Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the Artscroll

Orthodox by Design is a comprehensive, innovative, and ground-breaking study of the world’s largest Orthodox Jewish publishing house, Artscroll, and its unrivaled influence in the English-speaking Jewish diaspora. Stolow’s study of Artscroll is accomplished through a carefully developed interdiscipli-nary methodology that combines media analysis with history, ethnographic inquiry, and scriptural interpretation, all informed by the diverse fields of media, religion, and social sciences. Situated in the middle of the most contested struggles for acknowledg-ment and legitimacy within contemporary Jewish public life, Jeremy Stolow insists that Artscroll’s unquestionable success (beginning in 1976 with 500 copies of The Magillah: The Book of Esther, it eventually emerged as the most significant player in the Jewish publishing world with books on virtually all aspects of Orthodox Judaism) lies in the publisher’s ability to balance Jewish orthodoxy of the strictest kind (Haredism) with business acumen and technological innovation in the printing process. Undoubtedly, as far as religious interpretation is concerned, Artscroll’s access to the multiple diasporic audiences is partially explained by its commitment to the trans