Hillel ben Eli was a scribe and cantor in Fustat, Egypt, between 1066 and 1108. Numerous rabbinical court documents and other items in his handwriting have survived, constituting the second-largest body of documents in the Cairo Geniza written in one individual’s handwriting. The only person to surpass him in this respect was his son-in-law, Ḥalfon ha-Levi ben Manasseh, who was also a rabbinical court scribe. Interestingly, the Geniza documents reveal that even an experienced scribe like Hillel ben Eli would sometimes spell the same word differently, even in the same document.

In addi…