Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my PhD joint supervisor, Dr Ben Outhwaite, for his support and suggestions on the drafts of this monograph, for showing me the manuscript I had identified and for enabling permission to use imagery from CUL. Thanks are also due to Dr Kim Phillips for sharing his discovery of T-S Misc. 24,182, after early drafts of this monograph reminded him of the special letters forms he had seen on those fragments.
My thanks to Dr Ben Outhwaite (again) for his proof-reading skills and to my main PhD supervisor Professor Geoffrey Khan for his helpful suggestions, and to both for their general advice and specific transliteration guidance. My thanks also, to Nehemia Gordon, for reviewing this monograph and who, coming across Sassoon 82, took amazing photographs and alerted me to them. This assisted greatly with the decipherment of the damaged sections of that core text.
My gratitude to Mr. Jacqui E. Safra for his permission in reproducing imagery from Sassoon 82 (now JUD. 022), that resides in his private collection in Geneva. Also to Jolanda van Nijen (Responsable administrative chez Collection d’ art privée) for her helpfulness in organising this. Additionally, to Dr. Justine Isserles who helped with manuscript dating and sent me images of MS Geunz 481. Also to Ephraim Caspi for early personal correspondence, sharing some articles with me and providing a couple of missing pages of Q651–652. Also for pointing me in the direction of Kreuzenstein, Sammlung Graf Wilczek, Inv.—Nr. 5667, HDSHDS.
A large thank you to the editors of the Cambridge Genizah Studies series and Brill for agreeing to publish this monograph and for their support in the publishing process. Particularly to Erika Mandarino, Assistant Editor, Ancient Near East and Jewish Studies for her guidance. Also to Cas Van den Hof of TAT Zetwerk for his guidance through the typesetting and proof-reading process.
Such a project would not have been possible without the opening up of the digital repositories in various academic institutions, notably the Cambridge University Library, the Ktiv digital repository though the National Library of Israel, the British Library, the Biblioteca Apostolia Vaticana, the Biblioteca Palatino, Parma, the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society Genizah project and the Books within Books project.
My thanks to Biblioteca Apostolia Vaticana for permission to use images of Vat. ebr. 1 and particularly to the British Library for their excellent open policy towards reproduction of their images. Also to the Alexander family for trusting me with the restoration of their precious family Torah, which provided some exquisite examples of letter forms from Sefer Tagin. Also to Ada Yardeni z’l for the inspiration to draw scripts that were not available for reproduction.
Figure 1
Examining T-S D1.42 in its protective pouch in Dr Outhwaite’s office at CUL.
To my parents, Eileen and Rabbi Maurice Michaels for a loving upbringing that instilled in me a deep connection to Judaism and our heritage. To my son Aryeh, for listening to me talk about obscure texts, as well as discussing the latest superhero films and comics. However, my greatest thanks go to three scribes. My scribal teacher Vivian Solomon z’l who instilled within me his passion for the scribal arts and equipped me with the skills to be a sofer STa”M. To his teacher, Dr. Eric Ray z’l, whose fascination for the ʾotiyot meshunot rubbed of on his student’s student. Finally to my wife, the first soferet of modern times, Avielah Barclay-Michaels for her love, patience and unstinting support, whilst I worked on this monograph.
Marc Michaels (Mordechai Pinḥas), M.A., Sofer STa”M
ʾAdar 5780/February 2020