Whatever Happened to the Hebrew Publishing Company?

One summer, some thirty years ago, when my father went to his grandparents for Shabbos, he noticed that his grandfather’s siddur was falling apart.

“Let me buy you a new siddur, Grandpa,” he said.

My great-grandfather finally agreed, but only if my father could find him a Birnbaum siddur, like his old one. It took a while, but he did find one, and the next time he went to his grandparents, he brought it along.

Ha-Siddur Ha-Shalem, with translation and commentary by Philip Birnbaum (popularly known as simply “The Birnbaum Siddur”), was the king of American siddurim from the time it came out in 1949 until the ArtScroll siddur took over. From it’s clear typesetting, simple English translation and plain instructions, it set the standard for all that would follow.

It was published by the Hebrew Publishing Company, a Jewish publisher on the Lower East Side that published siddurim, haggados, songbooks, Hebrew textbooks, and countless other works from the 1920s to the 90s. In 1980, it was purchased by Charles D. Lieber, a former Random House executive with ties to the Center for Jewish Renewal (Reconstructionist Judaism) and it all went downhill. Well, that and the changing Jewish publishing scene with ArtScroll and demographics. That reissued siddur my father bought in the mid-90s seems to be some of the last activity the company ever had.

Charles D. Lieber died in 2016. A few years ago, I started wondering what had happened next. Online searches yielded nothing except other people wondering the same thing. Affiliated websites and phone numbers turned out to be dead ends. (In one amusing conversation, I was clearly not the first person who had called a certain number asking for information about the HPC and the person who answered was very apologetic that they couldn’t help, or even help me get in touch with the other people who had called them).

Finally, I hit upon the solution. Charles Lieber’s son is John Nathan“Janno” Lieber, CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. As a public figure, I reasoned, there must be a public email address to which I can send inquiries. Indeed, I found one, and sent him an email asking for information on the HPC.

And I got a response! He referred me to his brother James, who gave the sad news that the company was no longer functioning. So much for my hopes of getting a job there. I offered to buy it, but I don’t think he took me seriously. Which is good, because I probably don’t have the money for it.

But now we (kinda) know the end of the story.

For now.