Person
Every book David Wolpe recommended on podcasts
Across 4 podcasts. Every show David Wolpe appears on, in one place — not just one.
David Wolpe’s most recommended books
- The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
- The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
- Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens
- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Herzog by Saul Bellow
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- 1 Maccabees by John R. Bartlett
- 2 Maccabees by Daniel R. Schwartz
- God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
- Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
David J. Wolpe is an American rabbi and author. He was Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School and is now the Max Webb Rabbi Emeritus of Sinai Temple. He previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA. Wolpe was named the most influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek in 2012, and among the 500 most influential Angelinos in 2016 and 2018. Wolpe now serves as the Inaugural rabbinic fellow for the ADL, and a Senior Advisor for the Maimonides Fund. Wolpe resigned from an advisory group on antisemitism assembled by Harvard President Claudine Gay in December 2023 in response to what Wolpe characterized as a hostile environment to Jews at Harvard. Speaking on the Lex Fridman Podcast, Wolpe recommended several formative books. He praised Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death as a profound work for understanding mortality and the psychological ways people avoid confronting it, recalling that his father encouraged him to read it in high school. He recommended Christopher Hitchens's memoir Hitch-22 as a great read offering insight into Hitchens's background and complex relationship with religion, and highlighted Saul Bellow's novel Herzog. Wolpe also expressed deep admiration for Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath, and shared that George Eliot's Middlemarch is his favorite novel.
Books recommended by David Wolpe
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The Sabbath
The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel is a profound theological exploration of time, sacred rest, and the spiritual dimensions of Judaism.
Recommended“you mentioned one of them which is Victor Frankle's man's search for meaning and I also really really love Hesshel's the Sabbath”
Where to get it
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The Denial of Death
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning psychological and philosophical study arguing that human civilization is ultimately driven by an unconscious terror of mortality.
Discussed“Uh, first of all, I would say when I was in high school, I think my father actually encouraged me to read this book. Uh, I read Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, which I found and still find to be one of the most profound works I've ever come across.”
Where to get it
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Hitch-22
Hitch-22 is a candid and intellectually robust memoir by the late British-American essayist and critic Christopher Hitchens, reflecting on his political evolution, literary friendships, and eventual battle with cancer.
Recommended“His uh autobiography Hitch 22 is a great read.”
Where to get it
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Man's Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E.
Discussed“you mentioned one of them which is Victor Frankle's man's search for meaning and I also really really love Hesshel's the Sabbath”
Where to get it
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Herzog
Herzog by Saul Bellow is a celebrated modernist novel following a beleaguered intellectual who writes frantic, unsent letters to friends, enemies, and historical figures while suffering a midlife crisis.
Recommended“I also love Saul Bellow, especially 'Herzog.' But that's a very different kind of thinking—person's novel. I read a lot of mysteries, and a lot of other kinds of fiction and literature.”
Where to get it
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Middlemarch
Middlemarch by George Eliot is a classic Victorian novel that explores provincial life, social reform, morality, and human relationships in a fictional English town.
Recommended“My favorite novel is Middle March.”
Where to get it
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1 Maccabees
Discussed“we learn about the story of Kaneka from the Mcabes 1 and two, which are not in the cannon of the Hebrew Bible, but they were written later.”
Where to get it
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2 Maccabees
Discussed“we learn about the story of Kaneka from the Mcabes 1 and two, which are not in the cannon of the Hebrew Bible, but they were written later.”
Where to get it
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God Is Not Great
God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens is a prominent polemical manifesto of the New Atheism movement that argues organized religion poisons everything, undermines moral responsibility, and distorts human understanding.
Discussed“So, for example, the idea that you would call a book 'Religion Poisons Everything'—I think he did that deliberately and provocatively so that he could defend a proposition that obviously is indefensible: that it poisons everything.”
Where to get it
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Infidel
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a powerful memoir detailing the author's escape from a oppressive upbringing in Somalia and her eventual journey of self-discovery and political awakening in the West.
Discussed“she wrote a book called Infidel she said when I was growing up in Somalia”
Where to get it
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Letters from Earth
Discussed“Mark Twain has a passage in letters from Earth where he says people think they're going to list lie on green fields and listen to harp music”
Where to get it
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Letters from the Earth
Discussed“One is that every image of what it's like is foolish; like Mark Twain has in 'Letters from the Earth' says, 'We're going to lie on green fields and listen to harp music,' which you wouldn't want to do for five minutes while you're alive, but you think you'll be happy for the rest of eternity doing it after you”
Where to get it
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Lolita
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is a controversial and acclaimed novel about an adult man's obsessive and abusive relationship with a young girl.
Discussed“The reason is he said all love require all real love stories require an obstacle. And usually it was you know, adultery or something like that. He says but when all barriers have been leveled and the only obstacle less left is an adult may not touch a child. It was part of Nabokov's genius to make that into a”
Where to get it
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Survival in Auschwitz
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi is a harrowing autobiographical account of the author's imprisonment in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust, detailing the profound degradation and resilience of the human spirit under unimaginable totalitarian cruelty.
Discussed“There's one place, I think in Survival in Auschwitz, where Primo Levi talks about a bricklayer that the Nazis asked him to build a wall and he couldn't persuade himself to build it badly.”
Where to get it
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The Arc of a Covenant
The Arc of a Covenant by Walter Russell Mead is a comprehensive political analysis examining the historical relationship between the United States, Israel, and the Jewish people.
Discussed“Walter Russell me who is uh the foreign fairs columnist of the Wall Street Journal just wrote a a long book that I actually blurbed and I can't remember now the name of it it's I think it has the word Arc in the title but it's all about the uh the ark of a covenant there it is the”
Where to get it
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The book of Genesis
The book of Genesis by Victor P.
Discussed“The beauty of the Book of Genesis is all through Genesis brothers are fighting, even though they don't kill each other in the end.”
Where to get it
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The Exodus
Discussed“I think Richard Elliot Freriedman may have gotten this right in his book Exodus.”
Where to get it
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The Talmud of Babylonia
Discussed“Yeah, well, the Torah is the five books of Moses written in Hebrew. Most modern rabbis, non-orthodox or non-literalist rabbis, will tell you that it's a product of human beings, and I believe that they are inspired by God.”
Where to get it
Appearances
Other mentions (2: passing, ad reads, own books)
“Yeah, you wrote in your book 'Why Faith Matters': 'Walt Whitman wrote that in order for there to be a great book, there must be great readers.' For a book to remain powerful throughout generations, it cannot have a single meaning; scripture, like great poetry, is not reducible to other words.”
“one of my books that called why Faith matters the preface was written by Rick Warren now the idea that an Evangelical Minister would write a preface to a rabbi's book about faith about faith”