“College is a time where there will never again be as much intellectual stimulation. This is a great way to learn about something very few people probably really know about,” said Noah Bickart in reference to the film “From Cairo to the Cloud.” The film, being shown on campus next Monday, Nov. 18, is the story of the Cairo Geniza, which is a large collection of ancient manuscripts, some dating as far back as the 12th century. Bickart, a professor in the Theology and Religious Studies Department, is featured in the film.

The story of how he became featured in this film is a bit of a “silly one,” according to Bickart. He received his doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary where Solomon Schechter, who found these manuscripts originally in 1896, had also studied. Hence, much of the Cairo Geniza ended up at the library at Bickart’s seminary.

Scholars from all over the world came to study at this library, one of whom was filmmaker Michelle Paymar. She saw Bickart utilizing the ancient texts with a class of first-year rabbinical students, and wanted to include him and his students in the film. A number of Bickart’s teachers are in the film as well.

“It’s really rare that you can know people from ancient history,” Bickart explained. “The Cairo Geniza is the snapshot of real life that is so rare. It is exciting because it is the pieces of real life that show that people now and people from back then are really the same.” From love poems to a wife complaining about her husband, the Cairo Geniza is a documentation of everyday occurrences and demonstrates that humans are the same regardless of time.

Bickart says this film carries the weight of explaining what he really does for a living. “I am a religion professor. I teach students about what it means to be Jewish and Judaism, but a lot of my job is also reading ancient books, which many people do not understand. This film is really about the scholarly enterprise of trying to see how people lived back then.”

This film also shows that interreligious dialogue is not just a modern, contemporary idea but something that has been around for at least a thousand years. According to Bickart, “The Cairo Geniza shows that all religions occupy the same world and engage in each other’s ideas, both now and a thousand years ago.”

Bickart explained that this is a theme that the entire Jewish community, as well as people of all religions, can take away from this film.

Bickart said he would also like to thank and offer appreciation to the Tuohy Chair in Interreligious Studies, the group paying for the screening of the film.