The Heart of Torah, Volume 1: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion: Genesis and Exodus

In The Heart of Torah, Rabbi Shai Held’s Torah essays—two for each weekly portion—open new horizons in Jewish biblical commentary.

Held probes the portions in bold, original, and provocative ways. He mines Talmud and midrashim, great writers of world literature, and astute commentators of other religious backgrounds to ponder fundamental questions about God, human nature, and what it 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 a covenantal relationship.

• The Heart of Torah, Volume 2: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion: Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
• The JPS Rashi Discussion Torah Commentary (JPS Study Bible)
• The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary (JPS Study Bible)
• Covenant & Conversation Genesis: The Book of Beginnings
• Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life--in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There)
• The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Vol. Three-Volume Set)
• Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor
• This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation
• Covenant & Conversation: Deuteronomy: Renewal of the Sinai Covenant
• If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir