For the past 25 years Rab­bi Neil Gill­man, Ph.D., pro­fes­sor of Jew­ish phi­los­o­phy at the Jew­ish The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, has been the Con­ser­v­a­tive Torah com­men­ta­tor for the news­pa­per Jew­ish Week, writ­ing a col­umn every third week. Traces of God brings togeth­er about a third of these columns. 

Address­ing the ques­tion of how we can find God in our lives, these brief com­men­taries probe and embrace the ten­sions and com­plex­i­ties, ambi­gu­i­ties and mys­ter­ies, anger and love, that we dis­cov­er as we read and reread Torah. Gill­man faces the Torah square­ly, tak­ing it on its own terms but also inform­ing his under­stand­ing — or will­ing­ness to sus­pend under­stand­ing — with tra­di­tion­al com­men­tary and con­tem­po­rary thinking. 

Beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten and total­ly acces­si­ble, Traces of God will enrich any read­ing of the Torah. But more impor­tant­ly, it will open pos­si­bil­i­ties for any­one seek­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of God’s pres­ence in our lives, whether or not we per­ceive it. Sug­ges­tions for fur­ther read­ing, index of Torah read­ings (the com­men­taries are titled by sub­ject, not by Torah portion).