Philip Birnbaum

Personal data may be processed to do the following: use precise geolocation data and actively scan device characteristics for identification. The Birnbaum Siddur, with nearly 800 pages, went through dozens of reprints. Birnbaum firmly kept the type all one size, because of his pedagogical belief that “children, trained in reading the larger type in the siddur, gradually develop a prejudice against whatever appears in the smaller print.” Courtesy of David Olivestone The New York Times once aptly described him as one of the world’s “most obscure best‐selling authors.” Yet for many decades, in synagogues and Jewish homes throughout North America and even around the world, his was a household name. He was Dr. Philip Birnbaum, translator, editor and author of over twenty books of Judaica, chief among them Ha-Siddur Ha-Shalem, known everywhere as “The Birnbaum Siddur,” which was by far the most popular siddur used in Modern Orthodox congregations in the second half of the twentieth century. This year marked his thirtieth yahrtzeit since he passed away at age eighty-four. Despite his one-time renown in the Jewish world, virtually nothing has ever been written about him, outside of a 1967 Jewish Press profile and a New York Times obituary. I came to know Dr. Birnbaum in the 1970s, when for several years I was the editor at the venerable Hebrew Publishing Company (HPC) in New York, in its day one of the leading publishers of Judaica in America. The company was owned by the Werbelowsky family (later shortened to Werbel) and occupied an impressive former bank building on Delancey Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Publishing Jewish books is not usually a very lucrative pursuit, but Philip Birnbaum was almost unique in that his books sold so well that he was one of the very few Jewish authors able to sustain himself solely on his royalties. True, his needs were few, as he never married and he lived very simply, but once his books began to meet with success, he gave up his teaching positions and moved to Manhattan’s Upper West Side. What is perhaps even more remarkable is that a nineteen-year-old Polish immigrant attained such a high level of fluency in a language that was not his mother tongue, and produced felicitous, articulate, eloquent and sometimes even poetic translations of complex texts. Not only was he a master of the nuances of English vocabulary, syntax and phraseology, he was also a superb Hebraist, which added yet another invaluable dimension to his work. The Hebrew Publishing Company occupied this former bank building on Delancey Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As one observer wryly noted, “Since everything is more or less backward in a company that specializes in Hebrew and Yiddish, the building supports the columns instead of the columns supporting the building.” It was later converted into apartments, offices and stores. Photo: Robert K. Chin/Alamy Stock Photo When he was not occupied with his scholarly pursuits in one of Manhattan’s several outstanding Jewish libraries, Birnbaum would write articles and book reviews for the Hebrew weekly Hadoar , published by the Histadrut Ivrit of America, of which he was a board member. Often, he would come into the HPC office to chat or to discuss possibilities for new editions of his works. Birnbaum had high expectations of other people’s scholarship, which were not always met. Ira Kellman, a fellow congregant at The Jewish Center in Manhattan, remembers him as “very precise and scholarly. Rabbis were at peril if they made a mistake in their Hebrew or any other area of Birnbaum’s expertise.” Attorney Lawrence Kobrin, who served as president of The Jewish Center, recalls that Birnbaum “was a very private person, immersed in his scholarship and publishing efforts. We invited him on several occasions to join us for a Shabbat meal, but I cannot recall his ever having accepted.” Born in 1904 in Kielce, Poland, Philip (Paltiel) Birnbaum came to the United States in 1