The Tel Aviv Museum of Art's American Friends (TAMAF) invited Friends to a private tour of the Codex Sassoon at Sotheby's, New York, led by Sharon Liberman Mintz, Senior Judaica Specialist.

The Bible is one of the world’s greatest treasures and holds powerful resonance for the three monotheistic religions and their billions of adherents. For thousands of years, its sacred words have been closely studied, analyzed, and meditated on. Copied, printed, and translated into scores of languages the world over, the Hebrew Bible arguably constitutes the most influential book of human history and the bedrock of Western civilization. Codex Sassoon, created circa 900, is the earliest surviving example of a single codex containing all the books of the Hebrew Bible with their punctuation, vowels, and accents.

The codex is named for its prominent modern owner, David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942), who assembled the largest and most important private collection of Hebrew manuscripts in the world and had a special affinity for Bibles in particular. Some of the most valuable and important items in his library belonged to this genre of Hebrew literature. His collection catalogue, Ohel Dawid, begins and ends with biblical material, and Codex Sassoon is its very last entry, giving pride of place to this monument of world civilization.