{"id":270,"date":"2012-06-03T03:09:35","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T03:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/?p=270"},"modified":"2012-06-03T03:09:35","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T03:09:35","slug":"qa-with-the-jewish-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/2012\/06\/03\/qa-with-the-jewish-journal\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&#038;A with The Jewish Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>\u2018A window onto 1,000 turbulent years crucial to understanding today\u2019s Mideast\u2019<\/h1>\n<p><em>Journalist and author Matti Friedman discusses his new book,\u00a0<a title=\"the Aleppo Codex\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Aleppo-Codex-Obsession-Pursuit\/dp\/1616200405\" target=\"_blank\">the Aleppo Codex<\/a>, and the significance today for this often overlooked chapter in Jewish history.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Shmuel Rosner<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>We should first provide some explanation for those who haven\u2019t yet read the \u200ebook: What is the Codex and why is it important?\u200e<\/strong> \u200e\u00a0 \u200e<\/p>\n<p>The Aleppo Codex is arguably Judaism\u2019s most important book, and one of the \u200eworld\u2019s most important and valuable manuscripts. It is revered in Judaism as the \u200eperfect version of the Hebrew Bible. It is also the oldest version of the entire Bible \u200e\u200e- or at least it was until the mid-20th century, when a large section went missing, a \u200emystery that plays an important part in this story.\u200e \u200eThe codex was written in the 10th century, but to understand why it is so \u200eimportant we need to go back about 900 years before that, to the destruction of \u200ethe Temple in Jerusalem by Rome. Until then, most Jews lived in the same \u200ecountry, spoke the same language, and were bound by geography and politics and \u200etheir ritual center in Jerusalem. Afterwards, Jews were scattered and moved \u200efarther and farther apart from each other, and none of those ties applied. What \u200eemerged was the revolutionary idea that a people could be held together by words \u200e\u200e\u2013 by a book that they all would read. For this to work, though, everyone had to be \u200ereading precisely the same book. So there had to be an agreed-upon version of the \u200etext, a key to reading the Bible. That key is the Aleppo Codex. It was never \u200ephotographed and there were no known copies, making the original priceless and \u200eirreplaceable.\u200e \u200e<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishjournal.com\/rosnersdomain\/item\/a_window_onto_1000_turbulent_years_crucial_to_understanding_todays_mideast_\/\" target=\"_blank\">For full interview click here.<\/a>\u200e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018A window onto 1,000 turbulent years crucial to understanding today\u2019s Mideast\u2019 Journalist and author Matti Friedman discusses his new book,\u00a0the Aleppo Codex, and the significance today for this often overlooked chapter in Jewish history. Shmuel Rosner We should first provide some explanation for those who haven\u2019t yet read the \u200ebook: What is the Codex and why is it important?\u200e \u200e\u00a0 &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}