Review of Friedman, The Aleppo Codex

THE ALEPPO CODEX, by Matti Friedman, is reviewed briefly by Brian Bethune in Maclean's. Excerpt:

It was presented to Itzhak Ben-Zvi, president of Israel, and a furious group of the Aleppo Jews living in Israel launched an unsuccessful case in rabbinical court to recover their property from the state. The records of the lawsuit were suppressed for decades. When Friedman unearthed them, though, he gained an inkling why. When the manuscript went on public display in 1960, it was missing close to 200 of its 500 leaves, a loss the government said had occurred during the codex’s hidden years. Yet none of the claimants in rabbinical court even mentioned the shocking mutilation. Friedman’s painstaking investigation of just what happened to the Aleppo codex—and when—is a fascinating account of the role of sacred relics in creating a national identity, and also of the lure of old and treasured objects.