Bibles, Study Guides, and Accessories
Deciding which bibles and bible references and bible commentaries to stock is a challenge. I attempt a historical and a critical approach. We begin with the Hebrew and Greek originals. We move through the significant translations chronologically: the Geneva (with its sharp and learned Calvinist notes), the King James (safer for its sponsor), the New Revised Standard, and the excellent harvest of translations in the late 20th Century -- the New International, the English Standard, and the Common English.
Our dictionaries and handbooks tend to be a little conservative, mostly because I am skeptical of the confidence and the imagination of modern liberal scholars. Two thousand years of brilliant minds have thought about and written about scriptures (longer and more in the case of the Hebrew scriptures), and the humble approach with that perspective is useful and wise. The best approach is to begin with the basics and go from there.
On a less controversial note, protect your treasure of wisdom with a book cover or tote. We have several designs with neat features.
The Heart of Torah: Volume 1
The Heart of Torah: Volume 1
Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion: Genesis and Exodus
Rabbi Shai Held
Foreword by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
Collectively, Rabbi Shai Held’s Torah essays—2 essays for each weekly portion— in The Heart of Torah, Volume 1 (Genesis and Exodus) and Volume II (Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) open new horizons in the world of Jewish biblical commentary. A renowned rabbi, lecturer and educator, Held brings creative theological exploration, penetrating psychological observation, keen attentiveness to literary detail, deep learning in Jewish philosophy and theology, and compassionate attention to the stirrings of the human heart.
He mines Talmud and midrashim, great writers of world literature, and even astute commentators of other religious backgrounds. He lets small textual anomalies slowly open up into fundamental questions about God, human nature, and what it truly means to be a religious person in the modern world. Along the way, he illuminates the centrality of empathy in Jewish ethics, the predominance of divine love in Jewish theology, the primacy of gratitude and generosity, and God’s summoning of each of us—with all our limitations—into the dignity of covenantal relationship.