Geniza project
Rotten away old prayer books in the original Chortkov bima found forgotten in the blue room after decades of decay in 2010
The Geniza project grew out from the RESEARCH project and our long time effort to save all religious artifacts in the shul.
The shul possesses hundreds of old prayer books, oldest ones from the nineteenth century. Some of them very valuable. They all need to be sorted, examined, and the ones in better condition should be restored, and saved.
We are preparing to collect resources to save and renovate as many of them, as possible.
Handwritten personal notes and stamps allow a very unique glimpse into the lives and origin of the people who once frequented the shul. A gold mine for genealogists. This part of the project is strongly interconnected with the RESEARCH project.
We do not give any of these books away, selling or gifting is out of the question, the same was with all objects used in the shul might them possess high values or not any at all.
In September 2011 prof. Michael Miller took the time to examine 2 of our bookshelves and helped sorting the books on them. We have hundreds of Machzorim and dozens of Sidurim some of them Ashkenazi some of them Sepharadi. We also found other interesting books, many of them dating back to the 19th century.
We are looking for opportunities for cooperation for saving these and all other artifacts in the shul. We are in partnership with MILEV, the Hungarian Jewish Archives, together we wish to find resources for the project.
In January 2018 we started digitizing and categorizing of the books. We created a database with all the information on the books themselves and also all the notes, names, dates stamps in the books. We wish to make all this available soon for the public.
