The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible

by Matti Friedman

  Descriptions of Aleppo on the night of the vote come from interviews with Rafi Sutton at his home in Israel in 2009 and 2010. The description of the sexton’s daily rounds comes from interviews with his daughter Batya Ron (formerly Bahiyeh Baghdadi) at her home in Israel in 2009 and 2010.

  Quotes from Arab representatives are from Morris, 1948; Mandate of Destiny; and Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003).

  The Zionist delegate to the UN quoted here is David Horowitz, a future governor of the Bank of Israel. The quotes are from his book A State in the Making (New York: Knopf, 1953), excerpted in Momentous Century: Personal and Eyewitness Accounts of the Rise of the Jewish Homeland and State, 1875–1978, edited by Levi Soshuk and Azriel Eisenberg (New York: Cornwall Books, 1984).

  Descriptions of Jerusalem on the night of the vote and the quote from Golda Meir are from Morris, 1948, and Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972).

  Chapter 2: Aleppo

  Descriptions of the Baghdadi family’s daily schedule are from interviews with Batya Ron (Bahiyeh Baghdadi) and her sister Carmela Dweck (née Baghdadi) in Israel in 2009 and 2010.

  Murad Faham’s description of that day comes from the transcript of an oral testimony he recorded at Hebrew University in 1976, provided to me by his grandson Jack Dweck.

  Rafi Sutton’s account is from interviews in 2009 and 2010, as well as from an extensive oral testimony he recorded at Hebrew University in the late 1980s.

  The Aleppo Jews named Lenin, Stalin, and Karl are mentioned in Amnon Shamosh’s Hebrew collection Gluyot Meolam Haemet (Tel Aviv: Massada, 2010), in the chapter titled “Lenin and Stalin Come to Visit.”

  The boy who had his beret knocked off is Isaac Tawil, interviewed in Israel in 2009. The boy who remembered sprinting home from school is Yosef Entebbe, interviewed in Israel in 2010.

  The text of the ad published by the Jewish youth club in Damascus, and the numbers of Jews killed in the postwar riots, are from Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands.

  Chapter 3: The Fire

  Descriptions of the riot in Aleppo come from interviews with Rabbi Isaac Tawil in Israel, 2009; Rafi Sutton in Israel, 2009 and 2010; Batya Ron (Bahiyeh Baghdadi) in Israel, 2009 and 2010; Carmela Dweck (née Baghdadi) in Israel, 2010; Yosef Entebbe (the boy who escaped into the alley as rioters entered his home) in Israel, 2009; Professor Yom-Tov Assis in Israel, 2009; Maurice Silvera in New York, 2010; and Leon Tawil in New York, 2010.

  The January 2, 1948, edition of Haaretz, with the article on the Crown by Professor Umberto Cassuto, is on microfilm at the national library in Jerusalem. Translations into English are mine.

  Chapter 4: The Swift Scribe of Tiberias

  The inscription beginning “This is the full codex” is from the colophon of the Crown of Aleppo as copied by Umberto (Moshe David) Cassuto in 1943, published in Hebrew in “Keter Aram-Tzova—Le’or reshimotav shel M. D. Cassuto,” by Yosef Ofer, in Sefunot 19 (1988–89). The colophon was later among the pages that disappeared.

  The account of Eli the Nazir is from Nehemia Aloni’s article in Hebrew in Leshonenu 34 (1969–70), “Eli ben Yehuda Hanazir vehiburo ‘yesodot halashon ha-ivrit.’ ”

  Material on the Masora is from the Encyclopedia Judaica and from interviews with Dr. Raphael Zer of the Hebrew University Bible Project in 2009 and 2010. I am grateful to Dr. Zer for his assistance in preparing this chapter.

  Material on the creation of the Crown in Tiberias comes from Mordechai Glatzer, “Melechet hasefer shel Keter Aram-Tzova vehashlachoteha,” Sefunot 19 (1988–89).

  Chapter 5: The Treasure in the Synagogue

  The number of schools, homes, and businesses destroyed in the riot is taken from contemporary reports cited in Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands.

  The description of prayers at the Señor Moshe synagogue and of the chanting of Psalm 83 is from an interview with Rabbi Isaac Tawil in Israel, 2009.

  For an example of the claim that “tens” of people were killed, see Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider, The Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 2010).

  The description of the Syrian authorities and the wealthy Armenian doctor looking for the Crown comes from the transcript of a conversation in late 1958 between President Ben-Zvi and Rabbi Moshe Tawil. From the archive of the Ben-Zvi Institute.

  The first version of the Crown’s rescue, from Rabbi Sadka Harari in Mexico City, and the second, about the Syrian minister, are recounted in Amnon Shamosh’s history of the Crown, Haketer: Sipuro Shel Keter Aram-Tzova (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1987).

  Murad Faham’s account of rescuing the Crown comes from his oral testimony recorded in 1976.

  The elderly rabbi I interviewed in the synagogue in 2010 was Yaakov Attiyeh. For yet another version of the Crown’s rescue, this one from Samuel Sabbagh, see chapter 22.

  The account of Asher Baghdadi’s rescuing the Crown comes from interviews with his daughters Batya Ron (Bahiyeh Baghdadi) and Carmela Dweck (née Baghdadi) and from a TV interview given by his son Shahoud (Shaul) Baghdadi in 1989 (broadcast in 1993). This version is corroborated in testimony given by Sarah Haver of Aleppo in Jerusalem in 1948; the community’s treasurer, Yaakov Hazan, in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961; and Rabbi Itzjak Chehebar, during Rafi Sutton’s investigation, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1989.

  The account of the Crown’s transfer to a Christian merchant and of the length of time it remained in his hands comes from Rabbi Moshe Tawil’s 1958 conversation with President Ben-Zvi, kept in the archive of the Ben-Zvi Institute. The name of the merchant—Fathi Intaki—and the fact of the Crown’s transfer afterward to Ibrahim Effendi Cohen, were first uncovered by Rafi Sutton in his 1989 investigation.

  Chapter 6: The Jerusalem Circle

  Descriptions of Jerusalem in early 1948 are from Morris, 1948, and from Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem.

  A transcript of the scholars’ meeting about the Crown can be found in Shamosh, Haketer. In many cases, the original documents used by Shamosh for his investigation were not returned to the Ben-Zvi Institute’s archive and have been lost, and the only existing record of them can be found in his book.

  Information on Isaac Shamosh and his trip to Aleppo are from an interview with his brother, Amnon Shamosh, in Israel in 2009.

  Quotes from the secretary’s letter come from a copy of the letter, written in Hebrew on the stationery of the Palmyra Hotel and provided to me by Ezra Kassin. The reference to an attempt to covertly photograph the manuscript comes from Shamosh, Haketer.

  Quotes from Cassuto’s diary, and descriptions of his time in Aleppo in his own words, are from his article about the Crown published in Haaretz, January 2, 1948, and from Shamosh, Haketer. Details of Cassuto’s observations of the Crown are from Ofer, “Keter Aram-Tzova—Le’or reshimotav shel M. D. Cassuto,” and Glatzer, “Melechet hasefer shel Keter Aram-Tzova vehashlachoteha.”

  The rabbi who guarded Cassuto was Yaakov Attiyeh, whom I interviewed in a synagogue in Bat-Yam, Israel, in 2010.

  Details of Cassuto’s tragic family history are from interviews with David Cassuto, his grandson and the son of Nathan and Chana Cassuto, in Israel, 2010.

  Chapter 7: The Sack of Jerusalem

  Some scholars have posited in the past that the Crown was taken from Jerusalem not by the crusaders in 1099 but by the Seljuk Turks several decades earlier. The most recent scholarship, however, attributes the Crown’s capture to the crusaders. See Haggai Ben-Shammai, “Notes on the Peregrinations of the Aleppo Codex,” in Aleppo Studies I (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2009).

  The description of the fall of Jerusalem is drawn in part from Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” in Crusades, vol. 3 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2004). More on the sack of the city and the messianic rumblings that preceded it comes from Joshua Prawer, History of the Jews in the La
tin Kingdom of Jerusalem (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). I am indebted to the Crusades scholar Jonathan Rubin of Hebrew University for his invaluable assistance in preparing this chapter.

  Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum (The Deeds of the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem) was written by an anonymous knight, apparently a Norman or Italian, who participated in the First Crusade and the assault on Jerusalem. Translated by Rosalind Hill (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).

  Gilo’s epic poem is from The Historia Vie Hierosolomitanei of Gilo of Paris and a Second, Anonymous Author, edited and translated by C. W. Grocock and J. E. Sieberry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

  The description of the Jews being burned in a synagogue is from the Damascene historian Ibn al-Qalanisi, cited in Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099.”

  Material on the redemption of Jewish books from Jerusalem is from S. D. Goitein, “Contemporary Letters on the Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders,” Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (1952), and from S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 5, The Individual: Portrait of a Mediterranean Personality of the High Middle Ages as Reflected in the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

  Chapter 8: The Jump

  The description of Bahiyeh Baghdadi’s escape comes from interviews with her in Israel in 2009 and 2010.

  Background on the arrival in Israel of Jews from Arab lands is drawn from Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis (New York: Henry Holt, 1986).

  The description of Rafi Sutton’s escape is from interviews with him in Israel in 2009 and 2010 and from his oral testimony recorded at Hebrew University in the late 1980s.

  Chapter 9: The President

  The description of Ben-Zvi’s preoccupation with the Crown is from an interview with David Bartov in Israel in 2010.

  The New Yorker article is by John Hersey, from the magazine’s November 24, 1951, issue.

  Amos Elon’s description of Ben-Zvi’s generation is from The Israelis: Founders and Sons (New York: Penguin, 1983).

  Details of Ben-Zvi’s attitude toward the Jews of the East are from Gish Amit’s doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2010 to Ben-Gurion University, “The Jewish National and University Library 1945–1955: The Transfer to Israel of Holocaust Victims’ Books, the Collection of Palestinian Libraries during the 1948 War, and the Appropriation of Books of Jewish Emigrants from Yemen.”

  The letter from Chief Rabbi Ben-Zion Ouziel, and the letters from Ben-Zvi and his secretary, are from the Ben-Zvi Institute archive. Translations are mine.

  Chapter 10: The Merchant’s Mission

  Information on Ibrahim Effendi Cohen is from an interview with his great-nephew Moshe Cohen in Israel, 2010.

  Information on the condition of Aleppo’s Jews at this time, and the fact that one-third were destitute, is from a letter sent by an Israeli immigration agent in Turkey on December 5, 1958. From the Zionist Archive, Jerusalem.

  The quote on the Jews’ living “in constant fear” is from a confidential report dispatched to the American Jewish Committee by Don Peretz in July 1957, cited in Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands.

  The account of Faham’s torture is drawn from the transcript of his 1976 oral testimony and from an interview with his son Avraham Pe’er in Israel, 2010.

  This account from Faham of his crucial conversation with the rabbis on the eve of his departure is drawn from his 1958 testimony in court. Tawil’s account is from the rabbi’s own 1958 testimony.

  Sarina Faham gave her account of packing the Crown in a washing machine in a TV interview with Rafi Sutton taped in 1989 in Brooklyn, New York, and broadcast on Israel’s Channel 1 TV in 1993.

  Chapter 11: Maimonides

  Details of Maimonides’s life and quotes from his letters are drawn from the fascinating and comprehensive Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds, by Professor Joel Kraemer of the University of Chicago (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

  Details of the Crown’s journey from Cairo to Aleppo are drawn from Menahem Ben-Sasson, “The ‘Libraries’ of the Maimonides Family between Cairo and Aleppo,” in Aleppo Studies I (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2009).

  I gained much insight into the thought of Maimonides, and especially into the content of the Guide of the Perplexed, in conversations with my father, the Maimonides scholar R. Z. Friedman of University College, University of Toronto.

  The quote on the Crown from the Mishneh Torah can be found in the laws governing the writing of Torah scrolls, section eight, chapter four.

  Chapter 12: Alexandretta

  Details of Israel’s immigration efforts, including information on bribes paid by Israelis and the quote from Shlomo Zalman Shragai, are from Segev, 1949: The First Israelis.

  The letter to Silo on “saving our brothers rotting in the exile of Ishmael” was written by the Israeli immigration agents H. Shadmi and Y. Pa’el in Turkey on December 5, 1958, and comes from the Zionist Archive in Jerusalem. The letter referring to “wild incitement” was written by the same agents to Aliya Department headquarters in Jerusalem on the same date. The lists of Aleppo Jews, the Faham telegram, and the letter from the rabbi—Itzjak Chehebar of Buenos Aires—are also from the Zionist Archive. I am grateful to Professor Yosef Ofer for putting his own extensive research at the archive at my disposal.

  Background on Shlomo Zalman Shragai, including his concern at this time for the Jews of Cochin, comes from his extensive files at the Zionist Archive in Jerusalem.

  Information on Yitzhak Pessel comes from an interview with his son Avner Fassal in Israel, 2010.

  Chapter 13: The Brown Suitcase

  The description of that night at Shragai’s house is from an interview with his son Eliyahu Shragai in Israel, 2010.

  Shragai’s letter to Faham, and Faham’s letter to Shragai, are preserved in the Crown file at the Israel State Archive, as well as in the file kept by the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court. The translations are mine.

  Chapter 14: The Trial

  Yitzhak Zaafrani’s account comes from his testimony to the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court on May 4, 1958, and from an interview with him in 2010.

  Faham’s account of his interaction with Rabbi Dayan comes from his own testimony in court in 1958 and from his oral testimony recorded in 1976.

  The letter from Meir Laniado describing Faham as a “crooked messenger” was sent to Meir Benayahu, Ben-Zvi’s secretary, on September 9, 1960, and is kept in the Ben-Zvi Institute archive.

  Chapter 15: A Religious Man

  Faham’s testimony and cross-examination are from the transcripts preserved by the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court.

  Ben-Zvi’s handwritten notes documenting the reports of the government lawyer, Shlomo Toussia-Cohen, are from the Crown file at the state archive in Jerusalem.

  Chapter 16: Our Last Drop of Blood

  The letters presented to the court by Shragai are in the file kept at the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court and in the Crown file at the state archive in Jerusalem.

  The angry letter from Meir Laniado accusing the state of trying to cut a deal with Isaac Shalom is the same letter cited in chapter 14, sent to Meir Benayahu, Ben-Zvi’s secretary, on September 9, 1960, and kept in the Ben-Zvi Institute archive.

  Faham’s account of how the trial ended is from his 1976 oral testimony.

  The Aleppo rabbis testified together in court on March 1, 1960. Tawil, who had arrived in 1958, had previously given similar testimony on December 4, 1958.

  The note from Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi to the government clerk, a Mr. Ziegel, is in the Crown file at the state archive in Jerusalem.

  The original trusteeship document, signed by President Ben-Zvi, is in the file at the Jerusalem Rabbinic Court.

  Chapter 17: The Book

  Translations from the Bible are from the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999).

  The let
ter from three Aleppo rabbis, and Rabbi Dayan’s letter mentioning “missing pages,” are from the Ben-Zvi Institute archive.

  The first detailed reference to what is missing is from the state’s first proposed trusteeship agreement, dated only “3.1958—Adar 5718.” Provided to me by Ezra Kassin.

  Chapter 18: The Keepers of the Crown

  The Yemeni book affair is described in detail in Gish Amit’s 2010 Ben-Gurion University doctoral dissertation, “The Jewish National and University Library 1945–1955.” I am grateful to Amit for generously putting his work at my disposal.

  The description of Ben-Zvi’s visit to Aden is from Segev, 1949: The First Israelis.

  The number of Jews killed in the 1947 Aden riot is from Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands.

  The transcript of the November 1, 1962, meeting of the Crown trustees is from the Crown file at the state archive in Jerusalem, as is the letter from Mordechai Rigbi to Ben-Zvi and the response from Ben-Zvi’s secretary.

  Ben-Zvi’s decision that photographs of the Crown would be published only in his articles is from a letter he wrote on March 8, 1959. From the archive of the Hebrew University Bible Project.

  Ben-Zvi’s scribbled calculations can be found in the Crown file at the state archive in Jerusalem. The later and more accurate calculation of how many pages were missing was conducted by Professor Yosef Ofer.

  The letters to and from the president’s office regarding the missing pages are from the archive of the Ben-Zvi Institute.

  The diplomat in South America was Alexander Dotan. A copy of his November 7, 1961, letter to Ben-Zvi with Hazan’s testimony is included in Shamosh, Haketer. Ben-Zvi’s note of this testimony and assertion that it was an “utter error” is in the archive of the Ben-Zvi Institute.

  Asher Baghdadi’s children assert that he was never questioned about the Crown after arriving in Israel. Although a document in the Ben-Zvi Institute archive shows the president was aware that the sexton had been in Israel since 1952, there are no documents suggesting he was ever contacted or interviewed.