Sivan 12 – And the hand of our God was upon us…

June 17, 2024

Sivan 12, 5784; from sunset June 17, 2024, to sunset June 18, 2024

This is the name “Ezra” (עֶזְרָא) the Scribe as seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls; written by a scribe over two thousand years ago.

Since Moses is still in the “waiting room” for another day before he is invited to enter the “cloud,” let’s check in with Ezra and company who are on their way back to Jerusalem from Babylon. About two months ago (already!), the Bible told us that Ezra and over 1,400 men along with their families, left Ahava on the 12th day of the first month and began their nearly 900-mile journey. To cover this distance over a period of four months; they are probably making 7-8 miles per day…assuming a rest day every Sabbath.

They likely travelled along the Euphrates River to Aleppo and then down the fertile Beqaa Valley into Northern Israel, past the Golan Heights and the Galilee, and on down to Jerusalem. Their journey would take them through parts of what is known as the fertile crescent. This is a crescent-shaped area from the northern Persian Gulf extending northwest along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers reaching to the Mediterranean Sea and then curving south, hugging the coastal regions down towards central Israel.

At the two month mark of their four month journey, the returnees are probably near Aleppo which is located in what is now Syria. Aleppo was the home of the Aleppo Codex for six hundred years.

The Aleppo Codex is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. It contains the Masoretic markings – those dots and dashes that we use to this day to aid in pronunciation of the original Hebrew text. The codex was written in the city of Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, in the 10th century C.E., and was endorsed for its accuracy by Maimonides.

The synagogue where the Codex was kept was plundered during the first crusade and the Codex ended up in Egypt. The Jews in Egypt paid a high ransom for it, even borrowing money to get it back. The Codex was kept in Egypt until a descendant of Maimonides moved it to Aleppo where it remained for 600 years. It was the oldest known Biblical manuscript until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In 1947 riots broke out in Aleppo in protest to the United Nations vote to partition Palestine. The synagogue housing the Codex was burned and the Codex disappeared. It did not appear again until 1958 but was missing most of the Torah as well as other large sections. Since then two pieces have turned up and many remain hopeful that the rest of the missing pieces will eventually be reunited. The Codex is now housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem along with the Dead Sea Scrolls which are more than a thousand years older than the Codex.

The city of Aleppo is one of the oldest, continuously occupied cities in the world. Its original ancient name, Halab, has survived as the current Arabic name of the city. The meaning of Halab is not clear. It may be derived from the Hebrew “chalab” (literally ‘milk’) related to a folktale of Abraham, who milked his sheep here to feed the poor. Others have proposed that Ḥalab means “iron” or “copper” in Amorite languages; the area served as a major source of these metals in antiquity. Another possibility is that Ḥalab means ‘white’, as this is the word for ‘white’ in Aramaic, which was the local language before Arabic. This may explain how Ḥalab became the Hebrew word for milk or vice versa.

Aleppo was the largest city in Syria before the on-going Syrian Civil War. In the Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016), many parts of the city suffered massive destruction. Due to this battle the city is no longer the most populous and has fallen to second place behind Damascus.

Before the Battle of Aleppo, the city contained one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East. There was also a large Jewish population here until 1947 when most emigrated after the rioting mentioned above. The remaining Jews found themselves under a travel ban until 1992 when most of them migrated to the United States. The last Jews of Aleppo, the Halabi family, were evacuated from the city in October 2016 by the Free Syrian Army and now live in Israel.

The Jews from Aleppo referred to their city as “Aram Tzova” after the ancient Aramean city of Aram-Zobah mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.

We’ll check in with Ezra once more before he and his companions arrive in Jerusalem.

To read all of our posts about Ezra, please click on the image above.