On Artscroll revisionism: Professor Zvi Zohar Reviews "Aleppo City of Scholars"
In this review, Zohar shows how Artscroll recreated the Syrian-Jewish Aleppo community in its own (Charedi) image. He cites numerous examples of how the book (pictured) glosses over those Rabbis whose outlook did not conform to current Charedi standards and conveniently omits and outright distorts facts to suit its agenda.
Professor Zvi Zohar, is scholar of modern Middle Eastern Rabbinic Halacha. He has written two seminal books on the subject - masoret u-tmura and he-iru penei mizrah. He is currently teaching at Bar-Ilan University and is a musmach of the Hartman Institute.
link in PDF format
English Translation
Labels: aleppo, artscroll, biography, censorship, charedim, halab, halabi, rabbis, revisionism, zvi zohar
posted by Joels W. @ 8:05 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Thank you. You are becoming competition for the seforim blog.
when it came out, i wrote that i thought that it was a reaction against the publication, in english, of haim sabato's 'aleppo tales', which portrays a much more colorful range of aleppan rabbis.
Can you provide me a link to that post please? thanks.
1) seriously, what did zohar expect. that all of a sudden artscroll was going to do a more balanced work with this volume? what's the surprise?
2) i won't compain about this book. i'm just happy artscroll has a book about sephardi community to begin with.
You asked on my blog for a synopsis of R' Leiman's take; I'll give it here.
-He pointed out that the Zionist introduction was removed, and mentioned Zohar's point that this was done throughout the book. He contrasted this with the haskamot claiming this was a straight translation.
-He compared Artscroll's translation of the Rambam's words about the Aleppo Codex to the original, and found errors, as well as some misstatements of halacha related to this.
-He showed how a reference to Azariah dei Rossi (and St. Augustine) was edited out of the book.
There were some other points he made as well, including the addition of more recent figures (including non-Rabbanim) and allegations of politics.
In summation, he said the book was very good for its pictures, and that we all should buy it, but perhaps only for that reason.
Thank you Nachum.
i don't think i ever posted it. i'm trying to remember who i would have written those comments to.
What? Artscroll, displaying poor scholarship?
does this mean I have to go learn Hebrew to study Jewish texts? I was working under the assumption that mass produced, ideology-and-money driven publications were the way to go.
You forgot Andrew Jackson’s Big Block of Cheese with nary a macaroni in sight.
Works fine for me.
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