Copublishing Agreement Inked with Hebrew University Press

I am happy to announce an historic event. This week Jerusalem Perspective signed an agreement with Magnes Press, the publishing house of the Hebrew University, to copublish the English translation of the late Professor David Flusser's two-volume collection of Hebrew articles (approximately 60 articles -- in translation, there will be about 1,000 pages). It appears likely that Eerdmans Publishing Company will join us in publishing these two volumes and will be responsible for their distribution in North American.

I want to thank those who have donated to the Translation Project. Your generosity made it possible to gain the involvement of Magnes Press. May your reward be in Heaven! Your names, individually, will appear on the copyright page of the book (unless you have requested to remain anonymous).

We apologize to Translation Project donors for the delay in getting this project off the ground, but Magnes Press and Jerusalem Perspective were determined to find the perfect translator. Flusser's writings are not easy to translate. Because of Flusser's enormous range, there are only a handful of translators in the world who could even hope to translate his books and essays. To translate Flusser one would need not only to possess total fluency in Hebrew and English, but also to have a thorough knowledge of ancient Jewish, Roman and Greek history and literature.

We have hired the best translator I have ever encountered. He is a great scholar in his own right in several of the fields of Flusser's expertise, and holds the rank of professor at a major university. He also translates rapidly. We signed a contract with him only a few months ago, and already he has turned in his translation of the first third of the first volume of Flusser's collection! According to our contract with him, he will complete the translation of Volume One before the end of January 2006. It should take about six months more to get the volume in print once we have the English translation in hand.

In order to complete this important publishing project, making a large part of David Flusser's scholarly legacy available to the English-speaking world, Jerusalem Perspective will need an additional US$60,000. I appeal to those who have already donated to the Translation Project to continue to include this project in your giving, and to others who have not yet contributed, to consider helping to underwrite the project.