S. D. Goitein

Shelomo Dov Goitein (April 3, 1900 – February 6, 1985) 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.

Biography

Shelomo Dov (Fritz) Goitein was born in the town of Burgkunstadt in Upper Franconia, Germany; his father, Dr. Eduard Goitein, was born in Hungary to a long line of rabbis. The name Goitein points probably to Kojetín in Moravia as the city of origin of the family. He was brought up with both secular and Talmudic education. In 1914 his father died and the family moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he finished high school and university.

During 1918–23 he studied Arabic and Islam at the University of Frankfurt under the guidance of the famous scholar Josef Horovitz, while continuing his Talmudic study with a private teacher. He left the university with a dissertation on prayer in Islam. In the year 1923, Goitein fulfilled his lifelong dream and immigrated together with Gershom Scholem sailing to Palestine, where he stayed for thirty-four years. He lived four years in Haifa until he was invited to lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which had been inaugurated two years earlier. In Jerusalem, he married Theresa Gottlieb (1900–1987), a eurhythmics teacher who composed songs and plays for children. They had three children, Ayala Gordon, Ofra, and Elon.

In 1957 he moved to the United States where he felt more able to remain focused on his studies. He settled in Philadelphia and worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He died on February 6, 1985, the day his last volume of the series ''A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza'' (vol. 5) was sent to the publisher. The first delivery of ''The Individual: Portrayt of a Mediterranean Personality of the High Middle Ages as Reflected in the Cairo Geniza'' had been sent to the California University Press on December 26, 1984.

Academic career

In 1918–23, Goitein attended the universities of Frankfurt and Berlin and studied Islamic history under Josef Horovitz. His Ph.D. thesis was "on prayer in Islam." He also pursued Jewish studies, and was a leader in the Zionist Youth Movement. In 1923 he immigrated to Palestine, where he taught Bible and Hebrew language at the Reali School in Haifa. In 1927 he wrote a play called ''Pulcellina'' about the blood libel killings in Blois in 1171. In 1928, he was appointed professor of Islamic History and Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was founder of the School of Asian and African studies and of the Israel Oriental Society. In 1928, he began his research of the language, culture and history of the Jews of Yemen. In 1949, he did research in Aden, questioning the Jews who gathered there from all parts of Yemen before being flown to Israel. In 1938-1948, he served as a senior education officer in Mandatory Palestine, responsible for Jewish and Arab Schools, and published books on methods of teaching the Bible and Hebrew.

From 1948, Goitein began his life's work on the Cairo Geniza documents. An especially rich geniza with a large volume of correspondence was discovered in Old Cairo containing thousands of documents dating from the 9th to the 13th centuries. Since Jews began every letter or document with the words "With the help of God," the papers reflected all aspects of everyday life in the countries of North Africa and bordering the Mediterranean. The documents included many letters from Jewish traders ''en route'' from Tunisia and Egypt to Yemen and ultimately to India. The papers were mostly written in Judeo-Arabic characters. After deciphering the documents, Goitein vividly reconstructed many aspects of Jewish life in the Middle Ages, publishing them in a six-volume monumental series, ''A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza'' (1967–1993). Although the documents were written by Jews, they reflect the surrounding Muslim and Christian environments not only in countries bordering the Mediterranean but all the way to India. This has thrown new light on the whole study of the Middle Ages.
Goitein consulted extensively the Haskell Isaacs's catalogue of the Wellcome Collection and the Cairo Geniza material, of which he was considered the preeminent scholar.

Agnon correspondence

Goitein's lengthy correspondence with the Nobel Prize-winning author S.Y. Agnon was published by his daughter, Ayala Gordon, in 2008.Gentlemen and scholars, By Dan Laor, 14.01.09
/ref>''Gentlemen and scholars'' Dan Laor, Haaretz, Books, January 2009, p. 16 Agnon's wife, Esther, had studied Arabic privately with Goitein while she was a student at the University of Frankfurt. When Goitein moved to Jerusalem, he and Agnon became close friends. Most of the letters are from the mid-1950s onwards, after Goitein left Israel, a move of which Agnon was highly critical.

Awards and recognition

Goitein was awarded honorary degrees from many universities. He received research awards from Guggenheim (1965), Harvey (1980), and the MacArthur lifetime fellowship (1983). He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1970).

He received the National Jewish Book Award

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