The Best Books on Judaism | Jewish Studies

Chapter 3A – Judaism - General Works

Dr. Sarah Imhof

Dr. Sarah Imhoff is an Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies and Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Isolating Judaism from other aspects of Jewishness, such as language, foodways, geography, and heredity, presents a nearly impossible task. Any discussion of Judaism as a religion will necessarily touch on one or many of the other aspects of Jewishness. Furthermore, both historical and contemporary contexts demonstrate a wide variety of Jewish belief and practice, even when artificially confined to the religious sphere. Nevertheless, some scholarly works effectively demarcate some of the historical and theological trends across social contexts. Michael Satlow’s Creating Judaism uses texts from throughout Jewish history to demonstrate both the vast diversity and the common threads among Jewish religious movements and communities.

Discussions of Jewish theology - as well as whether or not Judaism can even be said to have a theology - provide avenues into analyzing broad concepts within Judaism. Alfred Jospe’s collection of German Jewish philosophy, Studies in Jewish Thought, includes portions of many canonical works. Arthur Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr issued a collection of essays on philosophical concepts and religious terms in Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought. Arthur Cohen’s Arguments and Doctrines presents challenges and revisions to Jewish thought in the wake of the Holocaust. For particular thinkers, Mamre presents a collection of existentialist philosopher Martin Buber’s essays; Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence collects the essays and letters of the twentieth century Kabbalist and Zionist rabbi; Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Insecurity of Freedom brings together essays showing a vast array of the mid-twentieth century thinker’s Jewish engagement with the world around him; Arthur Green’s These are the Words articulates a theology of Jewish renewal in a contemporary context.

Some resources are helpful for those with specific questions about Jewish law or practices. Jewish dictionaries and encyclopedias abound. For reference works, the Encyclopedia Judaica remains the most complete, but Louis Jacobs’s alphabetically organized The Jewish Religion gives the material an engaging, albeit neither narrative nor complete, treatment. Andrew Bush’s Jewish Studies presents a history of the field of Jewish Studies in theoretical terms; however, it is not “introductory,” as the title might suggest.