The Quest for New Strategies in Teaching and Popularizing the Dead Sea Scrolls

“The Master shall instruct all the Sons of Light” (1QS III, 12)
Since the discovery of the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, scholars have devoted most of their efforts to publishing the Scrolls, excavating Qumran and the surrounding areas, and presenting the new literary and archaeological data. In the past, new information was communicated to the academic and non-academic world alike by means of written and visual materials, oral presentations, media coverage, archaeological tours, and exhibitions. Thanks to the major technological breakthroughs of the last two decades, novel methods have been developed to disseminate knowledge regarding the Scrolls and related topics, such as electronic-digital databases, internet websites, and, most recently, virtual reconstructions. Some scholars have even adopted a less formal approach, using the fictional-literary medium as an indirect channel for transmitting information.
Nevertheless, the irony is that the explosion of information has not necessarily improved the general public’s understanding of the issues. To the contrary, a growing misinformation has blossomed in the last decades, due to two basic factors: the tendency of the popular media to invert reality and decontextualize as well as oversimplify academic arguments, and seek artificially contemporized interpretations of the Scrolls (i.e., mystery, controversy, and spirituality)
(Schiffman [2005], Grossman [2005]); and the vacuum created by the general inability of scholars to communicate the content of the Scrolls and articulate their relevance to the lives of real people (Mahan [2005]). This situation has created a need to develop innovative languages and focal points that can help communicate the true meaning of the Scrolls to the lay public.
In the past, there were just a few sporadic initiatives promoted by the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Israel Museum’s Youth Wing, and the Hebrew University to develop a systematic educational strategy for teaching the Dead Sea Scrolls to the younger generation, and dealing with their content, values, and contemporary relevance. Beyond these efforts, not much was done. Since my appointment as Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls in November 1994, this issue has become an important part of our agenda. In 1995, a half-day experiential program was created. A joint project of the Shrine of the Book and the Museum’s Youth Wing, it was in use for about four years. A few years later, inspired by an international conference held at the Israel Museum in 1997, and with the endorsement and support of the Dorot Foundation, the Shrine of the Book started developing formal educational programs for teaching the Dead Sea Scrolls. Thus, a fifth matriculation unit in Bible Studies, entitled “The Desert Motif in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls” was produced and run as a pilot project for a couple of years in several Jerusalem high schools. In addition, the virtual 3D “Shrine Educational Experience” (SEE), jointly created by the Israel Museum and the Politecnico di Milano of Italy, was developed and implemented as a pilot project by schools in Israel and Italy.
At the same time, in our search for new methods to popularize the Dead Sea Scrolls, a new artistic language was conceived in order to broaden the general community’s understanding of the spiritual and cultural significance of the Scrolls, and to rediscover the human dimension ensconced within the dry parchments and the mute archaeological artifacts and sites. In 2005, for example, a Jewish-Christian seminar was held at the Israel Museum to study the shared roots of the two religions and to enhance mutual understanding and promote interfaith dialogue.
The subject of the Scrolls was also addressed in a number of creative works: in March 2000, a music and dance performance, Between Profane and Sacred, took place at the Shrine of the Book; in 2003, an audio play entitled “A Journey to the Desert” was launched; and in 2006, Ariel Malka’s three-dimensional animated work JavaScriptorium and Ron Assouline’s short film A Human Sanctuary were shown. The latter two works were produced on the occasion of the dedication of the Dorot Foundation Information and Study Center in Memory of Joy Gottesman-Ungerleider.
Now for the first time, an entire session at an international conference is being devoted to the educational approach. This in itself is perhaps the best expression of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the field of Dead Sea Scroll research in the past twenty years. It has been transformed from an esoteric, almost sectarian, scholarly domain into a public and open discourse.