Keys to the Palace (Hardcover)

Exploring the Religious Value of Reading Tanakh

In this latest collection of essays, Rabbi Hayyim Angel continues to demonstrate the intellectual and spiritual benefits of the interaction between religious Jewish Tanakh learning and academic Bible scholarship. Throughout these twenty studies, Rabbi Angel introduces learning tools and implements them. The first seven essays explore significant areas of learning methodology and religious outlook, and the thirteen text studies put this methodology into practice. As in his popular classes at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Angel leads readers through the learning process so that they become involved as well. Rabbi Angel’s erudite scholarship, transparency of method, and engaging style make this book—as well as all his others—a must-read for religious students of Tanakh as well as all those who are interested in the engagement of religious and academic approaches to Bible study. Mind, heart, and soul grow together through these learned and accessible studies.

Rabbi Hayyim Angel is the National Scholar of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals (jewishideas.org). He has taught advanced Bible courses to undergraduate, graduate, and rabbinical students at Yeshiva University since 1996. He also serves as the Tanakh Education Scholar at Yeshivat Ben Porat Yosef in Paramus, New Jersey. He lectures widely in synagogues and schools throughout North America, and consults with numerous yeshivot worldwide to improve their Tanakh curricula. He has authored thirteen books, edited three other volumes, and published over 130 scholarly articles, primarily in Bible. Rabbi Angel’s scholarship focuses on the interaction between traditional and academic approaches to Bible study. He lives in Teaneck, New Jersey, with his wife and four children.