The Cairo (Egypt) Genizah is a collection of hundreds of thousands of documents preserved in the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo (Fustat). According to Jewish practice, sacred writings that can no longer be used must be buried, and before their burial they are to be stored in a special repository called a “genizah.” For unknown reasons, the materials deposited in the Ben Ezra Genizah were never sent for burial, so the Genizah preserved discarded writings from the time of its original construction in the 9^th century to the time of its discovery by Europeans in the 19^th century. In addition, many of the documents found in the Genizah were not sacred writings. The community seems to have believed that Hebrew letters themselves are sufficiently sacred to require deposit of writings using these characters in a genizah, and since the Arabic speaking Jews of Cairo wrote their Arabic using Hebrew letters, many types of common documents wound up in the Genizah. 

The page before you, is from a siddur—a Jewish prayer book. It is written clearly but not in a fine hand, on common paper. It was probably written by a person for their own use, therefore, or by a scribe hired to create a simple personal copy. During the manuscript age (before print), few people had copies of any book, so this is evidence of the great love of the owner of this book for the Jewish prayer tradition. 

The right page in front of you includes, among others, the prayer for the elimination of the enemies of Israel (= the Jewish People). Beginning with a statement that Jews who have turned aside from Jewish practice should have no hope before they return to the Torah, it then proceeds to pray that “Christians [Notzrim] and sectarians be wiped out in an instant.” Jews, like other people, knew who their enemies were, and when you are hated, you hate back in return. Notably, this text preserves a version of the prayer that was not yet subject to censorship, which began in earnest in the mid-16^th century.