Page 93 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

One such constellation of local relations is the Jewish community of London,
where ArtScroll has established a presence in synagogues, libraries, and the re-
tail Judaica book market, most prominently as purveyor of liturgical texts that
aim to replace the standard works authorized for use within the United He-
brew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, which have dominated the
11
“mainstream” of Anglo-Jewish Orthodoxy for the past century. Although it is
impossible to indicate the precise degree of penetration of ArtScroll books
in the London community (such as total sales per annum or frequency of use
in libraries), there is a striking pattern of a growing acceptance of the press as
a legitimate alternative to the existing English-Judaica literature, despite the
presence of a vocal minority who disparage ArtScroll’s ideologically motivated
translations. Among enthusiasts, ArtScroll’s arrival on the scene is understood
to have offered a compelling opportunity to counterbalance trends toward lib-
eralism and assimilation, against which the turgid prose of the standard English
texts, they claim, offers no compelling remedy. One Orthodox Rabbi, respon-
sible for the incorporation of the ArtScroll Siddur into his congregation, ex-
plained the importance of ArtScroll in revitalizing the London community in
this way:

The Masorti [Conservative] and the Reform movements don’t seem to have the
con¤dence or conviction to produce books like ArtScroll. They’re always too
dif¤dent: “x says this and y says that.” ArtScroll, on the other hand, claim to have
produced a de¤nitive version. What’s better? People won’t observe Pesach [Pass-
over] if they are presented with twenty opportunities not to observe it. People
don’t seem to get this message so clearly from Hertz or Singer [the “standard”
Orthodox texts]. 12

This claim of de¤nitiveness merits further attention. But ¤rst it is necessary
to point out that ArtScroll’s penetration in the London community has been
neither total nor indiscriminate. Rather, it has proceeded along culturally and
ideologically circumscribed routes, de¤ned by differences within the commu-
nity based on religious af¤liation, and also by differences of generation, gen-
der, and degree of command of Jewish canonical texts and of the Hebrew lan-
guage in general. In this respect, signi¤cant distinctions may be drawn within
the ArtScroll corpus between the demand for liturgical works and for the “non-
religious” texts. For instance, a survey of the spectrum of differently af¤li-
ated synagogues in the London area—Liberal, Reform, Masorti (Conserva-
tive), United Synagogue (mainstream Orthodox), Federation of Synagogues
(mainstream but “slightly more Orthodox” than United), Union of Ortho-
dox (Haredi), and “Independent” Orthodox—reveals that ArtScroll’s liturgical
works are most popular among the “mainstream” Orthodox congregations,
whereas other non-haredi communities (Liberal, Reform, and Masorti) show
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much less interest in acquiring or using them. In fact, beyond the Chumash,
the Siddur, and the Talmud, the ArtScroll corpus does not appear to have se-
cured a very strong place in the “mainstream” institutions of the London com-
munity. Their various series of popular history, self-help, youth and children’s

82 Jeremy Stolow