A landmark event - the Magerman edition of the Koren Tanach

This review appears in the edition of the Jerusalem Report dated 13 September 2021
 

              This is a publishing event of no little significance. Koren Publishers Jerusalem have just released their new Hebrew-English Tanach – the Magerman edition. More than ten years in the development, this historic publication features a completely new English translation of the Torah – the five books of Moses – by the late, and much lamented, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, one-time Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. He devoted his final years to this monumental undertaking, as well as producing a translation of much of the Psalms, and lived to see his work completed. Matthew Miller, the Koren publisher, tells us in his Preface that it was as the volume went to press that Sacks passed away.

          The beauty, felicity and scholarship inherent in Sacks’s rendering of the Torah into elegant modern English are apparent on every one of its 498 pages, which form something like a quarter of the whole. Since Sacks’s polished English takes full account of Masoretic authenticity, it is no paradox to categorize it, as the publishers do, as “a fully Jewish translation.” Many other eminent scholars and translators were involved in producing the rest of the Tanach. Each translated text was edited and reviewed several times by leading biblical scholars. Outstanding in this regard was Rabbi Dr Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, who himself contributed translations of Jeremiah and Proverbs.

          This Tanach bears all the outstanding features that have distinguished Koren publications for so long. Unlike what had become the standard presentation for Hebrew-English prayer books, Koren places the Hebrew on the left-hand page and the English translation facing it on the right. This layout, unique to Koren, means that the eye can absorb the Hebrew and its English equivalent much more easily, since each language starts from the centre of the two pages.

          The Hebrew font used by Koren for this Tanach was created by the publisher’s founder, Eliyahu Koren, back in 1962. Koren Tanach Font was devised specifically for the first Tanach published by the firm. Koren studied Hebrew manuscripts and early printing types intensively, consulted with ophthalmologists, took a sensitive approach to modernization, and brought into being a distinctive typeface that is both eminently legible and a delight to the eye.

          This edition of the Tanach is unique in a number of other ways. Standard bibles divide the text into chapters according to Christian tradition. As the publishers point out in a Foreword, “for much of modern history the only books available to the Jewish student of Torah were those printed by gentiles intent on converting them.” This Tanach is the first, while retaining the standard biblical layout, to present at the same time the text in the traditional Jewish system of sedarim, including the divisions for aliyot and weekly parashot.

          In the preliminary pages of the Tanach the reader will find where the Torah readings for special Shabbatot and for Festivals can be located. Details of every Haftorah, together with the variations for Ashkenazim, Sepharadim and Yemenite practice, are also provided. Even the occasional Minhag Anglia variation is included.

          The selection of maps, charts, timelines, genealogies and illustrations that form the final 60 pages of the volume are an invaluable aid to studying and understanding the context within which the 36 books of the Tanach were produced. They also add meaning to many aspects of the biblical story. For example, we are provided with a table explaining the weights and measures referred to in the Bible, and also illustrations of the first and second Temples as well as the tabernacles in the desert and at Shilo. Maps illustrate the tribal division of the land of Israel, and trace the effect of their various wars and battles on the territory they held. Genealogical tables trace the names and generations of biblical figures from Adam onwards, while an invaluable timeline illustrates precisely the periods covered by each of the books in the Tanach, starting with creation and Genesis (Bereshit).

          The biblical creation story has, of course, generated storms of controversy over the centuries, especially so since Charles Darwin outraged the Christian world of his time with his theory of evolution. It is generally acknowledged that the first English translation of the opening sentence of Genesis by William Tyndale in 1530, subsequently cemented into the King James’s Bible, does not accord with the original Hebrew. It runs:

          “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.”

          Many have been the attempts to render the real meaning into English. The abstruse problems and difficulties involved are, perhaps, best illustrated by the Tikkunei Zohar, a three-volume work devoted entirely to explaining the first word of the Torah – Bereshit.

          The Hebrew-English Tanach published by the Jewish Publication Society begins: 

          “When God began to create heaven and earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water – God said, “Let there be light"; and there was light.”

          Rabbi Sacks regarded this verse as of such importance that he provided a personal Foreword on the subject for inclusion in the Koren Tanach. He calls Bereshit “the most revolutionary, as well as the most influential, account of creation in the history of the human spirit.” He dwells on the fact that creation occurs not by way of science, but through words: “let there be…and there was.” Sacks maintains that the distinguishing feature of Judaism is that it is a religion of words, and this is why at the very beginning of creation God reveals himself to humanity through sacred words: “Let there be…”

         So how does Sacks render these seminal Hebrew words into English?

          “When God began creating heaven and earth, the earth was void and desolate, there was darkness on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved over the waters. God said: “Let there be light.” And there was light.”

         The infinite care that Sacks took over comprehending and translating these very first words of the Tanach are at one with the approach adopted by Koren to the entire enterprise. The results are evident in this magnificent new edition of the Tanach – a work that sets a new standard of excellence. To echo the words of Rabbi Sacks, “the Koren Tanach invites the contemporary reader to experience afresh the timeless stories and wisdom contained in the Hebrew scriptures.”