Synagogue Ben Ezra

The Ben Ezra Synagogue holds a wooden bimah that sits beneath a ceiling painted with intricate, geometric floral patterns. This building served as a place of worship for centuries, but it achieved its fame through a storeroom hidden behind a wall. In eighteen ninety-six, scholars discovered the Cairo Geniza here, a collection of nearly three hundred thousand Jewish manuscript fragments. These papers reveal the daily lives, business dealings, and legal disputes of people living in medieval Cairo, preserved by the dry desert air.