In my opinion, even if you don’t agree with one insight or another, it’s worth being familiar with the foundational books in the Jewish bookshelf. I’d דווקא start with Benaiah with Maimonides’ introductions. You’ll find important insights there for life.

It’s worth reading them during breaks and not during study time itself (bein hazmanim, army service, and the like). During study time, it’s better to read analytical Torah books.

Despite the Rabbi’s dismissiveness, these books do provide certain tools both for military service and for the years afterward in university and at work, so it is very worthwhile to know them.

As for reading material here, I’d simply wander among the books, old and new alike, including Maharal, Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Soloveitchik, and Rabbi Shagar.

It’s also worth reading scholarly books, like Micah Goodman’s book on the Kuzari, David Sorotzkin on the Maharal (with him you have to separate the wheat from the chaff), and the book What God Cannot Do by Robin. And of course the Rabbi’s books.

And in my opinion, don’t make the mistake many people make (myself included—it’s hard to break yeshiva habits) of starting with primary texts. Whatever you’ll get out of Beliefs and Opinions, the Kuzari, and Guide for the Perplexed after many hours, you’ll get more clearly, sharply, and systematically from Open University books. It’s both faster and clearer, really a win-win. After you know the approaches, the comparisons, and the central points, move on to the original literature. Maybe it’s not respectable to read that in the study hall, but you don’t lick ice cream with conventions of respectability. I warmly recommend that in this area you learn from my mistakes and others’.

With God's help, 22 Elul 5780

A brilliant idea occurred to me: to attend the faith and thought classes that the yeshiva offers, and also to learn in chavruta with an older student or a kollel fellow.

And of course: Maimonides’ introductions, the Kuzari (for a comparison between their approaches, Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat’s book Between the Kuzari and Maimonides will help), The Way of God by Ramchal, The Precious Adar and Footsteps of the Flock by Rabbi Kook, and the books of Rabbi Amital and Rabbi Lichtenstein. I detailed modern-style Torah thought literature in my comments on the column about dealing with going off the path.

Best regards,
Shatz

Obviously, books that cast doubt on the Thirteen Principles of Judaism—one who guards his soul should stay far away from them, and enough said.

Regarding the suggestion of “The Full Breadth of Your Land,” by that same logic one should also recommend never opening a Talmud or the commentary books of the medieval and later authorities, and instead learning the Bible, the Mishnah, and the Talmud from surveys by the “Closed University”; that way you’re guaranteed never to succeed in learning a Torah text independently 🙂

Best regards,
Zorba the Greek, author of the book The Kettle’s Spout

Regarding R. Shatz’s suggestion to learn in chavruta with a kollel fellow and attend faith classes—this is, in my view, exactly what one really should not do. Look around you there and you’ll see that nobody knows their right hand from their left; they picked up a few fragments here and there and weave the whole mess together with ropes of vanity. It’s far better to learn from experts in the field (and what doubts there could be about the presentation and orderly analysis of Rav Saadia Gaon’s words, I do not know). Talmudic analysis is a different matter, because it’s not only about broadening one’s scope of knowledge but also about developing technical skill that requires hands-on practice, and that’s not something you do on the side, and also because there still isn’t sufficiently good systematic literature. In my opinion, what will happen here is the usual thing: everyone will start from the original literature, then later they’ll get to organized literature and be horrified, and then advise others, who also won’t listen; one generation goes and another comes, and the missed opportunity keeps crawling on forever.

With God's help, 22 Elul 5780

To M.R.A. — greetings,

Regarding literature that analyzes and summarizes a philosophical approach of the great Jewish thinkers: there are reliable analyses that use their philosophical knowledge for a proper understanding of the books of thought written by the great sages of Israel, such as Rabbi Shilat’s book Between the Kuzari and Maimonides, to which one can add Pillars of Jewish Thought by Rabbi Dr. S. B. Urbach on medieval thinkers, and the books of Prof. Benjamin (Beno) Gross on the thought of the Maharal and Rabbi Kook.

Today’s academic literature is the exact opposite of systematic analysis of the words of the medieval authorities (Rishonim). Today, the more one multiplies “conspiracy theories,” turning the early formulators of faith into heretics against the very principles they themselves set forth—and that is, of course, crooked and distorted.

But even genuinely systematic literature, like the good examples I mentioned above, cannot replace mastery and close analysis of the original text. After you have learned the Talmud and struggled with Rashi’s and Tosafot’s difficulties and resolutions, then you can successfully approach Maimonides and the Tur and Shulchan Arukh, which aim to summarize the discussion into Jewish law, and the later literature that deals with conceptualization and explaining the reasoning. You can’t harness the wagon before the horses 🙂

Best regards,
Shatz the Spout

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… “conspiracy theories” that make the formulators of faith…

It’s not only ideas that make the medieval authorities into heretics; it’s mainly theories that read postmodern ideas into the medieval authorities (the contradictions in the Guide in order to really say that Maimonides himself was conflicted, the Kuzari in order to show that both sides are right, and so on).

I didn’t recommend Goodman’s book on the Kuzari for nothing, since many ignore the form of the Platonic dialogue and the ironic aspect that Rabbi Yehuda Halevi follows in its wake (Shmuel Shkolnikov expands on this aspect in Thirty-Three Studies in Plato). Many also ignore the clear contradiction between the framing story of prophecy to the king of Khazaria by an angel and the sage’s claim that prophecy belongs exclusively to Jews. Already here there is proof for Goodman’s claim that the sage in the Kuzari does not necessarily represent Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s own view. Goodman also elaborates on the matter of the tree growing from the seed, which is supposed to encompass the whole human species, and which many ignore, getting stuck at the seed stage without understanding that the parable continues onward in a more universal direction. People also study the witness proof from the parable of the king of India in a simplistic way, without relating to the serious problems involved in that type of proof. As a result, they understand it as a mathematical proof instead of as a phenomenological presentation of Judaism. For these reasons and others, I think Goodman’s book on the Kuzari is highly recommended. His books on Maimonides and Mishneh Torah seem to me less successful, but on that the local authority has already remarked: each book on its own merits.

Regarding The Full Breadth of Your Land’s recommendation to read Open University books: can you elaborate a bit on which books you recommend?

With regard to books like the Kuzari and Guide for the Perplexed, I meant specifically the course “Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages: From Rav Saadia Gaon to Maimonides,” https://www.openu.ac.il/courses/10412.htm. There are similar courses as well in Greek philosophy and Western philosophy, and also divided by topics (science, ethics, etc.).

By the way, I heard this general advice not long after I started getting interested in the field, but I scoffed, like an ignorant youngster, and went straight to the original literature (Plato’s dialogues, heaven help us. A crazy waste of effort). This isn’t just some side suggestion from some nobody on a website with a name; it’s a standard royal road, and tens of thousands will offer it to you—check and forget. It may be that if you want to learn how to philosophize (as opposed to knowing which ideas philosophers thought about), there is an advantage דווקא in initial friction with obscure literature, because then you’re also “with the king in his work,” and also because the very fact that the arguments aren’t clear and sharp leaves a lot of room for personal thought, and a person does not stand by a matter unless he has first stumbled in it, and so on. And there are also classics that really are worth reading in the original (translated). But when it comes to Jewish thought books from the Middle Ages, that is much less significant (in my opinion, etc.), and without any doubt it is far better to learn like a human being from books that will save you all the technical twists and let you focus on what matters.

Thank you very much to the Rabbi and the other respondents.

Rabbi, I’d be glad if you could explain what you meant by “in my view, what you’ll mainly get there is a source of inspiration and less actual study in the full sense.”
A source of inspiration in learning?
Inspiration for life?
What kind of inspiration?
Real inspiration?

The Full Breadth of Your Land, I’m in a yeshiva that isn’t very open ideologically; if I study Critique of Reason in the study hall, I think they’ll launch me out like a missile.

Inspiration for forming your own independent thinking. These aren’t books that constitute a binding source, and most of the ideas there are not really convincing to me, nor are they very innovative. So I don’t see significant value in this study. As I said, I explained this in the second book of my trilogy.

Thanks.