Even a century after their discovery, less than half of the documents from the Cairo Genizah have been published. The pace of publication should speed up, however, thanks to the generosity of Albert Friedberg, a Toronto businessman. The Friedberg Genizah Project has made a large, multi-year financial commitment (the amount has not been made public) towards publication of the Genizah documents and for the merging of current catalogues of Genizah materials into a searchable database on the World Wide Web. Genizah texts will also be placed online in searchable form.
The Friedberg Genizah Project will support publication in both printed and electronic formats. Publication will concentrate on Biblical texts and commentaries; Rabbinic literature; philosophical and theological texts; liturgy and religious poetry; legal documents; grammatical works; and secular poetry. The project is administered by the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and is directed by professors Neil Danzig (Jewish Theological Seminary, New York), Yaakov Elman (Yeshiva University, New York) and Lawrence Schiffman (New York University).
The directors of the Genizah project expect that increased cooperation among scholars on an international level and advances in technology will not only speed publication, but will also bring the world of the Cairo Genizah beyond a small academic circle to a wide popular audience.
