Modern Genizot: “Sacred Trash” Reconsidered

Abstract

For many years, the Jewish Museum in Prague has been documenting and researching a large collection of genizah finds from Bohemia and Moravia. This collection contains once-used Jewish ritual objects of various age (16th–19th century), especially texts that no longer served their purpose but were placed in a storage area, usually in a synagogue attic – out of respect for the Hebrew letters and for other religious reasons. In addition to assessing the current state of research and the processing of genizah finds, as well as their museumization, this article focuses primarily on a theoretical description of the genizah as a liminal space.

Keywords

• Jewish museums
• rural synagogues
• genizah