The American Jewish Archives Journal, Volume LXI 2009, Number 1

the So Called Dead Sea Scrolls,” JQR 43 no. 2 (1952): 121–139. In secondary literature Wechsler
is occasionally addressed as Doctor or Professor and more often as Mister. Sometimes he is
described as a professor and at times as a journalist. According to his own account, he was a
“researcher of ancient Israel history” born in Libau, Latvia, in 1889. Wechsler received his higher
education in Tübingen and Hamburg and made aliyah to Palestine in 1935. See “Wechsler,
Tovia,” in Who’s Who in Israel, 1966–67 (Tel Aviv: Mamut, 1966), col. 653.
121 Orlinsky to Sonne, 29 June 1950, MS 513/2343g/Correspondence, 1949–1950.
122 Ibid.
123Sonne to Orlinsky, 4 July 1950 (translated from the Hebrew), MS 513/2343g/Correspondence,
1949–1950.
124At the 1953 SBL meeting Orlinsky publicly accused Sonne of stealing ideas in his conference
paper from the doctor of Hebrew letters dissertation of one of the College’s graduate students.
Orlinsky to Glueck, 6 August 1953, MS 661/6/14, Glueck, Nelson, 1950–1971. Sonne only grew
more aggravated with Orlinsky when, in 1956, Orlinsky published a critical review of the first
volume of the official Dead Sea Scrolls publication. See Orlinsky, “Barthelemy, D., and Milik,
J. T., Discoveries in the Judean Desert; I, Qumran Cave I (Book Review),” Jewish Social Studies
18 (1956): 217. The review angered Sonne enough that he wrote to the editor, Salo Baron, to ask
why he did not prevent the publication of the review. See Baron to Sonne, 24 September 1956,
MS 513/2343h/Correspondence, 1957. Sonne remained on watch for Orlinsky’s book reviews.
When Orlinsky wrote negatively about Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica in the JBL [“Review of: The Text
of the Old Testament, an Introduction to Kittel-Kahle’s Biblia Hebraica by Ernst Würthwein and
Peter R. Ackroyd,” JBL 78, no.2 (1959): 176–178], Sonne was so angered that he wrote a short
article reviewing the review (which he called an “unfair and intemperate attack”) and sent it to
the former JBL editor David Noel Freedman and his successor, Morton Enslin. When Enslin
suggested that Sonne write directly to Orlinsky instead, because the journal could not publish
replies to its articles and reviews, Sonne replied, “[R]egarding your suggestion to write directly
to Dr. Orlinsky, I frankly do not see what purpose it could serve. Do you think Dr. Orlinsky
could be persuaded to retract his attack?” See Sonne to Freedman, 22 January 1960; Sonne
to Editor (JBL); 22 January 1960; Freedman to Sonne, 26 January 1960; Enslin to Sonne, 3
February 1960; and, Sonne to Enslin, 5 February 1956. These are preserved along with a draft
of the article in MS 513/2343h/Correspondence, 1960.
Sonne was much in the habit of writing sharp reviews. As a result of his 1948 review of Cecil
Roth’s The History of the Jews of Italy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1946), he began
what the prominent American Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna has called “one of the great
literary exchanges in the history of book reviewing.” [ JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture,
1888–1988 (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), 203]. In the review Sonne critiqued Roth for ascribing the
title “the circumciser” to the late ninth or tenth century Italian liturgical poet Menahem Corizzi
and challenged him to provide a source for this information. [Sonne, “Review: The History of
the Jews of Italy by Cecil Roth,” JQR 38, no. 4 (1948): 469–472]. Roth replied in a later volume
that he had, in fact, taken the information from an Italian language article by Sonne himself!
[Roth, “Critical Notes: A Reply to a Reviewer,” JQR 39, no. 2 (1948): 217].
125Orlinsky to Albright, 11 May 1949, MS 661/1/11, Albright, William F., 1941–1971.
126Albright to Orlinsky, 9 May 1949, MS 661/1/11, Albright, William F., 1941–1971.
127See John Trever, “A Paleographic Study of the Jerusalem Scrolls,” BASOR 113 (1949): 16–17
n. 39.
128Orlinsky to Albright, 11 May 1949, MS 661/1/11, Albright, William F., 1941–1971. With
regard to Zeitlin’s knowledge of this period’s material, Orlinsky commented to Albright (already
in 1945) that he had demonstrated “that he has no equal in the world today in historical
perspective of the intertestamental period combined with a first-hand knowledge of the rabbinic
material and a reliable knowledge of the hellenistic data. All his critics will pounce upon him …
but the fact always remains that their criticism is scarcely worth a hoot.” Orlinsky to Albright,
25 October 1945, Harry Orlinsky, HUC-JIR, Unprocessed Material/Albright, W. F.
Optimistic, Even with the Negatives: HUC-JIR and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1948–1993 • 89