The Aleppo Codex: Book summary and reviews of The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman

The Aleppo Codex Summary

In an age when physical books matter less and less, here is a thrilling story about a book that meant everything. This true-life detective story unveils the journey of a sacred text - the tenth-century annotated bible known as the Aleppo Codex - from its hiding place in a Syrian synagogue to the newly founded state of Israel. Based on Matti Friedman's independent research, documents kept secret for fifty years, and personal interviews with key players, the book proposes a new theory of what happened when the codex left Aleppo, Syria, in the late 1940s and eventually surfaced in Jerusalem, mysteriously incomplete.

The codex provides vital keys to reading biblical texts. By recounting its history, Friedman explores the once vibrant Jewish communities in Islamic lands and follows the thread into the present, uncovering difficult truths about how the manuscript was taken to Israel and how its most important pages went missing. Along the way, he raises critical questions about who owns historical treasures and the role of myth and legend in the creation of a nation.

The Aleppo Codex Reviews

"Starred Review. Friedman delivers an atmospheric, tense story about the destruction of a sacred relic, raising inevitable questions about who owns a people's historical treasures." - Publishers Weekly

"Through the Levantine haze and a millennium of safekeeping, a carefully paced narrative of purloined Judaica." - Kirkus Reviews

"The Aleppo Codex could be read as a thriller. It could also be read as a history of the Jewish people, or as a meditation on history and myth. This great book comes closer to containing everything than any book I've read in a long, long time." - Jonathan Safran Foer

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Matti Friedman, a correspondent for the Associated Press, grew up in Toronto and now lives in Jerusalem. He has covered two conflicts in Israel and one in the Caucasus and has also reported from Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, Cairo, and Washington, D.C.