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

In responding to Moffett, Gottschalk indicated admiration for the
Huntington Library’s release of the material but highlighted the fact that
unlike HUC-JIR, the library was not bound by an official agreement. Again
he pointed out that he had correspondence that spanned more than a decade
trying to release the scrolls. 534 Gottschalk’s suggestion that his hands were tied
in this regard but that he had tried to have the Israelis change the rules again
indicates Gottschalk’s sense of the public outcry. When Shanks announced
that HUC-JIR held scroll negatives, he essentially directed public attention,
and perhaps scorn, in the direction of the College. To help protect HUC-JIR’s
reputation, Gottschalk wanted to write an op-ed piece for The New York Times
that would highlight that HUC-JIR could not release its negatives but that for
more than five years the institution had worked, despite the constant Israeli
refusal, to have them released. 535 Although no op-ed piece appeared, Gottschalk’s
intention was consistent with his other correspondence and statements to the
press. The College must have been pulled in two directions. It needed to keep
the confidences of those it promised on the one hand, but it could have been a
hero to the antimonopoly movement on the other. The College was torn, and the
efforts to get the scrolls released within the system were the best it could do.
In contrast to Oxford and HUC-JIR, the Huntington Library could afford
to be more adversarial in dealing with the authorities. Both schools relied on
cooperation from the Israelis in scholarly matters, but they also held rights to
various manuscripts. They could not afford to set the precedent of undermining
scholarly publishing rights if they wanted their own preserved. The Huntington
Library, in communicating with Gottschalk and Patterson, indicated that it
had still not decided whether to participate in the meeting but that it wanted
to assure all parties that it was only interested in allowing access to its photos,
not making text editions or facsimiles. Further, Moffett noted, he was not
sympathetic to Tov, who had suggested that competition was beneficial only
after editiones princepes were completed. Neither was Moffett sympathetic to
young scholars who had just received their allotments while others had stood
by for decades to see material. Mostly, he was convinced that the editors should
get to work finishing their editions instead of “policing the activities of others.”
536 In releasing the library’s scrolls Moffett announced, “When you free the
scrolls, you free the scholars. If we had sat quietly we would have violated our
own policy of unrestricted access.” 537 The Oxford Centre’s reply to Moffett was
similar to HUC-JIR’s: It was bound by written agreement not to give access to
its negatives until the IAA lifted the restrictions. 538
Abegg and Wacholder were against Gottschalk’s participating in the
meeting for two reasons. First, they were concerned that the meeting would
create a situation in which the IAA and the editors could seek retribution for
the College having published the bootleg edition. After all, Puech had already
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