The Five Books Project

Call It Sleep
Henry Roth

This story about a Jewish greenhorn childhood on the Lower East Side is the first great Jewish immigrant novel. It’s utterly skinless—Roth’s writing, his voice, his protagonist, are all triumphantly bruised. Roth does not for a moment idealize or romanticize the Jewish immigrant experience. It is also one of the great works of fiction about the mother-son relationship, and in that context, it’s a love letter to Yiddish. Even though we only read his mother’s words when Roth is “translating” her Yiddish, it’s magnificent, a completely different language from the cruder English spoken by the “English-speaking” characters. But ultimately, I love the novel because it’s so raw.

Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi

Zakhor is a short book on the relationship between Jewish history and Jewish memory. This book taught me how to read Torah by teaching me what Torah isn’t. It isn’t history, grounded in evidence. It’s not literature insofar as we tend to separate that from history. And it’s not myth, because its characters are very human, very flawed beings—and I include God in that cast of characters. Torah lies at the intersection of those three things, history, literature and myth. Reading Torah is an act of remembering, and our job as readers is to try to understand what is being remembered.

The Seven-Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week
Eviatar Zerubavel

The book is by a sociologist who invented a field called the sociology of time. Judaism is said to be a religion of time, a transposition of Temple worship to temporal worship, but Zerubavel forces you to reckon with the deeper meaning. He shows you that different orders of time have different architectural styles, which influence us as powerfully as do different styles of architecture in space. People also don’t realize that the Jews invented the week. The week is a byproduct of Shabbat, and as such, is a fundamentally Jewish unit of time.

The Human Condition
Hannah Arendt

The fundamental premise of this book is that we are deeply embedded in the materiality of the world and inextricably conditioned by our time and place. Arendt makes explicit a worldview that the rabbis leave implicit. She speaks the language of Greek and Roman philosophy, but what she’s saying is inescapably Jewish. I’m particularly drawn to her philosophy of work, which closely parallels the rabbinic concept of melachah. The rabbis identify 39 categories of work not to be performed on Shabbat. Arendt, you might say, imposes the form of Western philosophical discourse on a deeply rabbinic understanding of the human condition. I rather doubt that’s what Arendt thought she was doing. But I think it is.

The Gospel of Mark

Matthew is generally considered the most Jewish gospel, but I think Mark  is the better storyteller, and that’s partly because he knows his Torah. Stylistically, this book of the Gospels is very biblical—it’s terse and moves quickly and creates characters of unplumbable depth. Mark’s Jesus is an abrupt, difficult, uncanny man-god, terrifyingly full of life. There’s a saying that the New Testament is a midrash on the Old. Mark’s Jesus is a midrash on God, who is equally abrupt, unfathomable, and frightening. The Gospel of Mark helped me to grasp the way in which Christianity is a Jewish sect, because Mark portrays so well the first-century Jewish state of mind that fostered the Jesus cult.

A Child of the Century 
Ben Hecht

Ben Hecht is, to my mind, one of the most significant Jewish figures of the 20th century. He embodied assimilation, professional success, and then a return to Jewish identity and a powerful if ambivalent relationship with Israel. A Child of the Century is his autobiography, and it tells of his transformation from an assimilated, highly successful Hollywood screenwriter to a Zionist activist in the 1940s. He was among a very small group of American Jews who tried to save the Jews of Europe and came up against a timid American Jewish establishment.

Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, the Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems
Edited by Ben Zion Bokser

Rabbi Kook opened the door to Kabbalistic thinking for me. The biggest lesson I got is that God is not static, but dynamic, and we are an essential part of the evolution of the divine. He gave me a way of dealing with the question of how a perfect God could preside over this world. Here you see that the structure of God is precisely about evolving from conditions of imperfection toward perfection. For me, even though Rabbi Kook died before the Shoah, it was a door to a post-Shoah theology. This English reader is a good introduction to Kook’s theology.

The Wild Goats of Ein Gedi
Herbert Weiner

The late Rabbi Herbert Weiner tells of his journey through Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the State of Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was the first book I read that widened the lens of looking at Israel not only as a Jewish state, but as a center of world religions, realizing that Zionism had created a new unprecedented dynamic where we were the majority, and we were in charge of Christian and Muslim minorities. That was a shock to me. I came to realize that Zionism gave us an opportunity that Jews as a persecuted minority under those two religions never had, which was to explore Christianity and Islam as spiritual paths, not as threats.

Operation Shylock
Philip Roth

I think this is the best novel about Israeli-American Jewish relations ever written. It’s hilarious and profound, and Philip Roth at his absolute best. I think it’s very relevant for this moment, even more now than when Roth first wrote it in the 1980s. Roth actually moved from being antiZionist as a young man to developing a much more complicated relationship with Israel. Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld challenged Roth’s anti-Zionism, and it’s all in the book. It’s a fascinating account of an American Jew’s struggle with Israel.

With God in Hell: Judaism in the Ghettos and Deathcamps
Eliezer Berkovits

This is Berkovits’s powerful attempt to create a theology of faith based on the Shoah. It helped me become a believing Jew not despite the Shoah, but because of it. As a result of this book, I saw the Shoah as a cosmic battle in which the forces of evil weren’t only trying to destroy the Jews, but were trying to destroy God through the Jews. It was a war against God, which is very much how Hitler defined it. It made it clear to me that I belong to the side of the Jews who affirmed a world of meaning and purpose.

Mishneh Torah
Maimonides (edited by Philip Birnbaum)

Judaism’s foundation is a vast legal system drawn from the Talmud, which consists of 63 tractates. Maimonides recognized in the 12th century C.E. that the Talmud and its commentaries were far too complex for the average Jew to grasp. He therefore produced a 14-volume work, known as the Mishneh Torah, organizing and summarizing the law in a terse style comprehensible to all. For nearly 1,000 years, the Mishneh Torah has been an excellent place to begin the study of Jewish law, and this one-volume abridgment is my recommended vehicle for starting the journey.

A Letter In the Scroll
Jonathan Sacks

“Why be Jewish?” Sacks asks and answers the question in this volume with a scholarly but accessible journey through Judaism’s central beliefs and practices. This short book, written as a wedding gift for his children, provides an excellent survey of Judaism’s spiritual history and moral teachings. Addressed to the modern Jew in search of meaning and composed in a style that is sometimes simple and sometimes soaring, it makes a compelling case that Jewish ritual and commitment provide an anchor of stability, satisfaction and consolation in our often chaotic world.

Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity
Abraham Joshua Heschel

Heschel was a man of contradictions. His writings focused on the special spiritual essence of the Jewish people. An ardent Zionist, he rejected the idea that land itself is holy and that nationalism could solve the religious problems of modern Jewry. Obsessed with the encounter between God and human beings, he nonetheless could not imagine a Judaism devoid of a drive for social justice. In this collection of lectures and essays, Heschel offers theological insight, a searing critique of Jewish survivalism, a harsh look at the workings of Jewish communal structures and a prophetic insistence that Jewish spirituality must always be wed to moral action.

My Promised Land
Ari Shavit

A brief history of Israel, filled with anecdotes and personal reflections, this volume is a minor masterpiece. The author recounts Israel’s history with love and admiration for the country and its people, but with blistering honesty about its shortcomings. Shavit recounts Palestinian suffering and wants justice for the Palestinian people, but neither disguises nor excuses the moral and political failures of Palestinian leaders. A depressing and hopeful book, My Promised Land manages to be a paean to Zionism, a demand that Israel survive, an acknowledgment of Israel’s dark side and a call for compromise between two longtime rivals, neither with completely clean hands.

To Pray as a Jew
Hayim Halevy Donin

Prayer matters. In this volume Donin expertly interprets the major prayers, offers a clear and helpful how-to on the rituals of traditional worship and stresses ethical awareness as a component of prayer. But Donin does not address the exciting innovations now developing in the contemporary synagogue. Readers will need to supplement this book by looking elsewhere for guidance on spiritual and community-building prayer experiences that are changing the face of Jewish prayer in the synagogues of North America.

Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron
Menachem Klein

Klein is a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He has collected a powerful untold story of the rather elegant and certainly surprising coexistence between Arabs and Jews in pre-state Palestine. The book is filled with stories of Arab-Jewish coexistence that don’t merely challenge the stereotypes we hold, they upend them. Klein fuels our optimism and hopefulness with a different reality than the one we normally see.

Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco
Aomar Boum

By studying Muslim attitudes toward their Jewish neighbors through four generations, Boum takes the reader into an unexpected world. Here we find a mutually respectful and loving relationship that existed prior to the mass emigration of Morocco’s Jews, mostly to Israel, but also to other countries. The book led to a recognition within Morocco of the need to actively preserve Jewish culture and heritage, even though the community has dwindled from around 250,000 in 1948 to a few thousand today.

Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn
Noam Pianko

Pianko introduces us to three alternative Zionist thinkers prior to Israel’s founding. While ultimately other perspectives prevailed, it is important to become aware of the nuances of earlier Zionist thought. The issues raised by these three men remain with us today, often with corrosive effects upon Israel and the entire Jewish people.

Bedouin Culture in the Bible
Clinton Bailey

Bailey is acknowledged as the foremost expert on the Bedouin and possesses the only transcribed collection of Bedouin oral tradition in the world. His latest book claims that the original Jewish people were Bedouin, nomadic people of the desert. This book demonstrates the vast expanse of Jewish scholarship and the deep interconnectedness of Jews to other peoples.

The Prophets
Abraham Joshua Heschel

In this extraordinary work, Heschel explores the Bible’s vast prophetic literature from a thematic point of view. Heschel well understands the power of the word, and he guides us into the lives and thoughts of these transformative human beings in his unique and intellectually stimulating way.

Chovos HaLevavos
Bahya Ibn Paquda

Translated as Duties of the Heart, this is the primary work of the 11th-century rabbi and philosopher Bahya ibn Paquda. As I delved into Judaism, I was often told that “it’s the deed that counts” and that this is what distinguishes Judaism (unlike Christianity, where believing in Jesus supposedly makes everything OK). It turns out that this is a bit of a parody, for although it is true that “the deed shapes the heart”—and if you don’t want to visit your sick grandma, you still should—the most important is ultimately the heart. The author analyzes why we have a tendency to focus on the external, which he says is necessary, but definitely not sufficient.

The Sefer Chofetz Chaim
Yisrael Meir Kagan

Sefer Chofetz Chaim was published in 1873. It covers the Torah’s laws of gossip and slander. When does listening to negative information have a constructive purpose, and when is it destructive? Sensitizing ourselves to be careful with the power of speech seems to be more urgent than ever, especially with Facebook and Twitter, where reputations can be so easily destroyed by a mere keystroke. The most easy-to-digest version is Artscroll’s The Chofetz Chaim: A Daily Companion, which is an abridged form of two of the Chofetz Chaim’s masterpieces. My favorite rule is that you’re not allowed to tell a writer that certain people don’t appreciate her work!

The War Against the Jews
Lucy S. Dawidowicz

I have gotten rid of hundreds of books each time I move, but this one has made it every time. To say “Hitler was a madman” is so often the beginning and end of our understanding of the Holocaust, but Dawidowicz, who was a very careful historian, shows how Hitler received the mandate to do what he did. Germany was not a “country going crazy” but rather systematically carrying out a philosophy that started hundreds of years before. The War Against the Jews shows that evil comes in stages, in a logical progression, and that every decision takes us down a certain path.

The Thinking Jewish Teenager’s Guide to Life
Akiva Tatz

South African rabbi (and doctor) Akiva Tatz is best known for his book Living Inspired, but I have always favored his book for the younger reader, The Thinking Jewish Teenager’s Guide to Life, especially for inclusion in bar or bat mitzvah gifts. It takes you through nearly every subject matter of significance: happiness, ordeals, defining one’s role in life, and the relationship between the sexes—all with an eye toward a deeper and inspiring reality.

The Illuminated Pirkei Avos
The Wolinetz Edition

Pirkei Avos, or Ethics of the Fathers, is a section of the Mishnah that can be appreciated on many levels. Even young children enjoy discussing with their parents, “Who is wise?” and “Who is strong?” because the answers are never what they would expect. The Illuminated Pirkei Avos contains not only commentary but also stunning artwork and calligraphy. From my perspective, the most important teaching in Pirkei Avos is “Aseh Lecha Rav,” make for yourself a rav or teacher. We are being taught here that Judaism ultimately is not a religion you can understand from books, but a relationship—with God—and we can only really grasp it via another relationship, with a teacher.

Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan
Translated by John Felstiner

Paul Celan is the greatest European poet reckoning with the Holocaust. He is a poet of trauma. He was an exceptional poet of the German language, an heir to Hölderlin and Goethe, who was at war with the German language, a language that made it possible for him to become a poet at all. He couldn’t get over what had happened to his family—and to others. I read Celan in my early 20s, and it had a tremendous impact on me. Unlike most American poets, he understood that he was living inside of history. I loved his gravity. Reading him, I began to formulate the kind of poetry I wanted to write going forward.

I and Thou
Martin Buber (translated by Walter Kaufmann)

This book was first written in 1923 and translated 14 years later. It has always been relevant. What’s meaningful to me is the way that Martin Buber treats Judaism not as a set of fixed rules or even beliefs, but as a dialogue, an ongoing set of relationships. I first encountered I and Thou in my mid-20s, and I began to formulate an idea of poetry itself as a kind of relationship. Buber gave me a roadmap for my idea of poetry itself as an encounter between strangers, between two people who are not physically present to each other. It establishes a relationship between a poet, a poem and a reader.

Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity
Abraham Joshua Heschel

I read Heschel in my 30s. I was definitely seeking something different from Judaism beyond Leviticus, beyond the rules. I wanted to see how deeply rooted the idea of justice is in Jewish thinking. Heschel provided me with his own Guide for the Perplexed. What I love about Heschel’s essays is his recognition that morality has a grandeur and spirituality has a kind of audacity, and that we are the only ones who can save Judaism from oblivion. It is our responsibility to pass Judaism on from one generation to the next.

World of Our Fathers
Irving Howe

I wish this book was called A World of Our Fathers and Mothers—that would be a more accurate title. Irving Howe gives us a full portrait of our ancestors, the Eastern European Jews who came to America. We can’t forget American Jewish life started as immigrant life. Howe reminds us of Jewish working class experiences in cities. He shows us the reasons for democratic socialism. I love his loving evocation of Yiddish culture. He reminds us of the Yiddish poets, playwrights and fiction writers who created art out of Jewish life.

The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
Edited by Robert Alter

Yehuda Amichai is the most humane and compassionate of modern Hebrew poets. He was part of a new generation who brought the vernacular into Hebrew poetry. He intermingled biblical and vernacular Hebrew in ways that are deep and resonant. He had a genius for metaphor. He wrote from the two poles of love and war. But what’s most meaningful about his poetry is the way that he put actual human beings at the center of his art. He’s that rare thing—a postmodern poet with a heart.

Tanakh

The Tanakh, made up of the Five Books of Moses, the Prophets and the Writings—which includes the Psalms, the Five Megillot and other important writings—is the basis of the belief system and history of the Jewish people. Without at least some familiarity with this literature, it is difficult to understand anything else. There are countless commentaries on the Tanakh, so the study of the ancient texts can be embellished.

People of the Book: A Novel
Geraldine Brooks

This novel based on the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah can be read as a sweeping history of European Jewish life from medieval Spain through the Nazi period. The actual Sarajevo Haggadah is the subject of many studies and is on display in Sarajevo. Extensive new research using the latest scientific methods to analyze the paper and the wine and food spilled on the Haggadah has been published recently. The Sarajevo Haggadah is illuminated with beautiful drawings and is a window into the history of Jewish art, a long neglected topic. Since we read the Haggadah every year on Passover, knowing about the Sarajevo version can enhance one’s seder.

The Man in the Sharkskin Suit
Lucette Lagnado

This book deals with the Mizrachi Jews of North Africa, as well as the Syrian Jews who moved there. Lagnado’s book reveals the painful gender relations among Jews in 20th century Egypt, issues of socioeconomic class, and the impact of class on the destinations Jews chose when Nasser expelled them: The poor went to Israel and the wealthy to France. Lagnado’s book uncovers aspects of aliyah, the Jewish diaspora, anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli sentiment after 1948 and the extinction of a unique Jewish culture.

Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel
Edited by Deborah S. Bernstein

Women researchers are the authors of each chapter. The editor recognized that the early immigrants were pioneers of new social forms (e.g. the kibbutz). The book includes chapters on both the First Aliyah (1880-1904) and the glorified Second Aliyah (1904-1914), which included David Ben-Gurion. Members of the First Aliyah established the towns, which members of the Second Aliyah disparaged as bourgeois and dependent on philanthropy. Other chapters cover the arts as well as politics and social ideals.

The Ladies Auxiliary
Tova Mirvis

Set in Memphis, Mirvis’s novel explores the American version of such eternal Jewish problems as internal community conflict, intermarriage and conversion, and the opposing forces of tradition and change. An (overly) enthusiastic newcomer moves to town and tries to innovate. Gradually, conflict arises between the synagogue’s Ladies Auxiliary and the women’s teenage daughters. “Love one’s neighbor as oneself” is not guiding their behavior. Tova Mirvis is part of a growing group of women writers (including Dara Horn and Rachel Kadish) who are bringing us new ways to think about Jews in America.

The Heart of Torah, Volumes 1 and 2
Shai Held

This is a wonderful two volume commentary on the weekly Torah reading. Each week, there are two essays explicating the parsha, and it combines literary analysis with classical sources and studies the psychological dynamics of the reading. Rabbi Held doesn’t shy away from confronting disturbing or problematic texts, looking to understand them within these historical and psychological contexts, and then making them relevant to our modern life.

Sage Advice: Pirkei Avot with Translation and Commentary
Irving (Yitz) Greenberg

Pirkei Avot, Ethics of Our Fathers sort of falls into what is called wisdom literature— observations about behavior, morality and what we value. It also incorporates some level of Talmudic disagreement—so that someone who’s looking for insight realizes that there are a multiplicity of viewpoints and opinions which can conflict. The source material in Pirkei Avot is traditional, but it also speaks to universal dilemmas and questions. Rabbi Greenberg’s commentary is very rich. He frames each chapter, giving background and historical context. Even though he is a great scholar, this is written for a general audience.

The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes
Michael V. Fox

Ecclesiastes, Kohelet, is an extremely problematic book. It deals with impermanence, ego and self-aggrandizement. It has a chilling effect in a culture that is highly materialistic like ours. And here is a book supposedly written in the voice of King Solomon who has almost immeasurable riches and access to whatever he wants. Ecclesiastes is one of the most psychological books, and you can tell why the rabbis argued over whether to put it in the canon. But I think it’s a mark of maturity that it exists within the Jewish tradition and is wrestled with on that level. The JPS translation and commentary are in more current language than other editions.

Souls on Fire
Elie Wiesel

Wiesel’s portraits of the early Hasidic masters give a very different viewpoint from how people think of Hasidism today. These were people who were rebelling against what they saw as the suffocating aspects of highly ritualized Judaism. So they were seeking joy in Jewish life, and the fact that wisdom and meaning can be found in everyday life. It didn’t have to be this elite, highly intellectualized rationalism. This book also doesn’t shy away from depression and despair. Some of the great Hasidic masters went through periods of questioning their faith. When you’re approaching Judaism, and you realize there are tensions around faith, belief, ritual and practice, that knowledge is very liberating.

The Book of Esther

The Book of Esther has one of the most brilliant insights into the power and the irrationality of bigotry. In one part of the story Haman is being elevated by King Ahasuerus but then he walks out of the royal palace and sees Mordecai the Jew and all his feeling of importance and pleasure evaporates. This kind of illness, whereby somehow “the other” is seen as such an undermining force that you can’t just be happy with your own portion, is powerfully expressed in the Book of Esther. The book speaks to the current malady which is leading to the resurgence of authoritarianism—a need to find and blame another in some way, or to use others as foils for your own advancement, aggrandizement and inner deficiencies.

Bombay: Exploring the Jewish Urban Heritage
Shaul Sapir

This book tells the history of Bombay—now Mumbai—through its Indian Jewish community. Sapir, a professor of historical geography at Hebrew University, presents different Jewish heritage sites and explains how they have changed over time. It describes the Baghdadis who arrived in the 19th century to work in textiles or trade and the impact they had on the city. Books like this make people reflect on the importance of remembering multicultural Jews all over the world.

Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish Art and Architecture
Ori Z. Soltes

This one-of-a kind book is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Jewish art from all over the world. Soltes, a professor at Georgetown University, uses the question of what makes art Jewish to guide his examination of thousands of years’ worth of art and architecture. Art has always played an important part in influencing culture and history, and that is why this book is timely and informative.

Dropped from Heaven: Stories
Sophie Judah

This collection of quaint stories about Indian Jews—the Bene Israel in particular—is funny, light and very entertaining. They also reveal a glimpse into a culture that is unknown to many even in the Jewish world. The book covers more than 100 years of history from colonial India through independence, the creation of Israel and the emigration of the majority of the population to Israel. Sophie Judah is a living treasure in our Bene Israel community, and her stories are whimsical, truthful and playful all at the same time.

Jews and the Indian National Art Project
Kenneth X. Robbins and Marvin Tokayer

This book explores how Jews in India have shaped and developed the country’s art. It talks about how art is shaped by many factors and influences. Communities like my Indian Jewish one are little known in the broad expanses of world Jewish culture. This book discusses how Jews in India were influenced by their Indian-ness and how they influenced their surroundings in turn.

Art and Religion in the 21st Century
Aaron Rosen

This is a very multicultural book that doesn’t focus on Jewish art but showcases Jewish artists and their viewpoints. It shows how much religion influences art and vice versa. This should be read alongside Can Art Aid in Resolving Conflicts? by Noam Lemelshtrich Latar, which examines how art can assist in creating dialogue and bridges across cultures.

The Bible

All our thinking is tied to the metaphors in the stories of the Bible. This is our DNA, we are a people of a story. It is a special kind of story, full of intrigue and adventures, the fallibility of humans and greatness of humans, and that’s what makes it the book of books. All other religions tell us that we are the people of the book, the people of the Bible, and we have abandoned that! It’s a shame, and I think we should go back. Even biblical ethics, of which we are so proud, are enshrined there in the form of stories about human beings like us

I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl

The last words of Daniel Pearl were, “I am Jewish, my father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish. Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.” So we asked 300 people what it means to them to be Jewish, and 150 of them responded and gave honest answers. Some of them confessed that it wasn’t easy. The answers have a common denominator, which can be read in the essays of Shimon Peres, Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua: Being Jewish today means being happy to feel part of the past, present and future of a collective of individuals who happen to call themselves Jews. That is all peoplehood is

1948
Benny Morris

Israel today is the icon that unites the Jewish people. We Jews spend so much of our energy remembering the Holocaust, and only a fraction of that energy is invested into remembering our redemption—the re-establishment of the State of Israel. Our children do not know about the years that led to the State and the miracle of survival. I talk to students about that particular period and what it meant to the continuity of the Jewish people and how close it was to a second Holocaust. I think 1948 by Benny Morris does a great job of historical documentation of the period, including the feeling of the pulse of the time.

The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow
Gil Troy

I believe that every American Jew is proud of being a member of a community that helped re-establish Jewish statehood. This book was a great endeavor by Gil Troy, who took Arthur Hertzberg’s book The Zionist Idea and modernized it, including in it sections that pertain to our time, and enriched it with some modern insight. We were instrumental in creating the greatest miracle in world history, and the contribution of American Jewry to that endeavor will fill every reader with pride—and we need some pride today.

A Simple Story
S. Y. Agnon

This is a simple love story, a depiction of life in the Jewish shtetl. Every Jew should know what life was like in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, because most American Jewish families carry the legacy of the shtetl. It is in our uncles’ stories, our mothers’ singing, our rabbis’ inflections. To communicate among ourselves, we need to know their legends, the stories they told each other, their family and community relationships—and all this is in one story. Everybody should understand the experience that was filtered and solidified through centuries of suffering and persecution. The book revolves around a Jewish wedding.

The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud

Originally published in 1900, The Interpretation of Dreams introduces Freud’s ideas on dream creation and interpretation. It details the theory that dreams are forms of “wish fulfillment” produced by the unconscious mind. By distinguishing between the narrative elements of a dream and its underlying meaning, Freud rekindled the ancient Hebrew tradition of dream interpretation, as revealed, for instance, in Genesis 41, in which Joseph interprets a dream of the Egyptian Pharaoh and is rewarded by becoming his second-in-command.

The Old Testament (Torah)

For at least 1,500 years, the Torah has remained one of the most influential works in Western culture. Its stories have been debated and interpreted by dozens of generations of philosophers, mystics, theologians, artists and writers. A working knowledge of Genesis and the Torah’s other books is sure to deepen one’s understanding of the evolution of Western civilization, as well as enhance one’s appreciation for such diverse authors as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, William Faulkner and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Gershom Scholem

In this groundbreaking work (published in 1941), Scholem explores the long-neglected and oft-despised tradition of Kabbalah and makes its goals and techniques—and system of beliefs—accessible to scholars and laypeople alike. Topics range from the use of gematria to create revelatory interpretations of the Torah to the influence of Islam on Jewish mystics. With this single book, Scholem took Kabbalah out of the hands of crackpots and charlatans and turned it into a practice worthy of careful and ongoing study.

Survival in Auschwitz
Primo Levi

As a well-known Jewish author in Portugal, a country almost devoid of Jews, I’m frequently asked by those trying to understand the Holocaust which author to read first. I always reply Primo Levi. In this, his first major work, he tells of the suffering and horror he experienced in Auschwitz and—with moving detail—describes how he and his fellow prisoners desperately tried to retain their compassion and hope. A footnote (and lesson): Levi’s manuscript was rejected by a number of major Italian publishers before being released by a small press. Its sales over the first few years were meager.

I Married a Communist
Philip Roth

During the latter part of his 50-year career, Philip Roth began to explore the fall from grace of characters who ran afoul of American mores and politics. In I Married a Communist, he brilliantly explores the chilling effect of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade on America’s insecure Jewish community. For those who wish to understand the history of Jewish assimilation in America and the continuing threat posed to Jews (and other minorities) by anti-Semites, xenophobes, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists and racists, this novel is essential reading.

There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice Through Jewish Law and Tradition
Jill Jacobs

There is nothing more crucial to understanding what it is to be a Jew than to understand our obligations in the world in which we live. This book is a thorough, brilliant primer on a number of issues related to setting up a society in accordance with the mandates of Torah and Jewish law. Jacobs takes readers on a journey through the Torah, rabbinic literature and later legal writings to show how our tradition has long demanded just systems and treatment of individuals on issues like poverty, housing, health care, criminal justice, workers’ rights and environmental issues.

Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective
Judith Plaskow

Though already almost 30 years old, this brilliant, comprehensive work of feminist theology is still the gold standard for surfacing the patriarchal underpinnings of much of Judaism and offering an alternate vision. Taking readers through the rabbinic process of reconstructing Jewish memory through a feminist lens, she shows how our thinking about crucial concepts of God, Torah and Israel have been deeply shaped by gendered understandings, and unpacks what they could yet be. It will have an indelible impact on how you see the tradition.

Mishneh Torah: Laws of the Foundations of Torah and the Laws of Repentance
Maimonides

Honestly, I’d recommend large swaths of the Mishneh Torah if I could, but in the interests of realistically engaging readers, I’ll start with these two chapters. The former text helps to make sense of the anthropomorphism in Torah and offers a powerful, mature theological understanding; the latter offers a step-by-step guide to taking responsibility for our interpersonal missteps and misdeeds—to owning the harm we’ve caused and working to make it right. The entire Mishneh Torah is available in Hebrew and English online at sefaria.org.

This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation
Alan Lew

Rabbi Lew (z”l) was my rabbi and had an indelible impact on my own Torah and understanding of the world. This book, his masterpiece, takes readers deep inside the inner, spiritual meaning of the time between Tisha B’Av and Simchat Torah, and how it can be a time of profound personal connection and growth. It both forever changes readers’ experience of that season and offers up new possibilities for engaging with the tradition in a broader way.

The Jewish Catalog: A Do-It-Yourself Kit
Richard Siegel, Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld

First published in 1973, this is a fantastic, accessible primer to a number of Jewish topics that, most critically, empowers readers to take the business of creating a Jewish life into their own hands, from the particulars of holiday and kashrut observance to tying tzitzit and making community. A lot of the resources are outdated, but the images are, now, delightfully vintage, and much of the wisdom resonates strongly.

Old Testament

We are The People of The Book, so read Part One. God’s early work is uneven but compelling. You can skip the sequel. There’s always a little skeptical realism that comes with being Jewish. Judaism is the only religion where you might believe in God, but you can still keep asking questions and don’t have to believe he’s always right. There’s a healthy dose of skepticism. It’s not like the New Testament that tries to explain everything. It absolutely informs the way I think about things.

The Story of the Jews, Volumes One and Two
Simon Schama

Great on the history of everything Jewish except humor. Note to Schama: Please remedy in Volume Three. In the meantime, that failure can be remedied by my third and fourth picks. You might as well know the history of the Jews. There are references to jokes in there, but he sort of left out the humor part, and I think it’s an important part of being Jewish, how we see the world and how we identify.

No Joke: Making Jewish Humor
Ruth Wisse

Here is the history of Jewish humor that Schama left out. Let’s see if he cribs any of it for Volume Three.

Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
Sigmund Freud

The insular Eastern European Jewish world is long gone, but these jokes are so perfectly formed that they will be told as long as jokes are told. Even when this book was published in 1905, Jewish humor was viewed as an essential part of Jewish culture by Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish humor is central to my work, and it shares something with other types of humor, but it also involves ambiguity, contradiction and intense crazy logic. Jewish humor has a poignant aspect. What’s the difference between a Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist? The optimist says “Things couldn’t get worse,” and a pessimist says they could!

Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler

For the jokes. I could’ve made this serious. Mein Kampf— never forget. But jokes aside, I really think it’s good to be aware of these things because the anti-Semitism that was at the root of this evil still exists.

Babylonian Talmud

If I were alone on a desert island and had just one single work of the Jewish mind and soul to take with me, it would be the Babylonian Talmud. Judaism as we know it is utterly unthinkable without the Talmud. The older I get, the more I appreciate it, admire it—and actually love it. For those unable to follow it in its original (almost everyone), we now have the Artscroll version with its translation and commentary. I increasingly define Judaism as a running conversation about the human condition. The very form of Talmudic argumentation within the text, and then across generations via marginal commentary, epitomizes the Jewish conversation at its best.

JPS Commentary Bible

The Bible, but only with commentary, because reading the Bible “straight” is a certain route to misunderstanding, apathy, alienation or worse. The Talmud (my first choice) is riddled with the taste of traditional commentary, but modern Jews also ought to know a scientific view of Torah. Even now, after factoring in the realms of more recent scholarly discovery, I find the Jewish Publication Society Commentary Bible filled to the brim with matter for the mind.

The Course of Modern Jewish History
Howard M. Sachar

What modern Jews need above all is a great once-over on specifically modern Jewish history. Sachar’s The Course of Modern Jewish History is not the latest account—it was written in 1958—so it lacks more recent scholarly insight, but it remains an authoritative classic and is practically a page turner.

Principles of the Jewish Faith
Louis Jacobs

Jacobs wrote some 50 books and would have been named England’s chief rabbi had the Jewish fundamentalists of the time not blocked him. His very best book is this one, a sparkling discussion of Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith, as they have been reflected in Jewish thought over the years. The full gamut of traditional Jewish belief is all here, explained cogently for non-experts to follow clearly

Choices in Modern Jewish Thought (2nd edition)
Eugene B. Borowitz

Borowitz is to modernity what Jacobs is to our rabbinic and medieval heritage. Virtually single-handedly, he founded the field of modern Jewish theology for Jews who were primarily ethnic and didn’t know we had any theology. Martin Buber? Mordecai Kaplan? Abraham Heschel? Leo Baeck? The early Zionists? Holocaust theology? They are all here, and the second edition adds chapters on modern mysticism, postmodern thought and feminism as well.