Derekh Selulah is a Hebrew-title edition of the Torah that presents the Pentateuch with a traditional rabbinic apparatus and with Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation and Hebrew commentary. It is a five-volume work, and the translation-commentary at its center is better known as the Bi’ur. The edition is therefore not a narrative treatise or a biography of Mendelssohn; it is a study Bible whose contents are the five books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy, accompanied by several layers of translation and explanation.
The biblical text is accompanied by Rashi’s commentary and Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation. It also carries a German translation printed in Hebrew letters, often called the Targum Ashkenazi, and a Hebrew commentary, the Be’ur, which explains the text and the translation. The Be’ur focuses on the plain sense, Hebrew grammar and syntax, lexical meaning, and the reasons for particular translation choices; it engages traditional exegesis, especially Rashi, sometimes agreeing with it and sometimes offering a different explanation. The German rendering aims at clear, readable German while remaining tied to the Hebrew, and it uses Hebrew characters so that Jewish readers accustomed to Hebrew script could read it.
The edition’s title-page description also lists Tiqqun Soferim, haftarot, and the Five Megillot, so the volumes can include not only the weekly Torah text but also prophetic readings and the festival scrolls. The core, however, is the Pentateuch with Rashi, Onkelos, the German translation, and the Be’ur.
Derekh Selulah is thus a rabbinic Bible edition: it surrounds the Hebrew Torah with traditional translations and commentary and adds Mendelssohn’s modern German translation and Hebrew explanation. Its contents are textual, exegetical, and liturgical rather than a continuous prose argument.
The Be’ur’s notes function as a bridge between the Hebrew text and the German rendering: they clarify grammatical forms, idiom, and lexical choice, and they explain why a given German word or construction was preferred. Because the notes are in Hebrew, the edition remains a Hebrew study tool even while supplying a German translation; the vernacular is the accessible rendering, while Hebrew remains the language of explanation and debate. The parallel apparatus also makes the volume comparative: Onkelos, Rashi, and the Be’ur are set alongside one another so that the reader can weigh early Aramaic translation, classical rabbinic exegesis, and modern philological explanation. In that sense Derekh Selulah embodies a model of a traditional rabbinic Bible enlarged by a modern translation and commentary rather than replaced by them.
