Friday, 4 May 2012

Book Review: Table Talk, by Moshe Pinchas Weisblum


(I am very very late with many reviews of books I've read lately so it is about time to start the counting and do my writing job).
One of the most well prepared moment of Shabbes, besides setting up the menu, is reading and preparing the weekly Parasha.
I listen or read many variants: at the beginning of the week, I start searching for some related discussions on YU Torah or Chabad.org or while reading different interpretations in the Orthodox media.
On Shabbes, I usually read once the Chumash and shortly after the comments. I discuss one more the short version with the children. At shul, I am reading the Hebrew version by myself. Eventually, thereafter, I continue with another sum up the discussion with the children to be sure that we have a common understanding of the main benchmarks.
In addition, I listen to the shiurim of the rabbi delivered during the day. At the first sight, it might be more than enough,
but I always look for more interpretations and versions. The next level is to focus more on the home discussion and to spend more time around the Shabbes table discussing the weekly Parasha. For the moment, I am looking for suggestions of formats and ideas for brainstorming - mostly by connecting the ideas of the parasha to our daily life.
Thus I was more than happy to stumble upon a Moshe Pinchas Weisblum book dedicated to the Table Talk. For each parasha, there are a couple of simple questions with the suggested answer that could organize at a certain extent the discussion. The level of difficulty is easy to medium and it is not difficult to follow and participate at the discussion. For each Parasha I found new interesting angles of view and I think it is useful for many – like me – looking to establish a minimal level of the discussions held on Shabbes.

Enhanced by Zemanta

No comments: