Thursday, September 11, 2008

Stolen Israeli Document Recovered in Germany

I'm way behind this week as I've been trying to finish up some non-blog projects; hopefully this weekend will give me a chance to catch up. In the meantime, I did want to pass along some good news: the AP reports that a document discovered missing nearly a decade ago from Tel Aviv's Rambam Library has been discovered at the German National Library, and will be returned to Israel.

A 1793 manuscript treatise on Jewish law, The Book of the Levite's Worship, went missing from Tel Aviv around 1998. It was put on sale at Christie's a year later, but didn't sell at auction and was later purchased by an "unidentified dealer" and disappeared until 2005, when a "manuscript specialist at Israel's national library in Jerusalem received a copy of a book being held by the German National Library and realized it was the Levite's Worship."

It has now been determined that the manuscript in Germany is that missing from Tel Aviv, and the Germans have agreed to return it to Israel.