Page 99 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

classical or modern Hebrew. It consists of a distinctively post-biblical form of Hebrew,
infused with Aramaic, and ordered by speci¤c traditions of composition, as found in
Talmudic and other rabbinic writings.
7. English-speaking Jewry is not, of course, simply a product of migratory ®ows
from East Europe in the nineteenth century. The British Jewish community, for instance,
can be traced back much further, and is based on political and cultural experiences quite
distinct from its counterparts on the European continent. For a useful history, see En-
delman 1979.
8. See Silberstein 1993, 206–213. Cf. Friedman 1986, 77; 1987, 250; and Heilman
and Friedman 1991, 206–211.
9. See, for example, http://www.njop.org. The largest kiruv network is probably the
one managed by Habad-Lubavitcher Hasidim, who have launched a succession of out-
reach campaigns in keeping with their messianic mission to heal the Jewish nation and
hasten the Redemption. See http://www.chabad.org. Cf. Friedman 1994.
10. The following analysis is based on ¤eld research conducted in the London Jewish
community in 2001. This included a survey of twenty-seven synagogues and eleven
Judaica bookstores in the Greater London area, as well as extensive, open-ended inter-
views. For useful overviews of the contemporary Jewish community in the United King-
dom, see Schmool 1998; Becher et al. 2002; and Graham 2003.
11. The most common Siddurim and Chumashim found in modern Orthodox and
conservative synagogues in the United Kingdom are Hertz 1929–36, 1947; Singer 1992;
Birnbaum 1977 [1949]; and Cohen 1983 [1960].
12. Personal communication, June 2001.
13. Haredi congregations, on the other hand, tend to have little interest in ArtScroll’s
Siddur or Chumash, not for ideological reasons but more simply because their command
of Hebrew precludes the need for a bilingual text.
14. Personal communication, July 2001.
15. One strategy ArtScroll has recently initiated to shift this balance of power is di-
rect marketing through the Internet. It will be interesting to see how successful this ven-
ture is in terms of generating sales from customers who would not have the opportunity
to come into contact with speci¤c ArtScroll titles by other means.
16. See the synagogue’s website, http://www.coolshul.org.
17. Personal communication, July 2001. Revised version by Rabbi Dunner in Febru-
ary 2002.

References

Bacon, Gershon. 1996. The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939. Je-
rusalem: Magnes.
Bartal, Israel. 1993. From Traditional Bilingualism to National Monolingualism. In He-
brew in Ashkenaz: A Language in Exile, ed. Lewis Glinert, 141–150. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Becher, Harriet, Stanley Waterman, Barry Kosmin, and Katarina Thompson. 2002. A
Portrait of Jews in London and the South-East: A Community Study. JPR Report No. 4.
London: Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
Birnbaum, Philip. 1977 [1949]. Daily Prayer Book. New York: Hebrew Publishing.

88 Jeremy Stolow