We are often called ​“The Peo­ple of the Book,” and David Bashevkin’s lat­est book, I Read This Over Shab­bos: Read­ing Jew­ish His­to­ry in the Parasha, speaks to the apt­ness of that nick­name. Back in Jan­u­ary 2020, Bashevkin casu­al­ly tweet­ed about a book he’d read over Shab­bos. It wasn’t until a few months lat­er that he shared anoth­er Shab­bos read — and then decid­ed to make it a week­ly habit. Over time, oth­er peo­ple began to post their Shab­bos reads, and it became A Thing. 

But it’s more than just a social media trend. Bashevkin explains the rea­son­ing behind shar­ing what you read, say­ing, ​“Shar­ing what you read has two goals: 1. It reframes social media as a place to share ideas.… 2. It reframes Shab­bos. In place of see­ing Shab­bos as restric­tive or a day that can be enjoyed only by those ful­ly obser­vant, ​‘I Read This Over Shab­bos’ became a move­ment to see Shab­bos as a day to con­nect with your favorite books — regard­less of denom­i­na­tion or even reli­gion.” In this way, peo­ple can find com­mon ground, thought­ful dis­cus­sion, and their next read. 

The book is struc­tured by parasha, and instead of mere­ly sum­ma­riz­ing the parasha and then com­ment­ing on it, Bashevkin often brings in sto­ries — about him­self or oth­ers. He’ll dis­cuss his­tor­i­cal events, Jew­ish his­to­ry, tales of sages, or sim­ply what he was like as a stu­dent. But he selects main themes or con­cepts from each parasha and dis­cuss­es them, bring­ing in what oth­er writ­ers have writ­ten in their books. At the end of each parasha chap­ter, there is a box list­ing the books and arti­cles he has ref­er­enced. The foot­notes also con­tain a wealth of texts: books, arti­cles, web­sites, links to videos, and more. Bashevkin makes the parashyiot real in this way; he brings the themes into our mod­ern lives and makes them rel­e­vant, show­ing read­ers the time­less appeal of the Torah. 

Inter­spersed through­out the text, there are pho­tographs of his­tor­i­cal events, news­pa­per clip­pings, his­tor­i­cal signs, and his­tor­i­cal cor­re­spon­dences, mak­ing the book visu­al­ly appeal­ing and easy to read. Though there’s plen­ty of dis­cus­sion about Tal­mud, syn­a­gogue, and Jew­ish life, Bashevkin keeps in mind that not every­one shares his lev­el of Jew­ish lit­er­a­cy and expe­ri­ence. His expla­na­tions and writ­ing feel like a con­ver­sa­tion with him in which he’s excit­ed­ly shar­ing things he loves, while mak­ing the ideas and con­cepts acces­si­ble and relat­able. That being said, the resources tend to be from most­ly male authors. While the book is about Jew­ish his­to­ry, there are plen­ty of female rab­bis, his­to­ri­ans, and schol­ars with pub­lished work he could have cit­ed and/​or dis­cussed. Yes, he’s com­ing from an Ortho­dox per­spec­tive, but Maharat and JOFA have made find­ing women’s Torah schol­ar­ship eas­i­er than ever. The book could have also been strength­ened by the addi­tion of a con­clu­sion or epi­logue; it has an intro­duc­tion detail­ing Bashevkin’s love of read­ing, but ends quite abrupt­ly after Vezot Haberakha. 

I Read This Over Shab­bos is an engag­ing, cere­bral addi­tion to the exist­ing col­lec­tion of parasha com­men­taries. It brings a fresh approach to the parshiy­ot, and pro­vides plen­ty of read­ing mate­r­i­al for your own future Shab­bos reading.