TORONTO — Dead Sea Scrolls guest curator Risa Levitt Kohn grew up in the Toronto Jewish community and spent countless hours exploring the Royal Ontario Museum over the years.
Risa Levitt Kohn
Having the opportunity to be a part of the ROM’s historic exhibit, which continues until Jan. 3, 2010, is a dream come true, she said.
“For me, personally, to have an opportunity to come back to Toronto and work at the ROM… You have to pinch yourself and say, ‘Is this really happening?’”
Levitt Kohn, who is director of the Jewish studies program at San Diego State University and an associate professor of Hebrew Bible and Judaism in SDSU’s religious studies department, said she is particularly fascinated by Jewish and Christian origins.
Before Levitt Kohn got a degree in history from York University, she was educated in the Jewish day school system, at the United Synagogue Day School and at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto.
“During my time at York, I did an overseas program at Hebrew University [of Jerusalem] and that is when I really became interested in ancient history and specifically in the history of Israel,” said Levitt Kohn, who has been involved in curating three separate Dead Sea Scrolls exhibitions in North America.
She began a master’s degree in Jewish history at Hebrew U, but she completed her master’s at the University of Toronto.
Levitt Kohn said that within the past few weeks she’s given a number of lectures on the scrolls, including one on July 12 at Beth Tikvah Synagogue, as part of its Dead Sea Scrolls Series, and she expects to give more lectures while the scrolls are on display.
On Dec. 15, she will deliver a lecture at the ROM titled “Jewish and Christian Origins Are Revealed by the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Levitt Kohn said that one of the many things that makes this exhibition different from others is that it is not a travelling exhibition. The 16 scrolls – which are divided into two groups of eight, with each group being displayed for three months – will return to the Israel Antiquities Authority in Israel to rest for a full year under dark, climate-controlled conditions.
“Every museum that I’ve worked with has built a show from the ground up. What that has meant for me is that I have had the opportunity to create three completely different shows,” she said.
“Every aspect of the design, from the content to the graphics, to the space itself, to the look of the cases and the colours on the wall – this [the ROM exhibit] was really a joint effort that we spent probably almost two years working on. I think all of us are so pleased with the way it came together.”
Although Levitt Kohn said she is more of an authority on Jewish and Christian origins and the transition from biblical Israel to early Judaism than the scrolls themselves, “the Dead Sea Scrolls falls right smack-dab in the middle of that period. It is a very logical extension of what I do.”
As the story goes, the scrolls were discovered in 1947 in caves in the Judean Desert by a Bedouin shepherd.
The scrolls on display at the ROM were written between 250 BCE and 68 CE and are fragments from the books of Genesis, Deuteronomy and Psalms, as well as the sectarian Community Rule, War Scroll and Messianic Apocalypse.
Levitt Kohn said that while the exhibit should be of interest to all Torontonians regardless of their religious backgrounds, it is especially important to the Jewish community because there are so few ancient Jewish written documents.
“When you deal with the field of ancient history, especially Israel, we have so few original written documents. I mean, we have the Bible, but it’s not the original copy of the Bible and… we don’t have anything like the archives and libraries like you have in Egypt or in Mesopotamia,” she said.
“The Dead Sea Scrolls in that sense, are really the biggest and best that we have. It just happens to be from this period where everything was changing religiously, politically, culturally – everything was sort of being turned on its head. To get a snapshot of that period through these original documents is really quite amazing.”
She said that the exhibit was designed to guide visitors through “the world where the Dead Sea Scrolls were copied and written” and that means taking them through the country.
“I think that is an important part of the show… this trek from the north through Jerusalem to Qumran. I would think that people who know very little about the country and the period would walk away from a show like this knowing a lot more and having a much better visual picture of what the place looks like,” Levitt Kohn said.
“It is such a wonderful promotion of Israel and Israeli culture… I think it’s very important, and it’s not very often that you get this kind of opportunity to see artifacts from Israel in Canada.”
