THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

Journalist and author, Matti Friedman details the history and the journey of one of the greatest books in Jewish Biblical Literature.  The Codex, known as the Aram-Tzova, and later, the Aleppo Crown, originated in Tiberius in 930CE.  Scholar, Aaron Ben Asher, and Rabbi Shlomo, Ben Buya’a, painstakingly copied in an exact and precise replication, each and every letter, each and every vowel, and each and every word of the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible.  The express purpose of the Codex was to insure that Jews in the Diaspora would have only one exact Bible for every Jewish community throughout the world, as singularity and unification was ultimately the only possibility for the survival of Judaism.  The Codex, meant to be a reference guide, issued as a bound book rather than a rolled scroll.

The Crown was moved to Jerusalem where it later survived the savagery of the Crusades in 1090 CE and the destruction of the city.  The Crown was recovered by the Jews of Fustat, (a town near Cairo), in approximately, 1100 CE, who paid ransom to the marauding Crusaders for its return.   One of the world’s great philosophers, Maimonides, lauded by both Christians and Muslims, a personal physician to Saladin under whose rule he lived, decades later, studied the Codex.   Maimonides referred to the Crown in the writing of his own works.

In the 1300’s, the Crown arrived in Aleppo where it was rarely opened, but kept stored, safe and intact, protected by locks and keys, in the Synagogue for six hundred years, until 1955.

During the 1940’s, before the birth of Israel in 1948, the Arab countries rioted, committed pogroms and continually threatened their Jewish populations.  In Aleppo, riots broke out and synagogues were burned.  Arab Jews were forced to leave their countries and most immigrated to Israel.  In the 1950’s, after another rash of murders and riots broke out in Aleppo, the chief Syrian Rabbi, Moshe Tawil, decided it was time for the Crown of Aleppo to be transferred to Israel, much to the government of Israel’s pleasure. 

Friedman details the story of the transfer of the Syrian Jew’s greatest pride and their ultimate loss of control over the Crown.  The author veers in and out of Jewish history, with vivid, descriptive depictions.  Mattie Friedman’s non-fiction work ultimately brings to light the fate of the treasured and beloved, priceless Crown of Aleppo.