Shul Books

The High Holidays are approaching and Jews around the world prepare for the moment with prayers, repentance, charity—and shopping and cooking for big holiday meals. In my own preparations for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, I assign myself one additional task: the selection of appropriate books to read in synagogue.

This may sound sacrilegious for me, an Orthodox Jew, to bring a book to read in synagogue. I am by no means a heretic. I am scrupulous about saying all of the prayers on the High Holidays and throughout the rest of the year. But between the two-day holiday of Rosh Hashanah, and the one-day fast of Yom Kippur, Orthodox Jews spend at least 21 hours in synagogue. As I know from long experience, not every one of those hours is used for prayer.

In fact, there is a lot of downtime, including waiting for the rest of the congregation to finish the silent prayers if one finishes early; listening to the readers’ repetition of the Amida prayer; and the various shuffles between announcements or the switching out of our prayer leaders. Sometimes we even get bonus reading time when the Torah has not been rolled to the appropriate portion, and the entire congregation waits while the prayer leaders roll the Torah, which can take a while if the Torah is set for Deuteronomy and the reading takes place in Genesis, as it does on the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

I do not read during the rabbi’s speech, nor do I read during times of collective prayer, but even with these restrictions, I generally have enough time during the 21 hours to polish off two books, and start my reading year off on the right foot.

I picked up this reading habit from my older brother Gil, who in 5748—1988 on the Gregorian calendar—was reading Leonard Fein’s Where Are We? The Inner Life of American Jews next to me in synagogue. My parents attended a Conservative synagogue, and the services were even longer than at the Orthodox synagogue I now attend. I started looking over Gil‘s shoulder and he loaned me the book. (Gil, of course, had another book with him as a spare.)

Gil later told me that this was a multigenerational family tradition: Our grandfather had gotten in trouble back in Poland for reading Daniel Deronda inside the flaps of his prayer book. This was a scandal, as his grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, was the synagogue rabbi and was irate at the discovery.

The reading-in-synagogue habit has many benefits: It helps me get to synagogue on time and with a spring in my step, knowing my time there will be filled with either active prayer or meaningful reading. It also helps me remember each year more clearly. High Holiday services, in accordance with Jewish tradition, are exactly the same year in and year out. New books ensure holidays do not blend together in my memory. In addition, I find that, as on airplanes, having your face in a book discourages unwanted conversations, thus reducing the amount of talking in synagogue.

Given that these are times of reflection and repentance, I take the selection of synagogue books seriously.

This is not a time for novels, be they pulp or serious literature. Nor is it a time for standard history or biography, which generally comprise the bulk of my annual reading. On the contrary, for the High Holidays, I undertake serious books that delve into what it means to be a Jew. With that in mind, I present this list of great synagogue reads, both classic and recent. These are not necessarily the best Jewish books, nor the most famous ones. They are books that fit my own criteria of seriousness about Judaism, readability, and the ability to follow along despite frequent and necessary devotional interruptions. Here are 10 of my favorites:

This Is My God, by Herman Wouk

This classic from the 1950s is the best explanation I have read of what it is to be a Jew. The title, I realized, comes from the “Song of the Sea,” something we read daily in synagogue, one of my many “oh yeah” moments I had while reading this book. Despite some dated language—I recall guffawing at the “gay pilgrims” headed to a festival at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem—its recognizable description of Jewish practices has a timeless feel to it.

The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel

This short and readable classic famously classifies the Sabbath as “a sanctuary in time.” Even longer than the time in synagogue on the High Holidays is the time living under Sabbatarian restrictions, so this book is a useful reminder of why those restrictions are important.

Tevye the Dairyman, by Sholem Aleichem

This is the only work of fiction on the list but I include it for two reasons: First, as a series of short stories, it makes for great shul reading. Second, Tevye so frequently quotes scripture, and so many of those quotes come from the daily prayer services, that shul felt like the perfect place to be reading it.

Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic, by Hillel Halkin

Collected letters are perfect for shul reading. This collection made the case for aliyah in the aftermath of the traumatic 1973 Yom Kippur War. The trauma of Oct. 7 makes it just as compelling and thought-provoking today. Israel has grown a great deal in the nearly half century since this book was written, but the tension between supporting Israel from afar and making the commitment to move there remains a resonant topic for many diaspora Jews.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold Kushner

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the Fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live, and who shall die? ... but repentance, prayer, and charity temper the severity of the decree.” These recurring words are at the heart of the High Holiday services. I, and I presume many other Jews, struggle with the fact that while we as a community were saying these words last year, evildoers were plotting to slaughter over 1,200 Jews, and the severity of that decree was not tempered. Kushner, who himself suffered the painful loss of a child, wrestles with theodicy, and while he does not provide definitive answers, he helps us think through these difficult questions.

John Lennon and the Jews, by Ze’ev Maghen

Everyone loves John Lennon’s vision in “Imagine,” right? Not Ze’ev Maghen. He dissects Lennon’s song and explains why people, but especially Jews, should reject a world with “nothing to kill or die for, no religion too.” He’s also set off by three Jewish Hare Krishnas that he encounters at LAX. Suffice it to say, it’s a very nontraditional book about why we should be adhering to our tradition, something that really resonates during those many hours in shul.

Genius and Anxiety, by Norman Lebrecht

This terrific book is more historical than most of my High Holiday books, but it was perfect nonetheless. It looks at the history of the Jews from 1848 to 1947 and explains how in that century of liberalization, Jews changed the world in every way one could imagine, culturally, technologically, and politically—thereby also changing the concept of what it means to be a Jew.

The New American Judaism, by Jack Wertheimer

This book, by the longtime Commentary contributor and JTS professor, does a deep dive into where the American Jewish community stands now. While reading, I had the sensation of being the frog in the water that was boiling all around me: Wertheimer aptly describes a myriad of changes to Jewish practices, happening in our lifetimes, that are largely unnoticed because they are absorbed and normalized so quickly.

The Zionist Ideas, by Gil Troy

Ordinarily I’d be loath to select a book by a member of my own family, but this book is perfect for High Holiday reading. It’s an update—and an improvement—on Arthur Hertzberg’s classic The Zionist Idea; it’s episodic, with bite-size selections from great Zionist thinkers matched with essays by Gil putting each thinker in context. It also provides valuable insights on how Zionism came to be and what it is now.

The Story of the Jewish People: Letters to Auntie Fori, by Martin Gilbert

This epistolary collection consists of letters that the great historian Gilbert sent to his “aunt” who had saved his life when he became deathly ill while traveling in India. In gratitude, he sent these letters to lay out the entirety of the history of the Jewish people to someone unfamiliar with any of it. Reading the familiar story of our people to someone new to it provided a great new perspective on why we spend so much time not only in shul, but also in maintaining our peoplehood.