The Soncino Chumash: The Five Books of Moses with Haphtaroth

by Abraham Cohen (Editor)

This invaluable study aid contains all five Books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Hebrew text is presented in full, with a lucid English translation and commentary digest based on the classical Jewish commentaries. Included are fascinating midrashic, philosophical, literary and mystical interpretations by such commentators as Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, Nachmanides, Sforno, Kimchi and Gersonides. This translation has been acclaimed by Rabbis everywhere and is used worldwide.

Genres: Judaica, Philosophy, Judaism

1203 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1983

About the author

Abraham Cohen was a Jewish-British scholar. He was the editor of the Soncino Books of the Bible and also participated in the Soncino translation of the Talmud and Midrash. He attended the University of London and Cambridge and was a minister of Birmingham Hebrew Congregation from 1933.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up as an Orthodox Jew, the only thing that kept me sane sitting in shul on Shabbat was reading the dirty bits - there are lots of them if you know where to look, the laws on purity (oooh, thrill, male masturbation), the bits on lepers and how to tell if you were one. I'd go looking for the right passages in the chumash and then read the commentaries of the rabbis. There's something kind of young-teen salacious about reading how one rabbi interprets a dirty word as compared to another rabbi's idea of its meaning. A real mental wank you might say.

The rest of the bible? Well its ok I guess, goes on a bit but there are some good stories if you don't take it all as set in stone. I know that there are some people who do, and I hope they won't take offence at my disbelief of their holy book any more than I will about their credulity. As the Dalai Lama said, "I really think it is best that you try and find truth in the religion of your forebears and ancestors. It is very hard to change religion. I think it is safer not to." From Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure

I didn't change my religion as much as go through stages of spiritual belief - I was raised not only Jewish but Catholic as we had a frustrated would-be Irish nun as a housekeeper and went to Welsh Non-Conformist schools and a Born-Again Christian youth club. At 16 I read Sartre and that was it, I understood, deeply, what he was talking about, so the new label was existentialist. I never wanted to say I was either agnostic (such a sitting-on-the-fence word) or atheist. It didn't matter enough for me to want to even define myself in this sphere. I'm far too much a pragmatist to be concerned about a spiritual plane except when stoned, then I might be, depends on the music.

But recently surfing through Wikipedia as one does, I came across Apatheism. And that fit perfectly. I'm an apatheist, an existentialist, a humanist, lots of labels. Why do we need to label people's beliefs or lack of them? Why is believing or not in a deity, any one, or lots of them, so important that is one of the first definitions we put on people? That's a question for debate.

The Technical Bits As part of the Shabbat service a small part of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses is read (enough so that the whole set are read in one year) and a small part from the book, the Prophets, HaNevi'im. Haptorath is plural to what is generally pronounced Haftarah. So now you know why I was so bored.

The Chumash is laid out with the top half being the text and the bottom the commentary. Each as important, you could almost say as sacred, as the other. To Jews, nothing beats a good nitpicking discussion. A resolution isn't necessary (or even really desirable, one doesn't want to be dogmatic), it's the debate itself that's the thing.

Mostly rewritten 18th May, 2019 when I found a comment I hadn't seen by a friend who is now ex about me condemning my son to burn in hell by not bringing him up as a Christian etc etc. She put it much more nicely than that, but that's what she meant. I deleted the comment. I didn't want to spur discussion.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like the Artscroll/Stone Chumash, this Chumash relies heavily on medieval Jewish commentators (such as Rashi, Nachmanides and Ibn Ezra) rather than adding one writer's unique perspective. But this Torah commentary has much less depth than Artscroll- where Soncino might dismiss a topic with a sentence or two, Artscroll will have a full paragraph. So on balance I like Artscroll better.

Soncino tends to be slightly less right-wing (in the sense of relying on bizarre legends) than Artscroll- but for a truly modern Orthodox perspective on the Torah, I like the Hertz Chumash better.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Read. Takes a year or two to complete!

[Rino]

practicing my limited Hebrew

[carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exactly what it says it is.