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• Rabbi Hoffman

Over many centuries, Judaism has consistently demonstrated a particular fondness for books and literacy. Books are nothing if not records of things said, of conversations that have taken place --- and because Jews are "the people of the book," its conversational record now makes up a vast literature reaching back some three thousand years. One Hundred Great Jewish Books allows readers to traverse time and space and listen in on the Jewish conversation as it has expanded --- from the Hebrew Bible and the pivotal period of the Rabbis all the way to the pressing topics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It covers the Middle Ages, explores the intellectual Enlightenment of the 1700s and political emancipation a century later, and pays special attention to American Jewish life and the two most critical events in modern Jewish history --- the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel. One Hundred Great Jewish Books introduces outstanding texts of many genres, written by artists and poets, historians and theologians, women and men, advocates of every kind of Judaism imaginable. Each of the entries features one work in its historical and cultural context, provides a summary of content and author, and reflects on its relevance for today's readers. One Hundred Great Jewish Books is an illuminating encounter with the Jewish experience in all its sensitivity and genius, but also its failures and foibles. It is an invitation to exercise the mind, touch the heart, and stir the soul.