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Books
(13 April 1999)
This is a very preliminary list of recommended reading. Right now, it reflects my own interests in trying to gain an organic, unified intellectually rigorous and sophisiticated understanding of the world through our Torah tradition. I hope to add greatly to this, as well as include the recommendations of future rabbis and teachers on this site. Rabbi Harry Zeitlin
Contemporary
Marc-Alain Ouaknin, The Burnt Book
Emanuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse and Nine Talmudic Readings
Aryeh Kaplan, Jewish Meditation
Tsvi Kolitz, The Teacher
Jon Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son and Creation and the Persistence of Evil
Adin Steinsaltz, The Thirteen-Petalled Rose
Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire
Andre Neher, They Made Their Souls Anew
Anita Diamant, Saying Kaddish
Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish
Ted Falcon, AJourney of Awakening, 49 Steps from Enslavement to Freedom
Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, Paradigm Shift
Traditional
Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzatto), Derech Hashem (The Way of God)
Pinhas Kehati, The Kehati Mishna
Adin Steinsaltz, The Talmud, Steinsaltz Edition
Aryeh Kaplan, The Living Bible
Kalman Kalonymus Shapira - The Piazetzner Rebbe, Chovat Hatalmidim (The Student's Obligation) and Bnei Machshava Tova (Concious Community).
Reb Chaim of Tshernowitz, Siduro Shel Shabbat
Reb Chaim of Tshernowitz, Be'er Mayim Chayim
Reb Menachem Nachum Twerski of Chernobyl, Maor Eynayim
Reb Mordechai Dov of Horneshteipel, Pela Yoetz
Reb Shalom Noah Brozovski of Slonim, Netivot Shalom
Jewish (non-religious i.e. novels, etc.)
Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
Steve Stern, Wedding Jester , A Plague of Dreamers and Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven
Secular
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
Richard Feynmann, The Feynmann Lectures in Physics
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy
Connie Willis, Bellwether
Marlo Morgan, Mutant Message Down Under
Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, No Boundaries, A Theory of Everything
James Austin, Zen and the Brain
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection
I highly recommend traditional talmud study (the Kehati and the Steinsaltz are the best contemporary editions available in English) in order to develop a contemporary understanding of structures and reasoning styles of Jewish thought. Studies of Tanach is also essential. The Living Bible, the translation by Aryeh Kaplan, is excellent. Nothing can substitute, however, for a living teacher.