My Safta, Aleppo, And The Codex

My Safta was born in Syria. I remember sitting in her Tel Aviv apartment, watching her watch Syrian TV: soap operas, dramas, news from the country she could never go back to. I never understood how she got that channel.

She was Syrian in every way except one: she was Jewish. As a young girl from Aleppo, she had to leave the city her family had lived in since ancient times. Aleppo’s Jewish community was one of the oldest in the world. Its Central Synagogue once housed the Aleppo Codex, the oldest and most complete Hebrew Bible ever written.

When I saw the Codex years later, behind glass in Jerusalem, I felt like I was seeing a piece of her story still surviving.