Letter: T-S 13J21.10

Description

Recto (secondary use): Late letter in Hebrew to R. Shelomo ha-Sofer from "your wife Dona Soro (=Sara?) and your daughters Reina and Raḥel and your son-in-law Moshe." They are dismayed at Shelomo's lack of response to their numerous letters urging him to return. They ask him to approach R. Shelomo ha-Rofe (David suggests this is the same Shelomo ha-Rofe who had access to the Nagid, mentioned in T-S G1.17, lines 15–16) and obtain an exemption from the tax. They have heard that the addressee plan to travel to Turkey, and they beg him not to do so. This would cause strife between his pregnant daughter Reina and her husband Moshe, it would cause bad luck to Rahel, who is grown and beautiful and good and modest, for the world will scorn the family and say, "look at this good, elderly, scribe who abandoned his wife and daughters after so many years. He must have gone mad, because he has traveled to a distant land," and you know what the verse says, "The eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth" (Proverbs 17:24). So please beseech R. Shelomo ha-Rofe that he obtain for you an exemption ('ketav') from the tax, and (even?) if you cannot, return. See also analysis in Zinger, "Long Distance Marriages in the Cairo Geniza," p. 28. ASE