Yosef Lindell
Review of the Koren Sacks Humash (Koren Publishers, 2025).
In 2015, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks told a reporter that he was composing a new Humash intended for synagogue use:
I am writing a new commentary to the Chumash. There was a commentary—it’s still used in Anglo Jewry—called the Hertz Chumash, written by one of my predecessors [as the British Chief Rabbi]. It is a commentary that asks: How do we set this against its historical background? What does it mean to us today? Nobody’s done a Hertz Chumash since Hertz a century ago and it’s an urgent necessity. ArtScroll anthologizes traditional commentaries and it’s done tremendously well. But they have not stepped outside that world of the yeshiva and said how do we make sense of this today?
R. Sacks believed that, while many existing commentaries were effective, they were not sufficiently applicable to much of modern Jewry. He believed that a new Humash for synagogue use must first and foremost instruct the modern Jew in how the Torah remains relevant.
In 2017, I published an article in Lehrhaus entitled “A Call for a New Modern Orthodox Humash.” The article compared the 1936 Pentateuch by Rabbi Joseph Hertz with ArtScroll’s 1993 Stone Edition Chumash. I concluded with a wishlist of sorts for a new Modern Orthodox shul Humash. I said that it ought to merge the aesthetic appeal of the ArtScroll with the Hertz edition’s engagement with modernity. The commentary, I wrote, should focus on peshat (plain meaning), employ literary techniques that notice themes, characters, and narrative structure, provide “religious inspiration within a moral framework,” and speak to both the learned and the uninitiated. It was a tall order, but I noted that I was eagerly anticipating R. Sacks’ Humash, which I hoped would do all of these things.
The article proved far more popular than I expected. It might even be said that the want of a R. Sacks Humash inaugurated the most productive phase in my career as a writer.
But while my writing took off, it seemed like the promised Humash was not to be. In 2018, R. Sacks called it “the biggest project [he had] ever undertaken,” suggesting that it was far from being finished. And then, in 2020, he tragically passed away. How could his capstone project be completed without him?
That today I hold in my hands the Koren Shalem Humash with the translation and commentary of R. Jonathan Sacks is thanks to the perseverance of a team of editors and writers at Koren Publishers – including R. Sacks’s niece Jessica Sacks (xi).[1] R. Sacks completed the translation of the Humash before he died, and it was published in the 2021 Koren Tanakh Maalot. But it’s clear from the “For Further Reading” section at the back of the present volume—which lists the publications from which each portion of the commentary was taken—that he only drafted a commentary for parts of three parshiyot: Shemot, Vaera, and Bo. The rest of the commentary was assembled from his voluminous writings elsewhere—primarily the many cycles of Covenant & Conversation on the weekly Torah portion, but also from his other published books and lectures, including his Mahzorim, Siddur, and Haggadah.
The volume’s editors took “great care” to present R. Sacks’s “ideas and messages in his own words, only adapting and reshaping them to preserve his style in the new format” (xii). Nevertheless, because the new Humash commentary is a medley of disparate sources whose compilation was not overseen by R. Sacks, I’ll admit I was initially skeptical. But I shouldn’t have been; the editors have done an outstanding job collecting and synthesizing many of R. Sacks’s major ideas about the Torah in a compelling commentary that speaks in his voice, holds together as a cohesive work, and addresses our contemporary age. Who knows? It might even be the new Modern Orthodox Humash.
This review will focus on several themes that emerge from the Humash’s commentary that allow us to judge its success as a distinctly Modern Orthodox work. First, a few caveats are in order. I am keenly aware that R. Sacks detested the term Modern Orthodoxy, calling it “overrated to the nth degree” because it is exclusionary and promotes “the narcissism of small differences.” I use it nonetheless because it describes and resonates with the North American community in which his Humash is likely to have the largest impact. Further, although the Humash was not put together by R. Sacks, I have no convenient alternative other than to treat the editors’ choices as reflecting his vision for the work. Finally, I will not discuss R. Sacks’s translation, which I have written about elsewhere.
The Humash’s Look and Feel
Let’s begin with the Humash’s layout, aesthetics, and a couple of secondary features. The Hebrew and English text of the Torah is large, crisp, and clear. The thinness of the paper is disappointing, but every Koren Siddur and Humash has this issue. However, this is the first time Koren’s longstanding decision to print the Hebrew on the left and the English on the right makes sense to me, as it allows R. Sacks’s commentary to be read from left to right across each two-page spread. (However, it does lead to some awkwardness when citing a range of page numbers, as will be evident in many of the citations that follow.)
Targum Onkelos and Rashi are printed below the Torah text, and Koren made unique choices with each. The Humash uses a version of Onkelos that follows Yemenite vocalization and punctuation, which “reflects the ancient tradition of reading the Targum publicly, as is still practiced today in Yemenite communities” (xii). Further, the Humash marks in gray the places where Onkelos departs from a literal rendering of the verse. As for Rashi, the publishers decided to present it in a unique typeface designed by Eliyahu Koren, who founded Koren in 1961, which some might find a little clearer than traditional “Rashi script.” More remarkably, the publishers relied on manuscripts of Rashi’s commentary as well as early and influential printed editions to create a new “critical” edition of the text, which they believe removes “all later additions and textual corruptions” from the commentary (ibid.). Rashi is also vocalized and punctuated. Finally, the volume includes a short commentary on each Haftarah by Rabbi David Nativ taken from the Hebrew Koren Humash Yisrael and translated into English (xiii).
Next we will consider R. Sacks’s commentary.
Torah and Secular Wisdom
Like his predecessor R. Hertz, R. Sacks quotes liberally from secular and non-Jewish sources, particularly with reference to philosophy and psychology. In his commentary on kashrut, he writes:
To fully apply the Torah’s dietary laws, we need an understanding of zoology. To apply Torah to the human mind, one must understand psychology and psychiatry. To apply it to society, we must understand sociology and anthropology. To cure poverty, we must understand economics. To avoid environmental catastrophe, we need to understand botany, biology, climatology, and much else besides. (776-79)
To R. Sacks, “pursuing secular studies” is more than “purely instrumental.” It allows us “to see the wisdom of God’s creation. … To repair the world, you have to understand it” (779-78). This is a proudly modern approach to the value of secular wisdom.
But unlike R. Hertz, R. Sacks wears his scholarship lightly. The Hertz Humash was a sustained polemic against turn-of-the-twentieth-century Biblical criticism and, at the same time, a plea to accept those aspects of modern scholarship and scientific thought consistent with Torah values. For example, R. Hertz wrote a lengthy essay denying that Genesis Chapters 1 and 2—which use different names for God and present creation stories somewhat distinct from one another—were written by different (necessarily human) authors.[2] He wrote another essay accepting the theory of evolution but stressing that “each stage is no product of chance, but is an act of Divine will.”[3]
R. Sacks agrees with R. Hertz on both counts, yet does not dwell on either point. About Genesis 1 and 2, he merely says that creation is “told from two different perspectives, first as cosmology (the origins of matter), then as anthropology (the birth of humanity)” (3). This acknowledges the distinction between the two chapters, but also defuses the larger question by implying that multiple perspectives does not mean there were multiple authors.[4] A few pages later, he suggests that evolution is hinted to in the Torah’s account of creation (12),[5] but there’s little discussion of either issue.[6]
R. Sacks’s decision not to explore conflicts between Torah and science or Torah and historical scholarship is not an oversight, but consistent with how he conceived of the Torah’s purpose. He writes, “To understand a book, one needs to know to which genre it belongs. … [T]he Torah is not a book of history, even though it includes history. It is not a book of science” either (3). Rather, “the Torah is, first and last, a book about how to live” (ibid.). The Torah teaches lessons of eternal relevance, not science or history. As R. Sacks writes memorably in his book The Great Partnership, “Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.”[7] On the one hand, this separation of realms permits one to accept science and historical scholarship as long as it is consistent with fundamental beliefs like the divinity of the Torah. On the other hand, it means that R. Sacks’s focus as an interpreter of the Torah is on making or deriving meaning, not on scientific or historical issues.[8]
Sins of the Fathers
One of the starkest themes in ArtScroll’s Chumash is that the Patriarchs and several other biblical figures never sinned. In ArtScroll’s telling, for example, the fact that Rebecca received a prophecy of ve-rav ya’avod tzair (Genesis 25:23)—that the elder brother would serve the younger—meant that Jacob had to steal Esav’s blessing to fulfill his destiny, even though it was hard for him to act against his truthful nature. Esav, on the other hand, was irredeemably evil and unfit for the Abrahamic mission.[9]
R. Sacks’s approach couldn’t be more different. “No one in the Torah is portrayed as perfect,” he writes (103), and no book “has been more honest about the failings of even the greatest” (82). Rebecca’s prophecy, R. Sacks points out, could mean that the elder will serve the younger, but the Hebrew is ambiguous enough to support the opposite interpretation as well (172).[10] In fact, “reading this parasha, we cannot but identify with Esav, not Yaakov”—we feel Isaac’s shock and see Esav’s tears (ibid.). Esav “is carved from an altogether coarser grain” than Jacob. “But he is not without his humanity, his filial loyalty, and a decent if quick-tempered disposition” (189). R. Sacks poignantly explains that in desiring to bless Esav, Isaac reasoned that although Esav was unfit for the covenantal mission:
he, too, is my child. I refuse to sacrifice him, as my father almost sacrificed me. I refuse to send him away, as my parents sent Hagar and Yishmael away. … I do not ignore who or what he is. But I will love him anyway, even if I do not love everything he does. (188)
This sympathetic reading of Esav is far from ArtScroll’s more traditional one.
Further, according to R. Sacks, Jacob was punished for his deception. Lavan tricks him into marrying the older sister, Leah, before the younger sister, Rachel, as “those who deceive will be deceived” (207). And Jacob is forced to pay obeisance to Esav when they meet again: he is frightened, he bows down seven times, and he calls Esav his lord and himself Esau’s servant. “The roles,” writes R. Sacks, “have been reversed” (191). When Jacob sends Esav a gift of livestock, he even implores “accept my blessing [birkhati]” (Genesis 33:11). R. Sacks says that “Yaakov is symbolically giving back the blessing he took all those years before” (243).
R. Sacks’s reading of the story of Jacob and Esav is thematic, character driven, and sensitive to the Torah’s use and repetition of specific words. This demonstrates the influence of the literary method of Tanakh study best exemplified in the Orthodox world by the work of Machon Herzog in Israel and teachers like Rabbis Yoel Bin-Nun, Yaakov Medan, and Elchanan Samet, among many others. Indeed, R. Sacks’s indebtedness to the literary school is evident throughout the commentary. He refers to the chiastic structure of certain stories—where the second half parallels the first half in reverse order (72, 413, 701)—and points out the thematic significance of the sevenfold repetition of a word (13, 133). Both R. Sacks’s willingness to explore the failings of biblical heroes and his adoption of literary exegetical techniques are emblematic of a Modern Orthodox approach.
Novel Directions
As R. Sacks noted in the interview with which this review began, ArtScroll presents a digest of commentaries. R. Sacks’s commentary in this Humash also cites many rabbinic commentators, but in true Modern Orthodox fashion, he includes figures who are often not part of the right-wing canon, such as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (10), Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (317), the nineteenth century Italian exegete Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto (379, 1095)—who was more academic than most—and Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook (583). R. Sacks also notes opinions that veer from ArtScroll’s more traditionalist approach to the Torah’s narratives, including Rashbam’s suggestion that Jacob crossed the river—leaving him alone to wrestle with the angel—because he was running away from Esav (235) and Rashbam’s view that Joseph’s brothers do not actually sell him to the Ishmaelites; he was pulled from the pit by the Midianites when the brothers were unaware (270-73).
Moreover, unlike ArtScroll or R. Hertz, R. Sacks frequently presents his own interpretations—or at least ones that I have not seen elsewhere. Here are two. In one of the few comments that R. Sacks wrote specifically for this volume before he passed away, he notes that it is “bitterly ironic” that the Egyptian magicians can make blood and frogs too, but cannot remove the plagues of blood and frogs that are causing their people to suffer! In other words, the magicians can only make “the situation worse, not better” (427). Also, R. Sacks is deeply ambivalent about Pinhas’ zealous killing of an Israelite who lay with a Midianite woman. He notes—admittedly conflating textual analysis with the later division of the parshiyot—that Parshat Balak ends on a cliffhanger, “between Pinhas’ act … and the divine verdict on the act,” forcing us “to wait a week before hearing whether he did right or wrong” (1130). Although God concludes that Pinhas acted appropriately, Pinhas is then made a priest in the Mishkan and given a covenant of peace, clarifying “that once is enough” (1135). “Rare indeed are the circumstances in which Pinhas-like zealotry is justified, and if anyone asks whether he may do the same, the answer must always be: no” (ibid.). In fact, an anti-violence streak suffuses the entire commentary, which is consistent with R. Sacks’s writings elsewhere.[11]
A Humash for Our Age
R. Sacks, as he promised in the 2015 interview, focuses on addressing the Torah’s application to the challenges of modernity. For instance, he notes how “the laws of kashrut limit our sense of possession over nature” (1330), and stresses the importance of environmental conservation (1370).
He also attacks the “hyper-individualism of our late capitalist society” and a culture that glorifies “I” and not “we,” (1225-24) arguing instead that storytelling centered around a values-driven historical narrative—like what is modeled in the Torah—can build a covenantal society that fosters a “sense of collective belonging” (1417).[12]
R. Sacks also seeks to instill personal responsibility. When Moses responds to God’s call at the burning bush, R. Sacks writes, “There is no life without a task, no person without a talent … There is an act only we can do, and only at this time … .” This “is the meaning of our life, the purpose of our existence, the story we are called on to write” (388).
And R. Sacks addresses modernity with an eloquence that few other writers can match. For example, he rhapsodizes about the Land of Israel with the insight of one who has walked its soil and witnessed firsthand the delicate balance between strength and fragility that defines the modern State:
For only in Israel is God so close that you can feel him in the sun and wind, sense Him just beyond the hills, hear Him in the inflections of everyday speech, breathe His presence in the early morning air, and live, dangerously but confidently, under the shadow of his wings. (1200)
I can almost hear R. Sacks reading this passage. The Land of Israel comes alive in the power of his poetry. How I miss his voice.
Concluding Thoughts
It’s fair to say that the way R. Sacks incorporates secular wisdom, reads thematically and sometimes counterintuitively, employs literary techniques, and addresses the challenges of our age with inspiring prose makes this work a Modern Orthodox Humash.
Is it the Modern Orthodox Humash? Of that I am not sure.
For one, as Rabbi Yaakov Bieler pointed out in response to my original 2017 article, there are many different directions a Modern Orthodox Humash could take, and the Modern Orthodox community is too diverse for one work to speak to every individual. Rabbi Yaakov Jaffe similarly wondered if we really need our texts to match our ideology precisely; if so, everyone might need their own version of the Humash. Indeed, R. Sacks’s Humash addresses certain aspects of modernity. Yet it largely ignores others, such as the challenges posed by biblical criticism. The Steinsaltz Humash that Koren published in 2018, which I reviewed for the Forward, is another take on a Modern Orthodox Humash: it cites many peshat-based commentaries and places the Torah’s narratives into historical and geographical context. Yet, by incorporating commentary into the translation, it fails to adequately distinguish between what’s in the Torah’s text and what’s an interpretation beyond the text. Both Humashim are “modern” in their own ways, and neither will satisfy every reader. At this point I’m willing to concede that the Modern Orthodox Humash may be a chimera.
There is also the practical problem of getting a new Humash onto synagogue shelves. More than 15 years after its publication, the Koren Sacks Siddur is only very slowly starting to displace the ArtScroll Siddur, and only in a minority of Modern Orthodox congregations. And the 2018 Rabbinical Council of America’s Siddur Avodat HaLev, which I reviewed here, is almost nowhere to be found. ArtScroll’s Stone Chumash is even more entrenched than the Siddur. I see very few Steinsaltz Humashim on the bookshelf. (There are more Hertz Humashim in my synagogue, to tell the truth.) I worry that Rabbi Sacks’s Humash will similarly struggle to gain a foothold. Siddur and Humash stock turn over glacially.
Finally, like every book, the new Humash has its drawbacks. I would have liked to see more focus on the traditional commentaries and discussion of how their methodologies differ. In my opinion, as noted above, R. Sacks also pays insufficient attention to the challenges posed by modern biblical scholarship. R. Hertz’s treatment of those issues is nearly a century old; we need a new primer. And the Humash is missing an introduction. If R. Sacks had lived, no doubt he would have worked to compose a revelatory and paradigm-shifting introduction like he did for the Siddur and Mahzor. Perhaps he would have also written longer essays on difficult thematic and textual issues like R. Hertz did at the end of each of the Five Books in his Humash. On a similar note, one gets a sense from the commentary to Va’era—which is the only parsha for which R. Sacks wrote nearly a full commentary—that he was planning on offering many short verse-by-verse insights that built toward a larger point. The editors were unable to replicate this style when assembling the commentary from his longer essays elsewhere. In these ways and so many others, his passing is still deeply felt five years on.
In some sense, this Humash is incomplete because R. Sacks’s own journey was incomplete. And this is the final lesson he and the volume’s editors leave us with. Moses did not make it to the Promised Land. This teaches us, according to R. Sacks, that “humanity at its highest is still human. We are mortal. … We each have a destination we will not reach” (1480). Life “is about getting up every morning and walking one more day to the Promised Land even though you know you may never get there, but knowing also that you helped others get there” (1482). And who has helped our generation take more steps toward God, Torah, and the Promised Land than R. Sacks?
My relatively minor critiques hardly lessen the achievement of this Humash. So buy it for your home. Buy it for your synagogue. It is a classic for our age, and maybe even for the ages.
[1] All in-text citations are to the volume under review.
[2] J. H. Hertz, ed., The Pentateuch and Haftorahs 2nd ed. (Soncino Press, 1960), 198-200.
[3] Ibid., 194.
[4] R. Sacks even suggests that Genesis 1, with its description of everything being created “according to its kind” is an exemplar of “ordered diversity,” which “is the priestly way of seeing the world” (7)—a reference to the academic view that Genesis 1 came from the priestly school or “P” source. Yet R. Sacks does not discuss the issue further, suggesting that he does not want to wade into Higher Criticism but also that he does not see multiple perspectives embedded in the Torah’s narrative as a challenge to Mosaic authorship of the Torah.
[5] R. Sacks writes that when the Torah says that God rested from all the work He created (asher bara elokim), it adds an unnecesary word, la-asot (Genesis 2:3). This could mean that God created the world “to make”—in other words, “to evolve” (12).
[6] However, R. Sacks addresses conflicts between science and religion at length in his book The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (Schocken, 2011). See particularly his chapter on Darwin, 209-232.
[7] Ibid., 39.
[8] Rabbi Gil Student makes this point succinctly in a recent piece based on an article R. Sacks wrote in 1989. Gil Student, “Rabbi Sacks on Reading Chumash Faithfully,” Torah Musings (Nov. 10, 2025).
[9] The Stone Edition Chumash, Nosson Scherman, ed. (Mesorah Publications, 1993), 134-43.
[10] The verse can be rendered in English so as to preserve this ambiguity: R. Sacks translates, “The greater shall the younger serve,” which can mean either option.
[11] Regarding Shimon and Levi’s destruction of Shekhem, R. Sacks writes, “Violence defiles all. It did then. It does now” (244). As to the command not to despise the Edomite, R. Sacks offers, “Esav may hate Yaakov, but it does not follow that Yaakov should hate Esav” (1388). And vengeance, R. Sacks says, is best left to God (1477). R. Sacks explores these themes further in his book Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (Schocken, 2015). But, as Rabbi Alex Israel writes in Tradition’s just-published special issue on the intellectual legacy of R. Sacks, “the dangers of power and a distinct aversion to its employment … pervades virtually every work that R. Sacks wrote.” Alex Israel, “Not by Might: Aversion to Power in Rabbi Sacks’ Writings,” Tradition 57:4/58:1 (Fall 2025/Winter 2026): 120.
[12] The need for covenantal community is a central philosophical idea underpinning R. Sacks’s work. Dr. Tanya White writes that for R. Sacks, “Covenant is not just a religious concept; it is a way of thinking about the world, one that prioritizes relationships, responsibility, and the pursuit of shared values. What began as a biblical concept narrowly focused on Divine-human relations evolves in R. Sacks’s later work into a comprehensive framework for grappling with the universal challenges of modern life, including those posed by society, postmodernism, and beyond.” Tanya White, “Covenantal Theology in the Work of Rabbi Sacks,” Tradition 57:4/58:1 (Fall 2025/Winter 2026): 247-48.
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