Around 200 CE, a group of rabbis produced a digest of legal opinions, together with some theological ones, known as the Mishnah. This was the first attempt (or the first attempt that survived) to put what these rabbis called the Oral Torah into writing. At some point, a parallel text, containing alternative opinions, was also put to parchment and given the name Tosefta—Aramaic for “addition.” Michael Satlow considers the oldest extant manuscript of the Tosefta, which once belonged to the Jewish community of the German city of Erfurt:

The Erfurt manuscript is the earliest and best witness to the Tosefta. Yet the Tosefta is itself a somewhat mysterious document. It reads much like the Mishnah, largely following its order. Some parts of it are identical to the Mishnah; others presuppose and comment on passages found in the Mishnah; and yet others seem to precede the Mishnah. While the Mishnah became the base text for two Talmuds (Palestinian and Babylonian), we do not know where, when, or why the Tosefta was redacted as a single document, nor how it was used.

That, though, is only preface to the story of our manuscript, which dates to the 12th century. The manuscript itself is hefty, heavy, and must have been expensive to produce. It is made of large parchment pages dotted with pinholes on the margin, to help the scribe keep a straight line. The scribe was also thrifty enough that when a page ripped, he stitched it back together rather than start a fresh one.

The Tosefta was one of fifteen extant Hebrew manuscripts used by the Erfurt Jewish community. Some of these manuscripts, such as an enormous Bible, are significant works, and there is a long, complex, and bloody history behind their survival. That story, with pogroms, property seizures, and ultimately the seizure of these manuscripts into Christian libraries, encapsulates the story of German Jews in the Middle Ages.

One of the greatest, and most baffling, of America’s errors since October 7 has been its indulgence of Qatar, a nominal ally that tends to act as anything but. Over the next week, I’m going to use this space to point to some of this regime’s bad behavior, and its deadly consequences. Today, I’ll focus on Al Jazeera, a state-sponsored media conglomerate that churns out anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda in a variety of languages. Douglas Murray calls attention to some of its employees in Gaza:

Take Muhammad Washah, whom Al Jazeera presented as a stellar part of the press corps merely reporting the truth. Unfortunately for them, their man is also a senior commander in Hamas. He used to be in Hamas’s anti-tank missile unit, but since 2022 he has been in charge of research and development for aerial weapons. Known to you and me as “rockets.”

It’s quite something to pull off. On the one hand, Washah can spend his days making rockets to fire at Israel. But in the evenings he can report on the terrible destruction in Gaza caused by the “Zionist entity.” . . . He might have kept getting away with it if IDF soldiers in Gaza had not managed to get a hold of his laptop.

And that’s why, Elliott Abrams explains, supporters of freedom of the press should have no qualms about Washington pressing Doha about the network—or about Israel’s decision to prevent it from operating within its borders:

While organized as a private company, Al Jazeera is the voice of Qatar’s regime. It was founded and financed by the then-emir of Qatar. Whenever I am told that this is not true, and that Al Jazeera is really an independent news source, I ask a simple question: show me one time since its founding nearly 30 years ago that it has voiced one criticism of the Qatari government. I’m still waiting.

And it’s not just Al Jazeera: Qatar owns other news media that are equally awful. . . .

These news sources are not free; they need to stay close to the Qatari official line and never contradict it in significant ways. . . . And that is what makes their pernicious role so consequential: Qatar could turn them off, or turn them into actual independent news sources, if it wished. Instead it wishes to promote and laud violence.