Aram Tzova—Aleppo אֲרַם צוֹבָה
One of the world's oldest communities: the city's Jewish name, Aram Tzova, is out of the Tanakh. Here the Keter was kept for six centuries, here the Laniado dynasty led; the last Jews left the city in our own days.
The Jews of Aleppo called their city by a name out of the Tanakh—Aram Tzova, the kingdom David fought—and traced their community from deep antiquity. The verifiable thread runs at least from the letters of the Cairo Genizah, where the merchants of Haleb are everyday correspondents.
It was a community of scholars: the preacher Shmuel Laniado and his dynasty, a rite of its own, piyyutim of its own. From the fourteenth century the crypt of the great synagogue held the Keter Aram Tzova—the most exact codex of the Tanakh—and the city guarded it like the apple of its eye: never sold, never lent, hardly ever shown.
After the UN vote of December 1947 a pogrom swept the city: the synagogue burned, the Keter was snatched from the fire, and the community began to scatter—Beirut, Istanbul, New York, Israel. Aleppo Jewry is alive to this day—only no longer in Aleppo: not one remains in the city.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The letters of the Cairo Genizah — the Haleb community in the letters of merchants and scholars
Scholarship
- The Ben-Zvi Institute: the Aram Tzova collections — the community's history and the fate of the Keter
Basis: documents and evidence.