The Kosher Bookworm: Aleppo, Syria, and the Jewish Religious Connection

The Reuters dateline for February 10th headlined, “Explosions kill 17 in Syrian city of Aleppo.” By Saturday, February 11, 2012, the numbers of fatalities increased and the reports in that day’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal reflected even more ominous numbers of incidents in Aleppo, an otherwise peaceful and calm city. The implications of these events for the future merit our serious attention and concern.

Since the advent of the Arab Spring, I have always contended that the events in Syria, especially in Aleppo, should be given added attention given its location and past history both within the Arab world and with the Jewish people.

With events changing from day to day, especially in Aleppo, I decided to devote this column to a singular literary chapter of the Jewish historical background of that part of the Arab world. Hopefully, this will help you better understand the importance of this region both to our own history and to appreciate the religious significance that Aleppo and Syria mean to us both yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Twelve years ago, Hebrew University in Jerusalem published “Keter Yerushalayim, The Jerusalem Crown: The Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.” This book is based upon the text and mesorah of the Aleppo Codex and related manuscripts, following the methods of Rabbi Mordechai Breuer and funded by the Karger Family Fund of Basil, Switzerland.

Two years later a companion volume of scholarly essays was published that for the first time gave the Aleppo Codex its first serious treatment from both religious and academic points of view. Within these essays are to be found a history of the Aleppo Codex, and the making and production of the Jerusalem Crown.

While I will leave it to the reader to further research the historical background to the Aleppo legacy, let it first be noted that the Aleppo Codex, while still in Eretz Yisrael, was regarded by the Rambam as the most reliable mesorah of the Tanach.

Over the next centuries, the Aleppo Codex was safeguarded by Aleppan Jewry until the outbreak of violence in 1947 when all Jewish sacred scripts were subjected to the looting and arson that became commonplace after the UN partition of Palestine vote.

Subsequent to this, most of the Jews of Aleppo left Syria and ultimately what remained of the Aleppo Codex found its way to Israel. Much restoration was done and it is now housed in the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book together with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Another literary source of information on the Aleppo Codex, which will be the subject of a future review, can be found in “Crown of Aleppo” [The Jewish Publication Society, 2010] by Dr. Hayim Tawil of Yeshiva University, and Bernard Schneider.

Aside from all the cloak and dagger aspects to the history of this sacred manuscript and the mesirat nefesh that so many Syrian Jews gave to the preservation of this Tanach, what fascinated me most was the epilogue to this companion volume by Dr. Mordechai Glatzer. He notes the following regarding the kind of letters used in this edition – the font of the Jerusalem Crown. I quote him in full text below:

“This edition of the Bible is the third among the Hebrew Bibles published in Israel with a new letter font – the ‘Koren’ Tanach [Jerusalem 1959-62] , the ‘Horev’ Tanach [Jerusalem 1996-98] , and the Jerusalem Crown. The late Eliyahu Koren designed the ‘Koren’ letters for his edition of the Tanach in the style of the Sephardi square script of the Middle Ages. The letters of the ‘Horev’ Tanach were designed by Zvi Narkiss following the square script used in Ashkenazi manuscripts. The Jerusalem Crown letters were also created by Zvi Narkiss.

For the first time in the history of Hebrew printing we now have a letter font designed in the style of the calligraphic square script employed in the monumental Bibles in the Land of Israel and in other eastern Mediterranean lands, from the 10th century onwards.

This, the eastern script, is the script in which the Aleppo Codex

was written; it is the script that the Sephardi script eventually developed.”

This peeked my interest since I find that a better comprehension in the reading of Hebrew comes wit h the variation of the letter font utilized in our sacred texts. It was not for naught that our ancestors used these fonts, fonts that are first now being revisited and utilized in our Bible and prayer book texts to much public acclaim in Israel, and hopefully here soon, to an increasingly more aware and educated public.

As events unfold in the Middle East in the days, months, and years to come, please take note of the geography and keep in mind the religious history that these territories have represented in our people’s past, present and future. These lands, towns and cities are suffused with our people’s blood and bone. Never forget that.

And further, never forget the creativity that our people gave to the spiritual enrichment in these lands both to ourselves and to those of other faiths who benefited from our voluminous contributions to their civilizations.