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

community and the public at large. These efforts highlight the role of the
faculty as American spiritual leaders who used the newest scientific findings
to help maintain the religious commitments of those who otherwise might
perceive them as dangerous or be misled by those who sought to undermine
their faith.
Although this story ends in 1993, the story of HUC-JIR and the scrolls has
certainly not ended. Its faculty continues to research and teach about the scrolls.
The critical views of Ellis Rivkin and Samuel Sandmel have been replaced by
those of faculty who have had access to more of the material—in part due to
the efforts of Wacholder and Abegg—and students who continue to explore
the implications of these ancient texts for their understanding of the Jewish
past and of the present.
Jason Kalman is assistant professor of Classical Hebrew Literature and Interpretation
at the Cincinnati School of HUC-JIR. He received his doctorate from the Department
of Jewish Studies at McGill University and is a research fellow affiliated with the
University of the Free State, South Africa. He specializes in the history of Jewish
biblical exegesis, and his specific research interests include rabbinic anti-Christian
polemic, medieval intellectual history as reflected in biblical commentary, and biblical
interpretation after the Holocaust.
Notes
*For Charlie, with love.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank professors James Sanders, Ellis Rivkin, Norman
Golb, Ben Zion Wacholder, Stephen Kaufman, John Kampen, and Martin Abegg for sharing
their recollections of HUC-JIR and its faculty. Ben Zion Wacholder’s family, Nina Wacholder
and Robert Goldenberg, showed me tremendous hospitality and answered many questions
during my visit in October 2008. I thank David Gilner, the director of libraries, for opening
the library records to me; and the president of HUC-JIR, Rabbi David Ellenson, for lifting
restrictions and granting me access to private presidential files. HUC-JIR chancellor emeritus,
Alfred Gottschalk, also kindly shared with me his recollections of these events. My graduate
assistant, Shane Cass, reviewed the manuscript and offered many helpful corrections. The staff
of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives has been helpful beyond
measure. Without their generous cooperation this project could not have been completed.
Unless otherwise indicated, all archival material cited is from the American Jewish Archives
(AJA), Cincinnati, Ohio, or the Klau Library, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of
Religion (HUC-JIR), Cincinnati, Ohio.
1 HUC-JIR president Alfred Gottschalk to Hebrew University president Avraham Harman, 24
October 1991, Administrative File: Dead Sea Scrolls, Klau Library, HUC-JIR.
2 The earliest group of Jewish scholars in the United States to publish articles or to give scholarly
conference presentations about the scrolls included Isaiah Sonne and Harry Orlinsky of HUC-
JIR; Saul Lieberman, H.L. Ginsburg, and Robert Gordis at the Jewish Theological Seminary;
Sydney Hoenig at Yeshiva University; and Solomon Zeitlin at Dropsie College. Among the
major non-Jewish scholars first to be attached to the scrolls were William Albright of Johns
Hopkins University and Millar Burrows of Yale University.
3 On the discovery and sale see the overview provided by Harry Thomas Frank, “How the
Dead Sea Scrolls Were Found” reprinted in The Dead Sea Scrolls (Washington, DC: Biblical
82 • American Jewish Archives Journal