For many years I’ve been a big fan of Rabbi Amnon Bazak as an extraordinary example of the Gush approach to learning Tanach. In his book To This Very Day: Fundamental Questions in Bible Study, he takes a step back to look at the big questions modernity has raised about the study of Tanach. Using…
Category: Modern Orthodoxy
Books for Israel
Given that today is Yom HaZikaron and tomorrow is Yom Haatzmaut, I thought it was a good time for a survey of some great books on Israel, both fiction and nonfiction, that are worth reading (some of which I’ve written about in this space). The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish…
Saving Our Kids – A Reflection on the Tikvah Foundation’s Jewish Schools and Technology Summit
I love being able to come home from a conference feeling full from having learned so much! Sunday and Monday I was joined by Daniella Greenspan (President of the Board) and Orly Rachamim (VP and Director of Educational Technology) at the Tikvah Foundation’s Jewish Schools and Technology Summit. Over 50 schools and 200 lay and…
Mesilat Yesharim – Ramchal
Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto is one of the most interesting figures of Jewish modernity. Born in Italy in 1707, he was broadly educated, a prolific author who wrote not only Torah, but plays, and was deeply controversial. At the age of 20 he was exiled from his native land because he claimed to learn Torah…
Avigayil Rock – פרשני המקרא
Amongst my most recommended books of this past year is פרשני המקרא, by Avigayil Rock z’l, (it has been translated into English under the title Great Biblical Commentators). It is an extraordinary, encyclopedic panorama of biblical commentary starting with Onkelos’s Arameic translation, through the middle ages, and into modern times. Each of the 25 chapters…
Rav Rimon
Part of my daily learning seder includes halacha. I’ve learned different sefarim over the years, most often classics like Mishna Berura or Shmirat Shabbat Ke’Hilchata. But more recently, my favourites have been the books of Rav Tzvi Rimon (having just finished his volume about Sefirat HaOmer and laws around the bracha for newly flowering trees…
Samuel Lebens – A Guide for the Jewish Undecided: A Philosopher Makes the Case for Orthodox Judaism
I took a first year philosophy class in university which went chronologically from the ancient Greeks to the modern Europeans. The medieval philosophers were very interested in God-proofs, which I found entirely uncompelling. This wasn’t because I was so sophisticated, or understood the weaknesses in their arguments (which I have since learned are many). It…
The Mirror of Leadership
The timing was fortuitous. We were driving into New York to see family, and listened to the 18Forty podcast interview with Rabbi Yissy Kaminetsky, the Rosh Yeshiva of DRS, an all-boys yeshiva high school in Long Island. Now, when I finish a podcast I just go straight to the next one, but my wife has…
Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up – Jerry Colonna
One of the genres I tend to read is leadership books, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more prescriptive and researched based (e.g. The Human Side of School Change, by Robert Evans), others written from the experience of the authors (e.g. Onward, by Howard Schultz about Starbucks). Reboot: Leadership and the…
Finding Ruchniyut
On my recent trip to Israel I was privileged to spend a couple of hours with Rabbi Yishai Zinger. Rav Dov Zinger, his father, started a yeshiva high school in Israel that has a very intense focus on sparking religious commitment (Rav Zinger also does a lot of other interesting things, especially around tefilah, across…