The Living Torah Museum
by Dovid Goldman

Young men often have exotic dreams. Some envision themselves conquering or discovering, inventing or winning, while others anticipate lives of fantastic luxury or exceptional fame. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, young Shaul Shimon Deutsch had one of the most exotic dreams of them all – and one of the more unlikely. It all began at the age of eight when he found himself becoming frustrated with his Torah education. What were all these things on the page he was studying about? What were all the ancient references no one seemed to recognize?

The Quest
His brilliant and curious mind left him unsatisfied with the incomplete picture of Biblical and Talmudic times and he decided he was going to fill in the blanks – not only for himself, but for young people everywhere. Rather than simply walk away, he decided he had to get to the bottom of things – literally. As he got a little older, he began to dream of finding and collecting every ancient artifact necessary to answer every one of his questions. He sensed that Torah knowledge was not meant to be dry, obscure and fractured but alive, real and whole.

To bring it all to life, he would establish a museum where Jewish students of all ages could see with their own eyes exactly what the Bible or the Talmud was talking about. Never mind that the time periods he was studying were in ancient history with few scraps of evidence to be found. Never mind that the most accomplished biblical experts in the world, whether in academia or in traditional Jewish circles, had already been studying the subject for many decades, with varying degrees of success. His thirst for this knowledge and his belief in the reality of Torah would not let him rest.

But where do you start if you’re a young man without a secular education and you want to solve the mysteries of the ancient Jewish world? Obviously, you start with reading everything you can get your hands on – until you discover that much of what you need is only found in ancient languages. Undeterred, young Shaul Deutsch taught himself those ancient languages – eleven of them – and kept going.

He gathered information about all the biblical and talmudic references to various objects no longer in use and set out to find them in the archeological records – in books, universities and museums. He met with experts around the world, matching archeological items that had been found with their biblical and talmudic references. But his dream was not simply to find these items, his dream was to collect them.

The Museum
Today, Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch is living his dream. He is the director of the Living Torah Museum and has amassed what is said to be the world’s most important collection of biblical artifacts outside of Israel. In the process, he has also become one of the leading experts on his subject. According to Hershel Shanks, the editor of Biblical Archeology Review (where the museum was written up twice), “with all the interest in the Bible, with all the interest in archeology… [and] all the people with access to the most sophisticated knowledge and current excavations, [no one has] accomplished what Rabbi Deutsch has done.”

If you decide to visit his museum, though, do not expect the Louvre. A fancy, high-brow experience was never what he was after. “This is a teaching museum,” Deutsch says. In a non-descript building in the heart of Brooklyn, New York (one of his two branches), you will find the most accessible encounter with priceless artifacts you could ever ask for. It is truly a Living Torah Museum – bringing every period of our history to life. Though every one of his 1,500 artifacts has been certified authentic by leading experts, many of them are either out on tables or in open, glass cabinets, waiting for Rabbi Deutsch to pass them around to his visitors.

Rabbi Deutsch has a motto, “If you touch history, it touches you.” His demonstrations often include placing a volunteer in ancient iron handcuffs, posing a child in a military helmet and shield from the times of King David or fitting a young man with a cloak from ancient Egypt. He might show you your reflection in the kind of copper mirror donated by the Israelite women to the Tabernacle – and then use its edge to cut one of your hairs, demonstrating why the Talmud was concerned about this practice on Shabbat. Or, he might pull out an instrument from 1300 BCE used both to curl hair and as a razor, and demonstrate by curling a young boy’s sidelocks. Worrying about these items – valued at tens of thousands of dollars each – and securing them behind heavy locked glass would defeat the purpose of the museum and leave us all back at square one: feeling distant from Torah sources.

According to Rabbi Deutsch, a full tour covering all the artifacts in the museum would take fourteen hours to complete (in fact, you can buy DVDs from the museum covering all fourteen hours). The 3,000 square foot Brooklyn location, at the corner of 16th Avenue and 41st Street in Borough Park, houses all the exhibits from the biblical period. There are approximately 1,200 in all, dating from as early as 1800 BCE. The second location is in the Catskill Mountains and is only open in the summer months. At about 1,500 square feet, it contains the exhibits from the rabbinic period – 300 items from the beginning of the Common Era until the 5th century. All visits need to be prearranged by calling 877-752-6283.

Most of the artifacts in the museum come either from donations or sponsorships. Archeologist Dr. Donald Brown, the last living excavator of King Tut’s tomb, donated his collection of Egyptian artifacts from the time of Ramses II to the museum. According to many, Ramses II was the Pharaoh when the Israelites left Egypt. Brown also donated another collection from his 1932 to 1938 excavations at Tel Lachish, from the southern kingdom of Judah. It is mentioned in battle accounts of Joshua, Sancherib and Nebuchadnezzar.

Other collectors who have been impressed with the museum have loaned their collections to Deutsch. Harvey Herbert, a lawyer and private collector, loaned his collection of ancient Hebrew inscriptions, the largest in the United States, according to Herbert. Most of the pieces are from the First Temple Period.

The Collection
Artifacts are arranged around important events in Jewish history, such as those related to the holiday of Chanukah. Among these are many fascinating pieces – one of which is truly extraordinary. There is a coin featuring Antiochus Epiphanes – the villain of the Chanukah story – with his name on it. There is another coin from the Bar Kokhba period that features a jug of oil from the Temple with a clay seal, an apparent reference to the one found by the Hasmoneans whose oil miraculously lasted eight nights. In fact, a jug that matched the one pictured on the coin was later discovered in a shipwreck. To demonstrate this sort of clay seal, the exhibit contains a real one from Egypt, reflecting the common practice of sealing expensive oils in this manner.

But the most striking artifact in the Chanukah collection (pictured, next page) is the oldest Chanukah menorah ever found. It was discovered in Jerusalem in 1967. It was certified as such by Dr Meir ben Dov, one of Israel’s foremost archeologists and Director of Temple Mount Excavations. In his letter of certification, he writes that “the lamp dates back to the first century of the Common Era, [and was] used by Jews toward the end of the second Temple period. It is undoubtedly the earliest Chanukah lamp extant. It is also possibly the oldest Jewish ceremonial object ever discovered.”


From more ancient times, there is an inscription on a stone tablet (pictured below) that was hand-written by Nebuchadnezzar (c 634 – 562 BCE) that begins “I am Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylonia…” According to the Bible, he is the one who conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and sent the Jews into exile around 587BCE.

Present as well is the only known clay impression from the ring of Yechanya King of Judah (b. 618 BCE) and one of five from Hezekiah (739 – 687 BCE), also King of Judah.

One of the more curious artifacts, and one of great significance, is the oldest known inscription of the Ten Commandments (pictured below), written in ancient Hebrew script on a stone tablet. What makes it curious is that it should more accurately be called the “Eleven Commandments.” The tablet was produced not by traditional Jews but by Samaritans, who had made a small number of “emendations” to the Torah.

Though their version of the text is almost identical to the one kept by Jews, it differs in two significant respects. In the traditional text, verses repeatedly refer to the “place that G-d will choose” as the location to bring offerings, etc. Though that place will prove later to be Jerusalem, this is never mentioned in the text. In the Samaritan version, each of these instances reads instead “the place that G-d has chosen,” which is identified as Mount Gerizim, which is about fifty miles north of Jerusalem. To this day, the Samaritans recognize that mountain as the holy place identified in the Torah. The second difference in their text is that an extra commandment is added to the Ten Commandments – to worship on Mount Gerizim. The tablet in the Living Torah Museum contains this eleventh commandment as well.

On the Road
True to its description of being “living,” this museum does not stay in one place. From time to time, Rabbi Deutsch packs a van with a collection of artifacts and travels, especially to Jewish schools in other cities. He will generally choose a set of related items, such as those surrounding the events of Chanukah, those of Purim or even what a particular class he is visiting is studying. He is limited, however, by what his insurance company allows him to take on the road (incidentally, with his entire collection valued in the range of $30 million, insurance is his largest expense).

His most recent excursions have been to Baltimore and Chicago. On a Sunday in October, nearly eight hundred people visited his traveling museum at the Baltimore JCC in Park Heights. Exhibits included the periods of the Patriarchs, ancient Egypt and the era of the Talmud. The next day, 1,500 students in six local Jewish day schools had their turn to watch their studies leap into real life before their eyes.

Among the items they saw was a wooden bedpost from ancient Egypt which had the name of its owner written on it in Hieroglyphics. This was the same type of bedpost to which the Israelites famously tied their Paschal lambs for four days before slaughtering it on the fourteenth of the month of Nissan. For the children, that story had suddenly become a whole lot more real.

History can seem distant if you are reading about it in a book. Displays in a museum may be more real but, locked in a glass with a small caption, they can seem just as distant. And who knows what really happened thousands of years ago, anyway? Rabbi Deutsch shows how it is possible to bring it all to life, demonstrating at the same time the authenticity of the Jewish biblical and Talmudic traditions. There is just nothing like holding in your hands – or wearing on your head – the very items recorded in the Torah throughout our history, and learning all about the role it played in the Jewish lives of our ancestors.

If you cannot make it to the museum, visit www.torahmuseum.com for a virtual tour of some of the displays. It is not the same as holding your past in your hands but it is fascinating nonetheless to see confirmation of so much of our tradition and to learn more about it in the process. The Torah was alive then, and it is alive still today.

To plan a tour of the Living Torah Museum, call 1-877-752-6283.