Friday, July 22, 1977 17 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS A statement in the Torah does not depart from its ordinary meaning. —Sabbath 63-. !! WHY WORRY !! . Leave Everything to Us Nyn & Harold Landis HOME CATERING t'hone 557-6157 WYN-HAROLD CATERING Murray Goldenberg PHILADEPHIA—Three closely guarded rooms and a walk-in vault at Dropsie University in Philadelphia have drawn the interest of scholars around the world. For it is here, on the campus of the 111-member student body university, that one can find the keys to ancient mysteries in innu- HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH HAL GORDON Musical Entertainment Big Bands or Small Combo. • STYLE • ELEGANCE • BEAUTY (355-4999 - Herman Jaffee . Southfield Rd. at 13 Mile 646-8484 "AVOID A COLD WINTER" NAT MARGOLIS FURNITURE formerly of Detroit, Mich. serving you in Florida with quality brand name furniture at discount prices. • American of Martinsville • Broyhill • • Lane • Dixie • Serta-Spring-sire • A Complete Line of convertibles and dinette sets Special orders Accepted NAT MARGOLIS FURNITURE Phone Orders Accepted 2930 N. Federal Hwy. (305) 561-0600 Ft. Lauderdale, Fia. 33308 ELECTROLYSIS WORKS! WE FOUND THAT OUT 16 YEARS AGO. AND WE HAVE BEEN HELPING PEOPLE RID THEMSELVES OF 'UNSIGHTLY HAIR EVER SINCE. HELEN ZINBERG R.E. IF YOU HAVE EMBARRASSING HAIR ON THE FACE, UPPER LIP, ARMS, LEGS, OR THIGHS, IT CAN-BE REMOVED PERMA- NENTLY. NOT BY GADGETS, NOT BY PROMISED MIRACLES, BUT BY MEDICALLY APPROVED ELECTROLYSIS. 16125 W. 12 MILE RD. OPEN MON. THROUGH FRI. INCLUSIVE BY APPOINTMENT — 557-8115 ./.‘// /WIZ/ JPS Names Lamm Dropsie University Great Vault Holds Key to Ancient Mysteries / /// //////// / merable and priceless Bible and Talmud fragments, fragments of paper and vel- lum bearing aged rabbinic- al decrees and more. According to the Phila- delphia Inquirer's maga- zine, Today, one can find thousands of rare books pub- lished from 1500 to 1699, other rare book sections containing nothing but Bibles, another displaying only clay tablets recording the affairs of businessmen circa 3500 BCE. There are the periodical stacks, shelf after shelf of scholarly and popular magazine and news- papers dealing with Judaica and the Middle East. The magazine continues: "Then there is the great vault, guarded by a heavy steel door and combination lock. The air inside is cold and damp to preserve its precious contents. These manuscripts and fragments of paper and vellum that lasted for millenia in the hot, dry desert air of the Middle East would crumble in the suphur- and lead- tainted air hanging over American cities. But the ar- tificial purity of Dropsie's vault and the reverence with which the manuscripts are touched by the students permit them to live on. "Against one wall of the vault are hundreds of co- dices (manuscripts bound in the shape of books, suc- cessors to scrolls and wax tablets). Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Samaritan, Sansk- rit, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek and Turkish manuscripts line the shelves. One codex is the 1500 edition of the code of Muslim law accord- ing to Abu Hanifa, written in 1197. "Then come incunabula, books produced in the earliest stages of printing, before 1500. There is, for ex- ample, Maimonides' com- mentary on the Torah, pub- lished in 1490; a Book of Psalms, published in 1487; a Holy Day prayer book ac- cording to the Roman rite, published in 1485. All of these were done by what was probably the world's first commercial press, the Soncino Press in Naples. "Some of the most in- triguing items are a hand- wntten history of the Popes up to 1600; a 13th Century Hebrew prayer book accord- ing to the Italian rite, writ- ten on vellum, and a crum- bling, browned paper re- cording the first sermon preached at a synagogue in Newport, R. I., on May 28, PHILADELPHIA—Nor- man Lamm. president of Yeshiva University, has been named to the pub- lication committee of The Jewish Publication Society of America. 1773. "Many scholars consider the most precious gem in Dropsie's vault to be a col- lection of 450 pieces of paper, papyrus and parch- ment, some torn, some burned, some fragmented, some so faded they are al- most impossible to read. They are from the geniza of the Cairo Synagogue, estab- lished in 616 in a former church building. (Geniza comes from the Hebrew word "ganaz," which means to hide or bury, and genizas were burial crypts for worn-out books, main- tained in synagogues.)" The Dropsie collection is part of the books and re- cords of the Jewish commu- nity of old Cairo that were buried in the geniza for al- most 1,300 years. After Prof. Solomon Schecter, then of Cambridge Univer- sity, uncovered the geniza in 1896, its contents became scattered. They went to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, to Paris, Vienna, Budapest and Mos- cow, but one of the largest representations is housed at Dropsie. It includes: • The world's oldest known Haggada, the book that is read in every Jewish home on the first night of Passover. • A contract recording the marriage in Egypt of a Jewish couple now dead 1,000 years. • One of the oldest and longest letters in the world (7,000 words when trans- lated from Hebrew into English), written in 1064 by a Sicilian Jew to an un- known recipient. It tells of the writer's voyage to Tu- nisia, where he faced death in a civil war among the Muslims. Historians writing about the Mediterranean area during the Middle Ages have used this letter as a reference. • Six decisions of a rabbi- nical court written in Arab- ic. • Part of a treatise on charms. It offers formulas for inducing love in another person and for the inter- pretation of dreams. • Part of the translation into Hebrew of Hippo- crates' book on medicine. The SHELDON ROTT ORCHESTRA Featuring & Recording Artist- VICKIE CARROLL "Professional Entertainment" 967-3187 255-1599/ :•••••••••••.........•••• ■ •••-•-•-• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • HAS WHAT YOU NEED • • • • AND WANT AT • • • • • • • • • SCHLUSSEL • • • • S • • • • • • 863-2388 1 • • LIFETIME GUARANTEE CN MUFFLERS & SHOCKS : • As Long As You tdwn Your Car • • • • • 10520 W. 7 Mile Rd. at Mendoto • • ••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • • • I • ALL SUMMER & SPRING SHOES Price Values from $25 to $75 Wedges • Moccasin _ s • Patent Leathers • Dress Shoes • Crepe Soles Choose from Famous Brands Pierre Cardin French Shriner -Freeman Joyce Verde - Hush Puppies Volare & Many others NEW ORLEANS MALL 10 Mile & Greenfield Mon., Thurs., Fri. 9:30 -8:30 559.1818 TueLlSif-e616,0Sat. BEAT THE HEAT WITH A NEW AIR CONDITIONED ART MORAN PONTIAC Texas U. Gets Books in Yiddish SUMMER SAVING TIME SAN ANTONIO (JTA)—A collection of nearly 3,000 Yiddish books has been ac- quired by the library of Texas University here, mak- ing it one of the top ten li- braries in the United States in Yiddish collections, ac- cording to a Texas Univer- sity scholar. Dr. Seth Wolitz, associate professor of comparative lit- erature and French, said that the collection was "re- markable" in that "it covers the entire range of Yiddish literature and con- tains original editions of many classics." 29300 TELEGRAPH JU T. NORTH OF TEL TWELVE MALL! • *; A A s a . . a AL SiEINBERG