wow
Actually I eat by Rabbi Ely Smith a lot.. and this is a real discussion.. kefirah? really? common, there would not be a post if that was the issue.. I asked my brother who asked a big rav in chabad who basically said well yeah you wont get much from these books i.e. intellectual stimulation
I dont agree with that, the one good piece of advice was to avoid tayla fishman and that rav soloveitchik ripped her.. I emailed rav soloveitchik to no reply.
Actually would like to interject that my best friend told me "you had no business learning in chabad, you belonged in YU" and I dropped out of school at 15.
So i'm opening constructive discussion here, there are plenty of books, read:seforim that are not in the main stream library
I own translations to: Tana dve eliyahu, Avot d'rabbi nasan, Mechilta D'rabbi yismael, Pesikta D'rav kahana,
To quote churn, you need to know your customers. There are many old JPS / JTS stuff that is great
Robert Brody is great. Ive seen ellman quoted a lot, Schamma friedman?
I know saul lieberman attacked jacob neusener and I know of lieberman from a famous question to the Rebbe regarding JTS
And then you have david weiss halivni, he got semicha at 15, knew all of shas... thinks God died in aushwitz.
I fail to see why ANYONE thinks we should just read / learn kehos / feldheim / artscroll... thats stupid and foolish.. If I wanted to be an apikores I sure as hell would not ask an opinion of this forum.
Rather, i'm looking to buy useful productive books, in fascinated by the talmudic and geonic era and honestly they dont teach this in yeshiva and the usual suspects are either not publishing this or they publish worthless junk.
I loved Rabbi Lau's the sages, I am enamored by the Cairo Geniza works, I have SD Goiten's a Mediterranean society. I am fascinated by the golden age of spain of poetry danush, ibn gabriol etc.. I would love to learn more about the paytonim and such
If you think that is kefira, i'm confused.