izzun books is an independent publisher of Jewish books, focussing on bringing balance and equilibrium (izzun) to Jewish publications.
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Up until recently, the realm of Jewish publishing has been largely dominated by presses which operate from within the Ḥaredi sectors of the Jewish world. If you find an English book of Jewish interest, especially one which has traditional sources or a religious outlook, chances are it has been published by ArtScroll, Feldheim, or Koren. All of these have their merits, but they also have problems; ArtScroll and Feldheim in particular are guilty of censoring texts they find inconvenient and disguising interpretations which disagree with their community’s outlook on Judaism.
As a result of this frustration, together with the rise of internet-based Print-On-Demand (POD) businesses, I decided a few years ago to try my hand at adding something new to the realm of Jewish books. After securing a grant from the Jewish Theological Seminary and the backing of several dozen strangers via Kickstarter, I set out on my first such project. That first project was a three-year long endeavour to create a Sefaaradi siddur which reflected egalitarian practice and gender-neutral language– the result of which was Siddur Masorti, launched in November 2019.
Since then, Siddur Masorti has sold over 500 copies, and reached thousands of people via word of mouth. Having seen this surprising result, my collaborator Isaac Treuherz and I, set to work right away on creating a Shabbat edition (the first volume was a Weekday siddur), and, I’ve decided to expand the effort beyond this one project and to open a small publishing ‘house’ called Izzun Books.
Izzun means ‘equilibrium’ in Hebrew, and the idea is that I want to try and bring more balance to the Jewish books available. I’ll be focussing on liturgical texts, siddurim and haggadot, but also poetry, art books, cookbooks, and translations of out-of-print classic words of Rabbinic literature. Realistically, I’m aiming to print and sell one new publication a year, slowly helping to re-balance the Jewish book-o-sphere from a different point of view.
