Cairo Genizah : Letter

Joseph b. Ismaʿīl (Samaritan)

Cairo Genizah

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Part of a letter written by a Samaritan carpenter, Joseph b. Ismaʿīl, asserting his devotion to the Law and seeking employment for the writer. It was probably written to a Rabbanite community. Bodl. Heb. b 11 (Cat. 2874) is a letter from the same individual, and reveals he is destitute and requests that the ‘head carpenter’ be instructed to accept him, because his co-religionists, the Samaritans, were too concerned with their own prosperity and not with poor people like him. The letter is written on the inside folios of a bifolium, with the writer’s name on f. 1r and blank on f. 2v. It appears to have been bound into a codex.</p>