Ann Arbor Jewish Book Festival Program

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

With Author Liel Leibovitz, How the Talmud Can Change Your Life

7:00 PM over Zoom

An extra­or­di­nary work of Jew­ish ethics, law, and tra­di­tion, the Tal­mud com­pels read­ers to engage with its abun­dance of ideas on how to live a good life. Full of folk leg­ends, bawdy tales, and rab­bini­cal back-and-forth over cen­turies, it is inspir­ing, demand­ing, con­found­ing, and thou­sands of pages long. As Lei­bovitz enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly explores in his new book, the Tal­mud is also humanity’s first self-help book, offer­ing sage advice on an unpar­al­leled scope of top­ics, includ­ing on how to deal with grief, how to choose your friends, and how to suc­cess­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cate with your partner.

Weav­ing togeth­er psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry with a wide array of mod­ern exam­ples touch­ing on every­thing from the cre­ation of Weight Watch­ers to the lives of Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Aris­to­tle, Lei­bovitz makes the Talmud’s insights rever­ber­ate for our mod­ern age. Each chap­ter is focused on a fun­da­men­tal human expe­ri­ence and illu­mi­nates how the Tal­mud speaks to dai­ly exis­tence. Giv­ing read­ers an enter­tain­ing crash course in Jew­ish his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy, Lei­bovitz shows how one of the world’s old­est books can, indeed, change your life.

Liel Lei­bovitz is the edi­tor at large for Tablet Mag­a­zine and the host of sev­er­al of its pop­u­lar pod­casts, includ­ing Unortho­dox and Take One. He’s the author of sev­er­al works of nonfic­tion, and a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to pub­li­ca­tions like The Wall Street Jour­nal, The New York Times, and oth­ers. A ninth-gen­er­a­tion Israeli, he now lives in New York with his family.