Torah for the Masses

The author of a popular new series of English translations of classical Torah works tells the story of his own journey back to Yiddishkeit. His life is now devoted to helping make that process easier and more accessible for others.

An Early Start

Born into a traditional Jewish family in Kenton, London, Rabbi Miller never would have guessed that he would someday become a rabbi who would help disseminate Judaism around the world. Although he had a strong Jewish identity growing up, he didn’t observe many mitzvos. He recalls attending synagogue as a child and finding it to be an alienating experience.

During the year leading up to his bar mitzvah, he was required to go to shul every Shabbos. The rabbi urged him to continue attending after his bar mitzvah. “If you don’t come to shul again next week, it was all a waste,” he said. Despite his Jewish guilt, Rabbi Miller didn’t return to synagogue again for years.

“Shul didn’t speak to me,” he recalls. “I didn’t understand the Hebrew, but the English was just as alienating — especially because the translations at the time were written in archaic English and filled with ‘thou’s’ and ‘thy’s.’ My main motivation in writing my Chumash is that I don’t want others to have to go through a similar experience.”

In school, he once had a homework assignment to write a report on some of the stories in Tanach. “I found the translations to be stuffy and old-fashioned and felt that they had the potential to be exciting and captivating if told slightly differently,” he says.

Instead of analyzing the biblical passages, he got creative and dressed up the Torah’s stories with contemporary themes and language. On his report, his teacher wrote that it appeared as if he wanted to “retranslate the Bible.” Neither of them could have guessed that her words would someday come true!

Guiding the Perplexed

After graduating high school, Rabbi Miller went on to attend medical school at the University of Leeds in northern England. He excelled in his studies, ironically with the exception of religion, art, and English — all the subjects that he uses for his publishing company today.

“The Arizal says that the areas in our lives that challenge us the most often possess our greatest potential,” he explains. “I guess I ended up putting my energy into these fields later in life in order to prove to myself that I could do it.”

During his time in university, he began to contemplate the meaning of life. One day he noticed a translation of the Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim (The Guide for the Perplexed) in the college bookstore. He bought a copy and read it from cover to cover, even though Rambam isn’t exactly easy reading. (* Each individual should consult with his Rav about whether studying Moreh Nevuchim is appropriate for him.)

“It had a very profound effect on me,” he says. “Until that moment, I thought Judaism was a dry and stagnant religion. I suppressed my interest in Judaism because of the oppressive synagogue experience growing up — ‘All rise and turn to page such-and-such for the recitation of the Eighteen Benedictions.’ I didn’t think that Judaism actually had anything interesting to say about life or the meaning of existence.”

This sefer, however, inspired him to begin learning about Judaism, and he slowly started to take on mitzvos, at first in private and eventually in public.

“In England we were taught to hide our Jewishness,” he says. “The prevailing attitude amongst secular Jews was that we were guests in the country and shouldn’t flaunt our Judaism in public. It was something to be embarrassed by. Even though mitzvos resonated with me, I didn’t want to come out of the closet and do anything in public for fear of what others would think or say.”

In college, the very first time he wore his tzitzis out, he was deathly embarrassed. His fears were legitimized when he walked into his first class of the day and everyone stared at him. Finally someone came over to him and pointed out that the elastic from his pants had snapped and was hanging out.

No one had ever seen tzitzis before, and they had no earthly idea what they were.

As he became more committed to Judaism, Rabbi Miller frequently used to argue with his atheist friends to try to prove G-d’s existence. At one point he came up with a “foolproof” plan.

Each year, one of the final medical exams was on a single section of human anatomy. Since the students had no way of knowing which part of the body the test would be on, they were required to study hundreds of pages of material. That year, Rabbi Miller made a deal with his friend that he would study only one section of anatomy in the hope that the test would be based on that part.

“I figured that Hashem didn’t want me to waste my time studying, so that I could learn Torah instead. I’m a risk taker by nature, but I was totally certain that Hashem was going to show Himself to me and prove His existence to my atheist friend.”

To everyone’s surprise, the test was about the section of the body that he studied. Rabbi Miller doesn’t recall what type of impression it made on his friend, but his own emunah was strengthened a thousandfold.

A Universal Chumash

He eventually became close to a Chabad shaliach, and before long he left university and went to study in Chabad’s yeshivah for baalei teshuvah, the Rabbinical College of America, in Morristown, New Jersey. Although his traditional parents had been thrilled all along that he was becoming more and more committed to Judaism, this was going a bit too far.

“They were afraid that I would never do anything valuable with my life without a degree,” he recalls. “I assured them that I was driven enough to become a congregational rabbi — my dream at the time.”

Rabbi Miller applied himself to his learning day and night to make up for lost time. “I could barely remember the Hebrew I had learned from my bar mitzvah training and I knew absolutely nothing about Judaism, but I applied myself and worked very hard to catch up,” he recounts.

Four years later, he went on to receive semichah in the central Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch Yeshivah in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

He married the daughter of Yerimiyahu Angyalfi, the Rav of one of the community shuls in Leeds, England, with whom he had spent many Shabbosos during his university years. “I never thought they would be interested in a baal teshuvah like myself,” he recalls.

Shortly after getting married, Rabbi Miller settled in Leeds and helped run a yeshivah program there with his fatherin-law. They brought over bachurim from Chabad yeshivos in New York who wanted to learn seriously while helping to strengthen the community. During this time, Rabbi Miller started working on his English translation of the Chumash. After a few years he decided to move to America to work on publishing his books.

Today Rabbi Miller lives in Crown Heights with his wife and five children, although he prefers not to be labeled a regular Chabadnik.

“I don’t believe in labels,” he explains. “There are so few Yidden in the world, and there’s so much division between groups. Why should we focus on our differences as opposed to the things that unite us? I’m a bit of a chameleon; I fit into every environment. I love to learn and teach everything.”

Rabbi Miller never intended to write the definitive Lubavitcher Chumash. “I never attended a single farbrengen with the Rebbe,” he says. “I don’t feel fit to be a mouthpiece for Chabad Chassidus.”

In fact, many Chabadniks didn’t even like his Chumash at first because it was too universal. His Haggadah was printed in nusach Chabad (Ari) and regular nusach Ashkenaz. The latter resulted in half the sales, proving that it has appeal far beyond the Chabad community.

“I wanted something that is good for everyone,” he adds.

Inspired to Inspire

During his years in yeshivah and afterward, Rabbi Miller spent a tremendous amount of energy trying to fit into the frum world.

“I was an outsider and I wanted in. Baalei teshuvah often feel unaccepted by the majority of the frum community, and I personally felt like a second-class citizen. I really wanted that acceptance. You can do teshuvah and be forgiven for anything except for being a baal teshuvah.”

Suddenly, after his first book came out, people started looking at him like he was one of them. “When I finally achieved the acceptance I was looking for all those years, it left me with a vacuum. Now where should I put all my energy?

“To quote a famous American comedian, I didn’t want to belong to any club that would accept people like me as a member. All those years I liked being a receiver. Now that I was a ‘member,’ I realized that I had to contribute to the community and start giving back.”

Today, in addition to writing and publishing his books, Rabbi Miller gives weekly shiurim in his house to an assorted group of over 150 young people. “We cater to lost souls — brand-new baalei teshuvah, off-the-derech kids who are bouncing back, older singles, and a few ordinary FFBs (Frum-From-Births) who are searching to connect to something,” he says. “Crown Heights is like a central bus station, with tons of people who are arriving at and leaving Judaism drawn here.”

He recently formed an inspirational Friday-night minyan in his house, based on his new “Lifestyle Books” Friday Night Prayer Companion, in which he gives brief Torah insights throughout Kabbalas Shabbos. The “Lifestyle Books” series is geared toward a broad audience and is designed to provide short inspirational teachings with a practical message.

“In this busy world … people want to know what the take-home message is when they learn Torah,” he explains. “They want to know what it has to do with their lives.”

The Friday Night Prayer Companion includes a practical explanation of the deeper kavanos of the siddur alongside the text. “I want to make the siddur more accessible,” Rabbi Miller continues. “We want to offer our readers a step-by-step guide to what they’re supposed to be thinking and feeling at each part of the prayer service and show them what’s happening in the upper worlds because of their words of tefillah. The siddur was designed to take us on an inner journey to a deeper part of ourselves, and we want to help people begin to explore that journey even if they don’t yet have access to the esoteric sefarim.”

He points out that the secular world is bombarded with books on Kabbalah and spirituality, but there’s not a lot of quality frum literature with a spiritual angle for beginners. “Chassidus speaks to the spirit,” he says. “It warms you and addresses your struggle. People aren’t interested in dry, dogmatic Yiddishkeit today. People need to be inspired.”

Rabbi Miller frequently quotes Jewish historian Rabbi Berel Wein in saying that all revolutions are doomed to failure; either they will fail immediately, or they will succeed and become mainstream, losing their revolutionary fervor.

“When I was becoming frum, I figured that if I grew a beard and became Chassidic, I would find authenticity, but sadly enough, we are all plagued by the same lack of enthusiasm brought on by habit. I became very disillusioned when I realized that not all frum people were inspired all the time.

“The problem is that we go through the motions so often that we forget to stop and think about what we’re doing. We’ve overdosed on the rituals of Yiddishkeit and need to inject them with new vitality. We read from the siddur so frequently, but how often do we study it deeply? We need another grassroots “revolution,” like what the Baal Shem Tov did three hundred years ago.”

His Gifts to Klal Yisrael

When Rabbi Chaim Miller decided to self-publish his English translation and commentary on the Chumash — the Gutnick Edition — it was only because he couldn’t find a publisher who would take it. He never imagined that it would rapidly become a bestseller across the Jewish spectrum, selling 120,000 copies in less than six years and appear in Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese translations.

Today the Gutnick Chumash has become a mainstay in many shuls across the English-speaking Jewish world, providing classic, in-depth commentaries together with inspirational Chassidic interpretations. Rabbi Miller single-handedly does most of the research, writing, and layout for all the books put out by Kol Menachem, the publishing company he runs with Rabbi Meyer Gutnick.

Rabbi Miller’s other books include an elucidated translation of the Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith, a translation of the weekly haftarah portions, the Haggadah, Megillas Esther, and the new 1,550-page color “Lifestyle Books” Chumash and Friday Night Prayer Companion. In the future, Kol Menachem intends to release a translation of Tehillim as well.

It may take an American a while to get used to Rabbi Miller’s proper British accent and dry sense of humor, but underneath the surface lies much more than a talented writer with a sharp intellect and Chassidic inclinations. At heart, Rabbi Miller is a fun-loving searcher for truth who is devoted to the mission of spreading the light of Torah to those near and far.

“I’m passionate about inspiring myself and others to make their Judaism meaningful. It should be vibrant and embrace your entire being — when you’re walking in the forest, when you’re eating, and when you’re in shul. You should always feel an intimate connection to Hashem, no matter where you are.”

A Writer’s Afterlife

The vast majority of Rabbi Miller’s content is based on research he does using the Otzar HaHochma Torah database. “It gets me to learn,” he confesses. “It’s very motivating when you know that you’re writing a book. I’m constantly uncovering new ideas.”

Nonetheless, he admits that writing isn’t an easy profession. “Writing is challenging because you don’t know who your audience is,” he says. “I’ve received hundreds of e-mails, and the vast majority of them are from people who think they found a typo. But I can count on one hand the number of emails I received from people showing appreciation for my books.

“My passion is people — that’s why I sometimes feel I’m in the wrong field. When I travel on speaking tours, it’s inspiring to see that thousands of people are actually reading my books, but otherwise I never get to meet them. I understand why writing isn’t a popular profession. It’s so uplifting when someone actually tells me that my books have helped them on their journey.”

Rabbi Miller quotes an old joke about a writer’s “afterlife.” Their Gan Eden and Gehinnom are virtually identical; in both of them people are typing away in a hot, crowded room for eternity. The only difference is that in Gan Eden they get published!

“Before I published, everyone I showed the manuscripts to was highly critical,” he says. “The designer said that my layout was awful. Maybe they were right, but for some reason people keep buying the books.” His wife often did the initial editing of his work, and her encouragement gave him the motivation to persevere.

“I thought about giving up every single day along the way. It wasn’t easy, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu invests in us, and we have to make sure that investment is fruitful by using our natural gifts and talents in the right direction. You only get one chance in this life. You have to get a clear vision of your unique contribution to the world.”