Books in Brief

Fortifications and the Synagogue: The Fortress of Babylon and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, Cairo

ed. Phyllis Lambert (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994; available from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, 514–939-7028) 279 pp., $65

For centuries, worn-out sacred writings and everyday documents were tossed into the dark genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo (Fustat).^a Rediscovered by western scholars in the second half of the 19th century, this treasure revealed much about Jewish life and traditions in the medieval Near East. The bulk of the Cairo Genizah documents were taken, by Solomon Schechter, to Cambridge, England, and housed in the Cambridge University Library.