Beginning in mid-October, I'll be touring the U.S, beginning with appearances at two universities: October 24, 2012: Northwestern University, Department of Jewish Studies, Chicago, IL, 7:30 PM October 25, 2012: University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Center for International Peace Studies, South Bend, IN, 12:30 PM After that, I'll be...
The Aleppo Codex and the Ownership of Tradition Sept. 12, 2012 The Torah belongs to all Jews and, indeed, to anyone who cares to learn and live its ways. But it is not transparent. Copyists make errors. Torah scrolls lack vowels, making pronunciation and meaning uncertain. Matti Friedman’s...
August 2, 2012 KUER Radio West (Salt Lake City) Interviewer: Doug Fabrizio Around 930 CE, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. Over the centuries, it was stolen by Crusaders, ransomed to Egypt and eventually found a home in Syria, where it was protected by...
And the codex was not consumed By Stephanie Saldaña, 06.08.12 Eight years ago, when I was living as a student in the Christian Quarter of Damascus, I would often wander across Straight Street to the Jewish Quarter of the city. Still known as Harat al-Yahud by the local residents,...
Matti Friedman on the Unsolved Mystery of the Aleppo Codex By JOEL LOVELL Ronen Bergman’s article in our July 25 issue on the Aleppo Codex was occasioned and informed by the recent publication of “The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith and the Pursuit of...
A note from Matti: On July 25th, 2012, The New York Times Magazine published a story on the Aleppo Codex, headlined "A High Holy Whodunnit." The article included several references to my book, The Aleppo Codex, but did not make clear to readers that the entire...
The Aleppo Codex is one of the books that is a struggle to classify. It is a great thriller, a fascinating piece of history, a captivating human drama and a beautiful study of religion and politics which will appeal to atheists and the apolitical alike....
In the city of Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee around the year 930 A.D., the swift scribe Shlomo Ben-Buya’a under the direction of the scholar Aaron Ben-Asher created a perfect copy of 24 books of the Old Testament in Hebrew. The...
TORONTO – Toronto-born Jerusalem journalist Matti Friedman has published a cracking good yarn. If you like historical detective stories or mysteries, The Aleppo Codex is an excellent example of the genre – and it’s not even fiction. Anyone who looks into the history of the text of...
Many medieval manuscripts have obscure pasts, but the Aleppo codex has a history that only became murky in the 20th century. A bound copy of the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible) more than a thousand years old, the codex was always considered the most authoritative representative...