Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows:
Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood and My Happiness Bears No
Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century,
which was named a best book of 2009 by the Barnes & Noble
Review.
Peter Cole’s most recent book of poems is Things on Which
I’ve Stumbled. His many volumes of award-winning translations
include The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and
Christian Spain, 950––1492. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in
2007.
Hoffman and Cole live, together, in Jerusalem and New Haven.
WINNER OF THE 2012 AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION'S SOPHIE BRODY
AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN JEWISH LITERATURE
“Beautifully written, learned and lucid, Sacred Trash is a treasure
that should not be hidden . . . Exquisitely realized.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A literary jewel whose pages turn like those of a well-paced
thriller, but with all the chiseled elegance and flashes of
linguistic surprise that we associate with poetry . . . Sacred
Trash has made history beautiful and exciting.”
—The Nation
“Hoffman and Cole unfold this saga with dramatic flair, peppering
their narrative with the Geniza’s own distinct voices, from the
ancient and medieval to the modern and contemporary. Skillfully
they embed the drama contained within the old texts with the
contemporary dramas of the people handling the texts . . . It is a
testament to [them] that they have fleshed out these ghosts, and
patiently constructed a vivid, human saga every bit as
extraordinary as a miracle.”
—Haaretz (Israel)
“Both lively and elevating . . . An extended act of celebration of
Cairo’s historical Jewish community, their documents, and their
documents’ 20th-century students . . . wonderfully revived by
Hoffman and Cole.”
—Anthony Julius, The New York Times Book Review
“A multi-layered work that provokes admiration and excites the
imagination on many levels.”
—Moment
“Hoffman and Cole’s vivid portrayal of the discovery of the ancient
Cairo Geniza . . . is equal parts treasure hunt for the sacred and
historical, and Herculean rescue of important texts . . . Sacred
Trash is a wonderfully accessible and exciting account of ‘numerous
heroes, medieval and modern’ and their discoveries of artifacts
that have transformed our understanding of the interplay between
history and religion.”
—The Boston Globe
“The real behind-the-scenes story of the Cairo Geniza and the
Western scholars who retrieved and studied it is . . . also a very
human story, as Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole show in their charming
and unobtrusively erudite new book.”
—The Jewish Review of Books
“A wonderfully passionate and lively account of a civilization we
could not have imagined existed and of the men and women whose
enthusiasm and dedication brought it to light.”
—Gabriel Josipovici, The Wall Street Journal
"Absorbing . . . Hoffman and Cole are adroit in their
exegesis . . . [Sacred Trash is] an accessible, neatly narrated
story of hallowed detritus and the resurrection of nearly 1,000
years of culture and learning."
—Kirkus Reviews
“What a delight to have the story of the Cairo Geniza, its romantic
recovery and spectacular contents, told here by two such brilliant
wordsmiths as Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole. This book takes readers
to the very navel of the medieval world, east and west, Arab and
Jew, shattering many preconceptions along the way.”
—Janet Soskice, author of Sisters of Sinai
“Hoffman and Cole spin an extraordinary tale of intellectual
adventure and lasting scholarly accomplishment. The men and women
who brought the Cairo Geniza to light are presented here in
painstaking detail, their quirks and their brilliance exposed in
equal measure. Carefully researched and beautifully written.”
—James Kugel, author of How to Read the Bible
“Sacred Trash is a jewel of a book: a lively and deeply informed
account of the Cairo Geniza, a magnificent Egyptian treasure-house
of Jewish religion, literature, and history that was forgotten for
centuries, and of the extraordinary crew of scholars and
impresarios who saved the documents, fitted the scraps back
together, and made them speak and sing.”
—Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
One hundred and twenty years ago, time travel was all at once
realized: With the discovery of the Cairo Geniza, medieval Jewish
life in all its sacred and mundane efflorescence came tumbling out
in thousands of manuscript fragments, each one a distinct and
living voice of an ancestral civilization. No longer can we speak
of the seven wonders of the world—in this astounding and acutely
relevant tale, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole have uncovered a
remarkable eighth; and in its connection to our own humanity, it
surpasses all the rest.”
—Cynthia Ozick
“Sacred Trash is a small masterpiece. The romance of Hebrew
scholarship has never been so vividly conveyed. This book is
extraordinary in characterization, thought, and prose style. It
will teach common readers, Jewish and gentile, how much spiritual
tradition owes to the greatest scholars. This teaching comes
through delight.”
—Harold Bloom
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