Vice President, The Jerusalem Connection Book Author, The Copper Scroll Project

Shelley Neese is Vice President of The Jerusalem Connection Report. She writes regular articles for The Report and her writing has also appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Jerusalem Post Metro Edition, Arutz Sheva, and FrontPage Magazine.

While living in Boston, Shelley was the assistant to the Consul General at the Consulate of Israel to New England. In addition, she worked as a consultant at Conflict Management Group, a nonprofit connected to Harvard Law School.

Shelley lived and studied in Israel for over three years and has returned many times since. She spent the months leading up to the Gaza disengagement in Israel, working with a team of negotiators in a status report on issues relating to the “day after” Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. In 2008 and 2009, Shelley followed the story of an archeological dig in Qumran based on the Copper Scroll.

Shelley studied in Israel from 2000 -2003, where she received her M.A in Middle Eastern Studies from Ben Gurion University. The high point of her studies—and first crack at investigative journalism—was her masters thesis examining the secret, multilateral negotiations ending the 2002 siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

A native of Louisiana, she received her B.A. in Political Science from Louisiana State University. Shelley speaks Hebrew and has dedicated her life to supporting Israel. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona with her three children and her husband, who is a Major and family physician in the U.S. Air Force.

A member of the Jewish National Fund’s Speaker’s Bureau, Shelley is an experienced public speaker and is available to speak at your church, synagogue, or organization. She has a passion to educate Christians on the spiritual, historical, and moral reasons why they should actively support Israel.

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The Copper Scroll Project: An Ancient Secret Fuels the Battle for the Temple Mount

The Copper Scroll Project tells the story of an Oklahoma arson investigator, Jim Barfield, who sets off on a decade-long quest to uncover Qumran’s secrets―the lost treasures of the Jerusalem temple―and show the world that the Dead Sea Scrolls were merely the tip of the archaeological iceberg. Through a series of breakthroughs and setbacks, Barfield’s Copper Scroll Project becomes inadvertently tethered to Israel’s modern battle for the Temple Mount. The Copper Scroll Project is the one remaining witness to a covert operation to rescue Temple tithes and vessels before foreign invaders overran Jerusalem’s city gates. Could secrets contained in the most enigmatic of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll, hold the keys to one of the greatest treasures in Israel’s history?