This research project focuses on the 15 Hebrew manuscripts of the "Erfurter Sammlung" (Erfurt collection). After the elimination of the Jewish community of Erfurt during the Black Death pogrom in 1349, the manuscripts have travelled from library to library and have been kept in the Orient Department of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin since 1880. This spectacular collection includes the largest complete Bible manuscript, four of the oldest Torah scrolls, one elaborately illuminated Machzor (a Jewish prayer book for the High Holidays), as well as a Tosefta manuscript on its own, of which only three have been found worldwide.

The project aims to consider and describe these manuscripts in their cultural-historical context in order to gain clarity on Jewish life in Erfurt through these fragments. The manuscripts are to be regarded as their very own socio-cultural sources and compared to cultural, architectural and ritual artefacts from the surroundings of the Jewish community during the Middle Ages. As part of the many treasures of Jewish Erfurt which have survived, they tell the story of an important community with an enormous cultural heritage, a community that has wrongfully been kept in the shadows of SchUM (Speyer, Worms, Mainz). The project seeks to enhance research on medieval Jewish Erfurt, which has started twenty years ago with archeological finds, by introducing the aspect of manuscriptual transmission, in order to add to the scientific reappraisal of Erfurt's role as a focus point within the Jewish regional landscape. The idea of a community based mainly on a rich material culture should be questioned, an it should instead be shown that Jewish scribal culture and Jewish spiritual life have played an important role in Erfurt, even without the veifiable presence of outstanding scholars.

The project will focus on the Erfurt Machzor, which could reveal important indications about religious practice in the medieval community. This manuscript will be examined in-depth from a text-critical perspective, so as to detect liturgical speceficities and distinct performative elements in the Erfurt community through comparison with other medieval Machzorim in Ashkenaz. In this project, several methods will be combined: different but related approaches of materiality research, genetic textual criticism and ritual theory along with innovative techniques of digital edotorial studies.

External research partners: „Center for Jewish Art“ in Jerusalem; Research Center „Dynamik ritueller Praktiken im Judentum in pluralistischen Kontexten von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart“ of Erfurt University; „Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg“ and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.