Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew Book

Wow! What a beautiful read. Gillman takes all the big scary concepts in religion and breaks them down to mainstream and non-traditional avenues. He is optimistic and community-oriented, and overall, he focuses on the message of exploration and inclusiveness. Gillman's approach doesn't cheapen the philosophical ideas that drive theology, but he also doesn't feel the need to stick with overly academic language. He does a lovely job of providing textual evidence as well as historical context to try to explain why certain influential thinkers proposed the ideas that they did. This was a really fantastic way to guide myself into self-study of Judaism. I'm sure I will re-read this many, many times until my notes in the margins are completely illegible.