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| Fragment of Dead Sea Scrolls |
Last month, I visited Qumran (now located in the West Bank, but open to the public) and stared at the gaping holes in the desert mountainside where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. "Scrolls" is somewhat of a misnomer; much of what was excavated from these caves were fragments of the Jewish holy books and required much restoration. Nearly a thousand scrolls were recovered, most in Hebrew (though 20 percent were written in Aramaic and a few in Greek), representing all of the books of the Torah with the exception of the Book of Esther (a very timely detail, since today is Purim).
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| Dr. Lawrence Schiffman |
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Dead Sea Scrolls
Discovery Times Square, NYC |
Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls ended up in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, though I didn't visit them there. Some are still in the hands of the Jordanian Antiquities Commission. And a few, happily, are visiting about 40 miles from my Connecticut home in Times Square, New York City at the
Discovery Times Square. Several days ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Yeshiva University Professor and Dead Sea Scroll expert, Lawrence H. Schiffman at an event hosted by the Jerusalem-based
Bible Lands Museum. Schiffman led us on a wonderful tour of the Scroll Fragments and other artifacts of ancient Israel, and, while staring at the 2,500 year old pieces of my own Jewish history I wondered how anyone could negate the existence of the Jewish People in that region. The scrolls, our Torah, mostly written in Hebrew, are tangible proof that we were there. To dispute that would be like finding remnants of the Koran in Mecca and insisting that there were never Muslims there.
I encourage anyone who lives in the NY area to see these incredible artifacts for yourself. The Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition will be in Times Square through the middle of April, 2012.
