WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW, stop – and order from your favorite bookseller Liel Leibovitz’ How the Talmud Can Change Your Life (Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book). It’s a breakneck-speed, 272-page survey of Jewish history, bringing to life the key sages and lively times of the Talmud like never before, with illustrations drawn from Aldrich Ames and Billie Holiday and Weight Watchers and the Dewey Decimal System. I read it in three days, only grudgingly taking time for sleep and meals; it’s mildly profane and very learned and joyful and engaging and funny and sweeping and heartbreaking and really, really, real. You owe it to yourself, and to your understanding of Judaism, to read this book.
Seriously. Do it now.