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Zohar

I love Rabbi Tatz books and tapes. Really intense. Worldmask was major.

Shemoneh Perakim

If you would be a man I would suggest viyoel moishe

My daughter was just telling me something really original sounding by the Ramchal that they’re learning this year (in Israeli seminar). She says they learn it in all the (Israeli) sems, but I’d never heard of it till now.

The sefer is called: “La’yesharim tehilla”

She was telling me all about it, & it definitely was different than the standard style. I’ve not yet had a chance to see it. (She herself hasn’t yet bought one).

I don’t know what kind of thing you’re looking for.

By the way, as a ‘lurker’ for a good while, I enjoyed many of your posts writersoul.

Gutt voch.

Rav Hirsh on Chumash

writersoul,

rabbi pam wrote a mussar sefer called atarah l’melech

additionally there is hamaspik l’ovdei Hashem (not from r pam, from r avraham ben harambam)

Rashi, never found something better.

Interesting. I was thinking of recommending Chorev. I don’t think its massiveness will be a problem, because each mitzvah is an individual self contained piece which has nothing to do with any of the others. Not only that, you don’t have to follow any order; you can pick whichever ones interest you the most. And I think 25 minutes is enough time to get through one of them – some of the shorter ones might even allow for multiple pieces per session. Also, if your considering something like Chorev, you can also consider something like Sefer Hachinuch or even the Rambam’s Sefer Hamitzvos, but I think Chorev would be the best of those for the intellectual stimulation you are looking for.

If you are considering Shemoneh Perakim, I would point out that it is not particularly long, so depending on your pace, you might well finish it in a couple of months, which if you are planning to have this chavrusa for the duration of the year would cause you to have to come up up with another idea in the middle of the year. Then again, if you do choose Shemoneh Perakim, and you are also doing Pirkei Avos with the Bartenura, if you finish Shemoneh Perakim worst comes to worst you can just segue into Pirkei Avos with the Rambam’s commentary. (Though I don’t know if you would want to be concurrently learning two different parts of Pirkei Avos, with different commentaries.)

(I was also going to suggest something in Tanach, but I assumed you wouldn’t want that. Bad assumption. I would have suggested something like Iyov which can be very intellectual especially in the discussion of why good things happen to bad people. But something like that probably wouldn’t work so well in a 25 minutes a week setup and it sounds like Navi was nixed anyway {although technically it’s not Navi}.)

Regarding mussar seforim, there is a broad spectrum. For example, something like Orchos Tzadikim, you would probably consider “fluffy”, Mesilas Yesharim (which you have already learned) and Ohr Yisrael probably less so, and something like Chovos Halevavos can be pretty intellectual, perhaps even bordering on philosophical.

Keep in mind ??? ??? ???? ???? ??? ??? ???? ???.

Wow, you have a lot of chavrusas. If you are going to do Chovos Halevavos with one chavrusa and Chorev with another chavrusa, and one is a teacher and the other is a fellow student, I would recommend doing Chovos Halevavos with the teacher. Although it seems from what you wrote that you already are doing something else with the other chavrusa and Chorev and Chovos Halevavos would be vying for the chavrusa with this teacher. But to reiterate about Chorev, you don’t have to finish the whole thing or even half of it. Think of each piece as a separate sefer.

By the way it would be pretty funny if one of the people giving suggestions here was actually your teacher.

Oh, and I’m going to add uighwisarogh;oaerhg to my lexicon. It’s definitely more intelligible than ontic dualism. Speaking of which, Microsoft Word apparently never took any philosophy classes because it doesn’t know the word ontic. Actually, it’s the Coffee Room spell checker that doesn’t know ontic; Microsoft Word recognized the word but couldn’t think of any synonyms for it. But I’m not surprised – as I discovered last week, Microsoft Word doesn’t think that hacceity is a word.

So I listened to it again to see if I could clarify what he said about the Ralbag. It’s pretty hard to make out what he’s saying. After he says that Moreh Nevuchim is good he says “but the _____’s seforim _____ the Ralbag is not so good”. The first blank sounded like he was saying Rasag, Rashag, Rashal, or Ralbag. Presumably he was referring to R’ Saadia Gaon or the Ralbag. If the first blank was “Ralbag” then it seems that he was talking about all his seforim, not just Milchamos Hashem. If the first blank was something else, then he might have only been referring to Milchamos Hashem when he mentioned the Ralbag. The second blank might have been “like” or “but”, which I’m not sure how would fit in the sentence, or it might have been something else entirely – it’s hard to distinguish.

And I also noticed that he also said that Nefesh Hachaim and Kuzari are good as well.