Torah Yesharah

Rabbi Charles Kahana

Yosef Lindell

Introduction of the Torah Yesharah

Statement from the Agudas Harabonim in the Jewish Press

In my blog post of August 6, 2023 on the translation of Verse 7:13 I used the translation from the Torah Yesharah.  This is Charles – Yechiskal Shraga – Kahane’s explanation in English of the Chumosh. I found this translation  on Sefaria as I was looking up various translations of the above four words.    https://www.sefaria.org/Leviticus.24.5?ven=Torah_Yesharah,_translated_and_edited_by_Chas._Kahane._New_York,_1963&lang=bi&with=Translations&lang2=en

In the Sefaria copy they also copied a personal note dated March 13, 1978 written in the book’s inset, a personal note to Boruch from his grandmother, Sonia Kahane. Sonia was the wife of Charles Kahane and when she gave the Chumosh to her grandson, Charles Kahane had just passed away. It is touching.  Boruch Kahane is the son of Meir Kahane.  Shmuel Weissman is Manager of Text Acquisition  & Text Quality. Rabbi Weissman told me that the text of the Sefer came from Boruch Kahane.  It is appreciated that Seferia kept this personal note from a Bubi to a grandson.

In 1963 there were basically four translations of the Chumash. JPS 1917, Soncino 1935, and Silberman/Rosenbaum.  There was the very popular Linear Chumash Rashi translation copyrighted in 1950.  However, Jay Orlinsky told me that if you look in the opening pages of the Chumash it says, In cooperation with Dr. Harry Orlinsky, who was the editor in Chief of the JPS.  The linear translation follows JPS 1917.

I saw Rabbi Charles Kahane’s translation and asked myself who was this Rabbi Charles Kahane, why would he translate the Torah, and why didn’t I know about this work.  I discovered a Blog post for Yosef Lindell dated March 2023. Read Yosef Lindell’s fascinating article about the Torah Yesharah in a March 13, 2023 blog post answers these questions.   When Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Father Translated the Torah – The Seforim Blog

WHEN RABBI MEIR KAHANE’S FATHER TRANSLATED THE TORAH

 March 13, 2023  Admin 

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When Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Father Translated the Torah

By Yosef Lindell

Yosef Lindell is a lawyer, writer, and lecturer living in Silver Spring, MD. He has a JD from NYU Law and an MA in Jewish history from Yeshiva University. He is one of the editors of the Lehrhaus and has published more than 30 articles on Jewish history and thought in a variety of venues. His website is yoseflindell.wordpress.com.

In 1962, the Jewish Publication Society published a new translation of the Torah. The product of nearly a decade of work, the new edition was the first major English translation to cast off the shackles of the 1611 King James Bible. Dr. Harry Orlinsky, the primary force behind the new translation and a professor of Bible at the merged Reform Hebrew Union College and Jewish Institute of Religion, explained that even JPS’ celebrated 1917 translation was merely a King James lookalike, a modest revision of the Revised Standard Version that “did not exceed more than a very few percent of the whole.”[1] This new edition was different. As the editors wrote in the preface, the King James not only “had an archaic flavor,” but it rendered the Hebrew “word for word rather than idiomatically,” resulting in “quaintness or awkwardness and not infrequently in obscurity.”[2] Now, for the first time, the editors translated wholly anew, jettisoning literalism for maximum intelligibility. More than sixty years later, JPS’ work remains one of the definitive English translations of the Torah.

The new JPS may have left the King James behind, but it didn’t satisfy everyone. In addition to making the Torah more intelligible, the editors incorporated the insights of modern biblical scholarship, both from “biblical archeology and in the recovery of the languages and civilizations of the peoples among whom the Israelites lived and whose modes of living and thinking they largely shared.”[3] So when asked by Rabbi Theodore Adams, the president of the Rabbinical Council of America, whether the RCA could accept an invitation from Dr. Solomon Grayzel, JPS’ publisher, to participate in the new translation, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik demurred. He wrote in a 1953 letter to Adams, “I am afraid that the purpose of this undertaking is not to infuse the spirit of Torah she-be-al peh into the new English version but, on the contrary, … to satisfy the so-called modern ‘scientific’ demands for a more exact rendition in accordance with the latest archeological and philological discoveries.”[4]

Just one year after JPS released its volume, in 1963, R. Soloveitchik’s wish for a more “Torah-true” translation was answered, but likely not in the way he expected. The two-volume Torah Yesharah published by Rabbi Charles Kahane (1905-1978) relies heavily on traditional Jewish commentary in its translation.[5] But as we’ll explore, because of its lack of fidelity to the Hebrew text, it can hardly be called a translation at all.

Here is the title page (courtesy of the Internet Archive):

The strategically placed dots on the title page indicate that Yesharah is an acronym for the author’s Hebrew name—Yechezkel Shraga Hakohen. R. Charles Kahane was born in Safed and received semichah from the Pressburg Yeshiva in Hungary. After immigrating to the United States in 1925 and receiving a second semichah from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, he served as rabbi of Congregation Shaarei Tefiloh in Brooklyn for most of his professional career, a shul which drew over 2,000 worshippers for the High Holidays.[6] He was a founding member of the Vaad Harabbanim of Flatbush and helped Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz re-establish the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn. Today, however, he is known as the father of Meir Kahane, the radical and controversial Jewish power activist and politician who needs no further introduction. The father does not seem to have been directly involved in his son’s activities, but he took pride in Meir’s accomplishments and was a staunch supporter of the Irgun in Palestine, Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionist movement, and Jabotinsky’s youth group, Betar.[7]

R. Kahane told the New York Times that Torah Yesharah was inspired by Bible classes he gave to his adult congregants where many people did not understand the text even in translation.[8] (Recall that the new JPS translation was not yet available, and other English translations relied on the archaic King James.) He wanted to rectify this problem; indeed, the title page states that the work is a “traditional interpretive translation,” suggesting that it was intended to be more user-friendly. But calling it user-friendly does not do justice to what Kahane did. Here is most of Bereishit 22—the passage of Akedat Yitzchak:

Most translators try to approximate the meaning of the Hebrew. Not so R. Kahane. Nearly every single English verse here contains significant additions not found in the original. The first verse, for example, which states that the Akedah was meant to punish Avraham for making a treaty with Avimelech, follows the opinion of the medieval commentator Rashbam, who, notes that the words “and it was after these things” connect the Akedah to the previous episode—the treaty with Avimelech (Rashbam, Bereishit 22:1). But it’s hard to imagine that Rashbam, famous for his devotion to peshat—plain meaning—would have been comfortable with his explanation being substituted for the translation itself. Many other verses on this page provide additions from Rashi and other commentators. 

Pretty much every page of R. Kahane’s translation looks similar: Hebrew on one side and an expansive interpretive translation drawn from the classical commentators on the other. Kahane makes no effort to distinguish between the literal meaning of the Hebrew and his interpretive gloss.[9] Dr. Philip Birnbaum, the famed siddur and machzor translator, criticizes this aspect of the work in his (Hebrew) review, noting that Kahane’s interpretations are written “as if they are an inseparable part of the Hebrew source, and the simple reader who doesn’t know the Holy Tongue will end up mistakenly thinking that everything written in ‘Torah Yesharah’ is written in ‘Torat Moshe.’”[10]

To be fair, R. Kahane cites sources for his interpretations, but only at the back of each book of the Torah and only in Hebrew shorthand:

Thus, a reader not already fluent in Hebrew and the traditional commentaries would have little idea where Kahane was drawing his “translation” from and might not grasp how much the translation departed from the Hebrew original.[11]

Yet perhaps this was the point. R. Kahane considered literal translation to be illegitimate. In the preface to Torah Yesharah, Kahane contrasts Targum Onkelos, which is celebrated by the Sages, with the Septuagint translation of the Torah into Greek, which the Sages mourned. Kahane suggests that a Targum, which is an interpretation or commentary, is superior to a direct translation. Targum Onkelos, he writes, was composed under the guidance of the Sages and based on the Oral Law, and therefore it was “sanctified.” According to Kahane, “The Torah cannot and must never be translated literally, without following the Oral interpretation as given to Moses on Sinai. … It is in this spirit that the present translation-interpretation has been written.”[12]

Kahane was not the only Orthodox rabbi of his time to criticize translation unfaithful to rabbinic interpretation. We’ve already noted R. Soloveitchik’s concerns about the new JPS.[13] Similarly, the encyclopedist Rabbi Judah David Eisenstein reported that in 1913, when JPS was preparing its initial translation, Rabbi Chaim Hirschenson of Hoboken, NJ, convinced the Agudath Harabbanim to protest JPS’ efforts so the new work should not become the “official” translation of English-speaking Jewry the way the King James had become the official translation of the Church of England. The Agudath Harabbanim noted the Sages’ disapproval of the Septuagint and explained that only Targum Onkelos and traditional commentators that based themselves on the Talmud were officially sanctioned.[14]

R. Kahane’s approach also harks back to a series of articles in Jewish Forum composed in 1928 by Rabbi Samuel Gerstenfeld, a rosh yeshiva at RIETS (a young Rabbi Gerstenfeld is pictured below), attacking the original 1917 JPS translation. Gerstenfeld labeled the JPS translation Conservative and sought to demonstrate its departure from Orthodoxy by comprehensively cataloging all the places where the translation departed from the halakhic understanding of the verse. So, for example, he criticizes JPS for translating the tachash skins used in the construction of the Mishkan as “seal skins,” because according to halachic authorities, non-kosher animal hides cannot be used for a sacred purpose.[15] He believed that the word tachash should be transliterated, but not translated.[16] Gerstenfeld concludes that the JPS translators “missed a Moses—a Rabbi well versed in Talmud and Posekim, who would have been vigilant against violence to the Oral Law.”[17]

Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet remembers Rabbi Gerstenfeld from his early days in Yeshiva University.

Still, R. Kahane’s interpretive translation with additions goes far beyond what R. Gerstenfeld was suggesting. To give one example: Gerstenfeld quibbles with JPS’ translation of the words ve-yarka befanav in the chalitzah ceremony (Devarim 25:9). The 1917 JPS translates that the woman should “spit in his face” (referring to the man who refuses to perform yibbum). Gerstenfeld notes that rabbinic tradition unanimously holds that the woman spits on the ground. He suggests that “and spit in his presence” would be a better translation.[18] Gerstenfeld’s suggestion is reasonably elegant—it gives space for the rabbinic reading without negating the meaning of the Hebrew. Kahane makes no such attempt to be literal, instead translating that she will “spit on the ground in front of his face.”[19] As we’ve seen, Kahane had no compunctions about adding words.

Thus, there is no English-language precedent for Torah Yesharah of which I am aware. As the preface suggests, R. Kahane was inspired by the Aramaic targumim, but it would seem more by Targum Yonatan Ben Uziel than Targum Onkelos. Onkelos translates word-for-word in most circumstances, typically departing from the Hebrew’s literal meaning to address theological concerns, such as a discomfort with anthropomorphism. Targum Yonatan, on the other hand, seamlessly weaves many midrashic additions into its translation and looks more like Torah Yesharah. For example, at the beginning of the Akedah passage, Targum Yonatan goes on a lengthy excursus suggesting that God’s command to sacrifice Yitzchak was in response to a debate between Yitzchak and Yishmael where Yitzchak boasted that he would be willing to offer himself to God. This digression is akin to Kahane’s addition of the Rashbam into his translation. If anything, Targum Yonatan is more expansive than Torah Yesharah.

Torah Yesharah received a fair amount of press upon its publication. It was even reviewed by the New York Times, which called it “[a] new and unusual translation” that was intended to make the Torah “more meaningful to Americans.” The article quoted Rabbi Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits, then the rabbi of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan (before he became Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom), as calling it “an original enterprise” and “a most specifically Jewish rendering of the Torah.” While the Times was noncommittal about the work, a critical review in the Detroit Jewish News found Kahane’s language confusing and inferior to the new JPS translation published the prior year.[20] As for Dr. Birnbaum, he praised Torah Yesharah’s reliance on traditional Jewish interpretations and lamented the fact that most other biblical translations “were borrowed from the Christians from the time of Shakespeare,” but criticized the format (as noted above) and some of Kahane’s more tendentious translations.[21]

Despite the interest Torah Yesharah generated, its unique approach was not replicated. One might see echoes of R. Kahane in a better known translation—ArtScroll’s 1993 Stone Edition Chumash. As its editors explained in its preface, the “volume attempts to render the text as our Sages understood it.”[22] To this end, ArtScroll famously follows Rashi when translating “because the study of Chumash has been synonymous with Chumash-Rashi for nine centuries,”[23] even when Rashi is at variance with more straightforward readings of the text. Thus, for example, ArtScroll translates az huchal likro be-shem hashem (Genesis 4:26) based on Rashi as, “Then to call in the name of Hashem became profaned”—a reference to the beginnings of idol worship.[24] However, a more literal translation would run, “Then people began to call in the name of God,” which sounds like a reference to sincere prayer—the opposite of idolatry. It’s also well-known that ArtScroll declines to translate Shir Ha-Shirim literally, adapting Rashi’s allegorical commentary in place of translation.

On the other hand, ArtScroll’s overall approach is different than Torah Yesharah’s. ArtScroll is typically quite literal, translating word-for-word even when the syntax of the verse suffers as a result. An example from the Akedah is again relevant: va-yar ve-hinei ayil achar ne’echaz ba-sevach be-karnav (Genesis 22:13). ArtScroll’s translation, that Abraham “saw—behold, a ram!—afterwards, caught in the thicket,”[25] is awkward, but it preserves the word achar in the precise location that it appears in the Hebrew. When ArtScroll wants to highlight more traditional interpretations of the text in line with Chazal and others, it does so in the commentary, not in the translation itself.[26]

Two recent works—the Koren Steinsaltz Humash (2018) and the Chabad Kehot Chumash (2015)—are much closer to Torah Yesharah in that they insert commentary directly into the English translation. But they still differ in an important respect. Both the Steinsaltz—which is a translation of a Hebrew Humash based on the classes of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz—and the Kehot “interpolate” a good deal of commentary into the translation (the former is more peshat based and the latter leans more on Rashi and Midrash). Nevertheless, they distinguish between what’s literal and what’s added by using bold font for the literal translation. This approach still has its downsides, as it can still be hard to read the English cleanly without the added gloss getting in the way of the literal meaning.[27] But it’s preferable to Torah Yesharah, where R. Kahane did not provide the reader any means of distinguishing between the text and his additions.

Today, Torah Yesharah is but a historical curiosity. Yet its existence highlights the fact that some mid-20th century Orthodox Jews felt a real need for a translation that followed in the footsteps of Chazal and other traditional commentators. To them, JPS’ translation did not embrace an authentic Torah approach. Before ArtScroll came on the scene, Torah Yesharah filled that niche for a time, but its unusual format blurred the line between the Word of God and the words of His interpreters.

Yosef Lindell is a lawyer, writer, and lecturer living in Silver Spring, MD. He has a JD from NYU Law and an MA in Jewish history from Yeshiva University. He is one of the editors of the Lehrhaus and has published more than 30 articles on Jewish history and thought in a variety of venues. His website is yoseflindell.wordpress.com.

[1] Harry M. Orlinsky, “The New Jewish Version of the Torah: Toward a New Philosophy of Bible Translation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 82:3 (1963): 251.
[2] The Torah: The Five Books of Moses (The Jewish Publication Society, 1962), Preface.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications (Nathaniel Helfgot, ed., KTAV, 2005), 110.
[5] Charles Kahane, ed., Torah Yesharah (Torah Yesharah Publication: Solomon Rabinowitz Book Concern, NY, 1963).
[6] To the New York Times, Kahane described the shul as “progressive Orthodox,” and it likely lacked a mechitzah. See Robert I. Friedman, The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane (Lawrence Hill Books, 1990), 20. That, however, was not unusual for those times.
[7] The biographical information in this paragraph is drawn from Friedman (see previous note) and Libby Kahane, Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought (Institute for the Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane, 2008).
[8] Richard F. Shepard, “Rabbi Publishes New Bible Study; Works on Early Scholars Are Reinterpreted,” New York Times (June 21, 1964), 88.
[9] Here is another example of a large interpretive insertion concerning God’s decision that Moshe and Aharon would not lead the people into Israel because of their sin regarding the rock (Bamidbar 20:12):

That’s quite a few more words than are found in the Hebrew!
[10] Paltiel Birnbaum, “Targum Angli be-Ruah ha-Masoret,” in Pleitat Sofrim: Iyyunim ve-Ha’arakhot be-Hakhmat Yisrael ve-Safrutah (Mossad Harav Kook, 1971), 75.
[11] Of note, Kahane’s translation is available on Sefaria, but with modifications that obscure its radicalness. For one, the format is different: the Hebrew and English are not juxtaposed in the same way. Second, the sources for each verse are cited directly below the translation in parentheses. This is not the way Kahane presented his sources in the original.
[12] Torah Yesharah, xviii-ix.
[13] Among the most intriguing critics of the new JPS was Avram Davidson, who wrote in Jewish Life in 1957 that because the translation was being prepared by non-Orthodox scholars who intended to depart occasionally from the Masoretic text in light of new archaeological discoveries, it was not “being prepared on the Torah’s terms” and was unacceptable. A.A. Davidson, “A ‘Modern’ Bible Translation,” Orthodox Jewish Life 24:5 (1957): 7-11. Davidson later became a science fiction writer of some renown but by the end of his life had become enamored with a modern Japanese religion called Tenrikyo.
[14] J.D. Eisenstein, ed., Otzar Yisrael vol. 10 (New York, 1913), 309. See also the criticism of the 1962 JPS translation and the discussion of Eisenstein and R. Gerstenfeld’s article in Sidney B. Hoenig, “Notes on the New Translation of the Torah – A Preliminary Inquiry,” Tradition 5:2 (1963): 172-205.
[15] Samuel Gerstenfeld, “The Conservative Halacha,” The Jewish Forum 11:10 (Oct. 1928): 533.
[16] Indeed, ArtScroll’s Stone Chumash leaves tachash untranslated. Interestingly, R. Kahane just translates “sealskins” like JPS.
[17] Samuel Gerstenfeld, “The Conservative Halacha,” The Jewish Forum 11:11 (Nov. 1928): 576.
[18] Ibid., 575-76.
[19] Torah Yesharah, 331.
[20] Philip Slomovitz, “Purely Commentary,” Detroit Jewish News (Aug. 21, 1964), 2.
[21] Birnbaum, 76. It’s interesting that Birnbaum was far more critical of non-literal translations of the siddur. When the RCA incorporated the poetic translations of the British novelist Israel Zangwill into its 1960 siddur edited by Rabbi Dr. David de Sola Pool, Birnbaum wrote a scathing review in Hadoar, accusing Zangwill’s efforts as being “free imitations,” not translations, and of having Christian influence. Paltiel Birnbaum, “Siddur Chadash Ba le-Medinah,” Hadoar 40:6 (Dec. 9, 1960): 85. Birnbaum may have been jealous of the RCA’s siddur, which was a direct competitor to his 1949 edition. Also, he was unimpressed with Zangwill in particular, who had married a non-Jew and was not halakhically observant. For more about this, see my article in Lehrhaus here.
[22] Nosson Scherman, ed., The Stone Edition Chumash (Mesorah Publications, 1993), xvi.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid., 23.
[25] Ibid., 103.
[26] Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s 1981 Living Torah translation also bears some resemblance to Torah Yesharah in its tendency to follow Chazal, but it too, despite its exceedingly colloquial approach to translation, does not insert large interpretive glosses into the text.
[27] R. Steinsaltz calls the commentary “transparent” and “one whose explanations should go almost unnoticed and serve only to give the reader and student the sense that there is no barrier between him or her and the text,” but I am not sure I agree. See The Steinsaltz Humash (Koren Publishers, 2015), ix. 

I found this statement from the Agudas Harabonim in the February, 1963 edition of the Jewish Press. The Agudus Harabonim put out a statement about the JPS translation.  In bold letters at the end of their statement they write , “ THE NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE PENTATEUCH IS A FALSE TRANSLATION.

When the 1962 version came out, the JPS put out a marketing sheet with praise from various scholars and Rabbis.  Dr. Samuel Belkin, President of YU, is listed with the following statement:

“The translators have faithfully followed the Masoretic text and at the same time have made full use of the latest results of Hebraic scholarship and research in their work.  This is a significant contribution to Jewish scholarship and the Jewish community.”

Rabbi Kahane’s preface to his Sefer talks about his motivations and indirectly refers to JPS 1962:  It lays out what we Frum Jews believe in.  

PREFACE TO THE INTERPRETATIVE TRANSLATION OF THE TORAH

When the Eternal Almighty revealed Himself to Israel on Mount Sinai, giving them the Torah, the people heard His Words pronounced in the Holy Tongue – Hebrew. Forty years later Moses and the people of Israel reached the borders of Israel; there, in the land of Moab, Moses expounded the Torah also in languages other than Hebrew. Likewise, when Joshua brought the people into the Holy Land he fulfilled Moses’ instruction to inscribe the words of the Torah in various languages on tablets of stone set up on Mount Ebal.¹ Later, when Ezra the Scribe, whom the Sages honored with a dignity and praise like that of Moses in Jewish history, led the exiles, in Return from Babylonia into the Land of Israel, in the year 458 B.C.E., the Torah was again promulgated to the people. Ezra introduced the custom of publicly reading the Torah in Aramaic, the vernacular of the Jews in Babylonia; this was recited side by side with the text in the Holy Tongue.²

The best known and most sanctified Torah translation extant and accepted is that which was edited by the pious and aristocratic proselyte Onkelos. This translation was commonly read in the Synagogue for centuries by a specially appointed official after the reading of the Hebrew text by the rabbi had been rendered.³ Yet, we find that the rabbis looked askance at the translation of the Bible. Very harsh criticism is recorded in the Talmud against translations. Thus “the world shook when Jonathan Ben Uziel translated the Books of the Prophets.”⁴ About the year 275 b.c.e., Ptolemy II, the Egyptian Hellenistic King, summoned seventy Jewish elders to translate the Torah into Greek. Hence, this trans­lation is known as the Septuagint, “the Seventy.” The Jews tradi­tionally rejected it, and the Talmud compared the day of this translation to the day of the worship of the Golden Calf; the sages also tell us that immediately after the completion of this transla­tion, darkness came upon the world for three days, and that day was to be observed as a fast day.⁵

Superficially, there appears to be a contradiction in the talmudic passages. Was the translation acceptable or detested? After close examination of the texts we find a true interpretation based on the terminology. The talmudic word “Targum” is erroneously ex­plained by many as “translation.” In reality, this word means: expounding, interpretation, or commenting. Translation in Hebrew is Ha-atakah.⁶ Thus when it is related that Moses conveyed to the young generation the Torah in languages other than Hebrew, it does not mean that he recited it thus or as a verbatim, literal translation. Rather, it means that he interpreted the Written Torah, i.e. he expounded the Oral Torah which he had received on Sinai fully unto the people. Concerning Ezra’s reading of the Torah to the returnees from the Exile, it is said: “And they (Ezra and the Levites) read in the Torah of the Almighty Meforesh, expounding.” The Talmud translates the word Meforesh, as Targum, meaning Perush, interpretation. The Torah cannot and must never be translated literally, without following the Oral interpretation as given to Moses on Sinai.⁷ Jewish tradition therefore is opposed to translations of the Torah for the purposes of displaying to other nations that we, too, possess a literature… Likewise a translation done because of fear, as in the case of the Ptolemy incident, results in unnecessary and erroneous renditions. Also, a translation which is done with the intent to please the Bible critics is not acceptable. To us the Torah is not solely a book of wisdom, a work of art or a philosophical treatise. To the Jew Torah is the guide and the direction for life. Jewish generations therefore recognized and sanctified the Onkelos translation; for it was definitely based on traditional Oral Law and was done under the guidance and direction of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua, the exponents of the Oral Law — based on the teachings which they received from their teachers, traced back to Moses.⁸

The Targum of Jonathan Ben Uziel is still another translation-interpretation venerated by our people, for it too was traditionally received from the Latter Prophets. Moreover, because of Jonathan’s piety and sanctity it was acceptable.⁹ Jewry only accepts as author­itative that translation which is done by a faithful believer in Revelation. We believe in perfect faith that the Torah was given to us directly from the Eternal, — He who had revealed Himself on Sinai; consequently, to us the Torah is divine. Just as the Eternal had created the sun, the moon and the stars, which can never be removed or changed, so, too, the laws of the Torah, given to us from Heaven, cannot be removed or changed. No rabbi, nor group of rabbis, nor any founder of a new religion can dismiss the sanctity of the seventh day as the Sabbath, for we believe faithfully that the Eternal created the world in six days, and de­sisted from work on the seventh day. Similarly, no one can reject the dietary laws, for we believe implicitly in the sanctity of the people of Israel, and therefore abstain from the food the Torah has for­bidden. Likewise no one can discard circumcision, which is the basic sign of a covenant between the Eternal and the people of Israel. All this is also true of the other laws of the Torah, as well as of the historical facts contained therein. We believe in the story of Creation as interpreted in the Talmud; in the prophecy of Moses as explained by our sages; in the coming of a Messiah as enunciated by the Talmud but founded on the words of the Torah; and finally we believe in resurrection as expounded by the sages of the Oral Law.

Therefore, only that person or persons who believe in these fundamental principles can be authorized to translate the Torah for those who do not understand it in the original Hebrew. Every Hebrew word is impregnated with implications, and is imbued with the connotations setting forth the traditional Oral Law, as given to Moses on Sinai by the Almighty.

In short, Judaism holds a Bible translation sacred only when it is interpreted according to the spirit of the Talmud which is the Oral Law. This must be in the spirit of the devotion and holiness and recognition of the sanctity of the Divine Word.

It is in this spirit that the present translation-interpretation has been written. The translator has probed into the commentaries, ancient and medieval, as printed in the Rabbinic Bible and has culled much from them. Onkelos, Jonathan Ben Uziel, Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Rarnban, Sforno and others speak through these pages; he consulted also the modern commentators: Dr. J. H. Hertz and Rev. Dr. A. Cohen. It is recordted that “everything which a diligent pupil may teach is derived from Sinai through Moses.” As one who has devoted his life to the study of Torah, I respectfully present this work to the Jewish public with the hope that it will serve to teach all who thirst for “the word of the Eternal” that sacred heritage which is “our life and the length of our days.”

Finally I wish to express my appreciation for the kind and devoted assistance of my dear wife Sonia Kahane who has borne the burden of typing, re-typing and re-typing yet again with patience, intelligence and loyalty, while at the same time encouraging me in this holy work.

Rabbi Chas. Kahane

Note: The English used in the translation is of modern usage so that it should flow smoothly. It is prepared for all — the average reader as well as the student and scholar.

The Divine Name of the four Hebrew letters — the Tetragammaton — is translated “The Eternal” throughout, since it is derived from the Hebrew words, meaning: He was, He is, He will be.

The name “Elokim,” which denotes the Divine attribute of might, is translated throughout as “Almighty.”

The Author

1 Sotah 35b, 36a.

2 Nehemiah 8; Yerushalmi Megillah 1.11. B. Megillah 3a. (See Gilyon ha-Shas where apparently an error occurs).

3 Megillah 3a; Yer. Meg. 4.1.

4 Megillah 3a.

5 Soferim 1.10; Tur Orach Chayim, 580.

6 Rashi Sotah 36b.

7 Rashi Deut. 1.5 “in seventy languages it was expounded”.

8 Megillah 3a.

9 Ibid; Sukkah 28a.