Richard A. Freund, Ph.D., director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, will discuss “Temple Treasures in the Dead Sea Caves: New Insights from Archaeology” at 11 a.m. April 20 in Room 301 of the Laboratory Science Building.
Free and open to the public, the lecture is sponsored by the Arts & Sciences programs in Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies and in Religious Studies.
Freund is the author of six books on archaeology and two books on Jewish ethics. An ordained rabbi, he holds doctoral and master’s degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
He has appeared in many television documentaries, most recently NOVA’s “Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land,” which is based on his book, “Secrets of the Cave of Letters: Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery.”
Articles on his excavations have appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, National Geographic, Time and Eretz Magazine.
Freund is director of five different archaeological projects in Israel, including Bethsaida, Qumran, the Cave of Letters, Nazareth and a new project in Yavne, as well as an archaeological project in Burgos, Spain. This last project involves a late medieval church built over an early 11th-century synagogue in northern Spain.
In 2007-08, he will embark on two new excavations in Egypt and Israel that may finally solve the mystery of the Exodus.
For more information, call 935-8567 or e-mail jines@artsci.wustl.edu.