were all bios written by the same individual?
Great post!
>were all bios written by the same individual?
Wish I knew. They are all written in the same Artscroll style, but that could be just the editorial wand waved over them.
- Chofetz* Chaim [...] *an unusual departure from Artscroll's transliteration scheme
Don't they have an extra rule saying well-known words and names are left in the form in which they're known in the target group?
only one of these two men became a symbol
And the descendants of only only one these two men are exclusively Christians.
The interesting thing is (as far as I know!), Mendelssohn didn't reform anything concerning his holy Ritus, only reinvented or renewed its foundation, while Heidenheim lived and probably thought like a traditional Jew, but he cleared the sidder of the kabbalistic brushwood that had piled up during the century or so before. That looked like a reform to many. (Some of his grammatical changes were reforms, if you will, some were reforms, but not his. Anyway I don't know of any changes that implied a change in ideology, like striking out the korbones.)
>R. JB Soloveitchik "an original Talmudic scholar, thinker and leader"
Note the ommission of Leader but not "Leader of Jewry". He led a group while CI et al led all Jewry.
>R. JB Soloveitchik "an original Talmudic scholar, thinker and leader"
Note the ommission of Leader but not "Leader of Jewry". He led a group while CI et al led all Jewry.
david g. | Homepage | 01.22.07 - 5:48 pm | #
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I wonder if that is a good diyuk -- R'Aharon Kotler also is just called a "leader" and not "leader of Jewry"
>Don't they have an extra rule saying well-known words and names are left in the form in which they're known in the target group?
I'm not sure, do they? Why then "Yitzchak?" I know that lots of publications which try to use a consistent or even scientific translation revert to the common one where familiar to readers, but I don't remember if Artscroll does this.
>And the descendants of only only one these two men are exclusively Christians.
That's irrelevent. Haham Bernay's son became a Christian. So did R. Gershom Meor Ha-golah. As I always say, maybe Mendelssohn's children left Judaism because he splashed cold water on their faces on cold winter mornings to get them up to oren. The reason why Mendelssohn is reviled is not because of his descendents, although that's a convenient chiluk between him and others controversial figures who somehow aren't reviled.
>Note the ommission of Leader but not "Leader of Jewry". He led a group while CI et al led all Jewry.
To echo anon1, the reason I can't fault them for this is because they use so many eclectic expressions for so many people who they clearly are not trying to diminish.
That's also why I said that I think I could read more into what they said rather than what they didn't say. En hachi nami, there's no question that A. considers the CI a greater leader than RYBS--I'm not sure that's a crime, you know. But note that they restricted the Chasam Sofer to Hungary! Clearly they don't think the CI was greater than the Chasam Sofer. It's just that a certain set of 20th century gedolim get highlighted as leadersof Jewry and I think it's interesting--and the list includes RYBS.
"most surprisingly, R. Gedaliah Schorr (although it does note that he was called "the first American-trained gadol")."
"Thus, I can not detect a hint of disrespect when R. Gedaliah Schorr is not noted as a leader of Jewry."
I don't think it's accurate to call him a leader of Jewry. He was a relatively private person - he gave a shiur and had talmidim, but wasn't really a leader in the way the people described as leaders were.
I think that you read too much into these Art Scroll Bios. Most likely, the more lavish ones were written in the morning, while the lesser ones were written late in the afternoon when the author was suffering from fatigue and wanted to go home.
Actually I am surprised that they inclued Rav Soloveitchik. Why not Nehama Leibowitz anyway? I always thought her in line with the mefarshe Rashi that Artscroll likes-especially the Gur Aryeh. She helped to popularize this approach (I think too much, but then again isn't that exactly what Artscroll does?).
GREAT post. How come you have more than one blog?
I find it odd that they identify some as thinkers and not others. Do they mean that R. Kamenetzky and R. Hutner were more intelligent, profound, and original than R. Feinstein and R. Kotler? And instead of saying outright that the Chazon Ish and Chofetz Chaim were great leaders, they say these gadolim were "acknowledged as great leaders"--as if there perhaps some machlokes, and one might admit doubt as to their status as leaders.
Probably the writer was simply trying to instill a little variety in his descriptions.
1--the rav included, in the schus of the $tone'$
2-- satmar rav included-- in dvarim on mereishit HA shana ad acharit shana... ayen sham
They were written by an individual who is both a Talmud Chacham and a historian and not someone who necessarily buys into everything in Artscroll's corporate subconcious. I think you're reading too much into the bios.
I'd just note that Yehuda's sevara (the "coffee morning" idea) is a new "theory" bouncing around Shakespeare studies - that he wrote late, finished a piece, and started again the next morning with a cold towel wrapped round his head trying to get back into things. This apparently helps explain why some of the great set-pieces and speeches can be followed by the bits which directors silently cut out.
I wish I was kidding...
But back on topic, I don't think there's really any agenda - the people they didn't like, they didn't include (RYBS being the notable exception).
1) Soccer Dad is right about the author.
2) R' Gedaliah Schorr was R' Nosson Scherman's rebbe. There is no way that any perceived slight against him is an intentional diss from the Artscroll corporate office.
I think the whole thing is getting silly. We've gotten to the point where citing mod-O sources with comparable frequency (given published material to work with, more than comparable) isn't sufficient to see them as evenhanded, we're nit-picking over wording in the bios?!
ArtScroll is a private enterprise, and its work reflects the beliefs of its founders. Big surprise!
If you want to be annoyed, be annoyed with the lack of initiative in RCA and OU circles to do the same with their slant. Artscroll is doing what it's supposed to.
-mi
If that was directed at me, I would ask you to read my post again. I don't think you can detect a note of annoyance in it.
Thanks for the support, Baltimoron.
I looked at a Stone Chumash this morning and if you look at the acknowledgements it credits
Rabbi Dovid Katz for contributing the Bibliography with the assistance of Mrs. Daniella Zlotowitz. (Or similar wording.)
I had the privilege of going to a weekly Parsha Shiur given by Rabbi Katz years ago. The shiur could well be called ecletic. He could quote Moznaim L'Torah, Mishpat Ivri, Josephus, Magid Meisharim or whatever source made his point. (Which usually a perspective no one in the shiur had considered before.)
He's worked for ArtScroll and no doubt knows what his bosses want. But like I wrote, he's a Talmid Chochom and *serious* historian. I think that this speculation really demeans him.
Micha is certainly right too.
To broaden the discussion somewhat, I don't think that the excerpts from RYBS that appear in the Stone Chumash show him in the best light. He was not a thinker whose ideas can be reduced to bite-sized pieces. The same goes, by the way, for Rav Hutner.
That's a critique of the commentary as a whole, not of individual treatments.
but this is unsurprising. R. JB Soloveitchik is included
A very close Charedi friend of mine who seems to know all the Yeshivishe Lashon Hara that exists in the world, told me that the only reason RYBS was included is because of the patron benfactor, Irving I. Stone, who underwrote the cost of publication. I'm told he insisted on it.
am I the only that thinks that most of the responders here would still not mind if the Lubavitcher Rebbe was the only one omitted from their list? Nobody here mentioned the Rebbe, except for Fred that is.
Micha, if they'd come right out and admit that they reflect a certain point of view, that'd be one thing.
But try this thought: Which shuls represent the overwhelming market for Stone Chumashim, or Hebrew-English Siddurim? It ain't Chassidish shteibels. (With the all-Hebrew stuff, this may have changed.) And yet...
Beyond a doubt, R' Norman Lamm is thanked in all the acknowledgements because of the Stones and the Schottensteins. I'm not sure about this, though.
Nusach Anglia- Shakespeare was always revising, so that theory doesn't really work.
I've also refelcted before on the things S. writes about here, and I'm aware the bios are accredited to Rabbi Dovid Katz. I'm pretty sure this is Rabbi Dovid Katz, the Rabbi of the Hertzberg shul in Baltimore. He is both a great talmid chacham (see his article in an old RJJ Journal called the "mamzer and the shifcha")and a scholar of note. I've enjoyed many of his shiurim and history classes. He's very familiar with the world of Jewish scholarship.
This is just my own speculation, but if this is that same Rabbi Katz, writing those bios was "just doing a job". He knows what Artscroll would stomach and what it couldn't, and wrote the capsule bios accordingly. No different than a lawyer taking on a case he doesnt like, as part of his job. He personally probably thinks very little of some of the men he had to label as "leaders of Jewry", and thinks the world of others described in lesser terms. But that's just my speculation.
S:
what does the bio say about kohut?
i'll bet he made it in on account of his being a hungarian.
micha:
"If you want to be annoyed, be annoyed with the lack of initiative in RCA and OU circles to do the same with their slant. Artscroll is doing what it's supposed to."
S:
"If that was directed at me, I would ask you to read my post again. I don't think you can detect a note of annoyance in it."
well i'm annoyed. micha is right. artscroll does not pretend to represent mo views. yet mo organizations have compeltely abdicated to artscroll the role of supplying the mo layperson with quality books and translations. just look at the rca "edition" of the artscroll siddur. its not like there aren't first class mo scholars who are capable of doing translations and books targeted to the mo. but they would rather spend their time publishing academic monographs.
(or maybe its all just a matter of market economics?)
Kohut does not get an entry under his own name. The entry is for Aruch HaShalem and it says "Expanded version of the Aruch of R. Nasan ben Yechiel of Rome (c. 1045-1103), the famous medieval dictionary/ compendium of Talmudic literature, by the nineteenth-century scholar A. Kohut."
Incidentally, I just noticed that in this entry Rabbi is abbreviate "R." instead of the standard Artscroll "R'"
>well i'm annoyed.
Many things annoy me about Artscroll, but not everything. In the thread below this one I made a little statement about how Artscroll annoys me:
>I've long maintained that Artscroll's 'sin' is that it (if we can speak of 'it') knows the complexity of the actual tradition and many of its writers even know a thing or two or a hundred about modern scholarship on these issues, but deliberately shows only a monochromatic picture of that tradition in English. It chooses what people who can only access the tradition in English may learn of the tradition. That, to me, is why this blog exists.
But not everything about Artscroll annoys me! Micha wrote that
>we're nit-picking over wording in the bios?!
Well, yes. But I was not complaining about the way it included R. Soloveitchik. I also didn't complain about it excluding R. Kook or Nehama Leibowitz or whomever and I even noted that it doesn't contain an insight by R. Shach or the Satmar Rav (to which I was corrected, but evidently he didn't make the bibliography). Noting it is not the same as complaining about it. I accept that Artscroll cannot be what it is not. I don't think anyone took my comment that the Stone Chumash doesn't quote SR Driver literally. It was a little joke, an acknowledgement that Artscroll is not going to be something vastly different from what it is. It isn't going to become like the Anchor Bible, it also isn't even going to become like the Daat Mikra.
But what it *can* do is choose more judiciously within the traditional sources that it will cite and thereby expose the reader to more than what happens to buttress a contemporary hashkafah.
As for the RCA and all of them--yes, absolutely, they're being irresponsible by only publishing, when they do, for the elite. I remember reading somewhere a critique of Torah U-Madda because it has nothing to offer the laymen who isn't interested in Milton or whoever. It's a great critique. Why shouldn't there be a 21st century Modern Orthodox chumash that looks nice and has a great commentary from which laymen and even scholars can learn much?
Incidentally, I just noticed that in this entry Rabbi is abbreviate "R." instead of the standard Artscroll "R'"
Like R. Daneel Olivaw?
Re Rabbi Dovid Katz who evidently wrote these bios--I meant not disrespect for him and I apologize if I caused him any hurt. (Although I'd note that *I* didn't name him--readers critical of this post did.)
It is true that "Artscroll" is actually the work of many, many different people. Yet there is an Artscroll hashkafah--maybe sometimes its less clear, sometimes it changes direction a bit--but it exists. Furthermore, on a work as important and basic as the Chumash you can be sure that the work as a whole represents the views of Artscroll and it furthers it mission, which is harbatzas Torah AND a particular kind of education for the laity.
You'll note that I never quibbled with the designation of the Chazon Ish or R. Aharon Kotler or the Chofetz Chaim as Jewish leaders. That isn't my point. It's just interesting how something as random can still show clearly the viewpoint of the corporate entity. As I said, the bios are eclectic and it was probably done this way because it was judged more appealing then to plug names and dates into a template. But even within this eclectism you're still left with a standard 20th century yeshivish depiction of its Litvish-American gedolim. Which is fine--yet still interesting.
>Like R. Daneel Olivaw?
Had to google that, but sharp. ;)
"Daat Mikra"
forget about an original bible commentary. how about at least putting that out in english?
The reason for the lack of MO lay material is fairly simple.
The most talented MO adherents move to EY and in EY there is already a powerful tradition of books of great quality for the lay person.
Just go into the average RZ shul in EY and you will see hundreds of bible commentaries from RZ rabbis side by side with the chareidi ones. Its just that none of these books make their way into English.
The question is also economic. Is there an MO market for such books? One of the students in merkaz wrote a great hagiography of Rav Zvi Yehuda in english (link). It was not exactly a best seller. The same goes for other such ventures - the market just does not seem to be there in the American MO scene.
So the real question is, who would buy it? The MO elite in the US can do fine with the Hebrew. The MO lite in the US seems perfectly satisfied with the artscroll font and style which they have grown used to. Who would buy it?
> Nusach Anglia- Shakespeare was always revising, so that theory doesn't really work.
Yes and no. On the one hand, obviously you're correct. On the other, he was working to -crazy- deadlines; we -have- several of the different versions so can trace to a certain extent these patterns of revision; quite a few of them were rapidly out of date (Henry V probably the best example), and we know for certain that he never went back to them; and some/much/most (pay your money, takes your choice) of the early texts are in fact not -his-, but pirate copies produced by actors who played parts and remembered other peoples lines - so we have an original performance record. There were a couple of recent PhDs along those lines - it's a really stupid theory, but not for that reason.
S - I think you're remembering Prof. Brill's piece in the Edah journal. But put crudely, the reason that no MO chumash would get off the ground is that the line which would have to be trodden is almost certainly too thin, to say nothing of the UI reaction.
Actually, I think that the more interesting issue is, as Kishinevi has noted, who is called a thinker. Rav Feinstein and Rav Kotler were correctly NOT listed as thinkers because the they were first and formost great talmudists andor poskim, not baalei mahshavah -- this despite Rav Moshe's Derashot and Rav Aharon's mussar seforim. OTOH, Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Hutner, and Rav Kamenetsky are listed as thinkers precisely because in addition to being great talmudists, they were outstanding baalei mahshavah. Here I think is one place where Rav Katz MAY have sneaked something past the ArtScroll editors.
I agree with Nusach Anglia re the great difficulty in writng a MO Humash, but there was no reason why there could not have been a MO siddur, and there would have been a market for it. Witness the recent Yom Kippur Mahzor of the Rav. The abdication to the ArtScroll Siddur by the RCA was a major disgrace and shameful abdication of responsibility on their part and nothing less than catastrophe for MO.
S. wrote:
* Re Rabbi Dovid Katz who evidently wrote these bios--I meant not disrespect for him and I apologize if I caused him any hurt. (Although I'd note that *I* didn't name him--readers critical of this post did.)
No you didn't name him. Your comments were about "Artscroll." But in this case Rabbi Katz was Artscroll, so whether you knew it or not your comments were directed towards him.
I didn't identify him by name in the comments until I knew that Artscroll identified him. Had you checked the acknowledgements at the beginning you also would have known who the author was, even if the name meant nothing to you.
I was critical of your post because of its insulting tone. "Artscroll's corporate subconscious" is as pithy as it is dismissive.
I would have much rather not engaged in this exchange in the comments but given that you don't make your e-mail address publicly available, I was left with no choice.
were all bios written by the same individual?
That's certainly the standard belief amongst Orthodox readers of the bibliography. Other readers believe that two (or perhaps three) authors worked on the bios at different times, and that this explains the differences in tone and style.
I prefer to treat the bibliography as a unified work. It is presented as such, and the single-author theory calls for a critical reading where the multiple-author theory ignores differences in tone and style. Does a bio fail to recognise a particular rabbi sufficiently? Then the author of that bio must have been careless, or have expressed a personal animosity. The unified-work theory allows us to treat the selection and expression of bios as the product of a single mind, and asks us to consider what sort of a mind would produce this expression. I find this more satisfying and productive than the (rather sloppy) attitude that the differences afford no insight into the Mind of Artscroll.
chardal:
"in EY there is already a powerful tradition of books of great quality for the lay person."
i was talking about english-language publications.
"The question is also economic. Is there an MO market for such books?"
i also asked that question, and indeed many artscroll/rw defenders note that the dearth of mo competition is due to the absence of a real mo market. but i still wonder if this is true. i think it is fair to say that a (vast?) majority of mo homes have numerous artscroll publications, especially the siddur and humash. these people could have just have easily purcahse mo edititions if there were any.
"OTOH, Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Hutner, and Rav Kamenetsky are listed as thinkers"
Actually, only Rav Hutner belongs in that list. Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Kamenetsky did not contribute meaningfully to Jewish thought. Pachad Yitzchak, OTOH, was a major step forward in the amalgamation of Chassidut and the Lithuanian Yeshiva world.
>> Thus, I can not detect a hint of disrespect when R. Gedaliah Schorr is not noted as a leader of Jewry.
It cannot be. I would add that, as I recall, Rav Schorr was recognized as the up and coming gadol hador. Had he not died so early there is no question in my mind that he would have been IT. R' Moshe Sherer told me personally that he was very disheartened that the three upcoming gdolim of Ameruca--Rav Schorr, R' Shneur Kotler, and R' Boruch Sorotzkin were taken away so young. With their departure, the Klal lost the only gedolim who were trained under the earlier European Gedolim.
He gave a LOT more than just a shiur, especially in the last couple of years of his life. Meetings were postponed if he could not come. He was the life and sould of Zeiri Agudas Yisroel.
His problem was that he probably said WAY too much in shiur and was too hard to understand unless you knew Shas WELL.
Ari, Daat Mikra issued Tehillim in English, in a big and expensive three-volume set. The flap claims that other volumes are in the works.
nachum:
did not know that. when was it published? is it a direct translation?
"big and expensive three-volume set"
one problem with translations is that they take up much more shelfspace. like me-am loez and torah shelemah. i only hope that they are more successful than meam loez and torah shelemah and put out the whole set.
Well, Tehilim is a strange place to start, and the set -in their sale- was 320 NIS, so I wouldn't hold your breath
Anonymous; You, deliberately I assume, waved the proverbial red flag before the proverbial bull. To mix metaphors, I will take your bait.(See Sonnet 116)One may agree or disagree with Rav Soloveitchik's hashkafah, but how can you seriously mantain that tht author of Ish ha-Halakhah, U-Vikashtem mi-Sham, Lonely Man of Faith, the many essays on Teshuvah and Tefillah, etc. etc., etc., did not contribute meanigfully to Jewish thought?! As for Rav Kametetsky, perhaps I oversimplified. What I wmeant was that Rav Yaakov, addition to his talmudic learning, was known for his important peshat-style perushim on on Mikra.
Writing many books or essays (most of which are read only by a very select few - though they sit prominently on the shelves of many) proves nothing in and of itself.
The Rav's failure to contribute meaningfully to Jewish Thought (actually, failure is far too harsh and is in fact misleading - because he did not deliberately set out to have an impact on Jewish Thought) is evident in his students. They share, to a significant extent, a derech halimud l'shem u'l'tiferet that they imbibed from him. But one fails to discern any commonality of Thought among them. This is in significant contradistinction to students of Rav Hutner, all of him bear the impression of his mahalach ha'machashavah; the students of Rav Dessler, and, of course, the students of earlier luminaries such as Rav Kook.
If the Rav did not set out to have an impact on Jewish thought, why, in your view, did he write these articles. What do you think he thought he was doing? Obviously, I disagree with you, but I am asking this question seriously. As the Rav often said and wrote, he felt was making a contribution to the area of religious anthropology. I think he believed, and correctly so in my view, that this is an important and neglected area of Jewish thought.
BTW, simply factually, Lonely Man of Faith and Ish ha-Halakhah (in my translation) have been read by considerably more than a select few. The same holds for the Rav's teshuvah derashot and other of his essays.
Sonnet 116? The bending sickle's compass?
I think the Rav was working out his own angst - he had to explain somehow that utter devotion to lomdus is the supreme expression of the human spirit - transcending Mussar, transcending Chassidus, and transcending secular philosophy as well.
"Religious anthropology," as I have seen it explained, is the analysis of: "Notions of the ideal person in different religious traditions, including theoretical discussions of perfection, the ideal human nature, and so forth." True, the Rav made a contribution there - developing an ideal personality to which only a Soloveitchik can aspire.
Nusach: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame"
Anonymous:We will have to agree to disagree. Personally, I would rather you said that the Rav failed in his attempt to contribute meaningfully ot Jewish thought than to trivialize his essays by saying that they were a means of his working out his angst. BTW, I fail to discern much angst, if any, in Ish ha-Halakhah.
Oops! I meant sonnet 129.
And I read Ish HaHalacha as the ultimate rationalization emerging from existential angst. The glorification of the Reb Moshe Soloveitchik and the Ba'al Tokei'a incident, among others, is an absurdity that *only* angst can justify.
"Beyond a doubt, R' Norman Lamm is thanked in all the acknowledgements because of the Stones and the Schottensteins. I'm not sure about this, though."
? beyond a doubt I'm not sure?
A word to the wise (from an inside source): Since Dr. Lamm is persona non grata in the yeshivish world, Artscroll had a problem how to thank him. If you read their wording carefully when thanking him you will see how they succinctly avoid the issue if ever questioned by yeshivish people.
>> A word to the wise (from an inside source): Since Dr. Lamm is persona non grata in the yeshivish world, Artscroll had a problem how to thank him. If you read their wording carefully when thanking him you will see how they succinctly avoid the issue if ever questioned by yeshivish people.
A word to the wise, writing like this shows you have an enormous chip on your shoulder. Seriously. I am sure if I were to meet Rabbi Lam, I would be impressed. But I cannot view him as a Torah personality. I don't see how any one who intellectually honest cannot see the difference between him and Rav Shechter (a torah personality even according to the Yeshiva world).
Why must he be compared to someone else? It is not a crime not to be as big a talmid chochom as another talmid chochom. He is learned and a reputable manhig and educator of many decades.
The issue is not that the yeshiva velt views him as a nice rabbi, of which there are many nice rabbis in the yeshiva velt itself, but that it views him as persona non grata. That is unjustifiable merely because he is not R Schachter (nor is that the reason for their antipathy).
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