The Keter

Secured in the lower level of the famed Shrine of the Book at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum sits the Aleppo Codex. You may have read about it this summer in the paper, and there is a new book about it by the journalist Matti Friedman. Some call it the Aleppo Codex, some call it the Crown of Aleppo; this evening we will use the Hebrew name for crown, Keter. The Keter is a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible written around the year 930 by the scribe Shlomo ben Buya and annotated by Aharon ben Asher, making the Keter the oldest full manuscript of the Bible – except of course for the section that is lost. Of the original 487 folio pages, only 294 remain. The rest – some 40% destroyed or missing – is dispersed or hidden somewhere around the world.

This evening, by way of introduction to the holidays, I want to tell you the story of the Keter, not as a Biblicist or historian would, but as a story of much deeper significance. Because in all its mystery and sanctity, the Keter is a parable for our people, for our sacred journey, for our present and our future.

In the Israel Museum the Keter shares space with the Dead Sea Scrolls, written over a thousand years earlier. Passed down over the centuries from Moses through the generations, the text of the Bible was meticulously copied by a scribal sect called the Masoretes who sought to guard and preserve our sacred canon. Despite its name, the Keter was not written in Aleppo, but in the northern Israelite city of Tiberias. Soon thereafter, the Keter would travel to Jerusalem and quickly become the authoritative text of the Bible for Jew and non-Jew alike.

Now, if you know your history, then you know that eleventh-century Jerusalem was no place for a nice Jewish boy or Jewish Bible. When Jerusalem was sacked by the Crusaders, the Keter was saved and ransomed from the Crusaders by the Jews of Egypt. In Fustat, Egypt, the Keter came into the possession of the most famous Jew of the day and perhaps of all time – Moses Maimonides. Before his death in 1204, Maimonides, upon whose contributions to Jewish law, philosophy and exegesis we still rely, referred to the Keter as the authoritative text of the Bible. As to how the Keter arrived in Aleppo, we are not entirely sure. We know that Rabbi David ben Yehoshua, the grandson of Maimonides’ great-grandson, traveled through Israel in 1375, going to live in Damascus and eventually Aleppo, a historically strong and rich Jewish community. There the Keter sat, in the old Aleppo Synagogue, for over five hundred years, in a chest with two locks, like a nuclear briefcase, not to be opened except in the presence of the bearers of the keys. Legends developed about its power, the blessings and curses that came with it, an object of veneration of an ancient and glorious tradition.

The Keter slumbered for centuries – a sacred text under the protectorate of the Aleppo community – right up until November 30, 1947, the morning after the UN General Assembly vote in favor of the establishment of a Jewish State. That morning a mob attacked the Jewish quarter, setting fire to the synagogues, the start of a riot that would go on for days. It is not clear exactly how the Keter was saved, but according to Friedman’s account, the synagogue sexton, Asher Baghdadi, and his son ran back into the smoldering synagogue to gather the pages. From that day forth the writing was on the wall for the Aleppo Community. The Keter went from hiding place to hiding place; eventually the codex was wrapped in cheesecloth and smuggled out by a dairyman to the fledgling new State of Israel. There exists some controversy as to whether the Keter was given or taken, and whether it was meant to go to the State of Israel or the representatives of the Aleppo community in Israel. The proceedings of the court case remained sealed for 50 years and Friedman in his new book tries his best to untangle what remains a prickly historical and judicial question.

The biggest question, however, is not the fate of the Keter, but the fate of the 40 percent of the Keter that is missing. Because while it was believed that these pages were destroyed in 1947, the truth is much more obscure. For instance, a small fragment from the book of Exodus was discovered to be in possession of a Syrian Jew now living in Brooklyn. When the Mossad and the State Department got the last Jews out of Syria in the mid-1990’s, no other pages were found, though several interviewed in Friedman’s book have claimed to have seen other fragments in the hands of former Syrian Jews or black market collectors.

In my hand is a copy of the reconstructed Keter. The original, in the Israel Museum, is as close as one can get to the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai. I have asked our Haftorah readers to have this copy present as they chant the prophetic portions on the coming holidays.

Because, as I suggested, the story of the Keter has far greater significance than the fate of a single manuscript. Embedded in this story is the DNA of our people; it goes directly to the heart of what this evening, our people, and our faith are all about. The journey of our most sacred text coming at last to our ancient homeland after centuries of being passed from hand to hand, scribe to scribe, generation to generation – a sacred trust never forsaken. The Keter has survived the dispersion of our people, going from place to place, when we were challenged as minorities, often persecuted, in foreign lands. But in these lands also came opportunity. The creativity, leadership and scholarship of rabbis like Maimonides enabled our faith to transcend the vicissitudes of any one context. Our law, our ritual, our philosophy, our culture, our art took form in this two-thousand-year Diaspora, returning to Israel only in the middle of the last century.

But that return, we know, was not complete. Because like the Keter, we the Jewish people are missing a full third of who we are. If you want a population study that really hurts, think of six million Jews in America and another six million in Israel. To be Jewish today means to live with the searing awareness of what has been lost. Centers of learning, of culture, of business; people religious and secular, rich and poor, holy men and hucksters, old and young, and all their descendants – never to be. The hasidic master the Baal Shem Tov once taught that the Jewish people are like a Torah scroll in that if even one letter is missing, the kashrut of the entire scroll is in question. So what, I ask you, does it mean if a full 40% of our people and their descendants are missing from the project of Jewish life? These are heavy questions in my mind, questions we will confront in the days to come.

In all its ups and downs, its tragedies and fragmented remains, the Keter represents the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people. Because from the ashes it has found a home. Because on November 29, 1947, when the UN voted in the partition plan and Israel was declared a state the following year, thousands of years of diaspora existence came crashing to an end. Holding this book, I hear the words of the psalmist, Hazorim b’dimah, b’rinah yiktzoru, that which was sown in tears will be reaped with joy. This book is a survivor; it represents a triumph of the human will, a story of rebirth, a return to Zion – the modern, living, breathing miraculous modern State of Israel. The folio pages of diaspora Jewry, scattered around the world, must forever feel the gravitational tug of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself must be considered incomplete unless attached to the dispersed pages around the world.

There are many more lessons to be had, but the final image I offer is not about the Jewish people, but about the Jewish person – you. If there is one image associated with Rosh Hashanah, one constant graphic, visual image, it is that of a book. L’shanah tovah tikateivu we say to each other. “May you be inscribed in the book for a good year.” B’sefer hayyim b’rakhah v’shalom, we chant. “In the book of life for blessing and peace.” We return this evening from the sojourn of the year gone by, some pages blotted, some with mistakes and some missing. We run our fingers over the folio pages, gently peeling them apart, fixing the dog-eared corners. As in the Keter, we search for what is missing and we aspire to restore ourselves to our best, original and God-given condition. Tonight and in the days ahead, we are each people of the book – the books of our lives. We are the copy editors, the restorers, the interpreters and yes, tonight we are also the authors, ready to draft the next chapters. In the days ahead may we be up to the sacred task extended to us and may we all – each and every one of us – be inscribed in book of life for a year of health, happiness and peace.