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Stefan Clive Reif OBE (born 21 January 1944) is professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge. [1] [2] He was born in Edinburgh. He has a PhD from University College London and a Doctor of Literature from Cambridge.
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Stefan Clive Reif OBE (born 21 January 1944) is professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge. [1] [2] He was born in Edinburgh. He has a PhD from University College London and a Doctor of Literature from Cambridge.
Stefan Reif graduated at the University of London with first class honours in Hebrew and Aramaic (1964) and obtained his PhD at Jews' College and at University College London (1969) for an edition of a seventeenth-century Hebrew liturgical manuscript. He was awarded the William Lincoln Shelley Studentship (1967). [3]
Former Head of the Oriental Division of the University Library. [4]
The University Library established the Genizah Research Unit in 1974 and Reif directed it until retirement in 2006. He was elected to a personal chair in medieval Hebrew studies and to a fellowship at St John's College at the University of Cambridge in 1998, and obtained the Litt.D. there in 2002. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Haifa in 2014 for his Genizah work, his research into Jewish liturgy and his encouragement of young scholars. He has written or edited fifteen volumes, as well as almost four hundred articles and reviews, and organized various international conferences. Among his most important studies are Shabbethai Sofer and his Prayer-book (1979), Judaism and Hebrew Prayer (1993), Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library (1997), A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo (2000), Why Medieval Hebrew Studies? (2001), Problems with Prayers (2006) and Jewish Prayer Texts from the Cairo Genizah (2015–16). [3]
Reif was president of the Hebraica Libraries' Group (1981–1984); the Jewish Historical Society of England (1991–1992); the British Association for Jewish Studies (1992); the Cambridge Theological Society (2002–2004); and the National Council on Orientalist Library Resources, (2004-2005). He is a trustee of the Cambridge Traditional Jewish Congregation and a senior academic consultant to the Universities of Haifa and Tel Aviv in Israel. He is on the International Advisory Committees of the ISDCL and of the periodical Ginzei Qedem, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Mekize Nirdamim Society for the Publication of Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts. Reif is a popular lecturer and has addressed many audiences in Europe, Israel, the United States and Canada. [3]
He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to scholarship. [5]
Solomon Schechter was a Moldavian-born British-American rabbi, academic scholar and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and architect of American Conservative Judaism.
A genizah is a storage area in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery designated for the temporary storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics prior to proper cemetery burial.
Westminster College in Cambridge, England is a theological college of the United Reformed Church. Its principal purpose is training for the ordination of ministers, but is also used more widely for training within the denomination.
The Damascus Document is an ancient Hebrew text known from both the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is considered one of the foundational documents of the ancient Jewish community of Qumran.
Abraham (Avraham) ben Samuel Firkovich was a famous Karaite writer and archaeologist, collector of ancient manuscripts, and a Karaite Hakham. He was born in Lutsk, Volhynia, then lived in Lithuania, and finally settled in Çufut Qale, Crimea, where he also died. Gabriel Firkovich of Troki was his son-in-law.
Shelomo Dov Goitein was a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, and particularly on the Cairo Geniza.
Rabbi Solomon Aaron Wertheimer, was a Hungarian rabbi, scholar, and seller of rare books.
Norman Golb was a scholar of Jewish history and the Ludwig Rosenberger Professor in Jewish History and Civilization at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Elkan Nathan Adler was an English author, lawyer, historian, and collector of Jewish books and manuscripts. Adler's father was Nathan Marcus Adler, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. He traveled extensively and built an enormous library, particularly of old Jewish documents. Adler was among the first to explore the documents stored in the Cairo Genizah, being in fact the first European to enter it. During his visits to Cairo in 1888 and 1895 Adler collected and brought over 25,000 Genizah manuscript fragments back to England.
Moshe Gil was an Israeli historian.
Norman Arthur Stillman, also Noam, b. 1945, is an American academic, historian, and Orientalist, serving as the emeritus Schusterman-Josey Professor and emeritus Chair of Judaic History at the University of Oklahoma. He specializes in the intersection of Jewish and Islamic culture and history, and in Oriental and Sephardi Jewry, with special interest in the Jewish communities in North Africa. His major publications are The Jews of Arab Lands: a History And Source Book and Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity. In the last few years, Stillman has been the executive editor of the "Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World", a project that includes over 2000 entries in 5 volumes.
Obadiah the Proselyte was an early-12th-century Italian convert to Judaism. He is best known for his memoirs and the oldest surviving notation of Jewish music, both unique survivals.
Joseph Yahalom is a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 1983, he has been a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language.
Herbert Martin James Loewe (1882–1940) was a noted scholar of Semitic languages and Jewish culture. His grandfather, Louis Loewe (1809–1880), had been Sir Moses Montefiore's secretary and the first Principal of the Judith Lady Montefiore College at Ramsgate.
The Palestinian minhag or Palestinian liturgy, as opposed to the Babylonian minhag, refers to the minhag of medieval Palestinian Jewry in relation to the traditional order and form of the prayers.
Geoffrey Allan Khan FBA is a British linguist who has held the post of Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge since 2012. He has published grammars for the Aramaic dialects of Barwari, Qaraqosh, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja in Iraq; of Urmia and Sanandaj in Iran; and leads the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic DatabaseArchived 8 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine.
Gary A. Rendsburg is a professor of biblical studies, Hebrew language, and ancient Judaism at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He holds the rank of Distinguished Professor and serves as the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair of Jewish History at Rutgers University (2004–present), with positions in the Department of Jewish Studies and the Department of History.
Efraim Lev is a professor in the Department of Israel Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Haifa. He is the immediate past Head of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research of the Cairo Genizah at the University of Haifa, and the Department of Humanities and Arts at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He also headed the Eshkol Department of Multi-Disciplinary Studies for special programs and undergraduate degrees in the University of Haifa’s Faculty of Humanities (2013-2018). Lev specializes in the history of medicine and pharmacology in the Middle East, in particular from the Middle Ages and the early modern period.
The Friedberg Geniza Project (FGP) is a digital preservation project, one of the primary goals of which is to computerize the entire world of Cairo Genizah manuscripts - images, identifications, catalogs, copies, joins, and bibliographic references.
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