News Brief10:58 AM

(IsraelNN.com) A 1,087-year-old fragment of the ancient Aleppo Codex will finally be received Thursday by Jerusalem scholars in a posthumous gift to the Ben-Tzvi Institute by a Syrian Jew who lived in New York.

The fragment, held by the late businessman Sam Sabbagh, will be presented Thursday to the institute by his daughter Rachel Magen, two years after her father's death.  Sabbagh rescued the precious page from the burning synagogue where the Codex was held after rioting Syrian Arabs torched the structure in 1947, destroying 40 Torah scrolls in the process of protesting the U.N. decision to grant the Jews a national home. A large part of the Codex made it out of the conflagration and was smuggled into Israel, but many pages are still missing.

"This is the No. 1 manuscript of the Jewish people," explained Institute Director Dr. Tzvi Zameret in a report by Haaretz on Tuesday, "the most complete and ancient surviving Bible and it is important that people understand that this is a national matter, not only a religious one. The Bible is part of all of us."