I Love ArtScroll, So Shoot Me

ArtScroll is a publishing house that is part of the Ultra Orthodox (UO) renaissance. It is a smashing success. Translations of prayer books and classics of pietistic literature, and its crowning achievement the Schottenstein Talmud, a new, exceptionally good translation and commentary, are widely distributed. They also put out biographies of rabbinical leaders, (gedolim), that are very controversial. These books have become a fault line in the ongoing kulturkampf between Modern Orthodox (MO) and UO.

A comment by Steve Brizel in the blog Crosscurrent (3/27/06) states the issue succinctly: “I think that it is fair to note that ArtScroll's hashkafic (ideological) slant leans towards the Charedi world and rarely has something praiseworthy to say about the Religious Zionists/Modern Orthodox world. Its view of the Holocaust is that despite the fact that 6,000,000 Kedoshim (holy martyrs) died, the yeshivos survived. It has not come to grips with the fact that there is a sovereign State of Israel. In at least one volume, a picture that included RYBS (Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik) has been doctored to remove RYBS, despite the fact that RYBS raised funds for Lakewood (the famous yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J.) and Chinuch Atzmai (the Ultra Orthodox school system in Israel). This trend is also present in a recently produced hagiography of Rabbi Aaron Kotler z’’l as well. One sees nothing positive about Religious Zionism, Modern Orthodoxy or Yeshiva University/RIETS. In my opinion that is revisionism of history on a grand scale ... the hagiographies are a long boring drone…the subject was a child prodigy who held from every conceivable chumrah(stringency) and who never told a word of Lashon Harah(gossip). One sees zero about the obstacles within their families or society that the Gedolim(the famous rabbinical leaders and scholars) overcame to become Gedolim."

I am proud to say I am a HUGE fan of hagiographic biographies, including most of the ArtScroll volumes. I enjoyed the biographies of R. Moshe, Rabbi Pam, the Chofetz Chaim. In fact, I can’t remember an ArtScroll hagiography I did not enjoy and I have read many. There is no contradiction between enjoying, learning from and being inspired by such books, and recognizing that these books fail to meet the standards of acceptable historical accuracy. There is undoubtedly a need for critical biographies. The absence of such books doesn’t take away from the value of hagiography. These are two separate genres each with different standards and purposes.

The way these hagiographies are to be evaluated is against other such books within this genre. Using this latter standard, the American ArtScroll type adulatory tomes are inferior to earlier specimens, such as Zevin’s Ishim V’Shitot and Maimon’s Sarei Hameah. I would say Mizrachi writers are far better than Agudah people, and Israelis better than Americans. Three other non critical works that are nevertheless really valuable are Tenuat Hamusar, the multi-volume biography of the Chazon Ish and Rabbi Karlinsky’s biography of the Bais Halevy. And of course in the last few years Rabbi Nathan Kaminetzky’s very important and much discussed The Making of a Gadol. None of the books just mentioned count as critical biographies. They are all hagiography. The main difference between these good “lives of saints” and the more inferior versions is the breadth of information and the assembling of interesting and important details. In some instances a serious attempt is made that the details are established using accepted rules of evidence. All the material, even the most laudatory puff piece in Der Yiddisher Vort, which by the way is a terrific magazine, will be of great value to future historians. Proof: Are historians better or worse off with the hagiographies the Shivchei haBesht, and the Shivchei haAri? The answer is obvious.

A life devoted to Talmudic study requires concentration, an ability to tolerate a fair amount of boredom and a willingness to sit for hours and days on end with a feeling of not knowing where you are or how to proceed. Imagine you are stuck in the middle of some obsessive and strange tractate say Yevamoth or Menachoth, without a clue. Someone who needs instant gratification and external approval gives up…maybe becomes a pulpit rabbi or proceeds to the next page (sugya). A Talmudist stays put, doesn’t panic and tries to work through the sugya, however long it takes. One really has no feel for the Talmud until one has been through the entire work 4-5 times; the first 30 years are tough going. A hagiographic book devoted to a Talmudic master becomes a beacon of light to a struggling Talmudist. These books show that it is possible, that one can be immersed in the sea of the Talmud and arrive victorious and safe on the distant shore.