Big Headline: On Yom Kippur, We Judge The Book By Its Cover
A Social Acceptability Guide to Yom Kippur Reading Material
Before proceeding, a note of attribution: This article was inspired by Dr. J.J. Kimche’s considerably more serious blog post, “The Shul Book-A Field Guide.” My brother-in-law alerted me to the article, which is how an innocent link becomes a full-length article. Dr. Kimche is a Harvard-trained intellectual historian and professor of religion and philosophy at UATX. His article is scholarly. Mine asks the less scholarly question of which books can sit beside a machzor without setting off a small communal inquiry.
We are taking a brief break from our Sound of a Generation countdown for a relatively timely article and new topic that we hope will benefit our readership. Next week, the countdown returns with numbers seven through five, three songs that helped define the era and will bring us within striking distance of the top four. The songs, some having already survived for decades, should be able to manage another week.
Now that we are safely in Elul, the yamim noraim are no longer some distant events on the Jewish calendar. Selichos is approaching, the machzorim are beginning to reappear, and Elul is calling upon us to begin the serious work of cheshbon hanefesh and teshuvah. As such, we will depart this week from our Top 10
At the center of it all stands Yom Kippur, the holiest and most awe-inspiring day of the year. From Kol Nidrei through Neilah, we spend the day immersed in tefillah, teshuvah, and the opportunity to stand before Hashem with a seriousness we rarely summon during the rest of the year.
It is also a very long day of davening.
That is not a criticism. It is a logistical fact.
At various appropriate points during the day, some people supplement the machzor with additional reading. What one may read, and when, is a legitimate question for one’s rav.
This article addresses the entirely separate question of socially accepted reading material.
Because the fact that something may technically be permissible does not necessarily mean you want it lying open on your seat when you are called for an aliyah.
Every shul has its own standards. Still, six broad categories have emerged.
- The Sefer
Social Acceptability Rating: 10/10
A sefer is unquestionably the gold standard.
Shaarei Teshuvah, Mesillas Yesharim, or Rav Soloveitchik’s On Repentance all fit naturally into the day. Nobody sees On Repentance beside your machzor and wonders whether you have drifted off topic.
A Gemara is also fully accepted, although one should be realistic about how much lomdus can be attempted on an empty stomach. A difficult Tosafos may be manageable after Shacharis. By late Minchah, even identifying which words belong to Rashi can feel like a major accomplishment.
There is also a risk in selecting a sefer solely for appearances. If you bring a Ketzos because it gives your shtender a more serious look, the man beside you may ask what you are learning. “I’m still getting into it” is not a strong answer when the sefer has been sitting next to you every Yom Kippur since 2019.
Mussar is especially suited to the day, although it can get personal very quickly. You begin with the impression that you occasionally become impatient. Ten pages later, you learn that the real problem is gaavah, anger, weak emunah, selfishness, and a disturbing inability to recognize the tzelem Elokim in others.
You thought the chazzan was dragging.
The sefer believes the chazzan is the least of your problems.
Special Ruling: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Social Acceptability Rating: 10/10; 11/10 in hardcover
Rabbi Sacks merits his own category.
He was, after all, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. That is three separate forms of social acceptability before you have opened the book.
Ceremony & Celebration, Letters to the Next Generation: Reflections for Yom Kippur, and To Heal a Fractured World are all excellent choices. They are serious, accessible, directly relevant, and written in English sophisticated enough to make whatever the person beside you brought look slightly undereducated.
Rabbi Sacks’s prose also produces a curious effect. After two pages, your internal voice develops an English accent. After four, you are thinking in words such as “covenantal,” “civilizational,” and “particularity.”
You finished the silent Mussaf before the chazzan and opened the book intending to read a page or two. You are now contemplating whether Western civilization can survive without a shared moral vocabulary.
The name alone provides complete social protection. Even someone who has never read Rabbi Sacks understands that you are engaged in something elevated, British, and almost certainly important.
Nobody knows precisely what “covenantal responsibility in a postmodern age” means.
But everyone agrees that it belongs in shul.
2. The Gadol Biography
Social Acceptability Rating: 9/10
A gadol biography is meaningful, uplifting, and easy to read in short segments.
Reb Moshe, A Tzaddik in Our Time, and All for the Boss are all safe choices. A black-and-white photograph of a gadol on the cover provides nearly complete social protection. The larger the beard and the smaller the typeface, the fewer questions you will receive.
The hidden danger is that some of these books have plots.
You begin with the intention of reading an inspiring story about emunah. Fifteen pages later, there are forged documents, a closed border, a Soviet interrogator, and one remaining seat on a train leaving before dawn.
At that point, the book is no longer functioning as a biography. It is a thriller with haskamos.
If the tzibbur has begun Al Chet and you are still waiting to find out whether the exit visa arrived, close the book. The gadol made it out of Russia. You need to return to the machzor. A two-volume biography provides even greater social acceptability, although bringing both volumes raises the possibility that people will assume you intend to spend Yom Kippur in shul through Succos.
3. The Jewish Novel
Social Acceptability Rating: 6/10
A Jewish novel falls within the broadest definition of socially accepted reading material. The rating can rise or fall dramatically based upon the cover.
A classic such as The Chosen can be defended as serious Jewish literature, although bringing a book with that title on Yom Kippur suggests a level of confidence best kept private.
Historical fiction such as The Family Aguilar, with its account of Jewish life during the Spanish Inquisition, is easily defensible. It deals with mesirus nefesh, Jewish survival, and commitment under extraordinary pressure.
Modern frum fiction is less straightforward.
Broken Promises includes a shidduch, illness, family conflict, betrayal, and a lawsuit. It is certainly serious, although Yom Kippur provides enough emotional intensity without adding civil litigation.
Then there is Lie of the Land, which begins with an estranged frum family and eventually carries its characters into the Amazon rainforest while they unravel a decades-old secret and flee a new threat.
It may be an excellent book. But if the tzibbur is saying the Avodah and you are in the Amazon, something has gone wrong.
The test is simple. Imagine the rav asking what you are reading.
“A historical novel about Jews remaining faithful during the Inquisition” is a good answer.
“A yeshivah bochur accidentally took the wrong suitcase from Ben Gurion Airport” means nothing remotely calm will happen for the next 300 pages.
4. The Comic Book
Social Acceptability Rating: 8/10 for a child; 3/10 for an adult
For children, a kosher comic can be perfectly reasonable.
The Amoraim Series: Rav Nachman presents stories from Chazal in comic form. The Hunt for Eichmannteaches modern Jewish history. Klonimus follows a Jewish boy confronting challenges with emunah.
None is a machzor, but all are preferable to a child leaving shul every eight minutes to determine whether anything new has occurred in the lobby.
A Yiddishe Kop is a special case. Gadi Pollack’s books are technically illustrated visual brainteasers rather than comics, and they are wholesome, Jewish, and specifically designed to sharpen the mind.
They are also dangerous. A child opens the book quietly. An adult says, “Let me see that for one second.” Ten minutes later, four men are leaning over the page trying to determine which wagon could not have entered the marketplace from the east. The child has gone to groups. Two accountants have been brought in.
For an adult, even a kosher comic occupies shaky ground.
You may inspect your child’s comic. You may read several pages to understand what your child is reading. But once your child has gone to groups and you continue turning pages, it is no longer chinuch.
If the child returns and you say, “One second, they’re about to catch Eichmann,” ownership has officially transferred.
The Kichel Collection is undoubtedly kosher. It is also specifically intended to make frum people laugh at themselves. This makes it excellent reading almost anywhere besides shul on Yom Kippur. One poorly contained laugh during chazaras hashatz, and everyone knows you are not reading Rav Chaim.
Dry Bones is more sophisticated. It is Jewish, Israeli, and often quite serious. It is also political, which means the first cartoon will take ten seconds to read and twenty-five minutes to discuss. By the time you return to your machzor, four men will be debating the future of the State of Israel and one will be explaining what Menachem Begin would have done.
Mainstream comics receive a firm 0/10.
Batman, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and Calvin and Hobbes should not be visible beside a machzor.
Yes, many legendary superheroes were created by Jews. That is an interesting historical fact, not a heterfor Batman during Mussaf.
5. The Secular Book
Social Acceptability Rating: 4/10; 7/10 if it exceeds 700 pages
Serious secular books may qualify as socially accepted reading material, particularly if they are thick enough to appear unpleasant.
The Power Broker, The Brothers Karamazov, and Andrew Roberts’s Churchill: Walking with Destiny all look suitably forbidding.
The Power Broker is especially safe. It is more than 1,200 pages long, and the title could plausibly refer to the shul president.
Thickness itself provides a surprising amount of protection. Once a book passes 700 pages, it stops looking like entertainment and begins to look like an undertaking.
Crime and Punishment also sounds perfectly suited to Yom Kippur, although displaying it beside your machzor may look less like a literary choice than a personal disclosure.
War and Peace may be the ideal secular shul book. It has a solemn title, no flashy cover, and almost no possibility of being finished during a single lifetime. From two rows away, it could easily be mistaken for an English sefer on bein adam l’chaveiro.
The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court also has an exceptionally shul-friendly title. At nearly 600 pages, it sounds like a history of distinguished talmidei chachamim and is thick enough to establish that you did not come to Yom Kippur looking for light entertainment. In reality, it is Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong’s deeply reported account of the Supreme Court.
Yom Kippur is indeed about judgment.
This is the wrong court.
Sports books occupy a narrow gray area. A Sandy Koufax biography has an obvious Yom Kippur connection. Koufax famously declined to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur.
Still, one appropriate chapter does not automatically kasher the remaining 280 pages for chazaras hashatz.
A book about the Jets has a different argument in its favor. Few institutions have taught generations of Jews more about disappointment, suffering, and the dangers of misplaced faith.
But it is still not a sefer.
6. The How-To Book
Social Acceptability Rating: 4/10, subject to the title
How-to books are socially risky because the title tells the entire shul exactly what you believe needs fixing.
Atomic Habits seems relevant. Yom Kippur is a day to examine our patterns and commit to change. Unfortunately, the habit currently being displayed is your inability to remain in shul without reaching for a productivity book.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is also defensible, although everyone who knows you will begin privately counting.
How to Win Friends and Influence People raises a different problem. The people you thought were your friends may spend the rest of davening reconsidering how that happened.
Judaism for Dummies may contain useful information but bringing it to shul on Yom Kippur is a remarkably public request for assistance. Nobody will make fun of you. That would be easier. By Mussaf, you will have two chavrusas, three invitations for Shabbos lunch, and someone explaining why we fast.
How to Be Perfect is perhaps the worst possible title to display on the one day when the entire tzibbur is publicly acknowledging otherwise.
A public-speaking guide must never be opened during the rav’s drasha. Underlining passages would constitute open criticism.
Home-repair books carry a more practical danger. If the shul president notices that you are studying plumbing, electrical work, or drywall repair, you will be appointed to the building committee before Neilah.
And then there is How to Cook Everything. No. After four o’clock, opening a cookbook in shul is not reading. It is incitement.
A Few Non-Book Rulings
Several other forms of reading material do not require full sections.
The shul bulletin: 10/10 on the first reading; 3/10 by the fifth. At some point you know every zman, sponsor, and mazel tov by heart and are simply hoping that new information has appeared since Shacharis.
A Jewish newspaper or magazine: 2/10. The word “Jewish” helps, but not enough. It still rustles, unfolds across multiple seats, and eventually reveals that you skipped the divrei Torah and went directly to the real-estate section.
A crossword puzzle or Sudoku: 0/10. This is not supplementary reading. This is announcing that you have begun an alternate program.
Ultimately, appropriate Yom Kippur reading should complement the kedushah of the day, not pull one away from it. It should be meaningful, suitable for short stretches, and easy to close the moment daveningresumes.
There is also one final test.
Imagine being called for an aliyah and leaving the book open on your seat.
If your first instinct would be to turn it facedown, it is not socially accepted reading material.
You already knew that before you brought it.
