Book Review:Lashon HaKodesh: History, Holiness and Hebrew

By Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein

Available here:

Amazon  Israel365  Feldheim

As a nation we know that Hebrew is intrinsically different from all the other languages in the world.  There is the religious aspect in that we believe that Hebrew is the language the world was created with and the first people on the planet spoke.  Its words are imbued with deeper mystical meanings that help shape the fabric of reality itself.  It is the language of the Torah, God's blueprint for Creation.

Then there is the practical aspect.  Hebrew is the only language from Biblical times that still exists in any mass form today.  Yes, there are small groups of Assyrians, Babylonians and Arameans out there in Syria and Iraq speaking a version of their biblical tongues and some have even preserved the ancient script but Hebrew is the language of an entire country as well as the liturgical language of millions of Jews worldwide.  Unlike Assyrian and the other ancient tongues it has a seat at the table of nations today, something no other ancient language can claim.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, in his new book on the development of the Hebrew language, finds himself having to maintain a delicate balance.  The purpose of the book is to take a serious look at the origins, development and current state of Hebrew as well as its influence on other languages through the ages.  The balance comes between presenting the opinion of Torah sources on the subject and those of academics.  This is not an easy task.  Dismiss the academics and he risks getting his book labelled as yet another Artscroll piece of fluff that presents a subject devoid of historical fact that will only appeal to Orthodox readers uninterested in a meaningful look at the subject.  Dismiss the Torah literature and the book becomes yet another perceived attack on Judaism and an attempt to analyze Hebrew as just another language which will cause him to lose out on the Torah observant audience.

Fortunately for both groups Rabbi Klein manages to maintain that delicate balance through most of the book.  He covers such subjects as what language the world was created with, what language the first inhabitants of Earth might have spoken and where other languages might have come from if everything started out in Hebrew in the early chapters.  It is here that he best maintains the balance between the religious and academic approaches, showing how both support a common thesis when it comes to the origins and early development of Hebrew.   From there he treats such subjects as the variety of languages that Jews spoke that had Lashon HaKodesh, his term for classical or "true" Hebrew" mixed into it.  Almost all people have heard of Yiddish, many of Ladino but his listing of various other languages that Hebrew has influenced or been a part of over the millenia is truly fascinating.  My critique of that section of the book is that I would have liked to see examples of vocabulary from those other mysterious half-Jewish tongues.  Given the modernity of the book he also mentions Yeshivish as a semi-Hebrew language but I would argue that it does not belong on the list as it is not a language meant for use by the general Jewish community of a region (eg. America) but rather a private language reserved for a small segment of that community, unlike Yiddish, Ladino and the others.

The history section in which the origins of the word "Hebrew" and how it came to be a label for Lashon HaKodesh is well documented and provides a nice summary that the reader can digest easily.  There is also the part in which modern Hebrew and its development is examined.  Unlike other languages, Rav Klein notes that Lashon Hakodesh, or the original Hebrew bequeathed onto humanity by God, is not a language like others.  William Shakespeare spoke English but anyone who has ever read his plays knows that the English he spoke is nearly incomprehensible at times.  However, it is still labelled as English because there is no patent on the label.  This is not the case with Lashon Hakodesh.  Rav Klein points out that just because Modern Hebrew uses the ksav Ashuri and many words and grammar rules in common with the language of the Bible that does not make it the same Hebrew and certainly it cannot be called Lashon Hakodesh.  He also documents the politics around the development of Modern Hebrew, reminding us that there was and is still a significant part of the Orthodox world that would rather we all spoke Yiddish except when davening because they see Modern Herbew as a bastardization of pure Hebrew.

At the end of the book Rav Klein presents five appendices and I wonder why they aren't labelled as chapters, especially the first three which are as long as his chapters and set out in virtually the same format.  In these appendices he deals with such issues as foreign words in the Bible along with whether or not foreign-sounding names were, in the Jewish literature are actually Hebrew names.  Once again he balances different views instead of dogmatically presenting just one in order to be "Torah true".  However it is towards this end of the book that the academic approach starts to become a little anemic and I would have liked to see more opinions from outside the Torah world if only to give a better appreciation of the Torah ones.

My main criticism is in the final section which is full of erratum and fill-in's that should have made it into the main text.  Obviously this is not the author's fault and I would think that if this book goes to second edition he will have been given a chance to edit those areas into the main text.  The add-in's would serve to improve an already good text even further.

Overall I recommend this as a good read and one that will deepen the reader's appreciation of what Lashon Hakodesh truly is.

Book Review: The Challenge of Jewish History

I'm a bit of a history buff so when new books come out on Jewish history that pique my interest I enjoy reading through them.  http://www.amazon.com/Challenge-Jewish-History-Greeks-Missing/dp/1937887316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434994151&sr=8-1&keywords=challenge+of+jewish+historyThe Challenge of Jewish History by Rav Alexander Hool caught my eye while I was shopping on Amazon for something else so I threw it into my cart.  Having recent finished it I can happily say I was not disappointed.
Rav Hool starts off by pointing that out traditional Jewish history and secular standard history contradict each other on a very important fact: how long did the Second Temple stand for?  According to Seder Olam and various mephorshim it was around for 420 years.  According to accepted secular history it was almost 600 years in standing.  Which is correct?
I began reading the book with a cynical eye.  After all, there is no shortage of books written by well-meaning rabbonim who try to disprove standard history or science in order to "preserve" the truth of a statement in the Talmud or Bible that conflicts with known facts.  (cf. the famous Talmudic mud mouse)  These books inevitably start by claiming that there is an obligation to believe the literal meaning of everything Chazal said, not just in halacha which is obvious, but in science, geography and other secular areas.  Thus if modern science contradicts a Talmudic scientific statement then modern science must be wrong.  All that's left is to present a highly selective assortment of statements by Chazal to prove that they were right.
This book is nothing like that.  Rav Hool starts out by demonstrating all the evidence for the standard secular historical version.  He then points out the inconsistencies or flaws in the historical record that are recognized by archaeologists and historians.  His conclusion is the secular historical version of a 600 year Temple is workable and if it wasn't for our sources saying it was only 420 years he'd have no problem with it.
He then brings in the Jewish view on that history.  His only references to the Bible or Talmudic-era sources are direct quotations from verses and chapters containing numbers of years in various areas.  The assumption, naturally, is that these numbers are correct just as the assumption regarding the secular information was.  This leads him to prove that there is a need to reconcile.
The way he does it is brilliant.  According to secular history the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Persian and Median empires.  Persia, in turn was conquered in its entirely by Alexander the Great.  Subsequent to his death the empire split into four kingdoms with the Seleucid and Ptoelmaic ones being the most relevant to us since they took turns ruling over Israel.
According to Rav Hool's information there is a fundamental error in the narrative.  Using recent archaeological discoveries he brings convincing evidence that Alexander did not conquer the entire Persian empire, just a big chuck of its northwest.  As a result Persia continued on in parallel to the Greek empire and subsequent kingdoms.  This has the result of contracting history and shaving 200 years neatly off the secular version, bringing it in line with the Jewish accounting.
Again, this is not a book of Chareidi apologetics.  The data Rav Hool brings is from the current archaeological literature, not Jewish speculative sources which allows a greater sense of reliability.
Using this data Rav Hool is able to suggest who Achashveirosh was in Persian history along with other historical events that occurred to our ancestors at that time as well.
I heartily recommend this book for folks with an interest in Jewish history. Despite getting tedious at times (Rav Hool loves his details!) it makes for a very interesting read overall and a new appreciation for events in that far off time.

Book Review - New Heavens and A New Earth

One of the critical differences between Torah and science is that the former builds on a initial Revelation that set down the principles of halacha that can never be changed while the latter developed slowly through human investigation and is open to change if existing presumptions can be shown to be incorrect.  The real conflict between Torah and science comes from scientists who don't understand that halacha's founding principles cannot be challenged and that all subsequent legal development must be guided by them, and by Torah scholars who think that science's approach to destroying its own historical positions means that it has no validity.

Into this ongoing issue comes Jeremy Brown's book, New Heavens and A New Earth.  The book is well-written and organized, presenting a history of the development of Copernicus' theory that we live in a heliocentric universe instead of a geocentric one.

One mistake we often make when looking back at science throughout history is to consciously or subconsciously assume that what it obvious to us was obvious to our forbears.  Brown, however, does a fine job reminding us of the state of science and also brings excellent descriptions of the debates that occurred in the astronomical community when conflicts between the Ptolemaic proponents and Copernican opponents began.

For example, when describing the geocentric model he notes that it did not develop simply out of a superficial literal reading of the Bible but was investigated using the astronomical tools and methods of the time.  The nafka mina was that the Copernican system, when it was first developed, had to challenge not only religious dogmatism but also had to provide sufficient proof it was correct.  Brown notes in a several places that the scientific community had multiple valid objections to Copernicas' system that prevents its immediate adoption and which, using the technology of the time, were quite valid.

The main part of the book is the Jewish encounter with heliocentrism.  Like the Catholics, Jewish thinkers began with the Bible and continued with the Talmud, deriving from there a geocentric view of the universe.  The idea that the sun was the centre and that the Earth was circling it was heresy to them and they initially (and for a while after) rejected it vigorously.

However Jewish astronomers, many of them devoutly Torah-observant, soon began their own investigations in concert with the greatest contemporary Chrsitian astronomers and began to realize that there was something to this heliocentrism thing which only increased the level of debate within the Torah community.  Brown meticulously documents the reactions and counter-reactions within our literature, proceeding from the time of Copernicus up until the present day.  He examines teshuvos and science textbooks written by Torah scholars to show how heliocentrism slowly came to be accepted as an acceptable Torah viewpoint throughout the Jewish community despite aggressive opposition from traditionalist, most of whom had never looked through a telescope.

The final section of the book deals with the issue in modern times and I found this to be most fascinating.  One would think that with the advent of modern telescopes and the launches of space probes over the last fifty years the debate would be settled.  After all we can see the solar system and how it's set up along with its relative position in the galaxy and that galaxy's relative position in the universe.  This is no longer a discussion using indirect evidence or mathematical models.  Yet there are still segments in the Torah world that reject geocentrism, something I find bizarre.

The most famous examples are the Satmar and Lubavitcher rebbes,  For the Satmar to reject heliocentrism should not come as a shock.  He also didn't believe that astronauts really landed on the moon.  His entire understanding of reality came from our holy literature independent of, and probably despite, confirmed scientific knowledge.

But the Lubavitcher Rebbe actually had a real education in his youth and was regarded as having maintain currency in scientific and engineering fields throughout his life in addition to his prodigious Torah knowledge.  Despite this he is on record as rejecting heliocentrism, as brought in Brown's book, for the simple reason that a literal reading of the Bible says it can't be, therefore it isn't and all the scientists in the world are wrong.  The best part of the section is where Brown brings a quote of Rebbe invoking the theory of general relatively to justify his geocentric position juxtaposed with a quote from Einstein, the developer of that theory, stating that anyone who used general relativity to justify a geocentric universe didn't really understand it!

At the very end Brown brushes up against the subject of heliocentrism vs geocentrism in the 21st century and although he only hints at it he does note the trend by modern Chareidism to react to any universal scientific understandings by rejecting them and then setting up that rejection as a ikkar enumah.  This has started happening in astronomy with the Chareidi brain trust essentially creating a new principle of faith that the universe is geocentric and that disagreeing means rejecting the Torah.  It's still a small group, to be sure (most Chareidim have no interest in astronomy it seems) but it seems to me that one day we might be told that, along with direct metzitzah b'peh and a 5775 year old Earth, we must also believe that this same young Earth sits at the centre of everything or risk being labelled as heretics.  I have personally spoken with an educated psychologist in my community who firmly believes in a geocentric universe because a gadol in the large Jewish community next door told me he has to.  In other words we are slowly moving towards a point where a certain community might announce that unless you reject tangible reality you don't believe in the Creator of that reality. 

This book provides a great read but also reassurance that there is enough support in our holy literature to reject such a demand handily.

Book Review: Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities

Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities By Michael Lesher

Anyone avidly following the Jewish blogosphere over the last 10 years knows that there are certain topics that have consistently remained topics of discussion over that time even as other subjects have risen and fallen in general interest.  The number one topic, it seems, is the existence and prevalence of physical and sexual abuse in the Jewish community, especially of children.  Even a casual perusal of such leading blogs as Failed Messiah and The Unorthodox Jew demonstrate how this subject maintains a high level of importance in discourse.

Into this discussion comes Michael Lesher's book, Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities.  I bought it with great interest and in the hope that it would be more than just a regurgitation of all the material I've been reading on-line over the last several years along with a predictable rant against Orthodox Judaism.  Unfortunately I was disappointed as much of the book turned out to be exactly that.

A good portion of the book deals with many of the high profile stories that have appeared in the media and on the Internet over the last decade and before.  This is important because, although one might think that Lesher is rehashing old material, due to the sheer amount of physical and sexual abuse stories coming out of the Jewish community, chalilah, there might be a fear that over time such incidents would become like background noise and lose prominence in people's attention.  Lesher deftly details the multiple incidents in a way that sends a clear message: each of these stories is important, each must be paid attention to for the way justice was miscarried and for the way the rabbinic leadership of the various communities helped perpetuate the abuse and because these are just the tip of the iceberg. In this regard Lesher is doing a huge service to the victims to ensure their suffering is not forgotten and to perhaps push forward justice for future victims.

Lesher notes how modern rabbinic leadership (and, citing history, it seems it isn't just the last century or so but much further back) demands absolute control of the Torah community and insists on the individual sublimating his desires and goals to those of that community as represented by the leadership.  In such a framework children lose their identity as precious gifts from Heaven to be nurtured and protected and instead become cogs in the machine.  And like any cog that doesn't function well, a community member, including a child, that doesn't play the stereotypical role to perfection as demands by the rabbonim is cast out lest the machine be damaged.  This attitude is what is behind the Orthodox obsessions with concealing physical and sexual abuse at the expense of justice or even empathy for the victim.  The imperative that the community's public appearance of spiritual and moral perfection must not be damaged trumps all else.  One cannot avoid feeling rage as Lesher details case after case where rabbonim who should and did know better sacrificed innocent children and their families in their name of their version of Orthodox Judaism.

Lesher also deals with the topic from a halachic aspect, albeit simplistically.  He correctly notes how the initiative of the Chofetz Chayim, ztk"l, to eliminate loshon horo from the Torah community has backfired and is now used to protect abusers even though the Chofetz Chayim himself detailed how his rules did not apply in dangerous situations such as there.  He discussed mesirah and how is does not apply in modern cases of abuse in Western societies and how the charge is used improperly and maliciously to protect abusers and intimidate victims and their families.  One of my disappointments with this section is that he did not go into greater halachic detail but he's not a Rav so this isn't surprising.  Certainly his superficial treatment of the subject is complements by existing books written by bona fide talmidei chachamim. 

The final part of the book deals with specific suggestions for dealing with abuse within the Jewish community.  Lesher appeals to the Orthodox laity and strongly suggests that we demand moe responsible leadership from our rabbonim.  He reminds us repeatedly that loving our children is one of our most important values which has been perverted and demeaned by a leadership that wants our loyalty even at the expense of our children's health and safety.  His appeal is heartfelt and his basic suggestions are meaningful although sadly the audience that most needs to read them will likely never even see a copy of his book.

So why was I disappointed with the book?  The problem wasn't with the basic material or even many of Lesher's suggestions but the overall tone of the writing.  Now Lesher was clearly in a difficult position.  One simply cannot write dispassionately about child abuse outside of a strictly clinical setting such as a medical journal.  Has Lesher tried to be emotionless his material would have had far less impact than it did.  There is, however, a fine line between urgency and being shrill and several times in the book Lesher crosses that line.  I can't fault him for doing so; one can only imagine the emotional upheavals he felt doing his research.  However when it happens, such as when he inserts words into descriptions of testimony of abusers like "He sneered" which are not necessary, it detracts from the text.  

Lesher also seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of the importance of community in Jewish tradition.  Yes, the degree to which some modern Chasidic rebbes and "Gedolim" demand that their followers descend into a clone state and eliminate all traces of their individualism is excessive and unprecedented, as the famous New Square Shabbos dinner menu demonstrated.  On the other hand Lesher comes across as a post-modern individualist, a "Ask not what you can do for the state, ask rather what the state can do for you" type.  Typical of a liberal entitlement society, this position is quite the opposite of traditional responsibility-based Jewish societal structure.  Any student of Jewish history knows that the survival of the Jewish nation is a fundamental principle to us and the commitment to that survival by martyrs over the millenia is what allowed us to survived the destruction of both our Temples (may they be speedily rebuilt) and ultimately return to and re-establish Jewish sovereignty in our Land.  Making my personal desires and goals secondary to those of my community when the two sides conflict is a requirement of Jewish membership in the nation.  The problems caused by rabbonim taking this to any extreme cannot be countered with a radical reassertion of individualism.  Ultimately the compromise position is one in which members give their best to the community while the leadership performs its designated function of ensuring that safety and justice are enforced in that community.  It means I don't have to see a conflict between protecting children from abusers and being a good community member because the community sees protecting the children from abusers as a priority.

My final area of discomfort with the book was Lesher's frequent tendency towards hateful rants.  In one chapter, for example, he discusses the abuse of women and children in a fundamentalist sect of the Mormon community.  Having details the perversions that occur he immediately rushes to assure us that the mainstream religion we shouldn't think of when it comes to women being oppressed is Islam.  He makes the readily-discredited claim that radical Islam is as misogynistic as we think it is (a la Ben Afflack) and instead tells us that if we want to find a religion comparable in hatred of women and children we need look no further than Orthodoxy!  He also uses a clever linguistic trick in which he mentions Orthodoxy in proximity to horrible crimes but then hastens to add "Not that I'm suggesting that there's a connection."  This is an old trick done to avoid being labelled with a specific hatred while still planting the hateful suggestion in the reader's mind and Lesher seems to delight in doing it. It detracted from the book because, while I appreciate that a certain amount of outrage needed to be expressed, the crossing into what read like a personal vendetta jarred me.

What's more, rabbis guilty of either committing abuse or protecting the menuvalim weren't his only targets.  In what feels like a literary mad swinging of fists, he attacks Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, zt"l, for writing an essay about making a personal peace with the mitzvah of destroying Amalek and then noting that such an attitude is not far from that of a child abuser.  He takes Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, zt"l, to task for daring to suggest that Torah Judaism has something moral to teach a depraved world as such as statement confirms that the Rav was, at heart, a xenophobe convinced that all Judaism's ills are due to the influence of an "orgiastic" outside world.  Lesher seems to reveal his agenda at this point and that agenda is that all rabbis who don't agree with a post-modern, anti-tribal outlook.  It's not just enough for rabbonim to reject a "Don't make us look bad" attitude but rather they need to reject any notion of Jewish exceptionalism, something that goes against any ethnic or national group's sense of identity.

Lastly there are his frequent rants against Israel and its politics.  One might ask what place such a topic has on a book on physical and sexual abuse but Lesher has an answer, implying that on the world state, Israel is the abuser and the so-called Palestinians are the abused, not much different than a predator rabbi and his helpless student victim.  Over and over he repeats canards and distortions, the products of Israel-hating sources such as Noam Chomsky and Norm Finkelstein.  For example his presentation of the 2006 war with Hezbollah clearly places all the blame on Israel and presents Hezbollah as the aggrieved victim just trying to fight back! At one point I wondered whether he would bring up the matzah blood libel and accuse Israeli settlers of performing that fictitious rite.  After all, Arab propaganda sources have made such an accusation and since Lesher obediently repeats all their other falsehoods.

So why is that important?  Simply put, it undermines his entire thesis.  I very well know that everything he states about Israel is incorrect, twisted or missing critical details in order to place blame on the Jewish state.  If he's that inaccurate and biased about his recollection of recent Israeli history then can I trust his recollections of abuse in the Jewish community?  In short, if he hates Israel so much (a charge I'm sure he'd deny) then does he hate Orthodoxy so much?  If he does, is this book just a hateful screed or an important place to start a discussion on how to confront abuse within the Orthodox community?

And that's ultimately the problem because starting that discussion, as Lesher documents, is a major priority for us to prevent even more lives from being damaged.

Book Review: Understanding Genesis

Understanding Genesis by prof Nahum Sarna is an interesting read I recently completed.  While not an Orthodox book by any stretch of the imagination, it is a fascinating and in-depth look at the first book of the Torah from the position of an interested and sympathetic academic, one more interested in trying to understand the message the stories of our ancestors teach us than in trying to tear down the text in an attempt to delegitimize it.
The book generally follows the narrative of Genesis starting with the creation of the universe and ending with Yaakov Avinu and his sons arriving in Egypt.  Most of the chapters corresponded to a particular narrative and hence parsha but some are short enough to encompass only part of one. 
In each chapter the narrative is summarized and then analyzed for moral lessons.  The text itself is also compared to contemporary non-Jewish sources to look for common features and literary styles.  For example, Sarna contrasts the Babylonian/Akkadian version of creation with ours, showing how the non-Jewish version is essentially just a mythical story with nothing deeper to recommend it while moral lessons abound in the Biblical text, clearly the intent of the Author. 
In the chapter on the Mabul, for another example, Sarna again contrasts various flood stories from the region with ours and again shows that what we are supposed to take away from the narrative is not the technical details of what happened but the moral lessons that occur to Noach and other characters.  This is obviously a repeated theme throughout the book: the Torah is not a history text or dry religious tract but a book of moral instruction even when analyzed through a secular lens.
In fact, the one limitation of the book is the obvious: Sarna concludes (as any academic must) that the Torah itself is a multi-author work although many of the proofs he brings are incredibly weak or full of supposition and conjecture.  Where he differs from other academics is in showing that the literary style of Genesis, the various legal phrases in the narratives and the descriptions of life in the time of our Avos are authentic products of the time, not later invention from the time of Ezra HaSofer or later.  One example is Yaakov Avinu's final argument with Lavan in which Yaakov pretty much quotes his rights from the dominant code of Hammurabi which was the law of the land at the time, something that would have been unknown to another author centuries later.
In fact, that was the one frustration I felt when finishing the book.  According to Sarna, the narratives in Genesis can be ascribed to the time period they claim to be from but is a multi-author book.  According to Umberto Cassuto, the Torah is a unitary text but the product of a later human author.  How annoying.  Why can't they each reach the obvious conclusion that each of their analyses reach together: that the text is a unitary entity written at the time it claims to have been?

Saturating the Market

(Hat Tip: FinkorSwim)
There are essentially three types of Jewish prayer books on the market.  The first kind are the good, ol' fashioned all-Hebrew ones that come in a variety of sizes, nusachs and commentaries.  Generally speaking there is a specific part of the Torah-observant community that prefers them.  The third kind are the non-religious ones that the Reformatives promote that have changed the traditional prayers beyond recognition and are useless for those who wish to daven according to strictly Orthodox standards.
The second kind, however, fit in the middle - the English-Hebrew Orthodox siddur.  For decades, the standard for Orthodox shuls that catered to a crowd that wanted English in its prayer books was the Birnbaum siddur.  It was revolutionary in a few ways.  First, it insisted on making all the prayer texts the same size font, as opposed to more traditional siddurs that seemed to randomnly change font size from paragraph to paragraph.  It also included a brief but decent commentary, including a good explanation of the 13 middos of Rabbi Yishmael at the end of the korbanos section.  It's the siddur I grew up with and still have a nostalgic preference for.
The siddur that replaced it in most places was the classic Artscroll.  It had a few advantages over the Birnbaum including more detailed instructions for the beginning or even moderately experienced davener.  In addition, it contained a decent section of halachic details on praying at the back.  Like the Stone Chumash would several years later, the siddur wiped out the old Birnbaums and quickly replaced them in many shuls.
After several years of being the uncontested siddur of choice for those wanting to daven with an English side to their shul, Koren recently entered the game with its siddur.  Like the Artscroll it contained a good English translation and copious instructions.  Koren went further and revolutionized things by putting the English on the right side of the double page, as opposed to the usual left page universally used in English-Hebrew books until now.  With their distinctive fonts and layout, it has been a beautiful addition to the English-Hebrew siddur selection.  It had such an obvious impact that it motivated Artscroll to update things for the first time in decades and introduce a more comprehensive siddur to maintain their edge in the market.
The question to be asked at this point is: is there room for another siddur?  Artscroll has made a mint selling its siddur for years.  Koren is working hard to catch up.  Apparently the Orthodox Union feels there's still room and has decided to introduce their own prayer book to the mix.  The advertisement is glossy and enthusaistic.  We are offered yet another great English translation (odd how no new English-Hebrew siddur ever wants to give us a "plain old" translation) and lots of new features including a commetary guaranteed to improved kavannah (!!), essays, a halacha section and parts for non-shul functions that often require a siddur.  There is also the promise of a women's section to facilitate those prayers specific to the gentler sex.
Leaving aside Matzav's predictable and historically revisionist condemnation of the project, one has to ask: how many Orthodox English-Hebrew prayer books can the market handle? 
This is not an idle question either.  One reason for Artscroll's success in the personal (as opposed to shul) siddur market is their connection to the kiruv industry.  Folks returning to our ancestral heritage through Aish HaTorah or Ohr Sameyach are likely to be guided to Artscroll, not Koren or others.  Certainly the OU siddur will not be listed as preferred over the Artscroll when released.  Koren has made its mark by aggressively courting the Modern Orthodox siddur, noting that its commentary includes Modern Orthodox authorities deliberately ignored by Artscroll.  It has tapped into the resentment that MO feels on its scholars and leaders being sidelined by the Agudah crowd and kol hakavod to them for doing that.  However, what niche does that leave for the OU to place its siddur in?
I am a fan of competition but there are limits on the number of products that make a healthy market.  Will all due respect to those who have clearly put a great deal of effort into this new prayer book, I wonder how successful their efforts to sell it will be.  I think that at this point, instead of a new siddur, the Orthodox Union and MO groups should concentrate their efforts on producing a new Chumash to rival Artscroll's.  That would have a far greater chance of making a meaningful impact in the MO community.

Book Review - On the Reliability of the Old Testament

Scholarly books should be a boring read.  After all, they're not written for a large audience, deal with tremendous amounts of facts and are composed to prove a point, not thrill a reader.  Yet every so often one finds such a book that combines rigorous academic information with an engaging style that allows one to read through a complex subject and actually enjoy it.  Such a book is On the Reliability of the Old Testament by Professor K.A. Kitchen.
One of the major advantages of the book is the recent date of publication.  In archeology, like any field of science or history, changes occur on a regular basis.  Yesterday's accepted truths are today's disproved theories.  Thus the more recent the book, the more accurate the analysis, at least until the next one comes out.  Because of the recent date, Prof. Kitchen is able to analyze the current state of archeological knowledge of the Middle and Near East and provide a compelling analysis as to the truth of the historical accounts in the Old Testament.
Another thing that makes this book valuable is that it reminds the believing Jew to go back and look at the straight pshat of the Biblical text.  So familiar are we with the aggadot and various mephorshim we sometimes forget what the text says and what it actually does not say.  While studying the Tanach from a religious perspective requires such ancillary sources, analyzing it from an academic and historial perspective is actually hampered by it.  One of the strength's of the book is its insistence on examining the unvarnishing, uninterpreted text to show how it testifies to its own validity.
The book is organized in a reverse historical fashion, starting with the era of the Babylonian exile and, chapter by chapter, working its way back in history towards the beginning of civilization.  Each chapter deals with its chosen historical era in a systematic fashion:
1) Looking at what the Biblical text says and what it does not say
2) Looking at what external sources say about the same events and the degree to which they corroborate the Tanach
3) Looking at the current archeological record to see what lights they shed on the Biblical text
In each and every chapter, Prof. Kitchen unforgivingly and thoroughly sets down the following facts which he shows cannot be disputed.  Firstly, there is no archeological or historical evidence that disputes any accounts in the Bible.  The best a Sinai-denier can do is say that there is no positive evidence on the record for those accounts but there is no evidence that events described in the Tanach did not happen.  This is the foundation for his analysis since it is self-evident that if there were such evidence, the Tanach could easily be discredited by it before any deeper study was conducted.
Secondly, Prof. Kitchen shows how both external sources and the archeological record confirm many details of the Tanach's narratives throughout every era of Jewish history.  Although a full recounting of all his examples would make this post unbearably long, a few examples will suffice.
In his analysis of the era of Yehoshua and the invasion of land o' Canaan, he focuses on a literal reading of the text.  Too many people, he remarks, have read the book superficially and come away with the impression that Yehoshua invaded the land, conquered all the Canaanites and burned the whole place to the ground.  But the text itself denies that account!  Careful reading shows that less than half a dozen cities were actually burned.  What's more, most attacks on Canaanite strongholds were followed by a return of the Israelite army to the home base in Gilgal.  In other words, Yehoshua conducted non-occupying raids more than anything else.  Interestingly, this fits with Chazal's statement that Yehoshua was punished for dragging out the conquest in order to extend his life.  At the end of the book, Prof Kitchen notes, is an admission that the only real zone of occupation for our ancestors was a narrow strip of land from Gilgal north to Shechem.
And what does the archeological record show?  That right around that time four major Canaanite cities were burned to the ground or otherwise collapsed, exactly at the text describes.  What's more, our ancestors used pottery and had dietary habits that were distinct from the pre-existing Canaanites and evidence of such appears in those strata that correspond to the time period the Tanach says we entered Canaan.  In conclusion, no negative evidence against Yehoshua, plenty of evidence in favour of the text.
A second example is the story of Creation.  A rational person will admit there is a great difficulty with a literal reading of the first eleven chapters of Bereshis.  Recorded human civilization is over 10000 years old so a time line ending 5770 years ago is untenable.  Kitchen examines this and brings some amazing ideas, based on external source comparison.
The first is that the account of Creation down through the Flood matches in style and some content most other contemporary accounts of the Creation of the World.  The Sumerians and others all worked along a standard temple - Creation of the world, creation of man, society builds up, Flood, then rebirth of humanity.  However, one significant difference is that the non-Tanach sources put the Flood further back in history than the geneologies in Bereshis.  Kitchen solves this problem by noting that in the ancient world geneological records were never complete.  "A" begetting "B" didn't always mean that A was B's actual father but that after A, B was the next significant person in the family tree.  Thus A's anonymous descendants were part of his begetting B.  This means that A begetting B at, say, 100 years of age, might mean A begetting the son who was the next generation on the way to B being born.  Further, the extended lifespans may hint that the next significant generation was born that many years after A started his begetting (BTW, I love that word!).  So if A lived 840 years after begetting, that could mean B was born 840 years later.  In this light, a significant amount of time can be added to both sets of geneologist, bringing them in line with contemporary non-Tanach accounts.
One theme that also repeatedly appears through the book is the reminder that the ancients did not have the same approach to history that we do.  With our broad knowledge of the development of civilization, we can see and understand how life has changed over the millenia.  The ancients, on the other hand, did not have this approach.  What was current for them was what always was and it was difficult for them to understand that things might have been very different long before.  Further, archeologist was not a known field of knowlege in the ancient world.  If city X was destroyed in 1400 BCE, people in 1200 BCE might never have heard of its existence!  Thus mentions in Tanach of cities that were known to have been destroyed long before the Babylonian exile or the Greek-Roman period are proof of the antiquity of the text.  As Kitchen repeatedly shows, there is no other explanation for how the city of Ramses, which was an obscure memory to only the most educated Egyptians by the time of the Babylonian exile, could have been conjured up by supposed the post-exilic redactor.  Again, we see evidence of this in the writings of Chazal where time and time again Biblical settings are described in then-contemporary terms.  Standard to the time, Chazal simply imagined that the Avos and others in the Bible lived exactly like they did, had the same daily routine, etc.
It is the final chapter, however, that I found most entertaining.  Having proven his case for the validity of the Tanach over and over and over again the preceding chapters, Prof Kitchen turns his attention to the various Sinai-deniers who have made careers out of trying to make the Bible into a fraudulent document.  One after another, he shows how their best arguments are based on conjectuve, willful misinterpretation of existing data or simple ignorant bias.  It was quite entertaining to see Prof Kitchen take all the best arguments of the so-called Biblical criticism school as well as the work of other, less-accomplished archeological scholars and demolish their so-called proofs.  The impression I was left with was: If those are the strongest arguments against the validity of the Tanach, why on Earth does anyone believe them?
The answer is wilfull revisionism, something Prof Kitchen helpfully fights against.  I strongly recommend this book for those who wish to see the Tanach from an unusual and very deep perspective.

Book Review: The Documentary Hypothesis

One problem with religious fanatics of any stripe is that they start off any debate with the assumption: "Given that I'm correct and you're wrong..." Certainly many traditional religious types are like that but now that atheism has gradually morphed into a religion itself its proponents have developed the same intolerance. Indeed, most of Dickie Dawkins' and Chris Hitchen's arguments are only successful if one first accepts that they are correct because they say they are. Honest critical analysis tends to lead one in other directions.
It was with this in mind that I read Rav Umberto Cassuto's The Documentary Hypothesis recently. Nothing anyone could say will change my mind about the unity of the Torah's authorship or that the author is God Himself. I was interested, however, in Cassuto's response to the classic arguments of the so-called Biblical Scholars. Would the book be one full of apologetics or would the arguments for a unified text come across as reasonable?
Now one must remember that this book itself is only a summary of a much larger text containing a far more exhaustive treatment of Biblical Criticism and its various failures. Unfortunatley my Italian is limited to the names of popular dishes and the phrase Gli atei sono un branco di idioti che hanno davvero bisogno di avere una vita. This meant I would have to rely on The Documentary Hypothesis itself for Cassuto's arguments.
On the whole I was impressed with the book. Cassuto has an organized approach in which he breaks down the multiple arguments against unity of the Torah into a smaller group of generalities. He then proceeds, chapter by chapter, to show how each of these generalities is based on a superficial knowledge of the text based on untenable assumptions that ignore multiple contradictions to them.
I don't expect anyone who refuses to believe in the truth of Torah to accept Cassuto's book. Those who insist on misunderstanding the revealed word of God will ignore, discredit or claim to have countered his arguments. However, for myself the book was valuable in providing an interesting and deep look at the structure of the text. For instance, in his treatment of the difference between the divine names YKVK and Elokim, one can use the principles he provides to gain a deeper appreciation of the message different parts of the Torah are trying to get across. Looking at word usage similarly adds to one's understanding of the text in ways simply reading through the pshat doesn't provide.
I highly recommend this book especially for those with an interest in grammer and language structure who would benefit from Cassuto's incisive analysis. On the whole, a good read.