The Israel Museum purchased a rare manuscript in the Sassoon Collection for $430,000 Tuesday, largely due to the efforts of Mayor Teddy Kollek. The manuscript went up for sale at a public auction in Zurich. “We have purchased the most famous Pentateuch of the Sassoon Collection,” said Kollek, who led a personal 48-hour telephone campaign with Jewish leaders throughout the world in order to raise the money. The 840-page manuscript is the “Pentateuch de Castro,” written in Germany in the late 14th Century. David Solomon Sassoon bought it in Amsterdam in 1899.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.