The manuscript, which is more than 1,000 years old, “disappeared for more than 500 years after the destruction of the synagogue of the town of Maxine,” whose name was changed to “Markada” located in the Hasaka governorate in northeastern Syria, where it was preserved, and it did not appear after its disappearance until it was sold in 1929. by David Sasson,” according to what Sharon Liberman Mintz, a researcher specializing in Jewish texts at Sotheby’s, then owned by a Swiss of Lebanese-Syrian origin.
The seller born in Beirut
As for the one who bought it at auction yesterday, on behalf of a charitable foundation affiliated with the Museum of the “Jewish People” in Tel Aviv, he is Alfred Moses, the lawyer and US ambassador from 1994 to 1997 to Romania, who said after the auctioneer hammered his offer: “I rejoice to know that it belongs to the people The Jew (..) It was my mission to realize its historical importance, and to see it in a place accessible to all,” referring to the museum.
The previous owner of the manuscript, after Alfred Sassoon, was the Swiss-Lebanese Jackie Safra, born in 1940 Beirut, who decided to sell it after conducting a carbon-14 examination on it, and when he confirmed the date of its writing that it was older than the famous Aleppo and Leningrad manuscripts, he offered it through “Sotheby’s” at auction.
It is known about Jackie Safra that his uncles are the late Edmond, Moises and Jacob, who resided in Brazil and two of them died there, while their eldest Edmond died in the fire of his house in Monte Carlo, and his grandfather was Jacob Safra, born in 1891 in Syria, from which he emigrated in adolescence with his family to Beirut before 130 years old, where in the twenties of the last century he established Bank Safra, then he left with his family in 1952 to Brazil, while he and his children always retained the Lebanese nationality. (Arabic)
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