Community Magazine March 2016

26 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE YIRMIYAHU COHEN to Reveal Secrets about the Aleppo Codex Sixty years after the Keter Aram Tzova (Aleppo Codex) was brought to Israel, the unansweredquestions surrounding it are being revisited in an upcoming documentary by Avi Dabach. Who is its rightful owner? Where are the missing pages? New Film T he Keter Aram Tzova is the oldest complete manuscript of the Tanach in existence. Written in Eretz Yisrael in the 10 th century CE, it was then verified and provided with nekudot (vowels) and marginal notes by Aharon Ben-Asher, the last and most prominent member of the Ben-Asher dynasty of experts on the mesorah . Members of the Ben-Asher dynasty were experts on the preservation of the accurate text of the Tanach. The Rambam, who lived in Egypt in the 12 th century, used this very manuscript to write his own Sefer Torah and to determine the proper places for its paragraphs. In Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Sefer Torah 8:4 he writes: “The book on which we have relied in these things is the well-known book in Egypt that contains the 24 books, which used to be in Jerusalem for many years in order to edit scrolls, and everyone relied on it because Ben-Asher edited it and checked it for many years and edited it many times as he was copying it.” The Keter, called a codex because it is not a scroll but rather is a collection of parchment pages bound together, similar to a modern book, was brought to Aleppo and kept there for six centuries. It was housed in an iron box in a cave under the Great Synagogue. Mr. Dabach’s great-grandfather, Hacham Ezra Dabach, was one of the last caretakers of the Keter in Aleppo, holding the keys to that iron box. The Aleppo community guarded the Keter zealously; there was a legendary curse associated with it: “Cursed be its seller, cursed be its defiler, and cursed be the community of Aram Tzova if it were to depart from there.” In November 1947, in reaction to the UN vote on the creation of a Jewish state, there was rioting against the Jews of Aleppo and a fire partially destroyed the synagogue. The Keter was rescued from the building by the shamash , Asher Baghdadi, and his son. It was kept in secret locations in Aleppo for ten years after that, while Aleppo’s Jews told the Syrian government – who wanted to sell the Keter – that it had been burnt. The Aleppo Codex