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34* Sammaries

the authors present a set of seventeen fragments from the Cairo Genizah —
five containing the statutory text of the grace after meals, and the remainder
containing poetic versions — each of which includes the Palestinian zimun
prior to the grace after meals. In their introduction to the fragments, the authors
demonstrate that the Palestinian rite did not use this formulation exclusively;
it is shown that in many cases the Palestinian rite, too, omitted the phrase
“for the food.” On the other hand, the authors establish that the inclusion of
the phrase is indeed uniquely Palestinian, and its appearance within a given
fragment can thus serve as a reliable indicator of the Palestinian nature of the
fragment. Indeed, after surveying the various criteria that have been suggested
in published research to distinguish between the Babylonian and Palestinian
rites of the grace after meals, the authors conclude that the inclusion of the
phrase “for the food” remains, to date, the only reliable criterion for such a
distinction.

A New Look at Genizah Fragments of
‘Midrash Chadash Al Hatorah ’

Gila Vachman

In 1940 Jacob Mann published the first volume of a book entitled The Bible
as Read and Preached in the Old synagogue, in which he presented the first
part of a previously unknown Midrash, which he named ‘Midrash Chadash
Al Hatorah.’ Mann passed away that same year, and the rest of this text was
published by his colleague, Isaiah Sonne, in a second volume by the same title
published in 1966. The most important manuscript of this Midrash, which is