The Artscoll series - from Mesorah Publications

Many of us are familiar with the Artscroll series of books, published by Mesorah Publications. But do they live up their reputation? Please read these critiques of Artscroll before making any assumptions.

"Judge Not a Book by Its Cover" by Rabbi Professor B. Barry Levy.  This is a review of the Artscroll Bible commentaries. Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought, Vol. 19, Spring 1981, p.89-95. 

Also see the follow-up letters by Barry Holzer and B. Barry Levy in: Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought Vol. 20, p.371-375

A critical review of some Artscroll books, from a Modern Orthodox perspective, can be found at:

Artscroll is popular, Artscroll is everywhere...but Artscroll is also one of the most heavily criticized and controversial line of Jewish books that has come out in the past 20 years. While they do make some good works, they also have a fundamentalist bias that limits the usefulness of their works to non-ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Their problem is that they sift through the vast literature of rabbinic midrashim, choose a tiny percent that show one view, and then present these midrashim legends as historical fact. Another problem is their lifting of rabbinical commentary from their actual context, sometimes changing the grammar and meaning slightly, and then making it appear as if their presentation of the subject is the only one possible in Judaism.

This not to suggest that they are without use. I own five Artscroll works, and many are Ok as long as you know what their bias is ahead of time. Otherwise, if you take them at their word, you end up with a distorted picture of Judaism.

The following excerpt is from is a review of the Artscroll Siddur, excerpted from "The new liturgies" by Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf. It was published in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, Spring 1997 volume 46, n2.

The official Rabbinical Council of America (modem or centrist Orthodox) prayer book has, for the first time, been published by Artscroll, a generally right-wing publisher of traditional texts, with English translation and very conservative commentary. The sole apparent difference between this book and other prayer books previously published by Artscroll is the inclusion of prayers for the State of Israel and Tsahal, the Israel Defense Forces, radical innovations for the non-Zionist Artscroll community.

....The commentary to this RCA volume includes not a word from Abraham Joshua Heschel, not to mention Jewish liturgy experts? Elbogen or Heinemann, experts in our liturgy. It even omits Rav Kook, Rabbi Soloveitchick, and classical Hasidism. The most up-to-date acceptable commentator is Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch, and most of the comments come from more obscure sources, although the medieval commentators and the Kabbalah are also usefully represented. The overwhelming mood is antiquarian and even obscurantist. Can that be what the RCA meant to present to the Jewish world?

The ruling authority for this version seems to be the Mishnah Berurah, a late commentary on the Shulchan Aruch and an extremely conservative one. The summary of "Laws" given on pages 978-992 is offered in this spirit, one of cautious, even cramped, obligation, with no sense of the possible exuberance and freedom of the Jewish prayer form. In this spirit, too, are old-fashioned theological views like the interpretation of Isaiah 1.28, with its terrifying promise of doom, taken here to refer to praying the Holiness prayers without a minyan, as if that could be either the prophet's intent or a legitimate occasion for God's wrath.

....All of the Song of Songs is given with a richly allegorical interpretation that borders on the ludicrous, a reading that invades even the translation of that book. We are given also an elaborate service for "Kaporos" (pp. 772f.), a superstitious rite that Rabbi De Sola Pool would never have permitted to mar our liturgy.

Psalm 148 is said to declare that men and women should never pray together since "mingling" would be "immodest." The eighteen (or nineteen) benedictions were "instituted by the patriarchs" (p. 98). Indeed, God created the whole world with the Hebrew alphabet (whatever that may mean) and if you don't believe it, you must refer to the Artscroll volume on "The Hebrew Alphabet, An Overview" (p. 1196).... Imaginative typography and bright, rather gaudy, covers, do not obscure the medievalizing sensibility of the RCA Siddur or its retrograde implications.

Even the introduction by the brilliant and open-minded Rabbi Saul Berman is disappointing. Though he traverses the uses of the Hebrew word for "approach" to offer us insights on the varied nature of petitional prayer, he falls to indicate that Jewish prayer is far more adoration or praise than it is request. The Sh'ma, the Sabbath Amidah, the Torah service, the Alenu, the Kaddish, the Kiddush, indeed by far the largest part of our liturgy is giving to God, not at all demanding or even requesting anything from the Deity. Yet Rabbi Berman only opens the gates of petition and leaves closed the many avenues of obedience, submission, exaltation, and adoration. This, too, seems both regrettable and reactionary.

In addition, the Artscroll book is full of plain mistakes. The Pirke Avot are not usually read between Pesach and Rosh Hashanah (pp. 544 f.). T'shuvah is not rendered by "responsa" (p.320). On page 737 the word "and" makes the whole passage unintelligible. There is a constant confusion between Ashkenazic (generally employed) and Sephardic transliteration. Thus we find the barbaric "Shavuos" (p. 380) or "kesubah" (p. 203) and many Sephardic transliterations embedded in generally Ashkenazic ones. "Haftarah," "Tallis Katan," "Avinu Malkenu" are all examples of confusion and ambivalence. In the Artscroll's unique version of transliteration, highly idiosyncratic readings abound.

{The RCA Artscroll Siddur} is encyclopedic, fascinating, and infuriating. It even includes a Yiddish prayer (pp. 620 f.) as well as some imaginative Kabbalistic and philosophical interpretations and comments. But it is too voluminous to pray, too obscurantist to accept, and too extravagant to represent modem Orthodoxy, not to say any other school less literal. Stressing "accuracy" over "beauty," it seems to me to fall short of achieving either. That comes as a great disappointment to those of us who had hoped for a model and a light but are given only a stone. Thank God, we still have De Sola Pool's traditional Siddur to help us pray as if we were still believing Jews.

The Artscroll Siddur, while having many good points, is marred by the fact that it confuses myth and midrash with historical fact. Perhaps the most infamous such example comes from page 98 of the Artscroll Siddur, in the commentary on the Amidah (Shemoneh Esrah). Expanding on a talmudic comment, the Artscroll siddur presents as historic fact the myth that the three Shemonah Esrah prayers of the day were in fact instituted by the Patriarchs - Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

Another gaffe is that the Artscroll commentary claims that the exact text of the individual blessings was composed by the men of the Great Assembly at the beginning of the Second Temple period. This is not possible. At that time, halakha expressly forbade the writing down of fixed, specific prayers. More to the point, there simply is nothing in Jewish rabbinic writings to suggest that the Great Assembly composed a set, exact text for the prayers of the Amidah. Rather, the Talmud states that the Great Assembly merely mandated that such prayers be said; it is clear that the specific wording and length of each prayer never became standardized until much later.

Even well beyond to the middle ages each Jewish community had variations in the length, wording and order of the prayers of the Amidah.  For more information on this topic, see Kavvana - Directing the Heart in Jewish Prayer, by Seth Kaddish, (Jason Aronson, 1997.)

 

safe mode