Magazine 2023-08 web

Rabbi Yechiel Goldhaber Rabbi Yechiel Goldhaber is a talmid hacham and a sought-after historian who has focused on Jewish history and minhagim. He has published two seforim and more than two hundred articles in various publications. Rabbi Goldhaber learned in Yeshivas Karlin Stolin, was Rosh Kollel of Kollel Degel Yerushalayim, and studied in the Jewish History Department of Bar Ilan. A Missing Piece The Aleppo Codex was in the news back in 2007, when a lost fragment of the text was retrieved. A Syrian Jew named Sam Sabbagh had found the piece of text on the floor of the torched synagogue after the 1947 riots. He kept it with him in his wallet throughout his life, believing that it provided him with protection and blessing. Seven years after Mr. Sabbagh’s death in 2000, the family agreed to bring the precious fragment to Israel so it can be “reunited” with the rest of the surviving text of the Aleppo Codex. The missing piece was added to the display in the Israel Museum. Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2007 that efforts were being made to retrieve other fragments which were taken by the Jews of Aleppo. “There must have been other fragments held by people today who might not even know that it is the Aleppo Codex, who don’t know this is the most important manuscript of the Bible,” Glatzer said. “We are trying to reach out to Jews from Aleppo who live all around the world to see if they have [pieces] and if they will come forward. We would like to contact anybody who thinks they might have a piece of the codex. We are very eager to put this puzzle back together.” The fascinating story of the Keter Aram Tzova is not just a matter of historical intrigue; it is symbolic of the story of the Jewish People. We guard our sacred tradition with the same level of care, concern, and vigilance with which the Codex was preserved. We fiercely adhere to authentic Jewish religious practice, down to the last detail – just as the Codex is the most authentic source for the sacred text of the Torah. We have survived expulsions, pogroms, upheavals, and displacement – just as the Codex has. Additionally, just as the majority of the Codex was miraculously saved from the raging fires of Aleppo and brought to the Holy Land, so has much of the Jewish Nation emerged from the ashes of hostility and persecution and assembled in Israel. And, like the Codex, we eagerly await the time when all the missing “fragments” of our nation will be reunited, and our nation will once again form a complete “Torah scroll” joined together in the devoted service of Gd. Exterior of The Shrine of the Book The Shrine of the Book  (Heikhal HaSefer) is a wing of the Israel Museum in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex, among others. The bulbous museum was constructed in 1965 specifically to house the scrolls which had been discovered a few years earlier in a cave in the Judean Desert. Rabbi Yechiel Goldhaber says that he is “99.99 percent certain” that the Aleppo Codex is the text used by the Rambam. 24 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE