Thursday, May 13, 2010

A summary of Lewis Glinert review of Artscroll's Stone Chumash.

I happened to come across a review of Artscroll's Stone Chumash by Lewis Glinert that I hadn't seen ("What Makes a Chumash Very Orthodox?" Le'eyla April 1995). Since it was of some interest to me, I'll share and summarize some of its contents.

A quote concerning the translation itself:
The message seems to have gone out that every ve need not be rendered 'and': thus Bereshit 21:19 'Vayyifkach Elohim et eineha' becomes 'Then God opened her eyes'; 21:27 'Vayyikkach Avraham - So Abraham Took'; 21:32 'Vayyikhretu berit - Thus they entered into a covenant'; and 21:33 'Vayitta eshel' simply 'He planted an 'eshel.' How odd then to find Chapter 22 beginning 'And it happened', and subsequently
And He said 'Here I am, my son.'
And he said, 'Here are the fire and the
wood[...]'

Compare [Rabbi Aryeh] Kaplan:
'Yes, my son.'
'Here is the fire and the wood[...]'

ArtScroll, it appears, cannot decide between readable translation for adults and a word-for-word chanting translation for the Hebrew classroom.

Of the frequent archaism, I would single out as particularly misleading such inversions as in Bemidbar 32:16 'Gidrot tzon nivneh lemiknenu - Pens for the flock shall we build here for our livestock' (an interrogative?).

The particle hinneh is the translator's acid test. When introducing a clause (in past or present tense), it signifies a realisation or a surprise. Unfortunately, Modern English, no longer uses a matching particle along the lines of 'behold'; instead we imply it through a verb. Thus Bereshit 22:13 'Vayyar vehinneh ayil' would be today rendered simply as 'and saw a ram,' and 22:20 'Vayyuggad leAvraham lemor hinneh yaledah Milkah' as 'Avraham received a message: "Milkah has had children"' (Kaplan's translations). But ArtScroll hangs on to 'behold' as if it were halakhah le-Mosheh misinai, with comical results: 'And saw - behold, a ram! - afterwards, caught in a thicket'; 'Abraham was told, saying: Behold, Milcah too has borne children.' For 'Vehinneh hi Le'ah (Bereshit 29:25), 'And it was, in the morning, that behold it was Leah.'
He also makes the observation that although Artscroll says it follows Rashi, which he calls "eminently reasonable," he cannot discover which principle they use when Rashi's interpretation is expressing derash or has no comment at all. For example, כִּי-מֵרֹאשׁ צֻרִים אֶרְאֶנּוּ Numbers 23:9 is translated as "far from its origins, I see it rock-like," like Rashi, but this is derash, and it ignores Onkelos (ארי מריש טוריא חזיתיה) and "the common-sense peshat."

He also notes a number of departures from Rashi's explanation, for no apparent reason.

In Ex 21:6, where Rashi translates וַעֲבָדוֹ לְעֹלָם in a derashic way (until the Jubilee year), the translators here write "forever," according to the peshat, and place Rashi's explanation in the notes. This is a pretty good catch on Glinert's part. An ahalachic translation? Is this the JPS?

לא תבשל גדי is rendered 'You shall not cook a kid,' 'despite Rashi's detailed argument that gedi denotes all young livestock.' (See Ex. 23:19) 'Uvekhol nafshekha' is 'with all your soul' although Rashi clearly would have favored 'with all your life.'

Glinert puzzles over the Hebrew animal terms in Parashat Shemini. Rashi translates the tinshemet as bat, the chasidah a stork and the anakah a heron. But Artscroll does not translate them, explaining: "Since Halachah rules that we do not know the accurate translations of the fowl in the Torah's list, we follow the lead of R' Hirsch in transliterating rather than conjecturing translations. The notes will give translations that are suggested by various commentators.' Glinert notes that 'In fact the editors have felt that they can go one better than Hirsch: they do not translate the eight sheretz haaretz either (and here no halakhah is conceivably in jeopardy).'

Glinert admits that there is a certain logic in not translating disputed terms, saving suggestions for the footnotes, which is natural given that all translations have to make a choice and save the fuller discussion for the notes. But why should it be done only for the animals in Shemini and the gem stones in Tetzaveh, when there are "hundreds of other words and structures in dispute?"

Moving along to the commentary, he calls it a "tour de force." "Blend[ing] old and new interpretations into a satisfying whole." He believes it goes "first for the literal or philosophical" interpretation, and mostly resists the temptation to mention "all those midrashim which generations of schoolchildren imagine to be peshat." Where midrashim are mentioned, there is a "commendable" attempt to offer some philosophical significance, often from the writing of recent rabbinic scholars like Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetesky and Rabbi Gedaliah Schorr. The effect is a commentary "preoccupied with timeless truths" rather than "the more topical truths" of commentary like the one in the Hertz Chumash.

He takes them to task for their "disturbing" omissions, asking where is the Torah Temimah? Where is the Machberet Menachem and Sefer Hashorashim of Janach? Glinert calls the lack of reference to the Lucavitcher Rebbe's Likkutei Sichos the 'most serious' omission, and 'one wonders if this is just an omission.'

He ends by describing the whole as a "mixed blessing." If you're looking for a message behind the words, it's a joy. (His words.) But if one is looking for the Divine words themselves, (also his words), you're out of luck.

21 comments:

  1. Re "every ve need not be rendered 'and'": an interesting counter-argument has been given by Robert Alter, in his Torah translation and his new book "Pen of Iron." As one of his reviewers summarized his position:

    The Torah's syntax is fundamentally additive (or paratactic); it comes at you head-on, one thing after another, rather than couched in subordinate clauses and complex sentences (hypotaxis). Modern translators, in their attempt to achieve a more flowing, contemporary style, abandon this archaic bluntness, and with it the Hebrew original's somber power. Alter points to the story of Rebekah as an example of how the repetitive use of "and" can build up meaning as well as majesty:

    "And she came down to the spring and filled her jug and came back up. And the servant ran toward her and said, 'Pray, let me sip a bit of water from your jug.' And she said, 'Drink, my lord,' and she hurried and tipped down her jug on one hand and let him drink. And she she let him drink his fill and said, 'For your camels, too, I shall draw water until they drink their fill.' And she hurried and emptied her jug into the trough, and she ran again to the well to draw water and drew water for all his camels."

    As Alter observes, the crescendo of "ands" is used to convey the tireless Rebekah's heroic labor: "A camel after a long desert journey can drink as much as twenty-five gallons of water, and there are ten camels." Those "ands" give urgency and weight to her task.

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  2. Whilst this is interesting, if Artscroll had put an * at every debatable word with a corresponding footnote, Artscroll chumashim would be no different to Mikraos Gedolos Chumashim, except in English.

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  3. Dan, Alter's school of thought is that the translator ought to give a flavor of how Hebrew sounds, so you get his famous "then the Lord God fashioned the human, humus from the soil." Artscroll's translator doesn't seem to have that, or anything in mind. If there is a method to its translation, other than following Rashi and rabbinic interpretation (except when it doesn't) they haven't said what it is, and I don't think anyone has discovered it. There seems to be no particular attention paid to language. Of course it could perhaps be argued that the Torah is not supposed to be seen as a beautiful literary work, but we don't know if that's what they had in mind; actually, I doubt it.

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  4. Also, Dan, what I think Glinert meant about the vav thing is not that a translator must choose to not render them all as "and" but that they should not mechanically do so, or more to the point that this is 'modern' translation theory, and he's impressed (or maybe only a little condescending) that Artscroll got the message.

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  5. It's odd that a scholar would be pleased with Artscroll commentary, given its ubiquitous and intentional fundamentalism (e.g. its overt young earth creationism).

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  6. Alter's argument is arresting and I did thinnk about it. After due considersation, his argument sounds better than it is in actuality. All you have to do is compare the two translations he mentioned, RAK and Artscroll. The former far surpasses the latter.

    Also, I'm not sure Alter's right that the "vovs" in the Rivah story are meant to denote ceaseless labor. The "vov" is the default, standard connective device in Biblical writing. It is the basic building block of the "possuk", which in turn is the basic building block of Scripture. It is not a particular feature of the Rivkah story. It's commonplace.

    DF

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  7. PNP, he's reviewing it for what it is. It's a "very Orthodox" translation and commentary. He does deplore their failure to rely on anything regarding the topography, flora and fauna of Israel besides Rabbi Yehosef Schwarz's Tevuos Ha'aretz, while clearly things have advanced a bit in that field since the 1830s (a point that I had until now seen no one make besides me).

    DF, I think the point is that RAK followed some method (and had some talent as a translator/ writer) while whomever translated the Chumash for the Stone Edition just didn't, at least not really.

    Alter's point you can take or leave. I personally would leave it, since although a string of 'ands' may sound symphonic or however he would describe it, in English, but in Hebrew "ve" just is what it is. It does add to the sound and rhythm of the language, but it is perfectly normal, while in English loads of "ands" is just dissonant. Still, it's an intriguing idea to try to not only convey the fact that the book is written in another language, but also some elements of what that language sounds like. The thing is that native speakers usually are fairly deaf to these kinds of things, so I'm not sure it adds to the experience of the English reader to know what it can sound like to the Israelite reader, when to the Hebrew reader it sounded normal.

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  8. "then the Lord God fashioned the human, humus from the soil."

    I understand that in Tyrian mythology, humans were fashioned out of tehina.

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  9. "Still, it's an intriguing idea to try to not only convey the fact that the book is written in another language, but also some elements of what that language sounds like."

    Agreed. I'll give you a great example I once read in a journal somewhere about the art of translation. A guy was translating Lincoln's Gettsburg address. He could have transalted the opening line as " Lifeni Shominim Visheva shanim, avinu . . .". But he wanted to match the rhythum of the english as much as possible. So he transalted it as "Vayahi lifnei shmonim shonim, visheva shonim, . . .". ( Like the description of Sara's death.)

    If Adderabbi reads this he could certainly weigh in.

    DF

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  10. JXG, I know "laughing out loud" is normally not meant literally, but your comment did the job.

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  11. "ArtScroll, it appears, cannot decide between readable translation for adults and a word-for-word chanting translation for the Hebrew classroom."

    Another option is that ArtScroll felt it wasn't worth it to decide this.

    "Of the frequent archaism, I would single out as particularly misleading such inversions as in Bemidbar 32:16 -- 'Pens for the flock shall we build here for our livestock' "

    As odd as this sounds, I like it when Artscroll uses this clumsy language. It forces me not to be lazy and look at the Hebrew. -- Alex

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  12. >Another option is that ArtScroll felt it wasn't worth it to decide this.

    I agree that Glinert's dichotomy isn't the only two options (and I also think that Artscroll certainly isn't trying to produce something to be used in the classroom) but I don't know what you mean by "worth it"? Are you saying that Artscroll felt it wasn't "worth it" to produce the highest quality translation it could?

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  13. When I brought up Alter's approach, I expressed no opinion of my own about it, but was curious to see what reaction it would elicit. I'm sympathetic with it to some degree, but all the "and's" do get a bit monotonous in English after a while. I also wonder if some instances of "ve-" (especially at the beginning of a pasuk) are not "and's" at all, but merely a grammatical device, "vav ha-hippukh," that may be meant only to convert imperfect verbs to perfect and vice versa.

    For a translation that goes even further than Alter's in giving "a flavor of how Hebrew sounds," see Everett Fox's work as seen in the Schocken Bible, which deliberately abandons a "smooth" English style:
    "Any widow or orphan you are not to afflict.
    Oh, if you afflict, afflict them...!
    For (then) they will cry, cry out to me,
    And I will hearken, hearken to their cry"

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  14. Joe in Australia6:03 AM, May 17, 2010

    I was browsing Artscroll's translation of the haftarah for parshat Parah and I came across a real howler. If you look at the bottom, of page 1217, verses 37 and 38 of Ezekiel 36 you will find a metaphor for the re-population of Jerusalem. Every commentator and translator says something like "the cities will be filled with flocks of men". The Stone edition has a unique understanding of this: "so shall the destroyed cities be filled with sheep-men."

    Classical mythology is replete with goat-men (satyrs), bull-men (minotaurs) and fish-men (merfolk). This, however, is the first time I have encountered a sheep-man, and I congratulate Artscroll on their bold and unique approach to translation.

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  15. Hilarious Joe.

    A comment like that begs for the resurrection of What's Bothering Artscroll.

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  16. Dan, of course "ve" does not really mean "and" in Biblical Hebrew. Alter well knows this. I believe his point is that even though it functions as the connecter, which in English and most (?) other languages is expressed via numerous words (and, but, yet, etc.) instead of basically one, the critical point is that in Biblical Hebrew since it is one prefix, it sounds the same to the Hebrew ear, and this is what he is trying to convey. The objection I raised above is that to the Hebrew ear it also sounds natural, an effect which is just missing from Alter's scheme. Still, it's an interesting idea to play with, as if Everett Fox (and both, I think, were really influenced by Martin Buber and Rosenzweig's German translation, which I am told was innovative in trying to convey what the Hebrew is like in the translation itself).

    Joe, you've pointed it out to me before, and I agree that it's really odd. A couple of years after the NJPS 1962 came out, Harry Orlinsky published a companion volume which explains its methods and choices. It would be nice if Artscroll did the same, but frankly we would not expect it (not merely because of alleged scholarly or intellectual sloppiness, or no market interest, but probably even be-shitta, it wouldn't demonstrate that it takes a translation of the Torah so seriously as to expend time explaining it).

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  17. I wonder how Biblical Hebrew sounded to a contemporary audience. There are languages where literary language is only modestly different from colloquial speech and others where they are quite different (Arabic and Norwegian come to mind.) If we have any evidence how Biblical Hebrew sounded to its original audience I am unaware of it.

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  18. Literary Arabic is quite different from spoken, but spoken Arabic is pretty flowery.

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  19. > In Ex 21:6, where Rashi translates וַעֲבָדוֹ לְעֹלָם in a derashic way (until the Jubilee year), the translators here write "forever," according to the peshat, and place Rashi's explanation in the notes. This is a pretty good catch on Glinert's part. An ahalachic translation? Is this the JPS?

    As you certainly know, this sort of thing is hardly limited to the likes of the JPS - see my comments on aTalmudic exegesis by the "frum" Rishonim here:

    http://bdld.info/2010/02/02/ibn-ezra-as-halachic-man/

    and here:

    http://seforim.blogspot.com/2010/05/woman-place-is-in-home_1330.html

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  20. > Classical mythology is replete with goat-men (satyrs), bull-men (minotaurs) and fish-men (merfolk). This, however, is the first time I have encountered a sheep-man, and I congratulate Artscroll on their bold and unique approach to translation.

    http://xkcd.com/610/

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  21. Jewish Ideas Daily has just published an article about the publishing empire that is ArtScroll. You can read it here: http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2010/5/21/main-feature/1/artscroll-inc

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