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Avot: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Ethics of the Fathers

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Pirkei Avot ("Chapters of the fathers") is both the best-loved portion of the Mishnah and also the Jewish text (other than the Bible itself) most familiar to non-Jews. Rabbi Shlomo Toperoff has thus done a tremendous service to all in providing a comprehensive commentary on this text.

And comprehensive it is. Drawing on Jewish sources, Rabbi Toperoff presents a line-by-line commentary on the entire text of Avot (which is presented both in Hebrew and in English translation). At the end of each section is a brief selection of relevant remarks from Hasidic lore.

The resulting 440-page volume will be a helpful addition to the library of anyone who wants a thorough, accessible, and Tradition-based commentary on Jewish ethics. In particular, since the ethical mitzvot are still officially regarded as binding even in the Reformest of Reform Judaism, this volume should help to provide common ground for respectful and mutually sympathetic dialogue among all branches of modern Jewry.