This book is written for the
modern Jewish reader conversant with the text of the Pentateuch and
Rashi’s commentary, exploring text and meaning using modern linguistic
and historical tools to understand the Torah as a uniform composition by
Moses, the Lawgiver. The origin of the book are weekly commentaries to
the Torah readings in the Sephardic (originally Moroccan) Minyan of
Congregation Anshe Shalom in West Hempstead NY. The encouragement of the
rabbinic listeners for the ideas of a nonprofessional Jewish student
was most welcome. This book was written on the request of a
Yeshiva-educated grandson to see the weekly Notes turned into a book,
showing points of view of which he never heard in the Yeshiva.
About the Author :
Heinrich W. Guggenheimer is a German born (1924), Swiss educated,
American mathematician, since 1989 Professor Emeritus of Polytechnic
University (today Polytechnic Institute of New York University.) He
received his advanced Jewish education at the Bet Midrash of Basel,
Switzerland. After retirement following a successful career as research
scientist, he turned his interests to Jewish subjects, writing with his
wife Eva nee Horovics, “Jewish Family Names, an etymological dictionary”
(1992, 2 nd ed. 2017; German version 1996), and as sole author “The
Scholar’s Haggadah” (1995), “Seder Olam, the rabbinic view of Biblical
chronology” (1998), a seventeen volume edition, translation, and
commentary of the Jerusalem Talmud (2000-2014), and “The Songs of
Psalms” (2017).
