Acknowledgments
This volume is the result of several surveys and research projects, carried out by the authors over many years, from the nineties of the last century up to the present. It brings together the most important discoveries made by Italian, European and Israeli scholars in the research and study of medieval Hebrew parchment manuscripts reused as bindings for books and registers in Italy. Thanks are also due to the former Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel, and to its workers Israel Ta-Shma, Benjamin Richler, Abraham David and Yaakov Sussmann for the “Mishnah Project”. This group worked in close cooperation with the initial Italian Team composed by Giuseppe Baruch Sermoneta and his son Hillel, Pier Francesco Fumagalli, Aldo Luzzatto, Amedeo Tagliacozzo and myself.
I cannot forget my dear friend Leandra Scappaticci, who unfortunately left us in 2015 at only 42 years old; in the nineties, past century, she searched for Hebrew fragments in the Genovese area and found in Savona some important pages of a Talmud Yerushalmi. Special thanks to Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, of the EPHE in Paris, above all for the creation in 2007 of the “Books within Books” project, – into which the research carried out in Italy since 1981 has merged. This project has given new life and resources, as well as European resonance, to this research, providing the digital scans and upload of Italian fragments on the internet site as well as the employment of young researchers. Judith, who has revised some texts and has always been of great help in dating the fragments, greatly encouraged the publication of this book.
I am also grateful to Simcha Emmanuel, the Israeli scholar who most of all has devoted himself to the study of the Italian and European Genizah, who has always worked closely with us and with me, especially in identifying the fragments’ contents. I wish to thank Andreas Lehnardt who has always collaborated and promoted the research conducted in Italy and the publication of its results. I wish to express my gratitude to the Orhot Press of Jerusalem, and to Abraham David and Joseph Tabory, for their permission to publish in English several texts which they had published in an earlier version in Hebrew. Special thanks go to the Brill Publishing House, especially to Giuseppe Veltri, editor of the series “Studies in Jewish History and Culture”, with the sub-series “‘European Genizah’: Texts and Studies”, in which five volumes have been already published. A special thank must go to Talia Kraemer, from New York, – the daughter of David, of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America – who, several years ago, during a sojourn in Italy, working at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna, in my Laboratory of Hebrew Epigraphy and Palaeography in Ravenna, prepared the English version of some of the texts. Special thanks also to Ilana Wartenberg for correcting the English translation of my contributions.
I also wish to thank the Italian libraries and archives for always actively collaborating in the research of the Hebrew fragments, and for granting their permission to use the photographs, many of which I made myself. I also want to thank all the collaborators of the “Books Within Books” Project for their precious work, making available online in the BwB’s database a considerable amount of fragments discovered in Italy since the 1980s.
Special thanks to Emma Abate, my successor as a professor of Hebrew at the Department of Cultural Heritage of Ravenna, who carried out the research in various archives, in particular the State Archives of Modena, and helped me in editing this volume, preparing the Bibliography and revising the texts; without her cooperation, this volume would not have been accomplished. I also wish to thank my colleague Saverio Campanini who, in the nineties of the last century, participated actively in the initial phase of our research of Hebrew manuscripts fragments at Bologna and Modena State Archives; with him I have shared many years of research on the Hebrew fragments and published together three of the five catalogues published by Oschki three of the five Catalogues published by Olschki, two in 1997 and one in 1999.
