Of Twice-Told Tales and Ockham’s Razor: A Response to R. Moshe Haberman

Of Twice-Told Tales and Ockham’s Razor: A Response to R. Moshe Haberman

By Elli Fischer

Elli Fischer is an independent writer, translator, and rabbi.  He is editor of Rabbi Eliezer Melamed’s Peninei Halakha series in English and cofounder of HaMapah, a project that applies quantitative analysis to rabbinic literature. He is a founding editor of The Lehrhaus, a web magazine of contemporary Jewish thought, and his writing has appeared in numerous Jewish publications. He holds degrees from Yeshiva University, rabbinical ordination from Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, and is working toward a doctorate in Jewish History at Tel Aviv University.

R. Moshe Haberman’s fascinating recent post on the Seforim Blog, “The Twice-Told Tale of R. Yonason Eybeshutz and the Porger,” traces the provenance of a single copy of the first edition of R. Eybeschutz’s כרתי ופלתי in order to resolve an old and puzzling question about a reference to an apparently nonexistent view of the Semag. The answer – that the reference to Semag (סמ“ג) in the printed edition is a typo and should actually be סה“נ, or Sefer Ha-Nikur – was first suggested in 1930 by Rabbi Solomon M. Neches and further clarified by Prof. Shnayer Leiman. Rabbi Neches claimed that this typo was corrected by R. Eybeschutz himself, as the author’s copy of the work was extant, owned by R. Neches, and contained the handwritten emendation. The case seemed to be closed.

However, upon inspection, it seemed that the book was not owned by the author, but by a different R. Yonason Eybeschutz. The conclusion of R. Haberman’s article is that this copy of the 1763 edition of כרתי ופלתי was owned by two different (and unrelated) people named Rabbi Yonasan Eybeschutz.

The post also states that Rabbi Neches, a leading rabbi in Los Angeles (and, as Fred MacDowell discovered, mesader kiddushin at the wedding of Elaine Ackerman to Jerome L. Horowitz, a.k.a “Curly” of the Three Stooges) from the 1920s until his death in 1954, who claimed to have the book in his possession in 1930, did not really have it in Los Angeles in 1930. Rather, he had seen it in his youth in Ottoman Palestine. The copy remained in Eretz Yisrael until 1963, when it was purchased by UCLA through sponsorship of the Cummings family and sent with tens of thousands of other items to Los Angeles. In other words, rather than take R. Neches at his word, that he possessed the book in Los Angeles in 1930, and presumably kept it until his death in 1954, whereupon his personal library was dispersed, R. Haberman posits that the book never reached American shores, let alone R. Neches’s shelves, during his lifetime, yet arrived in the city where he served within a decade of his passing.

The story thus contains two owners who coincidentally shared the name Rabbi Yonason Eybeschutz (RYE), and there is no connection between the fact that it was a Los Angeles rabbi who first mentioned this very item in 1930 and the fact that the item itself was in Los Angeles in 1963. Rather, the book made its way from Europe to Ottoman Palestine some time before 1910 (while its prior owner, the second RYE, was still alive in Poland). There it was viewed by a teenage R. Neches, who remembered, 20 years later, a marginal gloss he found therein. Meanwhile, the book itself falls off the grid for half a century before resurfacing in 1963, in an auction.

After reading the post, I decided that such a great story, filled with the most unlikely coincidences, deserved a Footprint. As I started documenting the copy’s provenance, however, the narrative began to unravel. As I will show, there is a much simpler narrative of the book’s provenance.

R. Haberman determines that two different RYEs owned the book because one signature specifies ownership by “Rabbi Yonasan Halevi Eybeshutz of Leshitz” and another signature bears resemblance to the signature of the original, 18th century RYE, author of כרתי ופלתי. Thus, it must have been owned by both RYE of Leshitz and RYE the author. Since R. Neches owned at least one book by RYE of Leshitz, namely, שער יהונתן, he, too, must have discovered that two distinct RYEs owned the book.

The problem with this theory is that there is no “Rabbi Yonasan Halevi Eybeshutz of Leshitz”. Rather, in the early 20th century, there were two RYEs. One was the rabbi of Kock (Kotzk) and later of Łosice (Leshitz), Poland and author of תפארת יהונתן. He was not a Levi, and he passed away in c. 1915. The second (or third) RYE, who was indeed a Levi, lived in the Praga district of Warsaw and perished in 1943. He was the author of שער יהונתן among other works, and on the title page that appears in Appendix B of R. Haberman’s post, you can see that the author is listed as living in Warsaw, and there is no mention of Leshitz/Łosice.

The pictures that accompany R. Haberman’s post show clearly that the RYE who owned this copy of כרתי ופלתי was from Łosice, but he does not sign that he was a Levi – because he wasn’t. With this in mind, we can now revisit the question: Is there any indication that the original RYE owned the book as well, or can we attribute everything to the non-Levi RYE of Leshitz?

After a bit of searching, I found an item related to RYE of Łosice on an auction site. This item, a copy of R. Eliyahu Mizrahi’s ספר מים עמוקים (Berlin, 5538/1778), contains both the stamp and signature of RYE of Kotzk (before his arrival in Leshitz). Here his signature is immediately to the left of the word ספר.

And here is his stamp (the smaller one):

The auctioneers also included a picture of a marginal note that the owner inscribed in the book, in the name of one Rabbi Isaac of Leszno (Lissa), son of the rabbi of Mezrich (presumably Międzyrzecz, Poland, in Prussia, close to both Leszno and Lozice, and not Mezhyrichi, Ukraine, home of the famed Maggid, or Międzyrzec Podlaski, in eastern Poland):

(Here is another item that contains RYE of Leshitz’s handwriting.)

Moreover, I am no graphologist, but the two RYE signatures that R. Haberman compares in his post seem far from identical. In the signature of the 18th-century RYE, the leg of the ה is more curved, the bottom of the נ does not extend very far below the line, the ת has a shorter leg, and the top of the ן begins at the same level as the tops of all the other letters. Sure, there is some superficial similarity, but it seems very far from dispositive.

Rather, Ockham’s Razor would encourage us to adopt the simpler explanation, namely, that copy of כרתי ופלתי was owned by only one Rabbi Yonason Eybeschutz: the rabbi of Kotzk and then Leshitz, who died in the early 20th century. It was he who wrote the gloss referring to ספר הניקור – an answer that has the ring of truth and which there seems to be no reason to reject, even if the answer was not provided by the author himself. If anything, RYE of Leshitz deserves his due as the one who resolved this question.

Let us now turn to the question of where the book was at various points. Here, the suggestion that R. Neches viewed the book in Eretz Yisrael prior to 1910, when he emigrated to the US, seemed impossible, as the previous owner – whether RYE of Leshitz or RYE Halevi of Warsaw – lived in Europe. When, why, and how would the book have made its way to Ottoman Palestine without its owner? Moreover, R. Neches’s language seemed to indicate quite clearly that the book was in his possession, in Los Angeles, in 1930. This received further confirmation from commenter Ben Sommerfield, who notes that in another article, from 1951, R. Neches again mentioned that the copy of כרתי ופלתי is in his possession and even includes a facsimile of the page with the marginal note. We can thus conclude that the book was in possession of R. Neches in Los Angeles from 1930 to 1951.

In order to have been included in the Cummings Collection, then, the book would have had to get from Los Angeles to Israel and back to Los Angeles in a span of 12 years – 9 years if we presume that R. Neches kept it until his death in 1954. While not impossible, here again, another explanation seems far more likely.

In an article in HaMa’ayan (56:1 [215], Tishrei 5776, pp. 101-2), R. Yaakov Yitzchak Miller, who located the copy of כרתי ופלתי together with R. Haberman (they thank one another in their respective articles), correctly identifies the previous owner of the copy as RYE of Leshitz (even comparing the signature in the copy to the signature in other auctioned items – in which there are likewise marginalia) and thus dismisses R. Neches’s claim that this was the author’s copy. R. Miller also notes (n. 2 ad loc.) that much of R. Neches’s library was donated to UCLA. It would seem far more likely that this copy of כרתי ופלתי was donated to UCLA from R. Neches’s estate than that it was sent to Israel, appended to a much larger collection, and then purchased by UCLA several years later.

So what are we to make of Prof. Arnold Band’s confirmation that כרתי ופלתי was part of the collection whose purchase he orchestrated in 1963, and of the fact that the book is listed in the UCLA catalog as part of the Cummings collection? In my view, the likely answer is that the 1963 purchase indeed included a copy of כרתי ופלתי – perhaps UCLA’s copy of the Vienna 1819 edition. It takes nothing away from Prof. Band and his efforts to secure this collection to suggest that it seems highly unlikely that he remembers, after 57 years, a detail that he never mentioned before about a signature in one specific book out of 30,000. Perhaps he remembered that the purchase included a copy of כרתי ופלתי, even an old one. Or perhaps he mixed up the 1819 copy with the 1763 copy after the former’s arrival in Los Angeles, resulting in the library miscataloging R. Neches’s 1763 copy. Either way, a cataloging error seems more likely than the scenario suggested by R. Haberman.

The final timeline would then look something like this: The copy was owned by RYE of Leshitz until his death in 1915. At some point between 1915 and 1930, R. Neches purchased it – perhaps from a dealer who obtained items from the estate of RYE of Leshitz and convinced buyers that they had been owned by the far more famous 18th century RYE. It remained in R. Neches’s possession until his death in 1954, whereupon it was donated to UCLA and miscataloged.



Review: The Schechter Haggadah: Art, History, and Commentary

Book Review: The Schechter Haggadah: Art, History, and Commentary
by Elli Fischer
 Rabbi Elli Fischer is a freelance translator living in Modiin, Israel.  He maintains the “On the Contrary:Judasim with Comments Enabled ” blog.  This is his second contribution to the Seforim blog.
Given the thousands of haggadot that have been published over the years, and the dozens of new ones published each year, it is not easy for any single haggadah to separate itself from the others on the market. As a result, some new haggadot provide unique commentary, others contain innovative liturgy and practice, and still others resorts to gimmickry and humor to win adherents. Only rarely does a haggadah appear that is truly remarkable. The Schechter Haggadah: Art, History, and Commentary, by Dr, Joshua Kulp and Rabbi David Golinkin, is indeed a remarkable haggadah.
In truth, the title of this haggadah is a bit misleading, since the “history” is part of the “art” and the “commentary”, and not an independent section. The text is divided into three sections: the first contains the traditional Ashkenazic haggadah text, adorned with artwork from early, mostly manuscript, haggadot. The second section, authored by Rabbi Golinkin, is an expanded section on the artwork of the haggadah, containing 115 annotated illustrations (according to the authors; though I did not count, I did notice that there were a whole lot of pictures). The comments include basic metadata such as time and place of appearance and where the original illustration can now be found, as well as other historical curiosities pertaining to the particular illustration, the haggadah in which it appears, or artistic themes in the illustration of haggadot in general. The third section of this haggadah is Dr. Kulp’s commentary, in excess of 100 pages, which deconstructs the text of the haggadah and the seder practices, locating their original meanings in the earliest Jewish texts and tracing their development through Jewish history. The latter two sections are referenced by unobtrusive notes in the main text.
The first section is beautifully laid out and has good proportion. Since the commentary does not appear alongside the text, one is not distracted by it during the course of the seder. The artwork that appears in the first section contributes to the aesthetic experience without crowding out the main event. Dr. Kulp’s translation is very straightforward and readable.
The illustrations are beautiful and fascinating, and the commentary informative. It features thirty-seven different depictions of the “four sons”, demonstrating how they were perceived by different artists over close to a millennium of Jewish history. Other artistic elements contain a touch of humor, even if the contemporary reader does not share the same sense of humor. For example, in two portraits from 14th and 15th Century haggadot, a husband points at his wife during the recitation of “maror zeh” (“This bitter herb”). Unfortunately, Rabbi Golinkin fails to note the Biblical origin of this particular misogyny: Kohelet 7:26 (“and I find more bitter [mar] than death the woman”).
Dr. Kulp’s commentary is at its best when engaging in source criticism of the haggadah and its antecedents. In some cases (“the four sons”, “go and learn”) he juxtaposes several variations of the same element, taken from early rabbinic works such as the Sifri, the Talmud Yerushalmi, and early haggadot, demonstrates their significant differences, surveys scholarly work on the relationships between the texts, and offers his own summaries and conclusions regarding the evolution of that element of the haggadah. This type of study, which typifies academic Talmudic scholarship, does not generally appear in popular works. To his credit, Dr. Kulp does an admirable job explaining the process and conclusions of his analysis for the educated layman, though his writing style is occasionally awkward (e.g. “read for someone the Hallel” instead of “read the Hallel for someone”), and I noted a number of grammatical errors (especially a lack of commas) and typos (e.g. “Hillel” instead of “R. Yohanan” on p. 258).
In general, the commentary section is structured as a series of sections, varying in size, that trace the origins of the seder and the haggadah. Virtually every standard practice and text is addressed, some more thoroughly and convincingly than others. The primary sources that Dr. Kulp uses are the Talmudim, Mishna, Tosefta, Tannaitic Midrashim, and haggadot from the Geonic era, from both Babylonia and Eretz Yisrael. However, he occasionally refers to other early sources such as apocryphal works, Greco-Roman writings, early Christian writings, Josephus, and Philo; haggadot from the times of the Rishonim and early Acharonim; and standard halakhic codes.
These sections, for the reader and teacher, constitute the best of what this haggadah offers. Each is akin to an individual lesson on a particular aspect of the haggadah or seder, tracing it from its origins to standard practice. For example, with regard to the four cups of wine, he begins with the Tosefta (Pesachim 10:1) instructing charity bursars to provide poor people with four cups of wine for Pesach night. Working of Professor Shamma Friedman’s theory that the Tosefta predates the Mishna, at least in part, he discerns that the number four was originally a somewhat arbitrary number that was deemed appropriate for the Pesach-night symposium. Later, in the Mishna, the four cups were formally arranged as the framework for the seder meal. Finally, midrashim sprang up to account for the significance of the number four on the night of Pesach. This evolutionary process sees the wine transformed from a vehicle of celebration into a ritual and symbolic act, a process that Dr. Kulp notes over and over again as practices that originated in a Greco-Roman context (dipping, reclining, etc.) are transferred into new cultural settings.
Nevertheless, Dr. Kulp’s explanations for the various texts and performances are not always convincing. For example, he does not really offer an explanation for the composition of the “Ha Lachma Anya” paragraph or for the introduction of the Mishna about Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya (though in both cases he argues against reading them as anti-Christian polemics). With regard to Rabbi Yehuda’s mnemonic, he demonstrates that it is an early source, but does not address why such a mnemonic would need to be developed in the first place (indeed, the Gaon of Vilna [Likkutim at the end of Seder Zeraim] argues that the original context of the mnemonic is as an inscription on Moshe’s staff, and was only imported into the hagaddah at a later date; see also p. 24 of R. Hayim Hischenson’s Motza’ei Mayim, here).
His reading of the midrashim contained within the “go and learn” often miss obvious textual points. For example, he asks, “why is cattle-plague singled out as the plague through which God took the Israelites out of Egypt?” He fails to note that the midrash in question intertextually links the “strong hand” of Deuteronomy 26:8 with the “hand of the Lord” of Exodus 9:3. The same can be said of the “portents” of Joel 3:3 and the same verse in Deuteronomy, about which he asks a similar question. He interprets the midrash on “u-vemorah gadol” as being based on a tradition that “morah” means “vision” and not “terribleness”. If that would be the case, however, then the prooftext cited (Deut. 4:34) is superfluous, as the “revelation of the Divine Presence” can be adduced without the prooftext. Rather, the exegetical nub seems to derive from the final phrase of the prooftext: “just as you saw the Lord your God do for you in Egypt, before your eyes”. As a rule, he does not discuss these midrashim as exegesis and tends to neglect the intertextual elements of these midrashim. While not a fatal flaw, an opportunity to more fully explore the nature of rabbinic exegesis is missed.
Another example of where Dr. Kulp misses a fairly straightforward explanation for the flow of the haggadah pertains to the division of Hallel. He writes: “It seems to me that dividing the Hallel into two portions was meant to highlight the centrality of the pesah sacrifice, perhaps in a similar way that reciting a blessing before and after food sanctifies the food”. Later in the same section, when discussing differing practices regarding the recitation of a bracha before Hallel, he writes that “we recite the Hallel at seder [sic] because the Exodus was miraculous… In contrast, in Babylonia they thought that the Hallel was recited in connection with the pesah sacrifice and hence they considered its significance to be diminished when the sacrifice could not be offered.” While it is hard to deny the difference between Eretz Yisraeli and Babylonian customs surrounding the recitation of Hallel, Dr. Kulp misses the main transitional link that mandates the recitation of Hallel, or at least part of it, at the end of the recounting of the Exodus. The transitional paragraph (imported into the haggadah from the Mishnah) states: “Therefore it is our duty of thank, praise (le-hallel), laud, glorify…the One who made all these miracles for us…Let us say before Him, ‘Hallelujah!'”. In other words, the recounting generates the duty to give praise, and it would be inappropriate to conclude the retelling without some words of praise. This approach is borne out by linking the latter part of Mishna Pesachim 10:5 with 10:6.
These examples all seem to flow from a single, overarching issue. Dr. Kulp tends to atomize the different parts of the haggadah rather than viewing them as part of a single structure or relating to a single theme. He states as much explicitly (p. 230): “we should be extra cautious of detecting editorial intention in the sum of the Haggadah’s texts. In my opinion it is extraordinarily difficult to speak of the ‘intention of the Haggadah.'” While I understand his caution, and agree that it is impossible to speak of a single editorial intention, there is no doubt that at each stage, with the inclusion or alteration of each new text, someone, somewhere, felt that a particular text fit with the overall theme or structure of the haggadah; the chaos is more controlled than Dr. Kulp would have us believe.
I hope that these last few paragraphs to not convey the wrong message; the Schechter Haggadah is a beautiful as well as excellent work of scholarship. Had I included every one of my criticisms, kal va-chomer everything that I liked, this review would have been far longer than it already is. In particular, the commentary has deepened my understanding of the evolution of the haggadah, and for one who is not familiar with source critical methodology, this haggadah can be transformative. My recommendation for readers of this haggadah would be to go through it before the seder: there is simply too much to digest, and the issues are often simply too technical, to be appropriate fare for the seder itself. Additionally, this haggadah is a fantastic resource for educators to teach the haggadah. Dr. Kulp’s commentary evolved from a series of classes that he gave, and it consequently is structured in a manner that is easily adaptable to a classroom setting (as my wife can readily attest).
Chag Kasher ve-Sameach!



Book Review: The Koren Sacks Bilingual Edition of the Siddur

Book Review: The Koren Sacks Siddurby Elli Fischer         Rabbi Elli Fischer is a freelance translator living in Modiin, Israel.  He maintains the "On the Contrary: Judasim with Comments Enabled " blog.  This is his first contribution to the TraditionOnline Seforim blog. I was recently given the opportunity to preview The Koren Sacks Siddur. This work, due to be released in 2009, is the first major bilingual Orthodox synagogue prayer book to be released since the ArtScroll Siddur in 1984. It goes without saying that this siddur will present the first serious challenge to ArtScroll's steadily increasing hegemony over the bilingual siddur market, and, as such, this review will often note differences between the two siddurim. The present volume features a translation and commentary by Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth (based on his 2006 Authorised Daily Prayer Book). His comments tend to be thematic and introductory, and do not explain or comment on the meaning of individual phrases. Taken together, Rabbi Sacks' comments would constitute a monograph on the basic structure, function, and themes of Jewish prayer. He does not anthologize from various commentaries on the siddur, rarely citing any sources later than the Talmud. The issue of translation is near and dear to my heart, as a professional translator. Translating the siddur is no easy task. It is fraught with the same tensions that characterize regimented prayer in general – the tension between spontaneity and regularity, the difficulty in giving expression to the longings of the human heart through a formal and formulaic recitation. Rabbi Sacks manages to capture the poetry and power of the prayers without sounding overbearing, highfalutin, archaic, or mechanical. Below I will compare the original Hebrew with the ArtScroll and Koren translations for several passages (The lines are broken up as they are broken up in the Koren siddur; the ArtScroll does not break lines up based on phrasing): 

Original Koren ArtScroll
את צמח דוד עבדך מהרה תצמיח וקרנו תרום בישועתך May the offshoot of Your servant David soon flower, and may his pride be raised high by Your salvation, The offspring of Your servant David may you speedily cause to flourish, and enhance his pride through Your salvation
כי לישועתך קווינו כל היום For we wait for Your salvation all day. For we hope for your salvation all day long.

  

Original Koren ArtScroll
שים שלום טובה וברכה Grant peace, goodness, and blessing Establish peace, goodness, blessing
חן וחסד ורחמים עלינו ועל כל ישראל עמך Grace, loving-kindness and compassionTo us and all Israel your people.  Graciousness, kindness, and compassion upon us and upon all of Your people Israel
ברכנו אבינו כלנו כאחד באור פניך Bless us, our Father, all as one, with the light of Your face  Bless us, our Father, all of us as one, with the light of Your countenance
כי באור פניך נתת לנו ה' אלוקינו  For by the light of your face You have given us, LORD our God For with the light of Your countenance You gave us, HASHEM, our God
תורת חיים ואהבת חסד  The Torah of life and love of kindness, The Torah of life and a love of kindness
וצדקה וברכבה ורחמים וחיים ושלום Righteousness, blessing, compassion, life and peace. Righteousness, blessing, compassion, life, and peace.
וטוב בעיניך לברך את עמך ישראל   May it be good in your eyes to bless Your people Israel And may it be good in Your eyes to bless Your people Israel,
בכל עת ובכל שעה בשלומך At every time, in every hour, with Your peace. In every season and in every hour with Your peace

 Another, blatant example comes from the first line of the second blessing of the morning Shema, which begins with the words "Ahava Rabba". ArtScroll renders it: "With abundant love you have loved us, HASHEM, our God; with exceedingly great pity have you pitied us." Koren, on the other hand, translates: "You have loved us with great love, LORD our God, and with surpassing compassion have You had compassion on us." These examples should suffice to bear out my contention that the Koren translation has a much more intuitive feel – that it is formulated as an English rendition of the Hebrew prayer and not simply as a mechanical translation. It is hard to quantify why "surpassing compassion" resonates better than "exceedingly great pity", but the eye and ear notice the difference all the same (as Prof. Moshe J. Bernstein is fond of noting: "My toilet overflows; my cup runneth over"). The layout of The Koren Siddur is innovative in several respects. Contrary to the convention of nearly all bilingual siddurim, the Hebrew appears on the left page and the English on the right. This format can be a bit disconcerting at first, but the adjustment period can be counted in minutes. The advantage of this innovation is both aesthetic and functional. From the aesthetic perspective, both languages seem to have a common "origin" in the binding instead of facing each other jaggedly. Functionally, this layout makes it easier to locate corresponding words and phrases. As I alluded earlier, Koren characteristically breaks lines up thematically, as in poetic verse. This results in an abundance of white space, but makes the prayers more intelligible. This convention is characteristic of Koren's all-Hebrew siddurim as well, and its efficacy transfers to the bilingual edition. Koren's liturgical publications (siddurim, machzorim, and chumashim) have long been known for their precise typesetting, and the present volume is no exception. In this siddur, there is a subtle distinction between the Hebrew fonts used for biblical passages and later liturgical compositions. The "dikduk-geeks" will be happy that the shva na is distinguished from the shva nach and the kamatz gadol from the kamatz katan. Its transliteration conventions are much more precise, making extensive use of apostrophes, hyphens, and underdots. Its transliterations of the various Kaddishin do not use awkward phonetic representations (e.g., "rabbaw"). In addition to the translation and commentary, the Koren Siddur includes italicized English instructions on both sides of the page. In general, they are longer at critical turning points of the service (beginning of the Amida, before Barkhu at Shacharit) but otherwise fairly concise. In general, these instructions contain more background and are less preachy than ArtScroll's instructions. For example, compare the following instructions that appear prior to the silent Shemoneh Esrei: 

ArtScroll:Moses advanced through three levels of holiness when he went up to Sinai. Therefore we take three steps forward as we 'approach' God in the Shemoneh Esrei prayer.Remain standing with the feet together while reciting Shemoneh Esrei. Recite it with quiet devotion and without any interruption, verbal or otherwise. Although it should not be audible to others, one must pray loudly enough to hear himself, See Laws #61-90 for a brief summary of its laws, including how to rectify the omission of phrases or paragraphs that are added at particular times of the year. Koren:The following prayer, until "in former years," on page 134, is said standing with feet together in imitation of the angels in Ezekiel's vision (Ezek. 1:7). The Amida is said silently, following the precedent of Hanna when she prayed for a child (I Sam. 1:13). If there is a minyan, it is repeated aloud by the Leader. Take three steps forward, as if formally entering the place of Divine Presence. At the points indicated by ^, bend the knees at the first word, bow at the second, and stand straight before saying God's name.

 The Koren Siddur, presumably because it is a bilingual edition of an Israeli siddur, is much more Israel-conscious than the ArtScroll. I refer not only to the fact that the Koren contains prayer services and laws for Yom ha-Zikaron, Yom ha-Atzma'ut, and Yom Yerushalayim and that it transliterates using generic Israeli pronunciation. I also refer to halakhic and liturgical differences that pertain to the Land of Israel, for example: adding the word "kadisha" in the Kaddish de-Rabbanan, differences regarding when one begins reciting "ve-ten tal u-matar", the procedures for Birkat Kohanim in the daily prayer, the inclusion of a note to omit "Barukh Hashem le-Olam" from Ma'ariv in the Land of Israel, and even the inclusion of the special prayer for rain in the Land of Israel as a footnote to the regular prayer. Although this siddur was produced specifically for American congregations, its inclusion of the laws and customs of the Land of Israel seems entirely right. The absence of these latter elements from the ArtScroll Siddur, for whatever reason, seems like an egregious omission. The Koren Siddur is more inclusive of women both in terms of its content and in terms of its instructions. The content includes the liturgy (imported from the Sephardic rite and increasingly prevalent in Israel) of the "Zeved ha-Bat" celebration upon the birth of a daughter (it appears in the excellent "Life Cycle" section of the siddur). It furthermore includes the thanksgiving prayer recited by a women after childbirth, which includes "Birkat ha-Gomel". The ArtScroll Siddur makes no mention of this obligation (and the practice is even discouraged in the ArtScroll Women's Siddur, which follows the minority opinion of the Mishna Berura on this matter without recording dissent). With regard to zimmun, the ArtScroll Siddur applies the practice to "three or more males, aged thirteen or older". The Koren Siddur, on the other hand, states that "when three or more women say Birkat ha-Mazon with no men present, then substitute "Friends" for Gentlemen". A final element of the Koren Siddur's treatment of women pertains to the commentary on the brakha of "she-asani kirtzono". As noted, this siddur does not generally comment on specific phrases and lines from individual prayers. The brakhot that use the "who has not made me" formula, as well as "she-asani kirtzono", are an exception to that rule. Here, Rabbi Sacks goes out of his way to explain these ostensibly problematic benedictions. Methinks he doth protest too much. His apology does little more than call attention to the problematicity of these passages. The present edition includes several introductions and appendices. The original preface to the Hebrew edition, from 1981, has been translated into English, and has been joined by prefaces written by the publisher and by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, Executive Vice President of the Orthodox Union (the OU is a sponsor of this publication). There is also a guide to pronunciation and transliteration penned by the editor of the volume. The most extensive introductory essay, however, is Rabbi Sacks' 42-page introduction to Jewish prayer. A perusal of it shows that it addresses elements of the history, philosophy, language, and structure of Jewish prayer, on the macro- and micro- levels. He characteristically weaves together Jewish sources from ancient to modern, as well as a sprinkling of references to British poets and critics. I have not read all 487 paragraphs of the halakhic section, but it goes well beyond the laws of prayer narrowly defined and includes discussions of the laws of tefillin and tzitzit, an overview of the entire Jewish year, and more. It even includes a section on issues that arise when traveling back and forth between Israel and the Diaspora. It also resurrects the very handy "Table of Permitted Responses", which provides an easy reference guide to what types of interruptions are permitted during the various parts of the prayer. The Talmud (Brakhot 32b) asks rhetorically: "Without knowledge, whence prayer?" Thus, understanding prayer – the simple meaning of the words and the underlying structure of how it all fits together – is a prerequisite for true prayer. The Koren Sacks Siddur has succeeded, through its nearly 1300 pages, in being informative and erudite without losing sight of the forest for the trees. It is, quite simply, a comprehensive guide book for Jewish prayer, introducing its users to the full gamut of experiences necessary to truly enter into the world of tefilla. It has set a new standard for English-language siddurim.