Matti Friedman has written a thrilling book about the Aleppo Codex, the most authoritative version of the Bible, produced in the 10th century by the great Rabbi Aaron Ben-Asher and the scribe Shlomo ben Buya. Named for the Syrian city in which it was housed, the Codex, also known as the Crown of Aleppo, is said to protect those who cared for it and curse those who defile it.
It is not only the most authoritative biblical text, its known for its vocalization and cantillation, and for masorah (transmission), the tradition by which the Scriptures have been preserved from generation to generation.
The story goes: in the mid-11th century, the text was delivered to the Karaite community of Jerusalem, apparently after having been purchased from the heirs of Aaron ben Asher, whose family had been involved in creating and maintaining the masorah for five or six generations. Not long after, it was taken from Jerusalem and eventually wound up in the Rabbanite Synagogue in Cairo, where it was consulted by the Rambam (Maimonides), and upon which he based his Mishneh Torah. Maimonides descendants brought it to Aleppo, Syria, at the end of the 14th century, where the community guarded it zealously for over 600 years.
It was kept safe through numerous upheavals in the Middle East, but during the riots against the Jews in Aleppo, in December 1947, the communitys ancient synagogue was burned and the Codex was believed to be lost.
It turned out that the Jews of Aleppo had managed to retrieve and hide it. Ten years later, it was brought to Jerusalem in a bold, clandestine operation.
When it resurfaced it was missing 200 leaves. The missing leaves have been a subject of fierce controversy. The Jews of Aleppo claim that they were burned. Scholars accuse members of the community of keeping them.
Thus, author Matti Friedman had a rich history to write about. I expected to write a heartening story about the rescue of this book, he said, but instead found myself like a person who innocently opens a cupboard and finds himself buried under a pile of forgotten things.
Friedmans tale involves grizzled Mossad agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book.
Friedman navigates through intentional deceit and government cover-ups in a work that catalogs the convolutedand often deliberately misleadinghistory of one books journey into the hands of the fledgling Jewish state.
When he began, Friedman had no idea that he was about to embark on a four year journey across three continents. I did not recognize the disappearance of the Codexs pages for what it wasa mystery, said Friedman. There were clues still hidden in forgotten crates of documents and in aging minds. And I did not see there was another mystery: how did the Codex get from Syria to Jerusalem? It was an odyssey that involved undercover Mossad agents.
This true-life detective story unveils the journey of the sacred text from its hiding place in a Syrian synagogue to the newly founded state of Israel. Based on Friedmans research, documents kept secret for 50 years, and personal interviews with key players, the book proposes a new theory of what happened when the Codex left Aleppo in the late 1940s and eventually surfaced in Jerusalem, mysteriously incomplete.
By recounting its history, Friedman explores the once vibrant Jewish communities in Islamic lands and follows the thread into the present, uncovering difficult truths about how the manuscript was taken to Israel and why its most important pages were missing. Along the way, he raises critical questions about who owns historical treasures and the role of myth and legend in the creation of a nation.
The Aleppo Codex could be read as a thriller. It could also be read as a history of the Jewish people, or as a meditation on history and myth, said Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
After unearthing hidden documents and interviewing key players from around the world, Friedman is the first person to tell the real story of the Aleppo Codex.
You can purchase his book on Amazon.com and at bookstores and you can view the Aleppo Codex at aleppocodex.org.
