The Informed Soul

Introductory encounters with Jewish thought.

Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb writes for the reader who has questions and wants them treated as questions rather than as symptoms. The word introductory in the subtitle is honest: this is a starting point in machshavah, written to be understood by someone who has not spent years in it, and it does not assume a background the reader may not have.

That makes it a book with a specific and useful audience. A ba'al teshuvah working out what he now believes and why, a high school or seminary graduate whose learning has been mostly in Gemara and halachah, or a thoughtful adult who has never been given a serious framework for Jewish belief will all get more out of this than out of something written for specialists.

207 pages, hardcover, 6 by 9 inches, from ArtScroll Mesorah Publications. It reads well straight through and stands up to being lent out and argued about, which for a book of this kind is the real test.

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