JERUSALEM -- Weston Fields is not a faint man. Each summer, he rules a crew of a dozen salmon fishermen as they buck the frigid tides and angry winds off Kodiak Island in Alaska. It is hard, bold work that toughens the mind and the hands.
But the first time this fishermen held the delicate parchment of a Dead Sea Scroll, he swooned.
"I was really in a daze. It was such an experience. I remember that I went to my car and backed up into a wall," he says.
That experience helped set the course of a strangely dual career. An Alaskan fisherman by summer, by winter Dr. Weston Fields is a scholar of biblical Hebrew and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation in Jerusalem.
"I think the physical work enhances the intellectual, and the intellectual enhances the physical," he says. When his life becomes too academic, "there's nothing like beating up against the wind and the waves to bring you to reality."
Dr. Fields, 46, launched the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation two years ago after a decade of shuttling to Jerusalem every year to study the ancient languages of the scrolls.
The first of the 2,000-year-old scrolls were found in a cave near the Dead Sea by a Bedouin in 1947. Eventually thousands of remnants from more than 800 scrolls were recovered. They include parts of original copies of the books of the Bible, Hebrew scriptures, poetry, literature and clues to the origins of Judaism and Christianity.
But the reconstruction, translation and interpretation of the fragments have been painfully slow and mired in controversy. The San Marino (Calif.) Huntington Library in 1991 defied the monopoly of the small group of scholars who have been appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority since 1967 to take charge of the scrolls. It published 3,000 photographs of the fragments so other scholars could study them.
Accelerating translation
The foundation set up by Dr. Fields is seeking to accelerate the official translation of the scrolls by raising money and financing the study. So far, 10 of the 30 volumes anticipated to make up the work have been published.
"We realized if we hoped to get it done in this lifetime, we have to have money so scholars can work on it without worrying about their job. People have to eat," he says.
Dr. Fields fell into this dual career by bent of his upbringing. His Baptist parents moved to Alaska to run an orphanage when he was a child. They eventually became cattlemen and fishermen, and young Weston was raised around the sea.
"I love to fish. It's in my blood. I've been out every summer since I was 9. I'm good at it," he says.
But religion also was part of his life. He pondered becoming a pastor and went to seminary school in Indiana. His interest in the Bible took him through a doctorate in the Old Testament, and eventually he decided to go to Hebrew University in Jerusalem, earn a second doctorate, and be close to the book's source.
'Fell in love' with Israel
"I really fell in love with this place," he says of Israel. "I knew by heart all the places of the Bible. It still, after all these years, never ceases to thrill me to go to the places I studied as a child.
"I'm not looking for a mystical experience by going to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for example. But I'm looking for geographical and historical background that makes this [Bible account] real to me.
"For example, when Jesus went from Jerusalem to the Galilee, you don't know how long that really takes on foot or on a donkey until you've been here."
But each May, he puts away his books to head back to Kodiak Island off the southern coast of Alaska. He joins his two brothers -- one a lawyer, the other a full-time fisherman-- and his 78-year-old father to prepare for the salmon run.
For the better part of four months, they and crew members work six-day weeks and exhausting hours. On a smaller island near Kodiak, they set their 900-foot long drift nets perpendicular to the coast to catch the sweep of pink and red salmon migrating toward spawning streams. Three times a day, Dr. Fields and his crew haul their 16 nets, pluck out the entangled fish, and set the nets again, working from a dozen 25-foot boats in the rough and lethally cold waters.
"It is dangerous. You're working with tight lines against heavy anchors, with big motors, heavy boats, in rough seas," he says. "Everything happens fast when you work against the tide. . . .
'Adrenalin rush'
"I enjoy the adrenalin rush to see a net full of fish, and you're working hard to pick it," he says. "I like going out in a storm, and wondering if you're going to come back. I like the thrill of coming home at dark after a long day, knowing you've had a good day."
But by September, he is ready again to return to the Middle East. He is "a little understimulated intellectually and socially" on the barren island. Mail is sporadic.
"You live pretty isolated on an island," he says. "It's nice to leave it and get out of working clothes. But the fishing gives my mind a chance to rest for a few months."
Since he began the foundation, he spends less time studying in Jerusalem each winter and more time traveling about the world. He lectures on the Dead Sea Scrolls, raises money for the foundation's work and coordinates the study of the scrolls.
Through the foundation, "we've brought together a lot of scholars who wouldn't otherwise have anything to do with each other," he says.
"The most important thing is that we're getting the scrolls published."