This week, we are celebrating Shavuot, the holiday where we commemorate the incredible gift of the Torah. We eat dairy foods (meant to acknowledge the land flowing with “milk and honey” that was promised to us), study all night long, and come together as a community in gratitude for the sacred text that keeps us bound together through the ages.
I’ve always loved the idea of a kind of a study-a-thon, a 24-hour learning endeavor that shows off just how deep and exciting our knowledge stores are. In particular, I love the idea that we use the term “Torah” in two different ways. With a capital “T,” Torah refers to the five books of Moses, the central aspect of the Bible that we consider most sacred.
But torah with a small “t” refers to any and all learning that the Jewish people have codified, from midrash stories to modern responsa literature. We take our Torah very seriously, but we also delight in continuing the writing tradition that has been central to keeping our people alive.
To that end, I wanted to offer some of the best new entries into the corpus of torah over the past decade. Each of these books is a beautiful expression of Jewish ideas brought in a new, accessible, and creative way. It reminds us that the work of understanding our world is never finished and that the world is so much more beautiful when we use Judaism to experience it.
Here All Along – Sarah Hurwitz
Like many today, Hurwitz did not have an altogether positive experience of Judaism as a kid. It wasn’t until she went through a massive life transition as an adult that she returned to our tradition and found how impactful it can be in making meaning. Hurwitz offers the greatest sales pitch for welcoming Judaism into a person’s life, made all the more beautiful because she isn’t a Jewish professional. This is the best book for potential converts or those who want to know how I make Judaism meaningful in my everyday life.
Morality – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
It is hard to argue that a book is cutting-edge when the author is deceased, but Rabbi Sacks certainly feels like the exception. His 2019 opus, Morality, is perhaps the least obviously Jewish of these books. The text applies to a general sense of bringing ethics to our daily lives in the 21st century. But it is, perhaps, the most compelling expression of what it means to ask the question: how can my Jewish ideals make modern life all the more powerful and meaningful? Sacks uses his many decades of public service to explain how he thinks we can best forge a path into a very tumultuous future.
The Color of Love – Marra B. Gad
The Jewish community has always been diverse and full of richness, but we haven’t always done a good enough job of expressing that. In The Color of Love, Gad describes what it was like growing up as a Jew of Color, showing us the richness of her life as a Jew as well as the hardships that other Jews forced upon her because of their prejudice. Gad gives us powerful insight on how to be the best version of the Jewish community through inclusion and love.
God is Here: Reimaging the Divine – Rabbi Toba Spitzer
We don’t talk about God as much as we probably should. But Rabbi Spitzer offers a wonderful insight into how we can frame our conversations about God to most powerfully and impactfully help us understand our relationship with a higher power. Using Jewish ideas and language, Spitzer gives us a chance to reject the strictest understanding of God, in favor of something far more loving, accessible, and powerful.
Judaism is About Love – Rabbi Shai Held
Shai Held is one of the brightest names in Jewish writing today, and his latest book continues his excellent track record. This is an insightful and textually heavy-hitting look at all the ways that love plays a central role in Jewish theology and practice and how we can best express our deepest connections with our faith through expressions of love.
DISCLAIMER: I am still in the process of reading this one. The first half has been spectacular. If the second half is terrible, I will apologize, but I’m not super worried about that happening and am willing to speak highly of the whole book with only half the information.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
