For a millennium the Jewish community of Old Cairo placed their old books and other writings, from marriage contracts and love letters, to children’s drawings and even drafts from the hands of Maimonides, in a genizah, or storeroom, of the Ben Ezra Synagogue. In 1896 Dr Solomon Schechter, a Talmudic scholar, was granted permission by the Jewish community of Egypt to take all he liked to Cambridge. He ‘liked it all’ and took 193,000 manuscripts. This treasure trove from Cairo...