Uzi laughed. “Yes. I even got to see a few pages once at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where they keep the Dead Sea Scrolls. I asked to see more, but it’s locked away in a vault that requires three keys, a magnetic card, and a six-digit code. It’s an ancient manuscript steeped in mystery.”
“We’ll get to that,” Yakov said. “First, you wanted to know what’s so special about it. It’s one of a kind. But even that’s not what makes it so special. There are plenty of ancient manuscripts that are one-offs. To understand its significance you must understand the time, what was going on.”
Yakov cleared his raspy throat and leaned forward slightly. He lifted a wrinkled hand and gestured as if delivering a soliloquy. “Around the year 930 CE, Judaism was splintered. Its traditions and teachings had been handed down by oral tradition for millennia, covering everything from how they should relate to one another, how they should treat the land, and most importantly, how they should speak to God.”
Halevi walked back in with a tray containing eight glasses, half of which were filled with ice cubes and water and the other four a milky-white liquid. In the center was a clear bottle featuring a green and gold label that contained Hebrew lettering.
“By the time of the First Temple,” Yakov said, “they were beginning to write down these oral traditions and laws — which really were their bible, their manual for how to live and act. But the Temple was their spiritual, religious, and community center. When it was destroyed by the Babylonians, the Jews scattered. They eventually rebuilt the Temple, but then the Romans destroyed it and the Jews lost their unifying center of life.
“They needed something that could survive the leveling of a building, something that could be taken with them to whatever region or land they found themselves in. Something that couldn’t be wiped out by an invading army.”
“A book,” Uzi said. “Or a Torah.”
Halevi handed out the glasses.
Vail took a sip and drew her chin back. Whoa. “What is this?”
Uzi laughed. “Arak. A Middle Eastern distilled drink made from grapes and anise seed.”
“Interesting,” Vail said as she held up her glass. “Continue, rabbi.”
Yakov sat back and thought a moment. “In the seventh century, Masoretic linguistic scholars in Israel who stressed the rabbinic teachings began standardizing the variations in the Hebrew language that had developed after the Temple was destroyed. Early in the tenth century, Rabbi Aaron Ben Asher was tasked with taking all this work and writing a reference text that set out Hebrew’s vowels and grammatical rules as well as how the prayers were chanted — its cantillation.”
“Cantillation?” Vail asked.
“Melodies,” Halevi said. “Forgive my father. He’s been a teacher all his life. What he’s saying is that the scholars were trying to preserve Judaism’s tradition, culture, and religion for future generations by standardizing the language and cultural nuances that had developed. They created a system of vowels and melodies, chapter and verse to organize the teachings and make it so anyone could learn the language. Three hundred years later, Ben Asher and the scribes brought it all together in an authoritative reference text — the codex. It was to be something that could culturally and religiously connect the thousands of communities that had fled to different countries.”
Yakov set his drink down, stroked his long white beard, then reengaged eye contact with Vail. “Discrepancies in the Torah, ambiguities, differences in interpretation, had to be avoided to keep the religion together, to keep it from splintering. Ben Asher’s goal was to create the perfect, official text.”
Uzi held his glass up to the light that streamed in through the windows. “Not to rush you, rabbi, because I’m enjoying this history lesson. But this case, we’re up against the—”
“I’m getting to the point,” Yakov said, waving a wrinkled and arthritic hand. “Be patient, my son.”
Uzi squirmed on the couch cushion. Vail placed a hand on his knee, telling him that she sensed there was, indeed, a point to Yakov’s discourse.
“Animal skins were prepared and special permanent ink was mixed from crushed tree galls, iron sulfate, and black soot. It took Ben Asher and his scholars decades to research the codex and it took the scribes five hundred or so pages to write it. Almost two hundred years later, in July 1099, the Crusaders sacked Jerusalem, murdering thousands and destroying the Jewish quarter, their places of worship, Torahs, and books. One book in particular survived, however. Do I need to tell you which?” He tilted his head at Vail, then Uzi.
Uzi said, “The Aleppo Codex.”
“Yes. Except that it wasn’t called The Aleppo Codex. Not yet. Even then, the codex’s importance was known. The Crusaders captured it, and other holy works, and demanded money. The Jewish community took out a loan from Egypt to pay the ransom — this is all documented in letters archaeologists have found — and that’s where the codex remained, in Egypt, until about 150 years later.
“During that time it was used by one of the world’s greatest philosophers and physicians, Moses ben Maimon — Maimonides. Maimonides used the codex as one of his main tools for creating the Mishneh Torah, books that provided a simplified description of Jewish law and rituals — a guide used even today.”
“Around 1375,” Halevi said, “Maimonides’ great-great-great-grandson left Egypt and brought Maimonides’ library with him — which included the codex. He settled in Aleppo and for safe keeping, placed the codex in a synagogue, locked away in a stone and iron chamber. It was removed only for certain scholars and dignitaries.”
“And that’s where it stayed until 1947,” Uzi said.
Yakov nodded slowly. “Yes. The Aleppo community considered it their divine purpose to safeguard it. They believed the codex was not supposed to leave Aleppo. There’s an inscription on the first page that reads, ‘Blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it, and cursed be he who pawns it. It may not be sold and it may not be defiled forever.’
“They took this very seriously. Even when Syrians were turning against the Jews and killing them, burning their synagogues and books, the Aleppo elders refused to move the codex to Jerusalem, where the new country’s president wanted to place it in the national museum. In the end, with Aleppo’s Jews being smuggled to safety in Israel — the codex was moved, rather circuitously, to Jerusalem.”
“But something happened,” Halevi said. “Sometime around its arrival in 1958, part of it went missing.”
“The first two hundred pages,” Yakov said, the glass in his hand. He took a drink, his hand trembling. “The search for those pages went on for twenty-seven years. Problem was, no one knew when they disappeared. Some claimed they were destroyed by the fire that Syrians set in the Aleppo synagogue during the riots. And there were burn marks on the corners of the surviving pages, so it looked like those two hundred pages were lost forever. But scientists later realized that the damage to the pages wasn’t carbon from a fire but some kind of mold. Eyewitnesses came forward and said the codex survived the fire and that the pages were lost while being snuck out of Syria.”
“We started hearing stories,” Halevi said, “of parts of the codex showing up in other countries. Pages, fragments of pages.”
Uzi sat up. “A black market. Dealing in antiquities and rare manuscripts.”
Those words caused a contraction in Vail’s stomach.
Halevi pulled over another chair and sat. “Mossad got involved, the IDF, the court system, even psychics. And then in 1985, they heard that the missing pages were buried in Ein Ata, a village in southern Lebanon. Israel controlled that area at the time, but because it was so unstable, a search party went in under IDF escort. They came up empty. But an Aleppo Jew, Joshua Ashear, the one who tipped them off that the codex might be there, stayed behind with a friend of his. Two days later, they found the pages hidden in a dealer’s attic. Not wanting to entrust the pages to anyone but people the man knew, Ashear passed them to an Aleppo rabbi, who transported them to the Aleppo Jewish community in São Paulo, and then on to Panama City. Two years later, they were brought here, to Brooklyn.”