When I purchased this Tanakh I was mostly interested in the translation it contains, and curious about the commentary, but I was very pleased to discover the numerous lengthy essays included in the back of the book, all of which are interesting and many invaluable to a better understanding of the text.

The running commentary along the text of the Tanakh is refreshing because it contains both rabbinic and scholarly, even critical, information. When placed along side a fairly conservative translation like the NJPS, the result is a well balanced book that "debates with itself" to allow the reader a full range of opinions to choose from. The short (typically one or two page) introductions at the beginning of each book provide useful historical context for the books, pulling them out from the "traditional understanding" and allowing them to be properly framed in the environment and circumstances under which they were written, or as close as we can get to uncovering that. I want to read the books to understand why they were written and what the original author, or authors, meant by their text, and this Tanakh allows me to do that better than any other Bible I have seen. ( )

A great Old Testament translation ( )

Very insightful commentary. ( )