Jerusalem (AP) - The family of man who held a fragment of a more than 1,000-year-old manuscript of the Hebrew Bible for six decades as a good luck charm will present it to a Jerusalem institute next week.

The parchment, about "the size of a credit card," is believed to be part of the most authoritative manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, the Aleppo Codex, said Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben Zvi institute. It contains verses from the Book of Exodus describing the plagues in Egypt, including the words of Moses to Pharaoh, "Let my people go, that they may serve me."

Sam Sabbagh, then a 17-year-old Syrian, picked up a piece of the manuscript off the floor of a synagogue in Aleppo, Syria in 1947. The synagogue had been burned the previous day in riots that followed the decision by the United Nations to partition Palestine, a step to creation of the Jewish state of Israel.

Sabbagh, who later immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, carried the parchment around for years in a plastic pouch in his wallet, Glatzer said. He used it as a good luck charm, even bringing it with him when he underwent open heart surgery.

Yad Ben Zvi in Jerusalem is a Jewish studies institute, who received the codex when it was smuggled into Israel in 1958. The institute learned of the fragment's existence about 20 ago and attempted to persuade Sabbagh to part with the fragment - to no avail.

After Sabbagh passed away two years ago, his family decided to donate it to the institute.

The codex, also known as the Masoretic Text, was written in Tiberias, next to the Sea of Galilee, in the 10th century and later brought to Jerusalem. It then traveled to Cairo, after which, according to tradition, Moses Maimonides' grandson brought it to Syria. The elder Maimonides was a 12th-century Jewish scholar whose writings and rulings are still followed and studied.
go

from an historical standpoint excellent
from a religious standpoint

Any idea what the fragment says owl?
The link wouldn't work for me.