The introduction of the printing press in Europe in the 15th century completely changed the way Jews read the Bible. They began printing the biblical text in Hebrew in the middle of the page, surrounded by Hebrew commentaries. As time went on, they started calling such bibles Mikraot Gedolot, literally “large bibles,” although originally, this term simply meant oversize bibles with folio pages.
Every Mikraot Gedolot published in the last 100 years contains: the text of the Torah in Hebrew; the Aramaic interpretation known as Targum Onkelos (from around the third century); and Hebrew commentaries by Rashi (11th century), Abraham ibn Ezra (12th century) and Nahmanides (13th century). Some other commentaries, almost always from the 16th century or earlier, might also be included.
Today, another technological revolution, the Internet, has again transformed Jewish bibles. One can now find an excellent do-it-yourself Mikraot Gedolot, available for free, at alhatorah.org. The site allows people to choose from 40 different Hebrew commentaries to display on their computer screens, alongside the biblical text. The creator of the website, Hillel Novetsky, has relied on the best available printed texts of the commentaries, but has also made extensive use of independent manuscript research. He has even added English translations of a few of the commentators.
A number of companies have also tried publishing all-English print versions of Mikraot Gedolot. The first was produced by scholar Michael Carasik and published by the Jewish Publication Society. Carasik created a text that modernized the medieval commentators. Essentially, he turned them into 21st-century Jews, but at the expense of accurately preserving what they wrote. Artscroll Publications tried, as well, producing an English-language Rabbinic Bible that reflected the company’s haredi values.
The latest is Koren Publishers in Jerusalem, which recently issued a very handsome volume, The Koren Mikraot Hadorot: Parashat Shemot With Commentaries. Slated to be the first of a 54-volume (!) series, this work comprises around 10 times as many volumes as the average Hebrew-language edition of Mikraot Gedolot. The 300-plus pages of the first volume cover only one Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1).
Matthew Miller, the publisher, explains his purpose in the preface: “Traditional editions of Mikraot Gedolot present only a slice in time and a small selection of the corpus of the Jewish commentators. Almost every generation has produced rabbinic scholars who speak to their times, from Philo and Onkelos 2,000 years ago, to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, the Lubavitcher rebbe and Nehama Leibowitz in ours.”
The text of the Torah is presented in Hebrew and in an elegant English translation by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. The only commentary that appears in full is Rashi’s, which appears in both Hebrew and English. But Koren has included excerpts, in English only, from a new and greatly expanded canon of commentaries. Excerpts from the standard Hebrew Mikraot Gedolot make an appearance, along with excerpts from other commentators spanning the last 2,000 years. The high-quality translations of the commentaries were done by Rabbi Jonathan Mishkin, who grew up in Toronto and lives in Israel.
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With so many commentaries on one text, the layout of the pages can get confusing in some Mikraot Gedolot. But this book’s pages are attractive and easy to read. One can easily see the connection between the biblical text and the commentaries.
The volume does an excellent job of conveying a wide range of ideas from the commentaries. But when the commentaries appear in English without either the Hebrew original or lengthy notes, it’s harder to get a sense of what language issues the commentators were addressing in their interpretations.
For example, in one difficult biblical verse (Exodus 3:19), God says about the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, “I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go velo beyad chazakah.” These last three Hebrew words have been understood in many different ways. In The Koren Mikraot Hadorot, we find on the same page as the verse: (1) Abarbanel’s explanation that even the mighty hand of the Israelite masses will not suffice to release them; (2) Chizkuni’s explanation that even God’s mighty hand won’t release the Israelites right away; (3) Rashbam’s explanation that Pharaoh’s alleged mighty hand won’t suffice to keep the Israelites enslaved; and (4) Rashi’s explanation that only God’s mighty hand will be able to free the Israelites.
If one doesn’t understand Hebrew well and only read the verse in Rabbi Sacks’s English translation – “I know that even by a mighty hand the king of Egypt would not send you forth” – one would probably understand the first two explanations, but Rashi and Rashbam’s would appear totally unconnected to the verse. Hebrew readers understand that they are not. The word velo might mean “even,” as Abarbanel, Chizkuni and Rabbi Sacks wrote, but it could also mean “unless,” as Rashi understood it, or “but not because of,” as Rashbam saw it. In other words, an English-language compendium of Hebrew commentaries on a Hebrew text can successfully convey the flavour of the interpretations, but often cannot grapple with the words of the text.
As impressive as this volume is, it ultimately raises questions about the state of Jewish literacy in the English-speaking world, even among highly committed Jews. As Prof. B. Barry Levy of McGill University wrote in 1991: “Some observers might perceive an English Rabbinic Bible as an embarrassment to our generation and a threat to the study of Hebrew; others, as a credit to modern ingenuity and industry and a contribution to American Jewish education. Neither position would be totally incorrect.”