Ben Esra Synagogue
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The Ben Esra Synagogue ( Hebrew בית כנסת בן עזרא, Arabic معبد بن عزرا), also called el-Genisa synagogue (בית כנסת אל גניזה) Or synagogue of the Levantine (ash-Schamijin), is a Sephardic -jüdisches church in Fostat , which is now part of the old city of Cairo is. According to local tradition, Moses was found here as a baby. The synagogue is known for its Genisafound from the 19th century, in which around 200,000 manuscripts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Judaeo-Arabic , written from 800 onwards, were discovered.
The Ben Esra has existed as an institution since ancient times, and the synagogue has been rebuilt several times since then. The predecessor of today's synagogue was destroyed by the Fatimid Kalif el-Hakim around 1012; under his successor az-Zaher it was rebuilt between 1025 and 1040. The wood of the door of the intricately carved Torah shrine dates from the 11th century and is in Walter's Art Museum in Baltimore and New York.
In the 12th century, the Jewish philosopher, doctor and astronomer Maimonides visited the Ben Esra Synagogue. The wood carving on the Torah shrine dates from the time of the Mameluke Sultanate in the 15th century. After a fire destroyed the bema (pulpit), the synagogue was restored in 1488.
After a renovation in the 1880s, the Ben Esra Synagogue was rebuilt in 1892. The color on the wood of the Torah shrine probably dates from the 19th century.
The Romanian Rabbi Jacob Saphir wrote as early as 1874 about the importance of the Genisa (Jewish writing deposit) in the Ben Esra Synagogue. In 1888 the British lawyer Elkan Nathan Adler entered the Genisa as the first European and acquired 25,000 documents from it. Solomon Schechter , a teacher at Cambridge University , carried out the first scientific study of the genisa inventory.
After almost all parishioners had to leave Egypt , the Ben Esra Synagogue now serves more as a museum than as a functioning sacred building.
swell
- Barry L. Stiefel: Jews and the Renaissance of Synagogue Architecture, 1450-1730 . Routledge , 2015, ISBN 978-1-317-32032-6 , pp. 28 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- Marc S. Glickman: Sacred Treasure - the Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic . Jewish Lights Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-58023-512-9 , pp. 4, 11, 20, 24, 27–28, 61, 88 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
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Coordinates: 30 ° 0 ′ 20.9 ″ N , 31 ° 13 ′ 51.7 ″ E