Rabbi Benny Lau is a rising star in the rabbinic landscape of Israel. Rabbi Lau, 50, is the nephew of ex Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, and wrote his PhD thesis about another ex Chief Rabbi: Ovadia Yossef. Today he heads a community in Jerusalem and is often asked to offer his opinion in the media.

In the set of books called “חכמים” (“The Sages”) Lau popularised (and I don’t use this term disparagingly) the lives and times of the Jewish Sages. The first book in the series dealt with the Second Temple period. The second with the period of Yavneh and Bar Kokhva. The third with the Galilean period. The current, and fourth volume, deals with the move from the Mishna days to the Talmud days, or as they are known, from the Tanaim to the Amoraim.

The book is in the same format as the previous ones. For each period, Lau provides a short historical background and then devotes a chapter to each of the leading Sages of the period. But unlike the previous volumes I found this one to be more disjointed and less easy to follow. There was less of a coherent picture of the life and thought of most of the Sages covered in the book. Perhaps it’s simply due to the “natural confusion” of the period covered, with the splitting of the Torah world between Israel and Babylon.

Despite this, The Sages: Volume 4 is yet another successful milestone in the journey rabbi Lau embarked on, a journey that opened up the world of our Sages to people who have not had the chance to encounter them through Talmudic study. For this reason alone, rabbi Lau should be praised. ( )