vra

Question of the Week: His last name originally was
Suchowljansky. Who is he?

II

'Walk'

OF JOCKEYS,

ROCK DRUMMERS AND

MYSTERIOUS MANUSCRIPTS.

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
AppleTree Editor

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One of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

l earning a little. In Fact-A-Day, AppleTlee pro-
f ascinating tidbits about any Jewish subject, past or

bath, in honor of June, you'll find a collection of 30
great facts with the letter "J."
ch day of June
a ve a suggestion for Fact-A-Day? If so, please drop us a
ppleTree Facts, 27676 Franklin Road, Southfield, MI
*144, fax (248) 354-6069, call (248) 354-6060 ext. 308 (voicemail
or e-mail: philapple@earthanknet

s children can testify,
there's something odd
about what doesn't have
to be done; no matter
I what it is, it's almost always fun.
If you told them they must wash
the car, they might whine and com-
plain. But if they come up with the
idea themselves, they'll likely find a
way to make it a great project.
Tell children they absolutely have
to clean up their rooms, and you're
sure to elicit at least two or three of
I any of the following:
"But I like it this way!" "Do I have
to do it now?" "But it's not a mess!"
"I'm never going to make my chil-
1 dren clean their rooms." "You are so
unfair!"
Now that school is done, try not
telling children they have to do
something educational or else their
minds will turn to mush. Instead,
just leave out books and newspapers
and items like this collection of 30
fun facts and let them discover it for
themselves. They'll be so inspired,
I they'll even pick up their rooms with-
: out being asked!
I Well, maybe.
„•
#1)The name of Israel's capital city,
Jerusalem, is mentioned 657 times in
the Tanach (Bible).

#2)The popular name Judith
(Yehudit in Hebrew) means "praise."

#3) One of the great mysteries of
Jewish history: The curious manu-
scripts of Moses Shapira. Shapira was
living in Jerusalem when, in 1883, he
suddenly appeared in London. He
was looking for an expert to analyze
15 strips of parchment. He said he

had purchased the parchments, made
of sheepskin, from an Arab, who had
found them in a cave in the Moabite
hills, near the Dead Sea. Shapira
believed the parchments were a copy
of Deuteronomy from the 9th century
B.C.E., which would make them the
oldest extant biblical manuscript.
(Until then, the oldest known biblical
text was from the 9th century C.E.).
Antiquities experts understandably
greeted Shapira with a great deal of
skepticism. If genuine, the text would
be worth a fortune. Then there was
the issue of Shapira himself. Several
years before presenting the
Deuteronomy discovery, he had sold a
number of pieces of "ancient" pot-
tery, also from the Moabite hills,
which were found to be fakes.
Still, two top experts, Dr. Christian
Ginsburg and Claude Conder of the
British Museum, agreed to look at
Shapira's find. A third consultant was
Charles Clermont-Gatineau, who
had exposed Shapira's "antique"
Moabite pottery. All three promptly
proclaimed Shapira's latest find a
fake, with one of the key criticisms
being that no manuscript could sur-
vive for long in a damp cave.
Shapira was devastated. He left for
a hotel in Rotterdam where he killed
himself.
About half a century later, in 1947,
a remarkable discovery was made in
the caves of Qumran, just a short dis-
tance from the hills of Moab. They
came to be known as the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and their authenticity has
been firmly established. While they
had suffered some damage, the scrolls
had remained for the most part intact
— inside damp caves.
Furthermo –re; they bore similarities
to the Shapira parchments, leading
Dr. J.L. Teicher, a professor at
Cambridge University in

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