Forgotten Synagogue Classics
Yosef Lindell
Mondays starting January 15, 2024 at 1:00pm Eastern, 8:00pm Israel Time
Walk into an English-speaking Orthodox shul these days, and you’ll see many ArtScroll siddurim and chumashim on the shelves. But what books did congregants use before ArtScroll? From the poetic Adler Machzor to the revolutionary Birnbaum Siddur to Rabbi Joseph Hertz’s magisterial Chumash commentary, this 5-part class will explore the history of the volumes on the twentieth century synagogue bookshelf. Each of these books was born of a particular ideology, and their rise and fall narrates some of the ways Orthodoxy has shifted in the last 100 years.
January 15
A Modern Orthodox Chumash? The Hertz Pentateuch and its Polemics
January 22
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s Living Torah: How Literally Must One Translate the Chumash?
January 29
The Adler/Routledge Machzor: Prayer, Poetry, and a Transatlantic Battle of the Translators
February 5
An Accurate Machzor and a Misspelled Matzevah: The Story of Dr. Philip Birnbaum’s Prayer Books
February 12
Third Time’s the Charm? The Rabbinical Council of America’s Siddurim
