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Institute to get ancient Hebrew Bible fragment

Thought to be part of the Aleppo Codex, the parchment was tucked in a wallet for decades.

JERUSALEM - For six decades, Sam Sabbagh carried a good luck charm: a parchment he found on the floor of a burned synagogue.

Turns out that parchment likely is more than 1,000 years old, a fragment of the most authoritative manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. His family plans to present it to a Jerusalem institute this week, officials said.

The parchment, about "the size of a credit card," is believed to be part of the Aleppo Codex manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, said Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben Zvi institute.

It contains verses from the book of Exodus, including the words of Moses to Pharaoh, "Let my people go, that they may serve me."

In 1947, Sabbagh, then 17, picked up a piece of the manuscript off the floor of a synagogue in Aleppo, Syria. The synagogue had been burned the previous day in riots after the United Nations decided to partition Palestine.

When Sabbagh later immigrated to Brooklyn, he carried the parchment around for years in a plastic pouch in his wallet, Glatzer said.

About 20 years ago, a Jewish studies institute in Jerusalem named after an Israeli president, Yad Ben Zvi, learned of the fragment's existence. But it couldn't persuade Sabbagh to part with it.

After he died two years ago, his family decided to donate it.

The recovery "is important in the sense that we are getting the chance to unify the missing parts and put them in their original place," said the Israel Museum's Michael Maggen, who will oversee restoring the document.

The codex is "a landmark," Maggen said, because it provides insights into key aspects of Hebrew grammar and pronunciation.

"We have only about 60 percent of the codex - more than a third is still missing," said Aron Dotan of Tel Aviv University. The missing part includes most of the Torah, he said. The codex comprised the books of the Old Testament.

[Last modified November 11, 2007, 02:37:47]