Genizah

[citation needed] Genizot are temporary repositories designated for the storage of worn-out Hebrew language books and papers on religious topics prior to proper cemetery burial, it being forbidden to throw away writings containing the name of God.

This custom is associated with the far older practice of burying a great or good man with a sefer (either a book of the Tanakh, or the Mishnah, the Talmud, or any work of rabbinic literature) which has become pasul (unfit for use through illegibility or old age).

In Pesachim 56a, Hezekiah hides (ganaz) a medical work; in Shabbat 115a, Gamaliel orders that the targum to the Book of Job should be hidden (yigganez) under the nidbak (layer of stones).

[citation needed] In medieval times, Hebrew scraps and papers that were relegated to the genizah were known as shemot 'names', because their sanctity and consequent claim to preservation were held to depend on their containing the "names" of God.

[citation needed] In 1927, a manuscript containing Nathan ben Abraham's 11th-century Mishnah commentary was discovered in the genizah of the Jewish community of Sana'a, Yemen.

In 2011, the so-called Afghan Geniza, an 11th-century collection of manuscript fragments in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judaeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, was found in Afghanistan, in caves used by the Taliban.