Customer Reviews

Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary

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-i like the cover stock, paper stock, and binding on the small edition. as long as you're somewhere in the middle it can stay open on your desk without you having to push on it, and the texture is a neat simulation of the leather original.

-you should know that the small edition does not contain the famous 200-page essay section in the back.

I don't think i'm qualified to make any real comments on this humash, i'm not particularly educated enough to be able to criticize. I like it in terms of the layout and design. The full-page articles introducing each Haftarah portion are good; I'm not sure why the JPS didn't think to do the same for each Torah portion. The "drash" running commentary is interesting but the "pshat" sometimes gets silly, explaining terms and plot points that are 100% clear from the translation.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly have created a new Torah commentary for the 21st century. They signed an agreement with the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) to use the five volume JPS Torah Commentary to serve as its basis. Etz Hayim features:

* the complete Hebrew text of the Torah, and the complete JPS English translation, using the latest revisions.

* The readings are arranged for aliyot, and annual readings, as well as the CJLS approved triennial cycle readings.

* There are two levels of commentary; one level presents the p'shat of the text, while the second presents a d'rash.

* The p'shat commentary is a summary of the JPS five volume Torah commentary, edited by Chaim Potok.

The JPS five volume Torah commentary is based on

*the meforshim, traditional rabbinic commentators
*the Mishna and Talmud
*The midrash literature
*Modern day literary analysis, comparative Semitics and linguistic analysis
*intertextual commentary relating each book to other biblical books
*evidence from modern archaeological discoveries.

The d'rash commentary is an original work edited many rabbis including Rabbi Harold Kushner, Shoshana Gutoff, Reuven Hammer, Jack Riemer, Ben Scolnic and David Wolpe.

In the 1994 "Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly" Rabbis Harold Kushner and David Lieber wrote an article, "The Projected Humash Commentary" They wrote there that the goals of this Torah commentary are:

* To separate academic truth from spiritual truth, while identifying both as equally true.
* To define the Shabbat morning service as a confrontation with the Torah portion as a source of ethical readings.
* The commentary will not only share homiletic insights; it will try to respond to questions that a modern thinking man or woman will ask of the Torah reading.
* To identify the teachings of contemporary rabbis as Torah, as much as the words of the Tannaim or the Hasidic masters are.

* It will seek to convey the notion that Torah is a living organism, and the Oral Torah, like the Written one, is a product of our people's desire to understand God's purpose and will.

It has an original commentary on the hastarot by Professor Michael Fishbane

Etz Hayim has been designed to differ from the official Torah commentary of Reform Judaism, which was edited by Rabbi Gunther Plaut and his UAHC colleagues. Kusher states:

"Many of us are familiar with the UAHC Torah commentary....It too has significant merits.But first, as a friend of mine put it, we should be suspicious of any Torah commentary where the commentary is in larger print than the words of the Torah. Secondly, it is not set up for synagogue use! You can now get it opening from right to left, but it is still not arranged by parshiyot, let alone aliyot. But my main problem with the Plaut commentary is that it suffers from what I sometimes think of as The Original Sin of the Reform movement - the inclination to judge the Torah rather than to open oneself up to be instructed by it."

Rabbi David Lieber comments on how Etz Hayim will be more traditional than that of the Reformers:

"As a commentary expressly intended for the Conservative movement, it should offer some halakhic interpretations explicating the Biblical base for the later rabbinic discussions.In this, it will of course differ from the commentary edited by Gunther Plaut.Beyond that, it will present a much more sympathetic understanding of the {sacrificial} cult and its institutions."

The halakhic materials are written by Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, a member of the RA Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and Dr. Judith Hauptman, Professor of Talmud at JTS. Dr. Adele Berlin, an authority on biblical poetics, compose some 25 new literary introductions to the larger units of the text.

I consider this to be one of the finest torah translations and commentaries written. It is a pity that the travel edition font is so small as to be unreadable without a magnifier It would have been far better to see it produced in two volumes in a larger more readable font size.

The Etz Hayim commentary suffers in that many readers are familiar with the full commentaries of each of the five books in the JPS series where the full reasoning behind the remarks is revealed.

The series of essays in the back of the volume is entertaining, but why not go out on a limb like the authors of the various commentaries did in their unabridged versions and provide a full bibliography to set readers desiring something more in depth a list of places to go. The strength of the Conservative movement has always been its command of the depth and breadth of prior scholarship. Without this anchor in the past I really don't know what it is that they are conserving.

The system of transliteration in Hebrew is one that is very different from the one that is used in Israel. Beit instead of Bet only makes sense if your mother tongue is German rather than English. A revision would be nice.

Lastly, why bother to include the Hebrew text of the Torah unless you are going to exploit that by making at least a sprinkling of remarks related to the Hebrew language or grammar. Rather than criticize the Reform movement as Elliot Dorff does at p. 1477, the RA and USCJ should invest in a modern page layout program that will allow them to add a little Hebrew back into the commentary and notes. The religious language of the Jewish people remains Hebrew and the commentary once it is shorn of its Hebrew language content is greatly weakened like Shimshon (Samson) without a full head of hair.

In sum, attractive and easy to read, but disappointing in terms of content.

This edition is the perfect adjunct to the Hertz Chumash in use in many Canadian and American congregations. The insights are well written, and the historical context provides even more meaning to the text. For someone seeking a different view, this travel edition is the perfect choice. It certainly is easier to carry than the full size edition.

Regretfully this commentary is a serious disappointment and in many ways inferior to the Reform Movement's 1981 humash (Pentateuch and Haftarahs) The Torah: A Modern Commentary by W. Gunther Plaut (hereafter Plaut ) -

Etz Hayim is designed to replace the venerable The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text English Translation and Commentary by J. H. Hertz (hereafter Hertz) in Conservative Jewish congregations. Hertz was written as a polemic against Higher Criticism. Higher Criticism concluded that the Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) was not dictated by God to Moses as per Jewish tradition but rather was written by people and had multiple origins and its composition involved a long and complex process. In a way, the Conservative movement, which has long accepted the legitimacy of Higher Criticism, has shown a lack of intellectual integrity, or at least, historical seriousness, in its use of Hertz.

To start on a positive note, in my view the strongest element of Etz Hayim is the introductions to the weekly haftarot.
Etz Hayim has 3 on-page commentary sections - (i) commentary to help the reader to understand the text in its historical-social context; (ii) commentary giving its relation to Jewish tradition and important issues raised; (iii) Halakha Lemaaseh - how the text relates to current Jewish practice. Commentary (i) explicating the text in its historical-social context, is culled from the 5 volume JPS Torah Commentary. However, the topical essays, almost all the elements of the JPS Torah Commentary relating to the history of the text and a great deal of interest to serious students has been left out. Thus Etz Hayim cannot be considered an adequate substitute for the JPS Torah Commentary in any serious non-traditional Torah study. Needless to say, those Jews interested in strictly traditional study of the Torah would use a book such as The Stone Edition of the Chumash - The Torah, Haftaros, and Five Megillos with a commentary from Rabbinic writings by Rabbi Nosson Scherman not Etz Hayim.
The essay section of Etz Hayim (pp 1339-1503) is virtually a compact course covering most Torah-related issues. Since the essays were written by a range of scholars various viewpoints are presented and there is a lack of coherence. The essays, like the commentary are aimed at the non-specialist audience - amekha in Conservative parlance. The essays are extremely brief and not always clear and, unlike Plaut, no bibliographies are provided to guide further reading. Another serious defect which will minimize the essays usefulness is the lack of cross-referencing between the on-page commentaries and the relevant essays. This lack of cross-referencing will greatly reduce the reference by readers to the essays.

In the, far too brief, section on Modern Methods of Bible Study (pp1499-1503) the author does, very briefly, outline the salient features of Source Criticism (pp1500-1501) and what they term Literary Criticism. It is important to understand the difference -

"In simple terms, source criticism is interested in cutting up the texts to find different layers of tradition; literary criticism considers the text as it stands now, as a whole, not as it may once have been. Literary criticism is both like and unlike traditional Jewish commentary. It looks at the Bible as a unified whole but has no theological commitment and sees it as the creation of human authors. Source criticism is interested in history; literary criticism treats historical questions as basically unanswerable and understands texts as literary products or objects, not as windows on historical reality. Literary criticism sees texts as coherent wholes that create meaning through the integration of their elements, irrespective of the authors and their intentions." (pp1501-1502).

The general approach of Etz Hayim seems to be

LITERARY CRITICISM+THEOLOGICAL COMITTMENT+ECLECTIC (sometimes tendentious) ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY ETC

As a person strongly committed to the study of history I find this approach deeply unsettling and rather pathetic as a product of the "Historical School". In Avot (chapt 2 mishnah 21) Rabbi Tarfon teaches "You are not obliged to finish the task but neither are you free to neglect it." Since the Renaissance Western Culture has understood history in a way quite different from the many cultures and civilizations that proceeded it. I do not believe that it is intellectually honest to ignore our understanding of history in trying to understand Jewish history and pre-history. Historical source analysis cannot give us sure answers but they certainly can often produce a balance of probabilities and as R Tarfon indicated we are not free to ignore it if we are to be intellectually honest.

In general, I would say, that the treatment is historically naive. The commentary and most of the essays seem to ignore the historical issues raised by historical-source criticism. Thus they carry on with the traditional assumptions that the material in Genesis really historically proceeds that in the rest of the Torah which, in turn, proceeds that in First Isaiah and Jeremiah. In fact, a very good case could be, and has been, made that the Genesis material is among the youngest in the Torah and that much of the legal material in the Torah is exilic. Without saying it this way, the approach is ---- we recognize that the Torah is a human document with a complex past but will largely accept the Torah as is as the basis for discussion and drawing conclusions even where we realize that the result is not historically valid.

Etz Hayim is terribly weak in the handling of some key ethical issues. Take for example the Torah's demand that the Israelites exterminate the Canaanites - man, woman and child (Deuteronomy, chapters 7 and 20). Given the importance
of this issue in the post-Holocaust period, I had expected Etz Hayim to deal with it seriously and at length. Regrettably the treatment in Etz Hayim is inferior even to that in Plaut and even in the old, pre-Holocaust, Hertz. This is astonishing as its prime source for Deuteronomy - the JTS Commentary by Tigai - has a whole excursus (pp. 470-472) on the subject.

Etz Hayim, unlike Plaut, generally ignores similarities with, and links to non-Jewish traditions.

There is a need for a Conservative humash suitable for the use of intellectually curious congregants with historical interests. A modified Plaut could fill this need. Such a modified Plaut should feature the following:

a. historical and archaeological references brought up to date
b. One chapter per parashah subdivided to reflect the triennial cycle. The relevant haftarahs should be at the end of each chapter.
c. discussions of modern Jewish views and practices centered on those of the Conservative Movement but not limited to it
d. heavier paper
e. haftarah commentaries similar to those in Etz Hayim
f. bigger English and Hebrew fonts
g. Hebrew and English in parallel columns

Regrettably no one seems interested in producing such a work.

David L. Steinberg "http://www.houseofdavid.ca/" (Ottawa, Canada)

I already owned the large harcover version of this torah and commentary. I was thrilled to get it in a smaller version that allows me to carry it along in my briefcase and to read and meditate on the scripture anywhere. The commentary is excellent and enlightening as it brings so much more meaning to the text. I recommend it highly.

I am extremely satisfied with this commentary, as I am a Torah student, and this adds to the volume of material I require for such study, especially with the fact that it is the latest in Conservative theology.

This commentary provides a real insight into Conservative Jewish thought on the Torah; with both a contextual commentary and a second midrashic commentary.
I sincerely hope it will not offend the Jewish Community to say that as a Christian, wanting to have a greater understanding of the Jewish roots of my faith, it has been a wonderful book to use.
For those who have not yet begun to study Hebrew - and even those, like myself, who are only just learning to read Hebrew - turning the pages from left to right (and reading the right hand page before the left) may at first prove challenging! But I'd encourage perseverance.
Highly recommended for any Christian who really wants to see their faith in context, and to comprehend the many nuances of the Torah.

I was very pleased with the new and unique format for the Etz Hayim Torah and Commentary. I found the introduction very helpful in explaining the Parashat, Midrash, and Halakhah commentaries, and also found them well presented. I also enjoy the Etz Hayim Study Companion with its excellent articles on methods for the study of Torah.