The Chosen
1967 · 271 pages
Two Brooklyn boys meet when one's line drive shatters the other's glasses at a yeshiva ball game. Danny, raised in silence to inherit a Hasidic dynasty, is secretly reading Freud in German.
★ 5.2
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Prophets
1962 · 672 pages
The God of Amos and Jeremiah is not serene but stung to anger by human cruelty, Heschel argues, and the prophet feels it. Marching at Selma, he felt his legs were praying.
★ 6.5
Daniel Deronda
1876 · 849 pages
Gwendolen Harleth sells herself into marriage with a cold, cruel man, and beside her Eliot sets an Englishman finding out he is a Jew. Early Zionists dated their conviction to this book.
★ 6.7
Hebrew Torah
Author unknown
400 BC · 400 pages
These five books make the world, drown it, and follow one family from Abraham to the law given at Sinai. Four billion people now worship the God who speaks in them.
★ 6.7