CairoGeniza

Rabbi's Column February 2020

We have the extraordinary opportunity to have the director of the film “From Cairo to the Cloud” join us at TBT as our Scholar-in-Residence this year.

Michelle Paymar is an award winning filmmaker whose credits include documentaries that have appeared on NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. Earlier films include her pioneering AIDS documentary, “For Our Lives,” and “Sippie,” a documentary (co-directed by Roberta Grossman) about blues artist Sippie Wallace.

“From Cairo to the Cloud” documents the discovery of the Cairo Geniza (a geniza is a receptacle for holy Jewish texts) and its subsequent safeguarding in ’The Cloud’ by a tenacious group of scholars. The Cairo Geniza revolutionized our understanding of Jewish history and illuminated a thousand years of vibrant Jewish life in the heart of the Islamic world.

There is so much to learn from the documents and from the filmmaker. We get to do both at our Scholar-in-Residence Weekend, March 20 -21, 2020.

To a great weekend of discovery!
- Rabbi Offner