Dead Sea Scroll exhibit is extended

By Daniela Perdomo

Dec. 15, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

An exhibit in San Diego of the Dead Sea Scrolls -- a rarity outside the Middle East -- has been extended a week to Jan. 6.

The San Diego Natural History Museum extended the exhibition, which opened in June, to meet demand. Delle Willett, the museum’s director of marketing, said 315,552 people had seen it as of Dec. 13 and 10,400 others have bought advance tickets.

“Our normal attendance for the entire year is usually under 300,000,” she said. “So we’ve really outdone ourselves. This is huge.”

The exhibit is billed as the most comprehensive display of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible yet discovered, dating from the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC. The 15 scroll fragments are exhibited in a darkened, climate-controlled room in which a fiber-optic lighting system turns off five of every 20 seconds to prevent overexposure of the parchments and papyri.

Also featured in the exhibit are ancient manuscripts, artifacts and photographs of the archaeological sites in the Judean Hills where the scrolls were found by a shepherd.

The exhibit’s crown jewel, however, is the scroll that features the oldest and best-preserved version of the Ten Commandments.

Elizabeth Sayles, groups sales manager for the museum, said the scrolls have attracted a wide range of people. She has booked groups that include the alumni association of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Jewish congregations and an economic development council from Orlando, Fla.

But Willett said individual visitors are even more diverse than the group bookings: “There’s not just old people and church people -- young people, pierced people, tattooed people.”

The exhibit’s guest book reveals that many came as part of a spiritual journey. Lillian Ingber wrote: “I am 93 and this has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.” Mikayla, age 12, wrote: “The Dead Sea Scrolls are our past, present, and future. If we listen to their teachings we will thrive in life. They are a huge inspiration.”

Information on the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit can be found at www.sdnhm.org/visit/.

Aiding ‘strangers’

The Torah emphasizes embracing society’s “strangers,” or outsiders, and Jews are obligated to carry out that mandate. That was among the messages Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) shared this week in a speech at the Casden Institute at USC.

Feingold, in a lecture titled “Judaism, Progressive Values and Public Policy,” said:

“We as Jews have felt these stigmas: it’s part of why we came here, it’s why we believe in the American experiment.” Jews have a special obligation and opportunity to help three American minorities who “are now experiencing some stranger status,” he said.

Feingold identified these three groups as blacks, Latinos, and Arabs and Muslims. All three groups, he said, face racial profiling.

“No one should be arrested for ‘driving while black,’ ” Feingold said to applause. African Americans, he said, have long felt like “strangers in their own land.”

Latinos, he said, have suffered racially motivated attacks since the failure of comprehensive immigration reform in June. “I think we shouldn’t be afraid of standing up to solve this problem,” Feingold said. “Yes, we have to solve the problem of illegal immigration; there is no need to divide America.”

Arabs and Muslims have been able to integrate in U.S. society more than in Europe, Feingold said, but there still is a need for American Jews to reach out to those communities.

“These are golden opportunities,” he said. “In reaching out to heal these rifts, we strengthen support for our community.”

Celebrating Mary

More than 100 Catholics and Episcopalians came together Sunday in an ecumenical service to celebrate “Mary The God-Bearer” at St. John’s Cathedral near downtown Los Angeles.

“At a time when the world sags under the horror of wars, the despair of the sick, and the disenfranchised, we were upheld [during the service] by the image of a young unwed girl who said ‘yes’ to God,” said the Rev. Gwynne Guibord, who was among the four Episcopal and Catholic priests officiating at the service. The service highlighted commonalities between the two faiths. The catalyst for the event was a 2004 joint statement of an international commission of the two churches on the role of Mary.

In “Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ,” Archbishop Alexander Burnett of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle and Archbishop Peter Carnley, primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, wrote:

“Our agreed statement concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary as a pattern of grace and hope is a powerful reflection of our efforts to seek out what we hold in common and celebrates important aspects of our common heritage.”

No IRS fine

The Internal Revenue Service, which this fall closed its investigation of a Pasadena church over a 2004 antiwar sermon, will not require the church to pay a fine in connection with the case, the agency has told the church.

In a recent letter to a lawyer for All Saints Episcopal Church, a top IRS official confirmed that the case is closed and the church will not be assessed a special excise tax, despite the agency’s finding that the sermon amounted to illegal intervention in a political campaign.

The church, which had asked the agency for clarification on that issue and others, released the letter this week.

All Saints leaders also asked the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, to review what the church calls irregularities and errors in the case.

In its letter to All Saints, dated Oct. 22, the IRS agreed that a review of the high-profile case would be “appropriate.”

An influential, outspokenly liberal congregation, All Saints came under IRS scrutiny after a sermon by a guest speaker on Oct. 31, 2004, two days before the presidential election.

In the sermon, the Rev. George F. Regas did not endorse a candidate.

But he criticized the Iraq war and said Jesus would have told President Bush that his preemptive war strategy there “has led to disaster.”

daniela.perdomo@latimes.com

Times staff writers K. Connie Kang and Rebecca Trounson contributed to this article.