VIN News – Brooklyn, NY – After over thirty years of hard work, Artscroll is celebrating the completion of its Yad Avraham Mishnayos series. Featuring the work of dozens of editors and scholars, the popular forty four volume series, available in both hard and soft cover, has become a fixture in Jewish homes everywhere.
The Yad Avraham Mishna series, originally sponsored by Louis Glick in memory of his son Avraham Yosef, opened up the world of mishnayos to an audience for whom it had previously been unattainable. The success of the Mishnayos project demonstrated that there was an audience who hungered for the assistance of an English translation for Torah She’Baal Peh, ultimately launching the project that became the hugely popular Schottenstein Talmud.
The Yad Avraham Mishna series was also responsible for allowing Artscroll to grow into the publishing giant that it is today. In its early days, like any other newfound company, Artscroll found itself struggling financially when Joel Fleishman, a professor of law at Duke University in North Carolina, walked into Artscroll’s Coney Island Avenue offices to express his gratitude for making mishnayos available in English. A leading authority in the United States on non-profit organizations, Fleishman suggested that Artscroll create a research arm supported by a non profit organization and with that the Mesorah Heritage Foundation, which provides the support for Artscroll’s extensive research was born.
Gavriel Sanders, Director of Public Relations at Artscroll, told VIN News in an exclusive interview “One unknown man’s connection to the learning of mishnayos led to the creation of something that touches practically every Jewish home. He couldn’t read Hebrew and needed the English and today is one of the founding members of the Mesorah Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees. We say in Pirkei Avos ‘mitzvah goreres mitzvah’. He is a living example of that.”
An exclusive VIN video interview with CJ Studios Yosef Shidler takes you inside Artscroll’s headquarters to discuss the completion of the mishnayos series and provides a sneak peek at some of the newest publications to be rolling off Artscroll’s printing press.
