On Aug. 7, 2020, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) passed away in Jerusalem at the age of 83. But the Steinsaltz Center that he opened many years earlier continues to publish books in his spirit and style, and has catapulted its projects by moving into high digitalization mode.
To celebrate that scholarship and encourage participation in moving it forward, an elegant gala was held on October 2, after Rosh Hashanah and on the cusp of Yom Kippur, at the Orient Hotel in Jerusalem, with the title “A Living Legacy, Jewish Knowledge in the Digital Age.” It was organized by Rabbanit Liza Even-Israel, the daughter-in-law of the late Rav Adin Even-Israel and wife of Rabbi Meni Even-Israel, the rav’s son, and was moderated by Israeli journalist Amit Segal, the chief political commentator of Channel 12 New and of Yediot Aharonot.
The speakers included Rabbi Meni and Ron Dermer, who served as the Israeli ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021. Dermer told the dinner guests: “I first met Rav Steinsaltz 27 years ago when I was the president of a student society at Oxford University. We were hosting a debate between the rav and Richard Dawkins, the world-renowned atheist, on whether God exists. It was a good debate. I think God won.
“I remember the rav’s unassuming manner, his insatiable curiosity, those piercing blue eyes, and his singular sense of humor,” Dermer continued. “I had the honor of introducing the rav before the debate. I said that night that if a teacher is measured by how much knowledge they spread and how many students they have, Rav Steinsaltz is surely the greatest teacher of our generation. Back then, his herculean effort to translate and write a commentary on the Talmud had already opened up the gates of knowledge to hundreds of thousands of students. But that was only the beginning … We learn, therefore we are.”
Referring to Rav Meni, the director of the Steinsaltz Center, Ambassador Dermer said: “Being the son of a great man is both a blessing and a burden. A blessing because what others encounter infrequently and superficially, a son encounters routinely and intimately. A burden because expectations to follow in the path of a great man rest most heavily on the shoulders of the son.”
His remarks were followed by a fascinating presentation of the English language Mishnah Project, the Steinsaltz Digital Platform, and a panel discussion of “Jewish Knowledge in the Digital Age” that included, in addition to Rabbi Meni and Ambassador Dermer, Rabbi Pinchas Allouche, Ian Kaufthal and Jordana Cutler. Rabbi Allouche is the founding rabbi of Congregation Beth Tefillah in Scottsdale, Arizona, a former student of the rav and a graduate of the rav’s high school yeshiva, Makor Chaim. Cutler is public policy director, Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, for Meta (Facebook). From November 2013 to July 2016 she was chief of staff of the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C.
Rabbanit Liza Even-Israel told this reporter: “We have the Steinsaltz Daily Study app that you can download to Android or Apple. It has over 13,000 users and is still only in Beta. In keeping with our mission to ‘Let My People Know’ by providing access to Jewish texts for anyone, anywhere, we are building a new platform, which will include an archive of all the rav’s materials including items that were never released to the public, that will be available for teachers, researchers and students.
“The Hebrew Mishnah was the last series the rav translated during his lifetime. The Mishnah will be in stores, God willing, very soon. We are now fundraising for the English translation. The Rambam Mishneh Torah in English is also underway.” The evening also celebrated the new Steinsaltz web portal.
The rav’s commentary on the Mishnah includes content from experts in zoology, astronomy, agriculture and many other disciplines. Producing the Mishnah in English is expected to take six years and include 13 volumes, accessible to millions throughout the world. Each volume of the Koren Steinsaltz Mishnah contains an overage of 750 color photographs and illustrations.
The evening included musical accompaniment by Aaron Hillel Attia and Shmuel Allouche.
Rav Amechaye Even-Israel, Rav Steinsaltz’s son and project manager of the Mishnah Project, said in a prerecorded message, “Saying goodbye for the last time to your father … standing there at the funeral, you could see that the closest people to him were his students. And you could see their love, their loss … I lost a father. I think they lost something that was much more than that. It left me with the urgent call that his mission really needs to go on.”
Rav Meni said, “His main request, that remained through his last days, to his last moment, was to continue in his life’s mission—to make the Jewish canon accessible and available to everybody.”
The rav authored more than 130 titles that elucidated the Jewish canon, and that have been translated and have been published in millions of copies. The Rav’s translation of the Mishnah began more than 12 years ago and was the last project completed during his lifetime. In a short film he had said, “My plans are for the next 140 years…”
Rav Meni described how when he was a teenager he remembers getting up in the middle of the night and seeing his father in his study with a Talmud open and next to it a book of science fiction. (“Probably Asimov,” he said.)
Rav Allouche described how when he was walking with the rav in Times Square a number of years ago, the rav would accept all the flyers pushed at him by multiple random people, and Rav Allouche asked, “Why are you taking them? You don’t need them.” And the rav said, “I don’t need them, but these people need me to take them, because after they’ve given out a thousand flyers, they get their pay. So why not help a stranger get his pay a little bit quicker?’ Here was a man whose head was in the heavens, but his feet were on the ground.”
Cutler introduced the premiere of the first Metaverse Torah, which is attended with virtual headsets in which four people virtually discussed a Torah issue, ending with a virtual Shehecheyanu. She said that they see their role in this digital age as asking, “How can we as a company help people to understand this technology” and that it is important that we be involved in how we want the internet to look for our children in the future. “If we are involved in the design, it will be less frightening.”
Rav Meni said: “The new web portal will provide unlimited access for educators and students. Scholars will be able to cross-reference ideas and terms from early biblical and later Jewish sources. One can download an app that will give them nine different cycles of daily learning. Tanach, Mishneh, Talmud, Rambam, Tanya … all of it with the rav’s commentaries.”
While Rav Allouche was with the rav in America in 2014, it was he who got the call that the bodies of the three boys who had been kidnapped and murdered, two of whom were students at Makor Chaim, had been found. After the rav was silent, and cried, he quoted the verse “Wake up God, why are you sleeping?” And then, “We spoke about death and about the afterlife. And he said, ‘They say there are angels in heaven and they have wings. But I’ll tell you what’s prettier. A human being with wings. And that’s what I try to do. To give people wings so that they too can fly, grow and soar to the heavens.’ Rabbi Steinsaltz wanted to give people wings, but he also wanted us to give other people wings, and that is how we should honor him.”
Toby Klein Greenwald and her husband, Yaakov, worked for Rav Steinsaltz in the 1970s, Yaakov was his student in earlier years, and Toby taught for seven years in his Makor Chaim high school yeshiva in Gush Etzion; one of the boys who was murdered was her student. She is an award-winning journalist and theater director and editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com.
