Keter Yerushalayim, the Jerusalem Crown, is the first edition of the Aleppo Codex as a printed Bible. This codex is the oldest known complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The famous grammarian and scribe Aaron ben Asher inserted the vocalization signs, accentuation marks and the Masorah. Because he also proofread the manuscript several times over, it became the authoritative text due to its accepted accuracy. After a long odyssey the codex found its way to Jerusalem in 1958, with unfortunately a major portion missing. In 1976 a facsimile of the manuscript was published and inspired the book edition closely resembling the original text. Thanks to the painstaking work of the renowned Scholar Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, the lost parts - almost the entire Pentateuch - could be reconstructed. To emulate the original, the Jerusalem Crown is laid out in three columns and employs a unique typeface re-creating the calligraphy of the Aleppo Codex. The census for the chapters and verses as well as the names of the weekly torah portions and their divisions for the synagogal reading were added. A short appendix explains the principles of the text recreation and lists the deviations from the standard Leningrad Codex. Dr. Mordechai Glatzer, a globally recognized expert in the history of printing, edited the companion volume. It contains contributions on various aspects of the manuscript's significance and an in-depth description of its history. Notably, Dr. Yosef Ofer's introduction to the Masorah clarifies from where the codex's authority stems and why its text can be regarded as nearly error free. The documentation folder of the Keter Yerushalayim contains an original set of pages, the Book of Ruth, and the original decorative front page with its gold printed title as a sample booklet, complete with an embossed cover of heavy crimson paper. There is also a sample chapter of the companion volume included in the set which is presented in a gold-embossed dark-blue folder of raw silk. The charge for the documentation kit will be credited if a copy of the numbered Special Edition is ordered subsequently.

Winner of the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex. Journalist Matti Friedman’s true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It’s a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity.

A scholar of law and religion uncovers a surprising origin story behind the idea of the separation of powers. The separation of powers is a bedrock of modern constitutionalism, but striking antecedents were developed centuries earlier, by Jewish scholars and rabbis of antiquity. Attending carefully to their seminal works and the historical milieu, David Flatto shows how a foundation of democratic rule was contemplated and justified long before liberal democracy was born. During the formative Second Temple and early rabbinic eras (the fourth century BCE to the third century CE), Jewish thinkers had to confront the nature of legal authority from the standpoint of the disempowered. Jews struggled against the idea that a legal authority stemming from God could reside in the hands of an imperious ruler (even a hypothetical Judaic monarch). Instead scholars and rabbis argued that such authority lay with independent courts and the law itself. Over time, they proposed various permutations of this ideal. Many of these envisioned distinct juridical and political powers, with a supreme law demarcating the respective jurisdictions of each sphere. Flatto explores key Second Temple and rabbinic writings—the Qumran scrolls; the philosophy and history of Philo and Josephus; the Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrash, and Talmud—to uncover these transformative notions of governance. The Crown and the Courts argues that by proclaiming the supremacy of law in the absence of power, postbiblical thinkers emphasized the centrality of law in the people’s covenant with God, helping to revitalize Jewish life and establish allegiance to legal order. These scholars proved not only creative but also prescient. Their profound ideas about the autonomy of law reverberate to this day.

Nazareth has been cruel to my mother, more cruel than any village ever was. All the village says that my blood father is not the man who married my mother. They have shamed her on the matter all my life. Every woman asks which man of the village is my blood father. Every man scowls and says he was not the one my mother seduced. My mother will not tell who is my blood father. My mother will not speak on the matter. My mother bears her shame in silence. Some righteous man, a prophet, said a word over me when I was a babe in arms. He told how I will redeem Israel when I grow to be a man. Now I have grown to be a man, but I do not know how to redeem Israel. The scriptures do not explain the matter. My people say that the man who redeems Israel must take up the sword and throw off our enemy, Rome, which we call the Great Satan. My family says I must take up the sword. Only I am no man of the sword. I wish with all my heart to redeem Israel, but HaShem, the God of our fathers, must tell me how. Lately, there came a new prophet to Israel, who immerses for repentance at the river Jordan. I went to ask the prophet how I should redeem Israel. He said I am to smite the four Powers. I asked what are the four Powers. He could not say, but he said HaShem will reveal the matter to me. I wish HaShem will reveal the matter, only I am not a prophet. Not yet. But I will be. Here is what I know. Every hour of every day, I feel the Presence of HaShem. I do not know why I should feel the Presence always. My mother does not. My village does not. Even the prophet of HaShem does not. I think the Presence will teach me the way to redeem Israel. But I am afraid to redeem Israel. To redeem Israel is to leave my mother to the scorn of the village. The rage of the village. My mother begs and cries on me to make a justice for her. To make a justice on the village. I do not know how to make a justice on the village. I do not know how to redeem Israel. But HaShem will show me the way. I will learn how to be a prophet of HaShem. I will learn how to redeem Israel. I will learn how to make a justice for my mother. I will smite the first Power. Or I will die in the trying.

Conflict between England and France was a fact of life for centuries, but few realize that this conflict originated with the Vikings and their settlement of what would become Normandy. In this compelling and entertaining history, Mary McAuliffe takes the reader back to those dark and turbulent times when Viking descendant William the Conqueror became king of England, yet as duke of Normandy remained an unwilling subject to the French crown. This led to ongoing hostility between his descendants and generations of French monarchs, culminating in the clash between young Philip Augustus of France and his royal English rivals, most notably Richard Lionheart. Mary McAuliffe colorfully provides the background and context for this "clash of crowns," whose outcome would shape the course of English and French history throughout the centuries that followed.