Arthur Green is one of the pre-eminent authorities on Jewish thought and spirituality. He is the Irving Brudnick Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College and rector of its Rabbinical School in Boston. Along with Ebn Leader and Or N. Rose, both on the faculty of Hebrew College, and Ariel Evan Mayse, a doctoral student at Harvard University, he has put together these teachings on the Torah drawn from a wide variety of works written by the disciples of the Ba'al Shem Tov, the great Maggid. They follow the weekly Torah reading and the Jewish festival calendar. Most of the texts in this book are talks given at the table in the course of a meal.
Volume 2 (Volume 1 is reviewed here) focuses on Numbers, Deuteronomy. and the Holiday cycle. As an added value, there are also brief biographies of Hasidic leaders. Each teaching concludes with a round table discussion between Green and the other editors. In both volumes, the weekly Torah readings are given in English and Hebrew. Here are some of the subjects covered in the book: the manna in the wilderness, Moses and the commandments, the strong tradition of teachers and students as central to the whole enterprise of Judaism, and the memory of having been reborn into freedom.
