Afghani Treasure

By Yoel Finkelman and Ofir Haim. A few weeks before Rosh Hashanah sometime in the 11^th century, a distraught, young Jewish Afghani young man named Yair sent a painful letter to his brother-in-law, Abu-al-Hasan Siman Tov. Life had dealt Yair a tough hand, or maybe it was just his own bad choices. Having failed in business in his hometown of Bamiyan, rumors were now spreading that he had “broken promises . . . regarding property” and that he did not truly “observe the Sabbath.” Leaving these problems behind him, he had left his young wife to move some 150 miles to Ghazni and begin anew. More...