Silence, Anti-Semitism and the Scrolls

054

Did you ever wonder what the dean of Harvard Divinity School does with his time? He attends meetings—all day—at least when a senior member of his faculty gives a virulently anti-Semitic interview to the press.

On October 28, 1990, chief Dead Sea Scroll editor John Strugnell of Harvard Divinity School gave an interview in Jerusalem to Israeli journalist Avi Katzman in which Strugnell called Judaism a “horrible religion” that was “originally racist,” a “Christian heresy” that should never have survived. He ended by recommending “mass conversion” of the Jews to Christianity as “the answer.”

The interview was published in Hebrew on November 9 in the Tel Aviv daily Ha-aretz. In the age of the fax machine, a copy of the Ha-aretz story arrived in the United States within hours. Arrangements were quickly made to publish the interview in English in the next issue of BAR (the BAR 17:02 issue, which would be out in mid-December).

The Strugnell interview was the talk of the corridors at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in New Orleans in mid-November.^a During the meetings, I tried to see Harvard Divinity School acting dean Mark Edwards in an effort to get a statement, but I was unable to locate him. After the meeting, I called his office in Cambridge and was told that he was out with a cold. I waited until he recovered and called again. He was in a meeting. I left word. He didn’t return my call. I called again the next day and was told that he hadn’t resumed my call because he had been in meetings all day. And he was now in another meeting. When would he be available? I asked. He was going to be in meetings all day, his secretary told me. The next day I called again and was finally told that he would not speak with me. So I was never able to get a statement from him concerning the anti-Semitic views expressed in the Strugnell interview. We printed our story without it. (See “Chief Dead Sea Scroll Editor Denounces Judaism, Israel,” BAR 17:01.)

In the wake of the public furor during the last few years over the failure to publish so many of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the denial of scroll access to scholars generally, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) revived its Ancient Manuscripts Committee. The revived committee held its first session at the Annual Meeting in New Orleans. For some time a committee of Israelis under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority had been locked in a struggle with Strugnell over control of the unpublished and still-secret scrolls. In an effort to exert its authority, the Israeli committee had recently appointed an Israeli scholar, Emanuel Tov of Hebrew University, as co-chief editor, who would have authority to act independently of Strugnell.^b The ASOR committee sided with the Israelis in this struggle and voted to send to the Israel Antiquities Authority a letter expressing the ASOR committee’s “wholehearted” support for Tov’s “proposed appointment” as “coeditor in chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project.”^c Although much discussed at the ASOR Ancient Manuscripts Committee meeting, the anti-Semitic Strugnell interview was passed over in silence in the letter the ASOR committee sent to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

I do not mean to suggest that anyone connected with these silences—the ASOR committee or the dean of Harvard Divinity School—is anti-Semitic, or anything close to that. Indeed, many of the people on the ASOR committee are Jews. It’s just that anti-Semitism is difficult to deal with. What do you say?

For years the issue of anti-Semitism has lurked beneath the surface of the scrolls. Everyone hoped it wouldn’t surface. To introduce the issue into the scrolls controversy would do no one any good, it was universally conceded. So silence about anti-Semitism has a long and honorable tradition in Dead Sea Scroll history.

No one has been happy that, with the 055Strugnell interview, anti-Semitism has now raised its ugly head. Everyone thought the issue was finally dead and buried, since scroll research had been opened to Jewish scholars (including Israelis).

On October 27, 1990, just one day before Strugnell gave his interview to the Ha-aretz correspondent, I myself tried to lay the issue to rest at an all-day public forum sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In my opening remarks, I went out of my way to emphasize that the current members of the publication team were “certainly without prejudice.” In the question period, someone asked me about the fact that the original eight-man scroll publication team, appointed in 1953 under Jordanian auspices, was Judenrein (Jew-free). I explained that the “bias [of the Jordanians] did not extend to the scholars themselves” and that today Jews are on the publication team. “That bias,” I said, “plays no part today.” I even cited John Strugnell as an example: “He has enlisted several prominent Israeli scholars [on the project].”

Now, with the Strugnell interview, the issue of anti-Semitism can no longer be avoided, although there has been very considerable effort to do so. We propose to face the issue openly and honestly. We hope others will do likewise.

In retrospect, one wonders whether it was right to remain silent in 1953 when, under Jordanian auspices, a “Jew-free” team was appointed to publish the scrolls.^d The Dead Sea Scrolls are, after all, a library of ancient Jewish religious texts. If anyone protested at the time the team was appointed, there is no record of it. Presumably—if anyone thought of it—it was considered wiser to accede to Jordanian sensitivities than to jeopardize the project. Perhaps so. But what would have happened if some Jews had been added to the team along the way?^e In any event, until the Six-Day War in 1967, Jewish scholars were completely cut out of work on the scrolls under the editing team’s authority.

In the Six-Day War, however, the unpublished scrolls, which were housed in the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem, fell into Israeli hands. The Israelis were now in control of the scrolls.

Yet a funny thing happened. Not a single voice was raised to correct the situation. No one said now that the Jordanian govemment was no longer in control, we can appoint some Jewish scholars, maybe even some Israeli scholars, to the team.

On the contrary, timid Israelis affirmed the “publication rights” of the “Jew-free” team, provided only that the scholars on the team publish the scrolls quickly.^f The rest of the community of scholars remained silent.

One factor that further complicated the matter was that almost all members of the original editing team were openly and vehemently anti-Israel. Harvard’s Frank Cross was a notable and distinguished exception to the anti-Israel bias of the team of editors. In contrast, another surviving member of the original team has to this day never set foot in Israel. For years after 1967, team scholars working in East Jerusalem refused to cross the old border between East and West Jerusalem, thus, in their own way, denying Israel’s existence. A latter-day vestige of this attitude was John Strugnell’s refusal in late 1990 to be treated in a Jewish hospital in West Jerusalem despite a serious medical problem and despite the 056inferior facilities in the Arab hospital to which he was admitted. Even the sheikhs of Saudia Arabia don’t go that far in their animosity toward the state of Israel. Strugnell’s refusal to go to an Israeli hospital is consistent with the statements in his interview that “it would’ve been nice if it [Zionism] never existed” and that the whole state of Israel is “founded on a lie.”

When a young graduate student named Michael Klein, now dean of the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College, wrote to Monsignor Patrick Skehan of Catholic University for permission to see a targum fragment from Qumran that Klein mistakenly thought was assigned to Skehan, Skehan replied that the fragment was in fact assigned to Milik (who does not answer correspondence), so Klein never got to see the fragment. But in his reply to Klein, Skehan stated as follows:

“Since I note that your letter included a carbon copy to Dr. Magen Broshi, I feel obliged to tell you in addition, that I should not under any circumstance grant through any Israeli functionary, any permission to dispense, for any purpose, or to any extent, of anything whatsoever that is lawfully housed in the Palestine Archaeological Museum.”

This attitude was shared by some other members of the editing team.

For about 15 years after the scrolls in the Rockefeller Museum (as the Palestine Archaeological Museum is now called) fell into Israeli hands, no Jew worked on the texts. Finally, in the mid-1980s, John Strugnell broke the barrier and enlisted the aid of Israeli scholar Elisha Qimron to work with him on the important unpublished text known as MMT. In another project, Strugnell worked with Devorah Dimant of Haifa University. Emanuel Tov of Hebrew University was assigned a Biblical scroll to publish.^g When, under Strugnell’s tenure as chief editor, J. T. Milik was persuaded to release some of his hoard of unpublished texts, assignments from Milik’s hoard were given to Joseph Baumgarten of Baltimore Hebrew University and Jonas Greenfield of Hebrew University. Strugnell also brought in Talmudic scholar Jacob Sussman to interpret Jewish religious laws (halakhah) contained in MMT, and Shemaryahu Talmon to interpret the calendar provisions in the same text. The “No Jews Allowed” sign was effectively removed from the Dead Sea Scroll publication project, largely as a result of assignments made by John Strugnell.

Everyone was relieved that anti-Semitism was now no longer even a potential issue.

Then came the Strugnell interview.

The reaction in the United States to the Strugnell interview has been very different from the reaction in Israel. The initial reaction in the United States was a kind of denial: “This is not the John Strugnell I knew.” Close associates lined up to proclaim that in 10 or 20 or 30 years they had never heard Strugnell talk like this. “After all, didn’t he bring Jewish scholars into the project?”

Everything Strugnell said in the interview was the result of his mental condition, I was repeatedly told. In the words of a graduate student quoted in the Harvard Crimson, “I’m sure it’s his illness that’s speaking.”

There is no question that John Strugnell is a very sick man, physically and mentally. Now it can be talked about. For one thing, it is inextricably involved in the question of his anti-Semitism. For another, it has already been in the newspapers, so we cannot be considered guilty of impropriety. Perhaps most importantly, nothing we discuss can erase—or add to—the humiliation of, and embarrassment to, John Strugnell or the painful personal tragedy that this reflects.

For years Strugnell has been an alcoholic, a disease that has seriously affected his ability to do his work. Everyone knew about this. But no one mentioned it publicly. There was a kind of gentleman’s agreement, somewhat like the press used to observe with respect to the drinking habits of members of Congress. The closest reference in print to Strugnell’s alcoholism was in a Boston Herald article in 1989 that described his “dilapidated side room of a Jerusalem convent” as “adorned with American and Israeli beer bottles… Empty cardboard beer cases are promptly converted into file cabinets still bearing names like Budweiser and Maccabi, a local beer.”

Despite the fact that his drinking was seriously impeding his work, no effort was made to remove Strugnell from his position either by his fellow team members or by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

In addition, John Strugnell is a manic-depressive. On at least one previous occasion, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Now, once again, he is a patient in a psychiatric hospital.

These facts obviously complicate the question of whether John Strugnell is an anti-Semite.

As noted, one theory is that the views he expressed in his interview are solely the product of his disturbed mind. According to this theory, the interview does not reflect what the man actually thinks; he simply made it up as a result of his mental condition.

The opposing theory is that his mental condition simply loosened his tongue. In vino veritas, so to speak. Perhaps he expressed himself more extremely than he would otherwise have done, but his core attitudes and beliefs are accurately reflected in the interview, according to this view.

The first theory is espoused by many of his students and colleagues. They are naturally and understandably pained at the public humiliation and disgrace that has fallen on their mentor and friend. In the letter from his colleagues and students (see Queries & Comments, in this issue), they suggest this possibility, without necessarily embracing it (“We cannot know how much his illness influenced what he said”). In a recent statement in the Israeli newsweekly, The Jerusalem Report (December 27, 1990), Frank Cross is quoted as saying that Strugnell’s “anti-Semitism is part of his illness.”

If we could conclude that Strugnell’s statements were simply the product of a disturbed mind and that they had no relation to his real attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, we could avoid the questions that arise when an anti-Semite is discovered holding the position of chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls. To decide whether his anti-Semitic statements in the interview were due to the 057effects of his present mental illness, we can look at Strugnell’s views prior to this interview. Some of this evidence has come out in press reports only since the publication of the interview: The fact is John Strugnell was and is an anti-Semite and rabidly anti-Israel.

According to Magen Broshi, curator of Jerusalem’s Shrine of the Book, where most of the original intact Dead Sea Scrolls are housed, “We’ve known for 20 years that he [Strugnell] is an anti-Semite” (quoted in a British newspaper, The Independent, December 14, 1990). In a Jerusalem Report article, Broshi is quoted as referring to Strugnell’s “rabid anti-Semitism.”

Broshi was not the only one who knew of Strugnell’s anti-Semitism. According to the Boston Jewish Advocate (January 10, 1991), “The anti-Judaic attitudes of [Strugnell] were known for a long time by many of his colleagues.” Nahum Sarna, emeritus professor of Biblical studies at Brandeis University is quoted as saying, “Strugnell was known by several people to be anti-semitic from the first days he came to Harvard. He did not hide his anti-semitic views. Some of his students say they never heard an anti-semitic remark from him, but some faculty members did.”

The same article quotes Cyrus Gordon, emeritus professor at both Brandeis and New York University: “His [Strugnell’s] habits and remarks had gotten around and were well-known. But it’s like having a bad boy—he’s still your child and you don’t like to talk about it to colleagues, friends and neighbors.”

According to Time magazine (European and Mid-East edition, December 24, 1990), “Scholars have long gossiped about Strugnell’s offensive ideas.” On one occasion several years ago, reported Time, “Strugnell toasted Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, whose Nazi unit committed atrocities during World War II, as the greatest man of the half-century.”

Newsweek reported his “adamant dislike for the state of Israel.” While criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitism, at a certain point the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism becomes blurred. Strugnell’s anti-Zionism approached that line if it did not cross it.

According to an article in the Baltimore Sun (December 23, 1990), “Several [students and colleagues] say he [Strugnell] demonstrated an upper-class British hauteur to Jews and Judaism,” adding that to individual Jews he was often “warm, generous and supportive.”

One former student who is Jewish (incidentally, a signatory to the letter in Queries & Comments) is quoted as saying, “He has said derogatory things to me before, and I called him on it. He would laugh and back down.” According to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report, a senior member of the editing team, Eugene Ulrich, “acknowledged that Strugnell had long had a reputation for making inappropriate remarks.” Ulrich referred to them as “slurs.”

A scholar who was being interviewed for a faculty position recalls Strugnell’s making anti-Semitic remarks to him.

Another former student who is Jewish told me that he worked closely with Strugnell on theological matters and knew him to be a very “conservative” Christian theologian who believes in a “supersessionist” theology according to which Christianity has “superseded” Judaism as the “true Israel.” Jews are therefore the false Israel. Judaism is therefore no longer valid; the covenant recorded in the Old Testament has been broken. As quoted in The Jerusalem Report (December 20, 1990) in a later discussion after he had resumed to the United States, Strugnell stated, “It’s the old Christian response to the Jewish problem.”

As noted above, the colleagues and students who signed the letter in Queries & Comments carefully refrain from considering the indelicate question of whether John Strugnell is an anti-Semite. Several of the signatories admitted to me that they don’t really know whether John Strugnell is anti-Semitic. Moreover, they concede that it is quite possible for a person to be an excellent scholar-as John Strugnell surely is—to produce unbiased work and to teach in an unbiased manner—and yet still be an anti-Semite.

The point they make in their letter is simply that in his professional work, his anti-Semitism, if he is anti-Semitic, did not have any effect. We have no evidence that his anti-Semitism did affect his work, although some scholars contend that it did. We are in no position to judge this matter. His students and colleagues may well be right.

But, unlike them, we must go further. Simply because his anti-Semitism may not have affected his work, we cannot finesse the question of whether he is anti-Semitic. We must also explore the nature of his anti-Semitism; we must also ask whether an anti-Semite should be working on these Jewish religious treasures even if he is otherwise competent to do so.

On the evidence already presented, we conclude that John Strugnell is an anti-Semite.

That needs to be said. That does not mean we should go looking for anti-Semitism under every green leaf. We are not 059advocating an academic witch-hunt. But when it manifests itself—in whatever unfortunate way—we should not avert our eyes. As we should not go searching for it, we should not avoid the issue when it arises. That there are dangers on either side must be conceded.

It is especially important that we look at the nature of John Strugnell’s anti-Semitism, because it comes not from a street-fighter like Louis Farrakhan, but from an erudite professor of Christian origins at Harvard Divinity School. His interview was laced with crude vitriol: “a horrible religion,” “originally racist,” “it never should have survived”—this, less than 50 years since the ovens of Auschwitz were put out (some might fear, banked). He even referred to Hitler’s inability to “move” four million Jews (the customary estimate of Jews killed in the Holocaust is, of course, six million, a figure disputed by those who deny the Holocaust).

It is easy to condemn this form of anti-Semitism—as, of course, everyone has done. Once the story hit the New York Times, acting dean Edwards of Harvard Divinity School managed to pull himself out of a meeting for a Time magazine reporter to whom he declared the Strugnell interview “personally repugnant.”

Certainly but for his illness, Strugnell would not have expressed himself in these crude terms publicly. But beneath this namecalling lies a far more sophisticated, intellectual, carefully developed form of anti-Jewish polemic. It is the repudiated doctrine of a past age. It is the view that Judaism is not a valid religion, the view that Christianity is the true Israel and the Jews the false Israel, the view that the Jews are “stubborn” because they have not accepted Christ, the view that the New Testament has invalidated the covenant reflected in the Old Testament, the view that Christianity has “superseded” Judaism and that Judaism should disappear. This position is summed up in academic jargon by the term “supersessionism.” This is the position that underlies Strugnell’s name-calling. This is the position, we are told by one of his former students who knows him well, that John Strugnell espouses—espoused long before his illness affected his mind. One doesn’t come up with a theory like this because one is mentally ill. This well-developed theory has long been part of John Strugnell’s philosophy of Christianity.

Although British-born Strugnell is a converted Roman Catholic, supersessionism is no part of the Church’s teaching today. To explain the Church’s view of supersessionism, we have asked Eugene Fisher, Director of the Secretariat for Catholic’ Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, to give us a brief report, which we print in the sidebar “The Church’s Teaching on Supersessionism.” Perhaps other Christian theologians will offer us their views.

What follows from this? First, what does not follow: We certainly do not deny John Strugnell or any other anti-Semite the right to express his or her views. Anti-Semites are free to state their views in as crudely, or in as sophisticated, a way as they like. But we—Christian and Jew alike—are free and morally obliged to condemn it when it surfaces.

This is as true when the anti-Semite is a great scholar and teacher as it is when the anti-Semite is a popular pop singer.

In their carefully crafted letter, Strugnell’s students and colleagues not only avoid the question of whether their teacher and friend is an anti-Semite, they also affirm that his anti-Semitism, if he is indeed anti-Semitic, did not affect his work: “We have never read or heard any evidence of anti-Judaism in his scholarship or teaching” (italics supplied). The italicized qualification is important. Outside his scholarship and teaching, the man has expressed anti-Semitic views, as some of the signatories recognize, yet they do not say this in their letter.

Assuming that his anti-Semitic views do not affect his scholarship, is he nevertheless unfit, by virtue of his personal anti-Semitism, to head the scroll publication team and to be honored by being given exclusive control of these Jewish cultural treasures?

John Strugnell is—and should be—as free as any other scholar to study and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls. But a known anti-Semite who has espoused his views publicly should not be on a publication team that has exclusive control of unpublished Jewish religious texts.

BAR’s position was stated in an editorial that accompanied the Strugnell interview (“John Strugnell: For the Man, Compassion; For His Views, Contempt,” BAR 17:01):

“It is clear that Strugnell cannot be permitted to function any longer as chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls. When a person with John Strugnell’s views handles these documents, he can only stain them. We say this despite his brilliance and competence as a scholar.”

So far, the team of editors has avoided all these questions.

In the official letter from the editing team announcing Strugnell’s removal, the team (F. M. Cross, J. T. Milik, Emile Puech, Emanuel Tov and Eugene Ulrich) cited only “his health and various complications,” adding, “We will remain grateful to Professor Strugnell for his many years of devoted service and his wide-ranging and unique positive contributions.” No mention of the anti-Semitic interview. As the New York Times reported: “In announcing the decision [to remove Strugnell] on Monday, they gave only his health and recent hospitalization as the reason for the action.”

Yet, as came out in personal interviews with the various actors in this charade, Strugnell’s anti-Semitic statements, in the words of the New York Times, concededly “forced the issue.”

If Strugnell’s health had been the real reason for sacking him, there would have been no need for such undue haste. Indeed, it would be unseemly to remove him just when he entered the hospital. Shouldn’t he have been given some time to recover? (Co-chief editor Tov, who would be replacing Strugnell, was away on a sabbatical in Holland and would not be back in Jerusalem until August 1991 anyway.) The fact that Strugnell was in a hospital meant that he would now face his problems. He would be “dried out” and his mental problem would likely be controlled, as it had been in the past, by drugs. Once he was “off the bottle” and back on his medicine, he was likely to be as good as new or certainly as good as he had been for many years prior to his hospitalization, when there was no move to unseat him. If it was “only” his health that was a concern, as the Times said, why did they not at least wait to see the effect of his stay in the hospital.

Perhaps sensing that the “health” explanation did not really hold water and not wanting to face the anti-Semitism issue, some team members put forward another reason for removing Strugnell-a reason that is as unfair as it is untrue: he didn’t push the team hard enough to get the scrolls published. According to an Associated Press story, one editing team member called Strugnell ineffective as chief editor “because he has not pushed researchers to work faster.” Ironically, as the butt of this charge, Strugnell was being made a scapegoat. The tardy scholars themselves sacked him—supposedly for not pushing them hard enough to complete their work. In fact, it was Strugnell who played the major role in developing the “Suggested Timetable” for publication^h and who persuaded Milik to divest himself of nearly a third of his hoard and to assign it to other scholars. The same scholars who fired Strugnell, supposedly for 060not pressing hard enough, were the very people who defended his policies regarding publication—and continue to defend them—provided only that they, rather than Strugnell, are at the helm. Prior to Strugnell’s anti-Semitic interview, no one on the team of editors criticized Strugnell’s policies or his failure to pressure others to complete their work.

The team obviously fired Strugnell—or recommended to the Israel Antiquities Authority that he be fired (it is not clear where this authority lies)—because of the anti-Semitic interview, but they gave other reasons—his health and his inefficiency—that avoided all the thorny questions involved in the anti-Semitic issue.

The reaction in Israel to the Strugnell interview is as puzzling as the reaction in the rest of the world is disturbing.

Shortly after the Strugnell interview appeared in Ha-aretz, I called Magen Broshi, curator of Israel’s Shrine of the Book and a member of the Israeli oversight committee, to get his reaction to the story. He seemed unconcerned. “Don’t waste your time on it,” he told me.

I then called Hebrew University professor Shemaryahu Talmon, another member of the Israeli oversight committee. “We are not perturbed,” he said.

Later, Broshi told the press that Strugnell’s anti-Semitism—which he said he knew about for 20 years—was “entirely irrelevant!” For Broshi, the only question was whether Strugnell was competent to do the job.

This attitude was echoed by Amir Drori, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who told a Ha-aretz reporter that “the only [!] consideration facing the Antiquities Authority [in deciding whether to remove Strugnell] is the quality of [Strugnell’s] work on the details of the scrolls.” (When the Antiquities Authority announced his removal, it was only because of “his physical and mental condition.”)

I cannot explain or understand this attitude. I don’t even know what to call it—timidity, diffidence, restraint? There is an old Yiddish proverb that goes something like this: “When someone spits on him, he says it’s raining.”

Some have suggested that Israelis are so accustomed to bias against them that they simply expect it and learn to overlook it.

As we have seen, the rest of the scholars who have a hand in the scroll-pot managed largely to avoid the question by attributing Strugnell’s anti-Semitic remarks to his mental illness. No doubt they were motivated by a desire to spare Strugnell from what they considered additional humiliation. To be hospitalized for a psychiatric condition, to be an alcoholic, to have these matters discussed publicly, to be removed as chief editor—all these represent a terrible personal tragedy that is inevitably painful to all concerned, especially to Strugnell himself. It was only natural that his students and colleagues wished to spare him, as one of the signatories to the letter told me, the additional burden of being branded an anti-Semite. He has already had to bear more pain than should be asked of anyone.

In retrospect, however, the issue was too obvious, too insistent, too important to be avoided.

The personal dimensions of the tragedy cannot be gainsaid. May John Strugnell recover fully and speedily. Let him be honored as a brilliant scholar, as a wonderful teacher, as a warm, generous and caring mentor and colleague. But for his anti-Semitism, he must also bear the shame.

The powers that control the unpublished scrolls must now face another question: Strugnell has been removed from the team itself. But his hoard of texts, over which he has exclusive control, remains his—and his alone. No one can see these texts unless John Strugnell permits it. Will he be allowed to continue to exercise this control, in short, to serve on the team? And if his treasures are to be taken from him, on what ground will this be done?

Did you ever wonder what the dean of Harvard Divinity School does with his time? He attends meetings—all day—at least when a senior member of his faculty gives a virulently anti-Semitic interview to the press.