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themselves—and no one remembers the poor man who delivered the city.”
    Wertheimer’s own close brush was, he clearly felt, with bibliographic immortality. In this sense, he was not alone. The final countdown to Schechter’s “discovery” was marked by the melancholy presence of several such aggrieved and almost-famous men—now nearly forgotten.
    O ne of the most painful of the close brushes that make up the early story of the Geniza is that of Adolf Neubauer, an extremely learned, slightly bitten Hungarian Jewish scholar and bibliographer who was Solomon Schechter’s sometimes friend but more often rival, and the man who probably came nearer than anyone else to beating Schechter—and Cambridge—in the race to pack up and haul off the bulk of the Geniza documents.
    Some sixteen years Schechter’s senior, the multilingual Neubauer had studied in Prague and Paris and immersed himself for years in the exacting analysis and publication of various Hebrew manuscripts. In 1868, he was hired by the Bodleian Library to catalog their extensive Hebrew holdings, and was eventually appointed sub-librarian of the entire collection. Later named that university’s Reader in Rabbinics, he was Schechter’s Oxford counterpart, if not in social at least in professional terms—and for several years these two erudite émigré scholars, among the only Jews in their respective Oxbridge settings, shared a wary bond, based on their common Central European background and, more important, on their passion for Hebrew manuscripts.

    ( Photo Credit 2.8 )
    Their friendship was far from simple, and their personalities were quite distinct. Never one to mince words, Mathilde Schechter gently mocks in an unpublished memoir the lifelong bachelor Neubauer’s severe stinginess, though she does allow that he had his winning qualities too. He had been very handsome once, “with his small features and fine blueeyes.” And when she and Schechter came to know him, “in spite of [his] twenty-seven year [old] coat he always looked scrupulously clean and well-groomed, and he had a great deal of dignity.… [W]e really were fond of him, although it was trying sometimes.”
    That fondness aside, her portrait—written years later, after the friendship had completely withered—stings. (“He always had the idea that every woman he met was in love with him, and that he was irresistible,” she notes, without comment.) She describes how she and Schechter found Neubauer once in his Oxford house reading manuscripts late at night beside “one little tallow candle,” which was the only light in the house. Whenever Neubauer got a new manuscript he’d invite Schechter to come see it, and Mathilde would send her husband “laden with good things to eat, partly in order to observe the dietary laws and partly because I knew he would not have enough food at Neubauer’s.” She goes on: “Whenever I came [to Oxford] with Schechter, we stayed at lodgings, but being very polite to ladies he [Neubauer] insisted upon my coming to lunch with Schechter, where he served the cheapest fish obtainable. He was very proud of his coffee, which he made himself, and which was indeed excellent. Somebody once sent him some very good cheese, and when I asked for a second helping he put the dish far away at the other side of the table and assured me that it was not healthy for me.”
    Neubauer had, in certain respects, a head start where the Geniza was concerned: as early as 1876 he had been sent by the Bodleian to St. Petersburg, to report back on the Firkovitch collection. In the description he offered upon his return, he explained the idea of a geniza, and made it clear how important he thought this particular Karaite “collection of … manuscript débris, ” concluding his remarks with the startling (for its time) suggestion: “May I be allowed to draw the attention of the University to the treasures which Rabbanite synagogues might offer from their numerous ‘Genizoth’