About Reverse Rapture, John Ashbery wrote: “It may not be for the faint of heart—most intense experiences aren’t—but those who stay with it will find themselves face to face with a world whose eerily sharp focus suggests recent satellite photographs of Mars. And they will never be the same again.”