For more than a decade, scholars and laypeople have enjoyed an online side-by-side Hebrew-English Mishneh Torah by Maimonides.
Translated by Rabbi Eliyahu Touger and generously shared with Chabad.org’s students by Moznaim Publishing Corp., it is especially useful for participants in the annual study of Mishneh Torah, in which the entire compendium is studied over the course of just under a year (or three).
Of special interest are the copious and insightful footnotes, which provide context, commentary and elucidation.
However, due to technical reasons, roughly half of the 1,000 chapters that make up Mishneh Torah are without footnotes on Chabad.org. Conversely, Chayenu, a weekly paperback bilingual weekly study syllabus, has footnotes on all chapters, but only those crucial to understanding the text.
This year the Jewish world culminates the 40th annual study cycle of Mishneh Torah on Tammuz 3, anniversary of passing of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson of righteous memory. Inspired by the milestone, Chabad.org and Chayenu have partnered to upload the remaining footnotes to their respective online platforms and apps, completing the work that had begun more than a decade prior.
“Both of our organizations are focused on making Torah study accessible to everyone everywhere,” says Rabbi Yossi Pels, director of Chayenu. “Rambam footnote is an area in which we both have room to improve our offerings, so the partnership was a natural fit.”
Since the Moznaim translation was published in an era when digital records were not kept in formats accessible to modern programs, culling the footnotes will involve scanning paper copies of the book and meticulously converting the scans to text and formatting them to be published on both Chayenu and Chabad.org’s online platforms.
Chayenu’s Rabbi Mendy Angyalfi expects the project to take up the better part of a year and for the product to be released in chunks as it becomes ready.
According to Rabbi Meir Simcha Kogan, director of Chabad.org, daily study is a staple of the cornucopia of offerings the website has developed since going online in 1993. “Learning daily Rambam is both crucial to gaining a broad mastery of Torah as well as a vehicle through which we connect with Jewish brothers and sisters all over the world. With this added resource, our connection has gotten that much richer and better.”
In honor of the celebration, Moznaim is running a special sale, offering 15% off orders for Mishneh Torah and 10% off Sefer Hamitzvot until Sunday, June. 13.
