Editing Aleppo Codex (section)

==History==

===Overview===
The [[Karaite Judaism|Karaite Jewish]] community of [[Jerusalem]] purchased the codex about a hundred years after it was made.<ref>[http://hebrewbooks.org/32847 M. Nehmad, ''Keter Aram Tzova'', Aleppo 1933]</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Pfeffer|first1=Anshel|title=Fragment of Ancient Parchment From Bible Given to Jerusalem Scholars|url=https://www.haaretz.com/1.4995266|work=Haaretz|date=6 November 2007}}</ref> When the [[First Crusade|Crusaders]] [[Siege of Jerusalem (1099)|conquered Jerusalem]] in 1099, the synagogue was plundered. The codex was held for a high ransom, which was paid with money from Egypt, leading to the codex being transferred there.<ref name="haaretz.com" /> It was preserved by the [[Karaite Judaism|Karaites]], then at the [[Rabbinic Judaism|Rabbanite]] synagogue in [[Old Cairo]], where it was consulted by [[Maimonides]], who described it as a text trusted by all Jewish scholars. It is rumoured that in 1375 one of Maimonides' descendants brought it to [[Mamluk Sultanate|Mamluk-ruled]] Aleppo, leading to its present name.<ref name="haaretz.com" />

The Codex remained in Syria for nearly six hundred years. In 1947, rioters enraged by the [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine]] burned down the [[synagogue]] where it was kept.<ref name="haaretz.com" /> The Codex disappeared, then reemerged in 1958, when it was smuggled into Israel by [[Syrian Jews|Syrian Jew]] Murad Faham and presented to the president of the state, [[Yitzhak Ben-Zvi]]. Sometime after arrival, it was found that parts of the codex had been lost. The Aleppo Codex was entrusted to the Ben-Zvi Institute and [[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]]. It is currently (2019) on display in the [[Shrine of the Book]] at the [[Israel Museum]].

Israel submitted the Aleppo Codex for inclusion in UNESCO's [[Memory of the World]] international register and was included in 2015.<ref>{{cite web |title= Aleppo Codex |website= United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |url= https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/aleppo-codex |access-date= 2024-12-16}}</ref>

===Ransom from Crusaders (1100)===
The Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem received the book from Israel ben Simha of [[Basra]] sometime between 1040 and 1050.<ref name=judith>{{cite book |last1=Olszowy-Schlanger |first1=Judith |title=Karaite Marriage Contracts from the Cairo Geniza |date=1 January 1997 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-49753-5 |page=148 |url=https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004497535_014 |chapter=The Karaite Nesīim}}</ref> It was cared for by the brothers Hizkiyahu and Joshya, Karaite religious leaders who eventually moved to [[Fustat]] (today part of [[Old Cairo]]) in 1050. The codex, however, stayed in Jerusalem until the latter part of that century.<ref name=judith/> After the [[Siege of Jerusalem (1099)]] during the [[First Crusade]], the Crusaders held the codex for ransom.<ref name=ols>Olszowy: pp. 54-55 and footnote #86</ref><ref name=codex>[http://www.aleppocodex.org/10.html The Vicissitudes of the Aleppo Codex] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080111184728/http://www.aleppocodex.org/10.html |date=2008-01-11 }}&nbsp;– See ''4.4 The Crusades and the Ransoming of Books''. Retrieved on 2008–03–04.</ref> Letters in the [[Cairo Geniza]] describe the inhabitants of [[Ashkelon]] borrowing money from Egypt to "buy back two hundred and thirty Bible codices, a hundred other volumes, and eight Torah Scrolls" from the Crusaders<ref>Goitein, S.D. ''A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Vol. V: The Individual: Portrait of a Mediterranean Personality of the High Middle Ages as Reflected in the Cairo Geniza''. University of California Press, 1988 ({{ISBN|0520056477}}), pg. 376</ref> which may have included the codex.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Synagogue in Old Cairo {{!}} Discarded History |url=https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/discardedhistory/case/a-synagogue-in-old-cairo/ |website=Cambridge University Library |publisher=University of Cambridge |access-date=3 December 2021}}</ref><ref name="codex" /><ref name="ols" /> A Judeo-Arabic inscription on the lost first page of the Codex described that the book was
{{blockquote|Transferred according to the [[Pidyon shvuyim|commandment to redeem captives]], from the loot of the holy city of Jerusalem, may she be rebuilt and reestablished, to the Egyptian congregation, to the Jerusalemite synagogue, may [Jerusalem] be rebuilt and reestablished in the life of Israel. Blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it or sells it or pawns it. [[Herem (priestly gift)|It may never be sold or bought]].<ref name=":0" />}}

===In Aleppo ===
The Aleppo community guarded the Codex zealously for some 600 years: it was kept, together with three other Biblical manuscripts, in a special cupboard (later, an iron safe) in a basement chapel of the [[Central Synagogue of Aleppo]], supposed to have been the Cave of Elijah. It was regarded as the community's most sacred possession: Those in trouble would pray before it, and oaths were taken by it. The community received queries from Jews worldwide, who asked that various textual details be checked, preserved in the [[responsa]] literature. It allowed for the reconstruction of information in the missing parts today. Most importantly, in the 1850s, [[Shalom Shachne Yellin]] sent his son-in-law, Moses Joshua Kimḥi, to Aleppo to copy information about the Codex; Kimḥi sat for weeks and copied thousands of details about the codex into the margins of a small handwritten [[Bible]]. The existence of this Bible was known to 20th-century scholars from the book ''‘Ammudé Shesh'' by [[Shemuel Shelomo Boyarski]], and then the actual Bible itself was discovered by [[Yosef Ofer]] in 1989.

However, the community limited outsiders' direct observation of the manuscript, especially by scholars in modern times. [[Paul E. Kahle]], when revising the text of the ''[[Biblia Hebraica (Kittel)|Biblia Hebraica]]'' in the 1920s, tried and failed to obtain a photographic copy. This forced him to use the ''[[Leningrad Codex]]'' instead for the third edition, which appeared in 1937.

The only modern scholar allowed to compare it with a standard printed [[Hebrew Bible]] and take notes on the differences was [[Umberto Cassuto]], who examined it in 1943.<ref>{{cite web|title=A Wandering Bible: The Aleppo Codex|url=http://www.english.imjnet.org.il/page_1358|website=The Israel Museum, Jerusalem|access-date=26 October 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161103074838/http://www.english.imjnet.org.il/page_1358|archive-date=3 November 2016|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}</ref> This secrecy made it impossible to confirm the authenticity of the Codex, and indeed Cassuto doubted that it was Maimonides' codex, though he agreed that it was tenth century.

===Loss of pages (1947–1958)===
[[File:Aleppo Deut 1910 Photo.jpg|thumb|250px|Photograph of missing page<ref>Photo taken in 1910 by Joseph Segall and published in Travels through Northern Syria (London, 1910), p. 99. Reprinted and analyzed in [http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/upload/_FILE_1371645202.pdf Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, "A Recovered Part of the Aleppo Codex," Textus 5 (1966):53-59 (Plate I)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304031249/http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/upload/_FILE_1371645202.pdf |date=2016-03-04 }}</ref>]]
During the [[1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo]], the community's ancient synagogue was burned. Later, while the Codex was in Israel, it was found that no more than 294 of the original (estimated) 487 pages survived.<ref name=Pfeffer>{{cite news |title= Fragment of Ancient Parchment From Bible Given to Jerusalem Scholars |author= Anshel Pfeffer |date= November 6, 2007 |url= https://www.haaretz.com/1.4995266}}</ref><ref name="Tawil">Hayim Tawil & Bernard Schneider, ''Crown of Aleppo'' (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Soc., 2010) page 110; there have been various reports and estimates of the original number of pages; Izhak Ben-Zvi, "The Codex of Ben Asher", ''Textus,'' vol. 1 (1960) page 2, reprinted in Sid Z. Leiman, ed., ''The Canon and Masorah of the Hebrew Bible, an Introductory Reader'' (NY, [[KTAV Publishing House]], 1974) page 758 (estimating an original number of 380 pages).</ref>

The missing leaves are a subject of fierce controversy. Initially, it was thought they were destroyed by fire, but scholarly analysis has shown no evidence of fire having reached the codex itself (the dark marks on the pages are due to fungus).<ref name=Pfeffer/> Some scholars instead accuse Jewish community members of having torn off the missing leaves and kept them privately hidden. Two missing portions of the manuscript—a single complete leaf from the [[Book of Chronicles]] and a fragment of a page from the [[Book of Exodus]]—were turned up from such sources in the 1980s, leaving open the possibility that even more may have survived the riots in 1947.<ref name=Friedman>{{cite book|last=Friedman|first=Matti|title=[[The Aleppo Codex]]|publisher=Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill|year=2012}}</ref><ref name=holy>{{cite news |author=Ronen Bergman |author-link=Ronen Bergman |title= A High Holy Whodunit |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/magazine/the-aleppo-codex-mystery.html?pagewanted=all |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date= July 25, 2012 |access-date= 2012-07-26 }}</ref> In particular, the 2012 book ''The Aleppo Codex'' by [[Matti Friedman]] calls attention to the fact that eyewitnesses in Aleppo who saw the Codex shortly after the fire consistently reported that it was complete or nearly complete, and then there is no account of it for more than a decade, until after it arrived in Israel and was put, in 1958, in the Ben-Zvi Institute, at which point it was as currently described; his book suggests several possibilities for the loss of the pages including theft in Israel.<ref name=FriedmanChap24>Friedman (2012) ch. 24 and ''passim''.</ref>

[[Documentary film]]maker Avi Dabach, great-grandson of [[Hacham]] Ezra Dabach (one of the last caretakers of the Codex when it was still in Syria), announced in December 2015 an upcoming film tracing the history of the Codex and possibly determining the fate of the missing pages.<ref>{{cite news |last1= Maltz |first1= Judy |title= My Great-grandfather, the Man Who Held the Key to the Aleppo Codex |url= http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.693328 |website= Haaretz |access-date=24 December 2015}}</ref> The film, titled ''{{Interlanguage link|The Lost Crown (documentary)|lt=The Lost Crown|he|הכתר האבוד}}'', was released in 2018.<ref>{{Cite web |title=הכתר האבוד • קטלוג הקולנוע הדוקומנטרי הישראלי |url=https://docs.org.il/movie/%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93/ |access-date=2023-12-06 |website=קטלוג הקולנוע הדוקומנטרי הישראלי |language=he-IL}}</ref>

===In Israel===
[[File:Jerusalem Schrein des Buches BW 1.JPG|thumb|right|Exterior view of the [[Shrine of the Book]]]]
In January 1958, the Aleppo Codex was smuggled out of Syria and sent to Jerusalem to be placed in the care of the chief rabbi of the Aleppo Jews.<ref name="friedman2">{{cite journal |author=Matti Friedman |date=June 30, 2014 |title=The Continuing Mysteries of the Aleppo Codex |url=http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/176903/aleppo-codex |url-status=dead |journal=[[Tablet (magazine)|Tablet]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140701172803/https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/176903/aleppo-codex |archive-date=July 1, 2014}}</ref> It was given first to [[Shlomo Zalman Shragai]] of the [[Jewish Agency]], who later testified that the Codex was complete or nearly so at the time.<ref name=friedman2/> Later that year, it was given to the [[Yad Ben Zvi|Ben-Zvi Institute]].<ref name=friedman2/> Still during 1958, the Jewish community of Aleppo sued the Ben-Zvi Institute for the return of the Codex. The court ruled against them and suppressed the publication of the proceedings.<ref name=friedman2/>

In the late 1980s, the codex was placed in the [[Shrine of the Book]] at the [[Israel Museum]].<ref name=holy /> This finally gave scholars a chance to examine it and consider the claims that it is indeed the manuscript referred to by Maimonides. The work of [[Moshe Goshen-Gottstein]] on the few surviving pages of the Torah seems to have confirmed these claims beyond reasonable doubt. Goshen-Gottstein suggested in the introduction to his facsimile reprint of the codex that not only was it the oldest known [[Masoretic Text]] (𝕸) in a single volume, but it was the first time that one or two people had produced a complete [[Tanakh]] as a unified entity in a consistent style.

During the [[Gulf War]], and again during the [[Gaza war]], the scrolls were placed in secure storage as part of the Israel Museum's emergency protocol.<ref name=IsraelStory>{{cite podcast
| url=https://www.israelstory.org/episode/hagit-maoz/ | title=Wartime Diaries: Hagit Maoz | website=[[Israel Story]] | publisher=Public Radio Exchange | host=Mishy Harman | date=2023-11-23 | access-date=2023-12-11 }}</ref>

====Reconstruction attempts====
Later, after the university denied him access to the codex, [[Mordechai Breuer]] began his reconstruction of the Masoretic text based on other well-known ancient manuscripts. His results matched the Aleppo Codex almost precisely. Breuer's version is used authoritatively to reconstruct the missing portions of the Aleppo Codex. The ''[[Jerusalem Crown]]'' ({{langx|he|כתר ירושלים|Keter Yerushalayim|Jerusalem Crown}}), printed in Jerusalem in 2000, is a modern version of the Tanakh based on the Aleppo Codex and the work of Breuer: It uses a newly designed typeface based on the calligraphy of the Codex and is based on its page layout.<ref>Glazer, Mordechai, ed., ''Companion Volume to Keter Yerushalam'' (2002, Jerusalem, N. Ben-Zvi Printing Enterprises).</ref>