First Person: Gedenkschrift

006

Regardless of how critical you may be of these First Person columns, I think you will learn something from this one that you did not know. If you know what a gedenkschrift is, you can stop reading. If you know a little German, you can easily figure it out.

A festschrift is a volume of papers honoring, usually, a highly respected senior scholar. Etymologically it is a “festive writing.” If the honoree has passed away, however, it is a gedenkschrift, etymologically a “memorial writing,” honoring and expressing thanks for the scholar’s memory.

Very recently the Israel Exploration Society published a gedenkschrift honoring the memory of Joseph Naveh, Israel’s leading paleographer who died in 2011 at the ripe old age of 83 (I am 86). (Ada Yardeni wrote a moving obituary for him in BAR.^a)

Glancing over the table of contents, I noticed at least two surprising omissions: contributions from Robert Deutsch and André Lemaire, both eminent Near Eastern paleographers.

Well, you may say, Robert Deutsch is also an antiquities dealer, which, in some minds, is close to—perhaps worse than—prostitution. But that is partially how Deutsch knows so much; he sees it all. He also holds a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University and serves as the editor of the Israel Numismatic Journal. On the other hand, he was a defendant in the so-called “forgery trial of the century,” involving, among many other things, the famous “brother of Jesus” inscription.^b But he, like other defendants, was wholly acquitted after a 10-year trial. Recently Deutsch filed a $3 million lawsuit against the Israel Antiquities Authority, which brought the lawsuit against him despite the contrary recommendation of the police. In his verdict, the trial judge said of Deutsch: “[He is] an honest and decent businessman, professional and experienced, who has advised many people without demanding any financial return.”

Perhaps Deutsch can be regarded as controversial. But this cannot be said of André Lemaire, a long-time star paleographer of the Sorbonne. Most professional paleographers would regard Lemaire as on a level with Naveh himself.

I decided to make a few discreet phone calls to see if I could find out the reason for these strange omissions. After all, nearly 30 distinguished scholars from around the world had contributed essays to this volume, so I should have no trouble finding out why Deutsch and Lemaire had been omitted.

It did not take me long. The volume had begun as a festschrift and was transformed into a gedenkschrift when Naveh passed away. When he was still living, however, he had left instructions that he did not want contributions from Lemaire or Deutsch to be included in the volume.

If you ever wondered if sophisticated, highly educated paleographers like Joseph Naveh (and archaeologists in general) tussle as do lesser lights, think again.

There is another side, however. Yossi Naveh, as he was universally known, was a Holocaust survivor and a special kind of Israeli immigrant who forged the character of the new nation of Israel. He was born in Ukraine and, at 16, was taken to Auschwitz by the Nazis. “He survived the death camp, the work camps and the death marches.”¹ After the war, he spent a year in a displaced persons camp. He then made aliyah to Israel aboard an illegal immigrant ship. He fought in Israel’s War of Independence and was wounded in the Galilee.

Life is complex.

Regardless of how critical you may be of these First Person columns, I think you will learn something from this one that you did not know. If you know what a gedenkschrift is, you can stop reading. If you know a little German, you can easily figure it out.