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

significant—HUC-JIR maintained major rabbinic and archaeological programs
through its campus in Jerusalem. At the time it was in the midst of preparing
to renovate its campus, and Israel had given the College a $500,000 construction
grant. 519 Acting unilaterally to open Israel’s national treasures to the public
was politically unwise. Gottschalk was attempting to serve two masters. On
the one hand, he did not want to upset the Israelis who, at least in Jerusalem,
held the purse strings; on the other, public sentiment was against the College’s
helping the editorial team maintain its monopoly on scroll access. In the same
release, Gottschalk made certain to highlight that the College was working to
have the Israelis increase access to the materials. HUC-JIR was trying to get the
authorities to allow a “more liberal reading” of its contract. HUC-JIR’s president
also suggested an alternative possibility: If all the institutions that had signed
agreements with the authorities agreed that given the current circumstances
there was no longer a good reason for the contracts, they could collectively
open the material. 520 Presumably this could protect them from legal action; it
would be difficult for the IAA to initiate legal proceedings against them all.
As for Abegg and Wacholder, Gottschalk was enthusiastic in suggesting their
actions had changed the status quo regarding control of the scrolls: “They blew
the lid off.” 521
The following day, in response to Huntington’s declaration and the public
support for releasing the material, Emanuel Tov and Amir Drori invited an
HUC-JIR representative to appear at a meeting in Jerusalem on 4 December
1991 to discuss the issue of access to the scrolls. Also invited were participants
from the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, the Huntington Library, and the
Qumran Centre at the Oxford Centre for Post-Graduate Hebrew Studies. 522
The press picked up notice of the meeting, which suggested that the goal
was to solve the problems with Huntington and the other libraries without
legal action; the IAA preferred discussion, negotiation, and compromise. 523
Given the public outcry, Israel could not afford the bad press that a lawsuit
would almost certainly bring. On 9 October 1991, Gottschalk indicated his
willingness to attend. 524
In late September, Zafren began formulating the College’s response to the
IAA. First, he noted that Harman’s letter in 1989 was the first the College knew
of the two different authorities controlling different collections of the scrolls.
Harman’s letter was a runaround, intended to confuse the situation and to make
challenging it more difficult. Second, it was not clear that the College had, in
fact, ever received negatives of the original seven scrolls. Zafren’s examination
of the negatives showed that 1QpHab, 1Qh (Thanksgiving), 3Q7, and much
of 6Q8 of the Genesis Apocryphon were also not included. As far as Zafren
was concerned, HUC-JIR had laid out funds for what Broshi claimed in his
letter of 7 May 1972 was a complete set of the unpublished fragments. However
in comparing the inventory lists to the negative numbers, it appeared that 151
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