In any Jewish cemetery, one can find some strange structures, known as ‘Genizah’. A Genizah is a storing place in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery to hide or to put away the worn-out Hebrew books and papers, prior to its proper cemetery burial. In Hebrew language Genizah or Geniza (plural Genizot) originally meant ‘to hide’ or ‘to put away’.

According to rabbinic law, once a holy book becomes too old to use, it cannot be destroyed or discarded or casually thrown away. Apart from the holy books, any texts containing the name of God should also be placed in a Genizah. As even personal letters and legal contracts may also contain the name of God, the contents of Genizot, also include any book or any piece of paper written in any Jewish language that use the Hebrew alphabet. The contents of Genizot are periodically gathered reverently and then buried in the cemetery according to the rituals.

Since the early 11th century, the Jewish community of Fustat (Old Cairo) has used to solemnly place their worn-out holy books and other writings in the Hebrew alphabet in a storeroom (Genizah) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue. In 1896-97 the Cambridge scholar, Dr Solomon Schechter, with financial help from the Master of St John’s College, Charles Taylor, visited Egypt and got the necessary permission from the Jewish community of Egypt to take away anything from the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue.

Dr Schechter discovered that, apart from the expected religious works, such as Bibles, prayer books and books on Jewish law, the Genizah contain huge numbers of marriage contracts, divorce deeds, pages from Arabic fables, works of Sufi and Shi'ite philosophy, medical books, magical amulets, business letters, even shopping lists, business letters and accounts, and hundreds of personal letters. He brought 193,000 manuscripts back to Cambridge, where they form the Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collection.

Among the heaps of papers, some pages were recognized as the Hebrew original ‘Book of Wisdom,’ accredited to Ben Sira, the Hellenistic Jewish scribe, sage, and allegorist from Jerusalem. The Book of Wisdom became part of the Christian biblical canon (Ecclesiastics) when translated into Greek. Before its discovery, the existence of any Hebrew version of it was unknown and some scholars even doubted its existence. In addition to valuable Biblical and Talmudic documents, the discovered papers gave a detailed picture of the economic and cultural life of the Middle East and the Mediterranean region over many centuries

Today, a large portion of the Cairo Genizah's documents is carefully preserved and exhibited under glass and boxes at the University Library in Cambridge. However, smaller collections are spread out across the world, in the libraries of Oxford, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Leningrad and Philadelphia.