In a trailblazing effort, ArtScroll set out to make Talmud Yerushalmi accessible to every Jew
Spanning 15 years and 51 volumes, this trailblazing effort to create an English-language translation and elucidation of the Talmud of Eretz Yisrael has opened wide the doors of this seemingly impenetrable work to Jews around the globe, seasoned scholars and laymen alike. The ArtScroll edition of Yerushalmi was the brainchild of Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz a”h, ArtScroll/Mesorah’s unforgettable founder and president, and he often remarked that he considered it to be the crowning achievement of his career in Torah publishing.
To mark the release of the final volume of the Yerushalmi, we once again joined three of the project’s top editors — Rabbis Eli Herzka, Zev Meisels and Yosef Asher Weiss — to talk about their experiences working on this one-of-a-kind endeavor and the ways in which it has enriched the world of Torah learning.
What were some of the unique challenges ArtScroll’s staff of writers and editors faced in their work on the Yerushalmi? What strategies and techniques did they use to address them?
Rabbi Zev Meisels: One of the great challenges was the terseness of the text. There were so many blank spaces with nothing filled in. It’s something like Mishnayos, where one statement follows the next with no in-depth discussion or elaboration, except that at least the Mishnayos are more clearly understandable at surface level. To make Yerushalmi comprehensible and accessible we needed to fill in those blanks to turn it into a cohesive, flowing text that people can understand and enjoy learning.
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