Good Jewish books

Home Forums Seforim, Books, & Reading Good Jewish books

Viewing 50 posts - 1 through 50 (of 55 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #589610
    bookworm
    Participant

    As my screen name denotes, I love to read and I am always looking for new good books. I would love suggestions and feedback on different books as I am trying to stick to Jewsih books only. I just read a great book, the story was amazing and inspiring: Escape from India, about an Israeli who is in the proces of doing teshuva and is arrested in India for smuggeling drugs and how he does teshuva gemurah in jail. The book is dedicated to the HOtlzbergs Hy”d who helped Ronen a lot while in jail.

    Other suggestions please?

    #641207
    Phyllis
    Member

    I just read Brain Waves and really enjoyed it. But honestly my favorite Jewish novel is “Yours Truly” written by Chava Rosenberg. I am a real fan of her style of writing and the way she puts down the characters.

    #641208
    mepal
    Member

    Do you like novels or true stories? I’m reading ‘The Network’ now, i forget the authors name. But he definately has a WILD imagination! He does keep my interest-which says alot.

    #641209
    musiclover
    Member

    a daughter of two mothers by miriam cohen, the double life of chani greenberg by menuchah beckerman and the four seasons of golda mirel by eva vogiel are awesome books

    #641210
    kapusta
    Participant

    bookworm who wrote the book youre talking about? It sounds great, I’d love to read it 🙂

    #641211
    mchemtob
    Member

    gordian knot, playing with fire, bamboo cradle, blackout, almost anything from yair weinstock, they print a weekly portion of his books in the mishpacha

    #641212
    Feif Un
    Participant

    I always enjoyed reading. When I was in yeshiva, the Rosh Yeshiva told me one day that I shouldn’t read. He said a good, frum person shouldn’t read novels even if they’re the “kosher” ones. He said it’s a waste of time and you gain nothing from it. He said a frum Jew should read a Navi if he needs to read. He said you could read it in English if you like. He said it has more than enough action and politics to keep anyone entertained.

    #641213
    bookworm
    Participant

    Phyliss- I love Chava Rosenberg’s books! I find they are really Jewish as they impart Jewish values weaved in an amazing story.

    mepal: I like novels, but only those that could be true, authoers with wild imaginations are to much for me. I read two books over shabbos (“Jewish” books) both about kidnapping and it was so exaggerated and ridiculous.

    #641214
    tzippi
    Member

    This is dangerous because of how easy it is to say lashon hara. So I will hold myself back and only mention great, great books.

    The new Avner Gold books are a breath of fresh air. Great reading, plot development, character development. I want to go back to The Promised Child and start reading them all over again. They’re a fun, adventurous ride too.

    Meir Uri Gottesman has some magnificent books. I would say the same about his books too. There’s a new one, I don’t know the title, The Harp, Deep Blue and others. If you’re into a charming little read, try his Chaimkel the Dreamer (and R’ Charles Wengrov’s book, Zalman’s Menorah. Speaking of charming little reads, The Rabbi of 84th Street, by Warren Kosak [a secular but deeply sympathetic journalist] about Rav Chazkel Besser is agood read.)

    Speaking of bios, there are some wonderful ones. In Every Generation, about the Yudelevitch family; My Footsteps Echo, about a 19th century meshulach; Greatness in Our Midst, about Rav Simcha Wasserman; many of the Artscroll bios, like Rav Pam’s.

    And one more fiction before I have to run: Oh, I forgot the title. Sun inside Rain? by M. Bassara, Feldheim, very different and you will want to read this before your kids if that is how you handle things.

    #641215
    musiclover
    Member

    aob- if u want to read a great book about a girl who survived cancer and is now married its called “miracle ride”. its a true story about how she coped with it.it made me laugh she put in some humor but it also made me cry. i highly reccomend it!

    #641216
    mepal
    Member

    ‘My Life on Wheels’ is also great. Its a true story of a girl coping with CP.

    #641217
    cantoresq
    Member

    Let’s start with certain basisc shall we? No one who aspires to be a Jewish intellectual can be without the Rav’s The Halachik Man. Leo Levy’s Torah and Science is also an important little book (literally, it’s less than 200 pages). Eliezer Berkovitz’s Not in Heaven offers a well thought out, if slightly controversial, formulation of the workings of the Halachik system. Aryeh Kaplan’s books also make for a good read duing one’s teenage years. Although reviled in the chareidi world, R. Norman Lamm’s Torah U’Maddah should be read (You don’t need to agree with it in order to learn from it). If one has the time and the ability, R. Teichtal’s Eim Habanim Smeicha is priceless. As far as history is concerned, although not written by a Jew, James Carrol’s Constantine’s Sword is probably the best exposition on the development of anti-Semitism ever. These are the titles that popped into my head now, but I’m sure I could come up with a different list on a different day.

    #641218
    squeak
    Participant

    oh boy…

    #641219
    mepal
    Member

    yah, cantoresq sounds sooo heavy. Doesnt sound basic to me at all.

    #641220
    squeak
    Participant

    …and so, another Jewish mind is saved by the lack of desire to seek intellectualism.

    #641221
    cantoresq
    Member

    Good reading should stimulate thought. As far as the term “basic,” I meant basic in terms of those books which enable the reader to formulate his/her own views on Judaism.

    #641222
    Jothar
    Member

    I recommend the works of Rabbi Akiva Tatz and Rabbi Avigdor Miller.

    #641223
    mepal
    Member

    huh squeak! my mouth’s hanging wiiiiide open.

    and to cantor, you’re 100% correct about that but isnt that why we go to school for? After that… u get what i mean.

    #641224
    cantoresq
    Member

    Actually Mepal, I don’t get your point. School is not a place where one learns all one needs to know. School is where one acquires the skills to learn for the reast of one’s life. With the exception of my refusal to attend an intermarriage, no matter how important the person getting marriaed might be to me, I can’t think of a single opinion I had at 18 with which I wholly agree today. I’ve learned much more since finishing school than I could ever have in school. I’ve never read anything my Akiva Tatz. As to R. Avigdor Miller’s writings, I can’t deal with the cognitive dissonance he creates. His inspirational writings don’t jive with his often provocative oratorical rhetoric. Which was the essence of the man?

    #641225
    an open book
    Participant

    aob- if u want to read a great book about a girl who survived cancer and is now married its called “miracle ride”. its a true story about how she coped with it.it made me laugh she put in some humor but it also made me cry. i highly reccomend it!

    did i post here? i hadn’t noticed 😉

    Note: i am most definitely NOT bookworm. totally different person. and you know

    “i don’t lie. if i don’t wanna say something i just say “i’d rather not say”

    i would never say something that’s not truthful. don’t you know that??” -moish01

    Feif Un: i’m not trying to convince you or anything, do what you want (or what your Rav says). but just for your information, i don’t just read fiction for more than just action and politics. although i like to read chumash & navi as well.

    #641226
    d a
    Member

    You gotto read Pyramid Base by Eli Shekhter. You read the book and think you know the end when suddenly . . .

    Other books by this awesome author:

    The Banker’s Trust (Out of Circulation and Not Available for Purchase)

    The Most Wanted List (Out of Circulation and Not Available for Purchase)

    Plan B (this one I didn’t read yet)

    Pyramid Base -THE BEST!!!- (Out of Circulation and Not Available for Purchase)

    Eli, if you read this post, you should know that your the best!

    #641227
    musiclover
    Member

    aob-sorry my post was meant for bookworm.my bad

    #641228
    an open book
    Participant

    no problem. just notice the difference, that’s all.

    thanks 😉

    #641229
    kabbalah man
    Member

    areyh kaplan’s books are wonderful

    #641230
    kapusta
    Participant

    bookworm, any info on the OP? 🙂

    #641231
    Jax
    Member

    da: wow all those books you mentioned are on the top of my list too!!! i own all those books!!! Plan B is a great one too, you should really read it!!!

    these days i actually go for the short story books:

    all the People Speaks(i loved kids speak as a kid)-Chaim Walder is an amazing author, all Touched by a Story Books, all he Visions of Greatness books-i recently read the latest volume of it-wow it was great!!!

    #641232
    lakewoodwife
    Participant

    I like novels, but only those that could be true

    In that case I recommend historical fiction… One of the best books I’ve ever read is Every Man A Slave. It’s an amazing story set in the south around the time of the Civil War. The character development and plot are fantastic and well thought out. One caveat- it is a very long book, not a problem for me but if your time is very limited…Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

    #641233
    cantoresq
    Member

    Other important basic titles include R.S.R. Hirsch’s Horeb, and his Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel and R. Zwi Hirsch Chajes’ Mavo HaTalmud and his Darkei haHora’ah. For a nice portrait of inter war American Orhthodoxy, I suggest Jenna Weisman Joselit’s New York’s Jewish Jews as well as Gurock & Schachter A Modern Day Heretic, a biography of Mordecai Kaplan. I’ll post other titles and they pop into my head.

    #641234
    bookworm
    Participant

    Escape from INdia is by Avigail Myzlik

    to cantor- I wasn’t talking about sefrei kodesh, more relaxing reading to do after a long day of work, kids and pesach cleaning

    Avner Gold’s books are classics I love them to!

    I also loved sun inside rain

    Mircale Ride is the only book I haven’t read- bezras Hashem I’ll look for that one- thanks

    #641235
    mepal
    Member

    cantoresq, first of all, take a chill. Second of all, in school I learnt all the ‘book knowledge’ and now I take that and learn from life itself, and based on that, come to my conclusions. But you’re probably right. A book or two as well would’nt hurt.

    #641236
    cantoresq
    Member

    Bookworm, most of what I’ve listed are lighter reading, and even the serious scholoarship is not typicall read in the Beth Medrash. I read Horeb at night before going to sleep when I was in college. The Chajes books I read in schul Shabbat mornings when bored with the davening. Halachik Man I also read in my spare time when in yeshiva in Israel (whew was the Rosh Yeshiva mad at me for that one; madder then he was about the Sidney Sheldon novel my roommate was reading when he did the raid). Just becuase one puts his feet up, doesn’t mean the quality of what he reads needs to diminish. I never read fiction, with the exception of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe, which are more in the line of social commentary.

    #641237
    anon for this
    Participant

    When I was a kid I read the works of Marcus Lehmann; these can be characterized as history in novel form.

    #641238
    squeak
    Participant

    Would you YU types kindly stop proselytizing

    #641239
    noitallmr
    Participant

    I have a soft spot for Impact. Love the short stories with an immediate message….would highly recommend!

    #641240
    cantoresq
    Member

    squeak, who’s prosletyzing?

    #641241
    bookworm
    Participant

    cantoresq: I have read much of what you have suggested, but that was not at all my intention for this post, some of us (and we are allowed) like to read different kinds of books also, not all of us want to be intellectual 24/7 and if you have ever worked and taken care of a home and kids the whole day you would know what I mean that after 11:00 pm my brain can’t handel anything close to intellectual (and anything by Rav Soloveichick or R’ S. R. HIrch is intellectual)

    Impact was an awesome book! so is every man a slave, I can’t remeber what it’s called but I read another book by the same author which was also very different about mashiach, but I liked every man a slave much more, that and sun inside rain are prob the best written Jewish books I have read (and Avner Gold’s)

    #641242
    squeak
    Participant

    You are intentionally proposing that he/she read books which, if he/she comes from a traditional Orthodox home, would be taboo. You yourself acknowledged the anger of your R”Y when he discovered one of your books. Yet you call these books “the basics” and gush about how “No one who aspires to be a Jewish intellectual can be without…” and how they are “books which enable the reader to formulate his/her own views on Judaism”. What do you call that if not proselytizing? It is for good reason that these books are taboo – they inspire nothing like what you claim. Rather, they draw the reader into the skewed version of religion that the authors present as truth.

    Never mind that the OP was clearly asking for recreational reading, yet you used this opportunity to try and ram your hashkofos down everyone’s throat. When I clap “Al Chait”, I have in mind the reading of some of those books you mentioned. Have mercy on a yet-pure soul. Once in, these krumkeits can never get back out.

    #641243
    mepal
    Member

    squeak, i second the notion!

    #641245
    cantoresq
    Member

    Nothing in the original post mentions “recreational reading.” What does that mean? How mamy poly-sybolic words need a book have to no longer be recretional? Secondly, this thread is rife with laudatory comments about the various books people recomend. Why am I not entitled to do the same? As to the “taboo” nature of the books, I didn’t know that Horeb or Mavo haTalmud are taboo. BTW is the Feldheim translation of the Mavo HaTalmud, the edition lacking an acknowledgemnt of its true author, also taboo? I seem to recall alot of guys in yeshiva reading it. Now please pay attention. I’m writing this very slowly so even you will understand. I was making fun of that Rosh Yeshiva. It seems Sidney Sheldon was ok with him, but the Rav Zt”l was not. Talk about “krumkeit” and “skewed versions of religion.” I don’t so much care that he opposed me reading The Halachik Man, but then what gives with not caaring about Sidney Sheldon? Then again my roommate wore a hat and I didn’t, so I guess the Rosh’s tacit approval of the book made reading it ok as it was “under rabbinic supervision.”

    While we’re on the topc of important Jewish books. No serious library should be without the Hertz Chumash. It is the single greatest English language refutation of the documentray hypothesis written for a layman. It’s a shame no one has undertaken to update it in light of developments in Bible study since its publication; especially since JPS now buys into much of the secular scholarship. But I guess “dah ma shetashiv” is one those incipient “krumkeits”

    #641246
    YW Moderator-72
    Participant

    cantoresq

    …The Chajes books I read in schul Shabbat mornings when bored with the davening…

    maybe you can start a new thread (although it will most likely NOT get approved) about what to do in Shul on Shabbos mornings when bored with the davening. You may want to branch out to the even longer Yom TOv davening.

    I guess that for the attention span of some people, actually davening and listening to the brochas and answering amen, following the Parsha and the Haftarah just isn’t sufficient for some people…

    #641247
    Feif Un
    Participant

    squeak: while you’re at it, klap al cheit for the sinas chinam you have towards YU people, and ask mechilah from those you’ve insulted. Many of them were/are gedolim who were considered to be from the gedolei hador. Not only have you insulted them, you’ve insulted all their students and their way of life. You call it a “skewed version of religion”. I think your view of Judaism is skewed.

    You really need to work on your ahavas Yisrael.

    #641248
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    oh man! My mouth was hanging open when I read the correspondence here. It’s catching fire- but please let’s keep it civil.

    and let me add- I 1000% agree with squeak and mod72

    #641249
    cantoresq
    Member

    YW Moderator-72

    Moderator

    cantoresq

    …The Chajes books I read in schul Shabbat mornings when bored with the davening…

    maybe you can start a new thread (although it will most likely NOT get approved) about what to do in Shul on Shabbos mornings when bored with the davening. You may want to branch out to the even longer Yom TOv davening.

    I guess that for the attention span of some people, actually davening and listening to the brochas and answering amen, following the Parsha and the Haftarah just isn’t sufficient for some people…

    Posted 1 hour ago #


    I’ve said many times that I find schul to be boring. There is nothing to listen to at the amud.

    #641250
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    did someone say recreational reading? My brother and I used to take a novel each, read half way through, guess the ending, switch books, read entire thing and tell each other if the other was correct. (I guess the jewish novels are a bit too predictable and need some help.)

    #641251
    areivimzehlazeh
    Participant

    cantoresq- if that’s the case, then it’s high time you found yourself another shul

    #641252
    squeak
    Participant

    cantoresq: Much seems to have changed with you, if you are resorting to ad hominem attacks.

    #641253
    squeak
    Participant

    Nothing in the original post mentions “recreational reading.” What does that mean?

    I never read fiction

    Actually, the tone of the OP and the example given indicates recreational reading. Since you never do light recreational reading you couldn’t relate to the question. That’s not an attack, but rather a statement of fact that your suggestions were not what the OP was looking for.

    As to the “taboo” nature of the books, I didn’t know that Horeb or Mavo haTalmud are taboo.

    Horeb is certainly not a taboo sefer. Rabbiner Hirsch is only an unrecommended source in yeshivos because YU is a living example of what his writings can do in the wrong hands. Most unfortunate, because certainly someone with proper guidance can benefit tremendously from Hirsch. I’m sorry for not explicitly excluding that.

    I personally am not here to be giving haskomos to seforim, or labelling them as taboo. Nor have I. Torah U’Maddah publications are taboo because mainstream rabbonim, rebbeim, Roshei Yeshivos, and moraei halacha do not accept that Solovetchik, nor his teachings and haskofos. Passing out copies to unsuspecting youths is proselytizing. No one should be reading these haskofos unless they know what it is beforehand, in which case it is their choice.

    I was making fun of that Rosh Yeshiva.

    No comment here. In any case, when you make such a remark, you have lost any traction you may have had in an argument.

    It seems Sidney Sheldon was ok with him, but the Rav Zt”l was not. Talk about “krumkeit” and “skewed versions of religion.” I don’t so much care that he opposed me reading The Halachik Man, but then what gives with not caaring about Sidney Sheldon?

    This is a good question, which should have warranted a discussion with your R”Y. I’m sure you did not discuss it with him, though. Sad, because you might have learned something. Instead you worked it out on your own, and that has not served you well. And the best you could come up with was the cynical refrain, that “he wore a hat”.

    Sidney Sheldon is an example of light recreational reading. Other kids might enjoy Poe’s stories, Archer’s, King’s, or Tolkien’s (examples of authors I’ve seen around yeshivos). I’m sure many R”Y would oppose any and all of these names, but some allow it (for whatever reason). If a particular R”Y deems this type of book to be “neutral”, does that make The Halachik Man a “neutral” book as well? If you can’t see the difference, and why the latter would be offensive in a mainstream yeshiva, while the former is a question of bittul zman, then maybe I am not the slow one here, eh?

    #641254
    Feif Un
    Participant

    squeak: Again, you insult YU and the gedolim from there. You say no Rabbonim accepted R’ Soloveitchik zt”l (and don’t even use the term Rabbi when referring to him)? R’ Hutner zt”l said that he was one of the gedolei hador!

    If you don’t agree with the YU philosophy, fine. Don’t publicly insult the Rabbonim and talmidim there. I disagree with the Lakewood philosophy, yet I don’t insult the Rabbonim there. I won’t say “that Kotler”. I recognize that they are legitimate Rabbonim, and respect them as such, even if I don’t agree with all their views. You should give YU the same respect.

    #641255
    bookworm
    Participant

    I didn’t intend for this thread to turn into this kind of talk

    let’s get back to the topic. People who are looking good books to read

    The Donor is also a really good book

    I guess that there are just not enough.

    #641257
    cantoresq
    Member

    Since I’ve been criticized for focusing on scholarship and not recreational reading, I.J. Singer’s novels are quite entertaining. But one must remember that he took a jaundiced eye to religion and even his portrayals of Orthodox culture is fiction.

Viewing 50 posts - 1 through 50 (of 55 total)
  • The topic ‘Good Jewish books’ is closed to new replies.