Preface

Abstract

This study had its beginnings during a casual Shabbat walk to synagogue with Prof. Bernard Septimus of Harvard University. On that occasion Prof. Septimus suggested an investigation into gaonic legal theory as a possible topic for my doctoral thesis as it seemed a good way to bring together a number of my research interests. At the time it seemed appropriate to limit the work to already-published materials. A number of months later Prof. Septimus, together with Prof. Isidore Twersky, made the rather attractive and fateful further suggestion that I travel to Jerusalem for a few months "to get my feet wet in the Genizah." Those few months turned into seven years, most of them spent wading through many thousands of manuscript fragments from the Cairo Genizah, searching for material that might be relevant to a study of legal theory.It was during these years in Jerusalem -now my home -that the texts published here, and others, were slowly reconstructed. At the beginning of this process, the texts were fragmentary and anonymous. But, gradually, I found that some of these fragments could be pieced together to form parts of books. And, as my research on these books progressed, I was able to identify a number of the texts as works by Samuel ben I:Iofni Gaon. A heretofore relatively obscure figure, I found that Samuel hen I:Iofni, who headed the Yeshivah of Sura at the beginning of the eleventh century, played a significant and interesting role in the development of Jewish thought in his time. As my reconstruction and analysis of his works revealed more and more new facets of the cultural world of the later gaonim, my doctoral thesis gradually evolved from an analysis of gaonic legal theory to the study on which the present volume is based.Although almost a century has passed since Solomon Schechter brought his great hoard of manuscripts from the Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo to the Cambridge University Library, the Genizah is still providing new windows into the cultural and social life of medieval Middle Eastern Jewry. One part of the Genizah's