Ambitious Tehillim Faced Scrutiny

By COLlive staff

How do you cram hundreds of sichos and classic commentaries into a hand-held book and still make it usable?

That was the near-impossible challenge which Rabbi Chaim Miller and his editorial team faced when embarking on the Schottenstein Edition of the Tehillim, some 9 months ago.

“The most important rule in Jewish publishing,” Miller explained, “is not to put too much on the page. The minute you have too much commentary and not enough text, people switch off.”

The editorial team at Kol Menachem, who have produced such international bestsellers as the Gutnick Chumash and Slager Haggadah and Megillah, were completely flummoxed when it came to this new project.

“You couldn’t cram it all into the page. It just wasn’t working,” said one of the designers at Kol Menachem.

So the Schottenstein family enlisted the help of Rabbi Ezra Schochet, the beloved Rosh Yeshivas Ohr Elchonon Chabad in Los Angeles, CA.

Kol Menachem presented a choice of different presentations to “The Rosh,” but he initially rejected all of them. “He was not an easy man to please,” Miller commented. “He understood this was a historic opportunity and that we needed to get it right.”

“So I went back to the drawing board. I edited everything down so that it packed more punch into less space, and I added a much wider range of Classic Questions. Finally the Rosh gave his brachah.”

Since then, the Kol Menachem team has been working steadily and the book is now nearing its half-way point.

David Schottenstein–who commissioned the book together with his brother Aryeh and his father R’ Tovia–was more than excited about the progress.

“I think this book is going to be huge,” said the founder of Astor & Black Custom Clothiers who now runs the Swiss Stays company. “So many people say Tehillim but struggle to find it meaningful, and now that is all going to change.”