The 5 Best Books of 5784

The term “People of the Book,” which sounds much better in Hebrew, Am HaSefer, is indeed apt. Walk into any Jewish bookstore or browse on Amazon, and new titles arrive daily.

5784 is coming to a close, and the year, like previous ones, was blessed with many excellent books. To which this is my list of the top five books of the year, most of which were previously reviewed in this fine publication.

My friend Meyer Mandel said that the definition of a good shiur is one that, after it’s over, makes you want to go and open up a sefer. With some license, a really good sefer makes you want to open up more seforim. And all of the ones listed here do just that.

Book of the year:

When the Chofetz Chaim wrote his books on Loshon Hara over a hundred years ago, he couldn’t imagine that a century later, something could be said and, within minutes, be instantly shared and seen worldwide by hundreds of millions of people. Yet that is today’s reality with modern communications and social media.

With technological advancements come halachic quandaries. Observant Jews who want to use social media face myriad challenges. For those who want answers on how to do it within the bounds of halacha, Rabbi Jonathan Ziring’s Torah in a Connected World: A Halakhic Perspective on Communication Technology and Social Media (Maggid Books) provides many of those answers.

This is the go-to guide and book of the year for anyone using or reading social media. Ziring has written a remarkable book outlining the complex halachic and technological issues we face today. Modern communications introduce innumerable halachic issues. Here he brilliantly shows how one can thrive using these when one understands the underlying halachic matters.

Runners-up: in no particular order

The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea, volume 1 —Who knew that the autobiography of a shochet from Eastern Europe could be such a fascinating read? This book takes the romanticism out of “Fiddler on the Roof” and shows how much of a hellhole Eastern Europe really was for the Jews of the time. Author Michoel Rotenfeld has done a wonderful job with this remarkable book. And I’m looking forward to volume 2 coming out next month.

Halakhic Man – 40th Anniversary Edition – In this is a graduate-level work of philosophy, Rav Soloveitchik expects the reader to be conversant in the works of philosophers such as Hermann Cohen, Immanuel Kant, Ernst Cassirer, Greek philosophy, Jewish theology, and Talmudic thought. Professor Lawrence Kaplan’s updated translation makes this task much more approachable for one of the most essential books on philosophy.

Letter and Spirit: Evasion, Avoidance, and Workarounds in the Halakhic System – Rabbi Daniel Feldman deals with topics that lead to misunderstanding due to their halachic complexities. A scholar of rare brilliance, he eloquently shows how the system—while hackable—when followed correctly allows a person to follow the letter and spirit of halacha and carry out the will of the Torah.

The Madwoman in the Rabbi’s Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud —The key word in this book’s title is rereading. In this original and engaging book, Gila Fine looks deeper into Talmudic texts to show that things are not always what they initially appear to be.

Fine’s approach is to reach each story twice to understand the deep meaning within these stories. The initial read determines its primary meaning. The second read uncovered the more profound truth that lies between the lines. And this is a book you should be reading.