The Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete extant manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, produced in 1008 or 1009 CE by professional scribes in Cairo; in the 19th-century, it made its way to Russia’s then-capital. Based on letters found in the Cairo Genizah from Mevorakh ben Joseph ibn Yazdad—the Egyptian Jew who commissioned the manuscript—Ben Outhwaite finds some hints about its origins. In particular, the evidence suggests that Mevorakh was a member of the Karaite sect, who dismissed talmudic (or “Rabbanite”) interpretations of the Torah in favor of their own, more literalist, interpretive standards:

Mevorakh’s family name is of Persian origin—Yazdad means “God has given” [in Persian]—and an Ibn Yazdad, probably Mevorakh’s father, appears in commercial correspondence from the Genizah early in the 11th century, whence it seems he is based in Egypt and plays a role in Mediterranean trade. Mevorakh himself clearly possessed significant social status, and probably also personal wealth, as we find that he was appointed around 1019 CE to oversee the two supervisors of an inheritance. . . .

[There is] strong circumstantial evidence that the Ibn Yazdad family were themselves Persian Karaites, [evidence supported by the codex’s primary scribe] Samuel ben Jacob’s use of a distinctively Karaite system of dating, alongside all the others, in the main colophon.

Mevorakh was not the only Karaite to own the codex. The last few lines of [its] colophon were added over a hundred years after its manufacture and reveal that in 1135 CE the book was sold to the leading Rabbanite Matsliaḥ ha-Kohen, [head] of the Palestinian yeshiva, an ownership fact asserted in attractive medieval Hebrew legalese and witnessed by Ḥalfon ha-Levi ben Manasseh, one of the most prolific court scribes of the Genizah, [who is] widely attested in 12th-century documents. . . .

So, the Leningrad Codex was produced for, most likely, a Persian Karaite, and was subsequently acquired by a Persian Karaite, who sold it to Matsliaḥ ha-Kohen ben Solomon, the head of the Jerusalem yeshiva. Matsliaḥ was the highest intellectual authority [not just in the land of Israel, but for Jews throughout Africa and Europe who followed “Palestinian” rather Babylonian halakhah and customs] and “head of the Jews” (raʾīs al-Yahūd) in the Fatimid empire. That such a powerful and senior figure should acquire the Bible attests strongly to the value ascribed to it in its day. In addition, evidently its Karaite provenance did not devalue it in Matsliaḥ’s eyes and deter him from purchasing it. . . .

[W]as Samuel ben Jacob a Karaite too, given that Karaism is so intimately connected with the creation of the manuscript? I don’t think so. From other findings in the documentary record, I believe he was a Maghrebi from a Rabbanite family of some status, though he had fallen on hard times.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.