W hen Maran Harav Chaim Kanievsky was informed by his grandson that Reb Meir had been taken from us he was greatly distressed. He said “I know his seforim. Chaval al d’avdin. He has many zechuyos.”
As the architect and dynamo behind what has been called the “ArtScroll Revolution” Meir was well-known. As the one who made it possible for many tens of thousands of people to learn Gemara for the first time ever or for the first time in many years as well for distinguished talmidei chachamim and roshei yeshivah who told us that the Schottenstein Talmud made it possible for them to learn daf yomi in the limited time allowed them by their many responsibilities. No less a Torah giant than Maran Harav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv referred to the notes in the ArtScroll Talmud in preparing his shiurim. It is well-known that the ArtScroll Siddur Machzor and Chumash are transforming lives and bringing the joy of new understanding to Jews near and far.
Not well-known however is Meir Zlotowitz the human being and the talmid chacham to whom ArtScroll/Mesorah was more of a mission than a business.
To Meir ArtScroll existed to foster yiras Shamayim. If a book contained even minimal content that could taint a reader’s fear of Hashem or put Klal Yisrael in a negative light he would reject it out of hand even though he knew the book would be a great commercial success. In ArtScroll’s earliest years we commissioned someone to write a commentary on a certain sefer. At one point he wrote that Rashi was mistaken. To Meir this was intolerable. How could someone dare say such a thing about Rashi? He paid the author and relieved him of the assignment. But we were committed to publish the sefer in time for a certain Yom Tov. So Meir undertook to write the commentary himself. He put in 18 hours a day; I couldn’t quite keep up with him (I never could) but together we met the deadline without sacrificing quality baruch Hashem.
