A brand new e-book revealed to coincide with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Yr, claims to supply “the story of Judaism” in an unbiased strategy utilizing a wide range of Jewish voices.
“The E book of Jewish Data,” a 497-page coffee-table quantity revealed by the Rohr Jewish Studying Institute, based mostly in Brooklyn, New York, differs from different encyclopedic works, even a 1964 effort with the identical title discovered in lots of Jewish properties of the interval.
“A number of them are superb books, and are very informative and offer you quite a lot of info,” Rabbi Yanki Tauber, the brand new quantity’s editor, stated in a phone interview.
However, he added, “I felt there’s room for one thing that has not been executed but,” a quantity that synthesizes Jewish historical past, observances and teachings in an accessible method.
He stated that making Jewish information accessible has been a key aspect of his profession through the previous 35 years.
A member of the Chabad Lubavitch group inside Orthodox Judaism, Mr. Tauber started his editorial profession creating English summaries of talks given by the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe whose teachings are prized inside the motion in addition to by different Jews.
He then was a founding editor of the Chabad.org web site, which conveys the group’s teachings in accessible articles and commentaries, and has drawn thousands and thousands of web page views over time.
However the brand new e-book is just not a Chabad tract, the rabbi stated.
“We need to have one thing that’s kind of Judaism is talking for itself by its unique supply texts, versus individuals speaking about Judaism or attempting arguing about what Judaism ought to imply at the moment,” he stated.
Different volumes providing an summary of Judaism are inclined to favor one perspective or standpoint, Mr. Tauber stated.
“All of those books [give] me one particular person’s tackle Judaism, one particular person’s perspective or at the very least a really slender group of individuals’s views. It may be an instructional perspective, or it may be a non secular perspective. After which relying on who this man is, is he reform? Is he conservative? Orthodox? Is he trendy Orthodox, is he [of] a extra liberal standpoint, is it a extra traditionalist standpoint, and so forth,” the rabbi defined.
This quantity has a distinct aim.
“I need the reader to learn the supply texts themselves, and resolve what they imply, what the supply texts imply to [them] within the Twenty first century, versus having a bunch of Twenty first-century pundits arguing” about what a reader ought to assume, Mr. Tauber stated.
He stated treating each side of Judaism in depth may require a 30-volume work, so to include the topic in a single quantity, he determined to provide an summary whereas stepping into depth on only some, comparable to 5 mitzvahs, or the commandments.
He stated the e-book covers “the broad vary” of Judaism and “reveals individuals how broad and what number of totally different areas there are.”
The quantity offers “individuals at the very least a pattern … you solely did it with a number of elements of it, however you confirmed them the way it actually is,” he added.
Among the many improvements of the brand new quantity, Mr. Tauber stated, is using infographics, charts, and timelines — together with a whole bunch of illustrations such because the recreation of an historic Egyptian brickmaking mould — to convey info that may in any other case take pages to explain.
The duty of visible presentation fell to New York designer Baruch Gorkin, who has labored with Mr. Tauber on different initiatives and can be credited with creating the fashionable Arial-style Hebrew font used on Apple’s iPhone and different gadgets.
The infographics element how a mikvah, or ritual bathtub, is constructed, or how phylacteries, the small leather-based field with leather-based straps containing Hebrew texts worn by observant Jewish males throughout prayers, are constructed, Mr. Gorkin defined in an interview.
The quantity’s design is simple and internet-like with a contemporary accent. Mr. Gorkin agreed that “clear” could be a good description of the e-book’s format.
“It’s additionally philosophically right as a result of we’re attempting to not stand in the way in which between the knowledge and the reader. I need the sweetness to return forth from the perform, which is known as a modernist concept,” he stated.
A two-page itemizing of well-known and notable Jews in historical past and the fashionable age could also be one of many few locations the place one would discover Simone Weil, Henry Kissinger and Barbra Streisand actually on the identical web page, together with former White Home adviser Ivanka Trump, who transformed to Orthodox Judaism when she married Jared Kushner.
“The pages attracted some consideration, however a few of it’s unfair, as a result of this isn’t an announcement apart from the truth that they’re well-known Jews,” Mr. Gorkin stated. “It’s not an endorsement of anybody there.”
The e-book, nonetheless, has had its share of endorsements, with Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis College’s professor of American Jewish Historical past, calling it “a powerful one-volume information to Jewish historical past, teachings, and practices.”
Rabbi Jeffrey R. Woolk of Israel’s Bar Ilan College deemed it “a useful treasure of Judaism to all, regardless of background and affiliation.”
The quantity is offered by the Institute on-line.
