Rabbi Zemel spent a considerable amount of time reading a wide variety of books during his recent six-month sabbatical. He provided the following 30 titles:

1. David Mamet, The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews
2. Philip Roth, Everyman
3. Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
4. Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy
5. Dara Horn, The World to Come
6. Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
7. Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina
8. Eric R. Kandel, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
9. Jeffery Goldberg, Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide
10. Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different
11. John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
12. Sylvia Barack Fishman, The Way into the Varieties of Jewishness
13. Amos Oz, How to Cure a Fanatic
14. Lawrence Kushner, Kabbalah: A Love Story
15. Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
16. Jeremy Benstein, The Way into Judaism and the Environment
17. Ron Wolfson, The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community
18. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
19. E.O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
20. Barbara J. King, Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion
21. Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force,1881--1948
22. Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
23. Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum, A Day of Small Beginnings
24. Hans Jonas, Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz
25. Michael l. Satlow, Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice
26. Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World
27. Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
28. E. L. Doctorow, The March
29. Kenneth R. Miller, Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
30. Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist